The Lord is my Park Ranger

I don't look to the Earth Sciences to cast light upon Grey's "Elegy" or Kipling's "Recessional" nor would I go to ancient scrolls for questions of  Geochronology. The story of Jonah isn't a proto wildlife documentary. Science and thinking like a Scientist has only been a part of human culture for a couple of hundred years.

Science and Poetry deal in different notions of time and veracity. They are two completely different tools we use to perform two completely distinct tasks.

The Bible is a divinely inspired text from the dawn of modern human ethical consciousness, attested to by many individuals from many times and cultures. Theologians like Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine have provided guidance concerning apparent inconsistencies and temporal knots arising from what we in the 20th Century might call the "Science VS Religion" debate. A hypothetical showdown between Batman and Anne of Green Gables would give rise to a far more coherent, and likely far more interesting, contest of ideas.

I don't acknowledge that such a "debate" can even arise from the under pinning axioms of either sphere of human endeavour. .

I found this image this morning and I liked it, probably for the opposite reasons Young Earth Creationists do.

Jesus .... yup .... Dinosaur .... hhhmm sure. Whats not to like ? 

Pascal

For in fact what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up.

Sickness Country

"As for nuclear power, the indigenous people in the NT grew up with knowledge about the “sickness country” and that they had a responsibility to ensure it was not disturbed. We would do well to listen to them."
  
That the Jawoyn had some gnostic sense of epidemiological folk wisdom which picked up the presence of environmental uranium is something you often hear repeated.

More likely antinuclear campainers impute "sickness knowledge" to Indigenous people, if it happens to coincide with Uranium ore deposit and concomitant political imperative. Otherwise the myriad taboos and proscriptions transmogrify into "spiritual heritage".

http://sicknesscountry.blogspot.com.au/

The blog author Director of the Canadian chapter of the International Medical Geology Association makes no claim of causality just coincidence, makes some chiding remarks about consumerism and spruiking up the creation of Kakadu National Park .

 http://www.smh.com.au/business/spirit-of-bula-haunts-a-shattered-nation-20110318-1c0mq.html
  
"If that wasn't bad enough, the Jawoyn people's mythical Bula, transplanted thousands of kilometres from home, began to cast a pall over those living in the shadow of nuclear power reactors at Fukushima and infected the spirit of global financial markets." is not particularly florid compared with the tone of the rest of this tract of bilge. 

KABOOM goes the economy, off goes the Gieger counter, that spotty dog has tipped over the rubbish bin - the whole catastrophe, ergo, there goes Bula again and the wise Jarwoyn stand back shaking their heads at the folly of the gubba.  

However, would we know if Bula were to go ahead and prototype a fast breeder reactor as part of a strategy to develop a fuel cycle which can utilize Thorium? Who are we to fathom the ways of Bula? Ekeing a living as a hunter gathering is not some noble savage, " Living in harmony with Nature". It would be a bloody tough life, more like "Dying in harmony with Nature". For us as comfortable middle class Westerners to ventriloquise the Jawoyn with own political agenda is patronizing in the extreme.  

This whole "sickness country" meme needs to be hauled into the light of day to cop a healthy tan. 

John Renton Replies

Mark:

The reason why the concept of time is not a major part of the course is because it was supposed to concentrate on the physical aspects of Earth. I read your "trip through time" and found it a perfect example of how an everyday experience can be used to convey the concept of dark time. In order to accomplish that feat, one must use a common experience. One that I have used when I taught historical geology employed a roll of Scott toilet paper. Actually, the idea didn't originate with me; I sort of stole the idea. The Scott people claim a roll of their toilet paper it consists of 1000 sheets. I must admit that I took their word for it, not wanting to spend my time to check to see if it does indeed contain the specified number of sheets. In any case, with 1000 sheets, every sheet represents 4.5 million years. Then the fun begins,. One sheet represents the entire time of human existence on the planet. Homo sapiens showed up about a half sheet ago with the written word going back 1/10 of a sheet. I suppose one could contemplate all that when one while taking part in ones daily constitutional.

John

Deep Time

James Hutton was one of the early pioneers of Geology. During the beginnings of the scientific revolution scientists were just begining to understand the processes that were gradually building the earth's surface. When they saw how slowly those changes progressed and the vast scale of the landscapes those tiny changes eventually lead to, it seemed too incredible to be true.  It was starting to dawn on Hutton and his contemporaries how immensely old the earth must be.

Hutton's 1788 paper concludes; "The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,–no prospect of an end."

Back then figures were being bandied about in the tens of millions of years. Fast forward to Becquerel and the discovery of radioactivity. This gives us the double whammy of being able to explain, firstly,  how the sun and the earth stayed hot for so long, and also, enabled us to date the planet precisely, using little clocks built into the fabric of matter itself.

Deep Time was here to stay -  4.6 BILLION years !

As humans however we struggle to visualise such a gaping chasm of time. Think about how your perception of time progresses. Years are remembered in flashes and minutes can telescope into eternity. The concept of time is probably one of the most unreliable senses we Humans have.

In order to try to grasp this concept I once amused myself, whilst driving from Kalgoorlie to Cloncurry along the Birdsville track with this thought experiment ;

Imagine every millimetre represents a year as you trundle along in the Toyota Troopcarrier "Time Machine".

You can span a man's life time with your hand.

The event that marked the catastrophe at the Tertiary Cretaceous boundary - a whacking great asteroid smacking into the planet. A blinding flash of light like an atom bomb, only vastly bigger, then plunging the planet into dust and darkness and killing off the dinosaurs. This would be over in the actual blink of your eye.

You then work out where, along the road of geological history, each event would be located.

Take the early Proterozoic Eon for example. Prior to this there was no Oxygen in the atmosphere.  Blue Green algae similar to the Shark Bay stromatolites, began the neat trick of photosynthesis.  One tiny relentless little bubble after the next as , little by little, entire oceans rusted into what would eventually become mountains of Iron Ore in the Pilbara. Took 'em a while but they eventually got around to it.

You get the idea now ? I wont spoil it for you because working it out is half the fun and makes the exercise all the more compelling.

This is one long road trip.

Pragmatism

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.

Murphy's Law

You all know about Murphy's Law right? 

It is that atavistic force that causes inanimate object to fail for no reason at the worst possible moment. 

If it can go wrong it will.

Well, not quite and, like many of these things if you drill a little deeper, the whole story is much more interesting as well as yielding some practical lessons.

It grew out of the experiences of a Colonel Stapp USAF, a pioneer in studying the effects of deceleration on humans. He was challenging the conventional wisdom that 20gs was fatal to the human body so there was no point in making the harnesses in fighter planes any stronger. Stapp begged to differ and in an heroic spirit of self experimentation put his own life where his mouth was.

After a SNAFU of the sort that any Technician or Engineer has seen many times, Stapp muttered something which eventually became Murphy's law.

To paraphrase:

If there is a way of buggering something up - eventually someone is going to do it. 

The corollary being ; If you can build that possible failure mode out or plan for it's contingency - not a bad idea to do so.

The bigger story makes for an engrossing read.

Hasten Slowly

A company needed to hire a technician to get some urgent work done. The HR guy was strapped for time so he got the 4 most promising applicants into his office and told them " I will conduct a group interview where I will ask one question and who ever give the best answer can start right away".  The applicants agreed.

"What is the fastest thing you can think of? "

Straight away the first applicant said " A thought ! To start with you only have a problem then in an instant an idea appears out of nowhere providing the answer to your problem"

The HR guy says" Great answer and you are obviously a very creative person - just the sort of thing we are looking for."

The second bloke says "An eye blink. So fast you can barely see it's happened."

The HR guy says "Well your right and colloquially - The Blink of an Eye is an indicator of speed"

The third bloke says "Light - I was on the farm the other day where the shed in the bottom paddock was wired to the electrics in the house - I threw the switch and instantly the light in the shed shone out. Albert Einstien even proved that nothing can possibly go faster than light."

The HR guy says "Dead right! You obviously have a good grasp of Physics - just the sort of talent we need."

The fourth bloke says " Diarrhea."

The HR guys says " WHAT !!??"

 The bloke continues "Well I was a bit loose the other day - got caught short - bolted for the dunny - burst throught the door but before I could think, blink or turn on the light I'd already fuckin shit meself!"

Better is the enemy of good enough

or "Dont over egg the custard". 

Work out what is a sound and tidy level of workmanship and dont try to make things perfect. It inevitably winds up making the finished job worse as well as being scandalously time consuming. Same applies to gimmicky accessories that serve no practical purpose.

I was soundly counseled by a RAAF  test pilot and gifted natural on the topic of instrumentation to "get you out of inadvertent IFR".   "Even thinking about that could get you killed" He said "The best piece of IFR equipment for a sport pilot / plane combo is a tent !"