Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Purity Month | Pura Vida

"I heart Pura Vida because to me, it means you have to 'celebrate, before it's too late.'" -- Ashley L., Chelseakane.com

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

Costa Rica doesn't have a national motto. But it might as well be "pura vida." While it seems that this simple phrase might translate into "pure life" in English, that's not the case. In Spanish, "pure life" would be "vida pura." So, "pura vida" has taken a host of related yet slightly different meanings, including "plenty of life," "full of life," "this is the life," "real living," and even expressions of positivity like "cool" or "awesome."

The origins of this phrase are unclear, but it has been said that Costa Ricans adopted the motto after seeing the 1956 Mexican movie, "Pura Vida!" Today, it is the most commonly used phrase in Costa Rica and is an expression of the culture's famously chilled out lifestyle.

When people greet each other, say goodbye, show appreciation, say thank you or you're welcome, it is common to say, "Pura vida!"

Pocketcultures.com offers some examples of its usage:

-¡Hola Tamara!, ¿Pura vida? (Hi Tamara, ¿Pura vida?)
-Muy bien, gracias a Dios. (Very well, thank God.)

-¡Diay Felipe! ¿Cómo vas? (Hey, Felipe! How’s it going?)
-Pura vida, ¿y vos? (Pura vida, and you?)

-¡Nos vemos mañana! (See you tomorrow!)
-Pura vida, ¡chao!(Pura vida, bye!)

-¡Muchas gracias! (Thank you very much!)
-¡Pura vida! (¡Pura vida!)

-¿Usted conoce a María? (Do you know Maria?)
-¡Claro! Ella es muy pura vida. (Sure! She’s very pura vida.)


ACTION ALERTS
  • Buy a handmade Costa Rican Pura Vida bracelet to help provide full-time jobs for Costa Rican artisans and 1% will be donated to the Surfrider Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting and preserving beaches and oceans worldwide (Pura Vida
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
PAST SERIES
image: Costa Rican dancers from the Feria America Tropical, a celebration of various foods from around Latin America. May 20-21 2006 at EARTH University, Costa Rica. (credit: bengarland, Wikimedia Commons)
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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Purity Month | Pure Food & Drug Act

"All day long the blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations: upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad tracks and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them; and there are not merely rivers of hot blood and carloads of moist flesh, and rendering-vats and soup cauldrons, glue-factories and fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell—there are also tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the workers hung out to dry and dining rooms littered with food black with flies, and toilet rooms that are open sewers." -- Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

When the American journalist and one-time California gubernatorial candidate Upton Sinclair wrote his classic muckraking novel The Jungle, which was published in 1906, his intention was to depict immigrant life in the United States, focusing on the hardships faced by an extended Lithuanian family living in Chicago and working at the Union Stock Yards, the massive meatpacking district that gave the city the nickname "Hog Butcher of the World."

But the novel became much more than a story about the immigrant experience. Upton's exposé of the corruption and horrific conditions in the meatpacking industry led to a public uproar that was instrumental in the passage, just a few months later, of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, which mandated the federal inspection of meat products, outlawed adulterated food products and toxic patent medicines. It also required accurate labeling of certain drugs, including alcohol and morphine, as well as others that were legal at the time, such as cocaine, heroin and cannabis.

The public outcry also led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which outlawed the sale of adulterated or misbranded meat, required mandatory inspections of animals prior to slaughter and established sanitation standards for slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.

While these were important safeguards to the public health, these laws did not consider the humane and ethical treatment of animals raised for food. According to the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM USA), approximately 10 billion land animals are killed every year for food in the United States, and 58 billion are killed worldwide. The vast majority of them experience horrific living conditions and physical abuse while they are being raised for slaughter.

Indeed, the battle to get the factory farm industry to stop abusing animals continues apace. And while there is progress—earlier this month, for example, employees at a Butterball turkey factory farm in North Carolina were arrested for breaking the state's animal welfare laws following an undercover investigation by Mercy for Animals—society still has a long way to go. Until then the meat industry will remain by and large pure horror.

ACTION ALERTS
  • Follow Sir Paul McCartney's lead and pledge to be veg for 30 days (Meat.org)
  • Get a free vegetarian starter kit
  • Sign a petition urging McDonald's to make their suppliers adopt a less cruel method of slaughtering chickens (PETA)
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
PAST SERIES
image: Men walking on wooden rails between cattle pens in the Chicago stockyard, 1909 (credit: Kelley & Chadwick, Wikimedia Commons)
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Monday, February 27, 2012

Purity Month | Pure Oxygen

"Vain? Yeah, I am." -- Simon Cowell

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

The Telegraph UK has reported that television producer and personality Simon Cowell tries to stay youthful "by taking blasts from a can of oxygen he carries with him at all times." According to the article, the 52-year-old "adopted the Hollywood fad for bottled oxygen in order to rejuvenate his skin and reduce stress."

The concept of breating pure oxygen for health reasons isn't new. Oxygen bars have popped up all around the globe since the early 1990s, though they serve their customers with 90 to 99 percent pure oxygen, which is not considered harmful to the body in small doses. Supporters of this practice report that it has cured headaches, hangovers and a range of ailments. Pure oxygen fans just can't do with regular everyday air, which contains a measly 21 percent oxygen. But hyper-oxygenators should think twice about this practice.

According to research conducted by Dr. L. Jackson Roberts II, professor of pharmacology and medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and Joshua P. Fessel, an M.D./Ph.D. student at the time, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, breathing pure oxygen increases the presence of a new class of compounds that they discovered called isofurans, which form when free radicals attack cell membrane lipids; i.e., when damage is being done to the lungs.

"Vain? Yeah, I am," Cowell once said in an interview. "But to be honest with you, I can't think of one person who is on TV who isn't vain." Whether or not oxygen helps him look better on the outside is up for debate. But the risks to the parts of his body that the TV camera doesn't focus on aren't.

ACTION ALERTS
PAST SERIES

image: Simon Cowell carries a can of pure oxygen with him at all times (credit: Wiki edit Jonny, Wikimedia Commons
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Friday, February 24, 2012

Purity Month | Pure Energy

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues." -- Duke Ellington

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

One of the most fundamental laws of physics is the Law of the Conservation of Energy, which holds that the amount of energy in any given isolated system remains constant over time. In other words, energy is conserved. As Albert Einstein put it, "Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another." That energy transfer is something that Duke Ellington knows a thing or two about.

The word "energy" is derived from the ancient Greek term "energeia," meaning activity or operation. But we often use and hear the phrase "pure energy." What exactly does that mean? Does "pure energy" exist? Some physicists say that it does, referring to the "E" in Einstein's famous equation, E=mc^2. Some equate pure energy with "radiant energy," the energy of electromagnetic waves; or rather, the energy carried by a wave's photons or that exists in its oscillating magnetic fields. Still others say that pure energy doesn't exist, and instead always occurs in some distinct form, such as heat, light, sound, magnetism or other kinds of energy, like mechanical or chemical. At least in the realm of physics, the concept of "pure energy" is up for debate.

Then there is the more esoteric dimension of "pure energy" that is a primary aspect of many spiritual practices and belief systems. In some cases, this kind of energy is referred to as a "psychic energy" or a life force. In traditional Chinese medicine, the term "qi" describes the vital energy that circulates through the body. In Vedantic philosophy, the Sanskrit term "prana" is used to refer to the concept of "vital life" that is connected specifically to the breath and is part of "Shakti," or "cosmic enegy."

In his 1907 book Creative Evolution, the French philosopher Henri Bergson coined the term "élan vital," meaning "vital impetus," which he used to explain the evolutionary development of living organisms. It has similarilites to the "will-to-live" concept espoused by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Bergson's concept has roots in Posidonius, an ancient Greek Stoic philosoher and astronomer who argued that all of Earth's living creatures possessed a "vital force" that came from the Sun.

Posidonius was partially right. Everything on Earth was created from elements that were born inside the Sun, or in certain cases—like debris from space that has landed on Earth—from elements born in other stars. Indeed, everything in the universe (except perhaps the mysterious "dark matter") was born inside a star.

In this sense, "pure energy" is the kind of energy involved in stellar nucleosynthesis; that is, the nuclear reactions that take place inside stars. As stars have remained a topic of no small interest for physicists, philosophers and mystics throughout history, maybe "pure energy" could act as a unifying concept. But it would likely require more than pure energy to get these groups to agree. Perhaps listening to Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald performing Ellington's famous ballad "In a Sentimental Mood" just might do the trick.

ACTION ALERTS
PAST SERIES

image: Lightning over the outskirts of Oradea, Romania, during the August 17, 2005 thunderstorm which went on to cause major flash floods over southern Romania. Mircea Madau
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Thursday, February 23, 2012

Purity Month | Hot Metal, Conflict Mineral: High-purity Tungsten

"'Blood diamonds' have faded away, but we may now be carrying 'blood phones.'" -- Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, June 26, 2010

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

Tungsten (a.k.a. "wolfram") is a chemical element (symbol 1, atomic numer 74) that comes from the Swedish "tung sten," literally meaning "heavy stone." Identified in 1781, tungsten has a remarkably high density, similar to gold or uranium.

It is also the heaviest element to be used by any living organism. The only organisms known to biologically require tungsten to survive are some species of hyperthermophilic archaea, a group of single-celled microorganisms that love super-hot temperatures. Two examples are Pyrococcus furiosus, which thrives best at 100°C, 212°F; and Thermococcus litoralis, which is found near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, the same ecosystem from which life on Earth may have sprung.

If a heat-loving species needs a metal to survive, then tungsten is a good choice. It has the highest melting point of any metal in pure form: 3422°C, 6192°F.

But humans rely on tungsten as well, particularly high-purity tungsten, which is valued in the electronic, semiconductor and photovoltaic industries for its high resistance and stability at high temperatures. It can be found in light bulbs, vacuum tubes, rocket engines and a wide array of consumer electronics. As Alan Mascarenhas notes in the Daily Beast, "Tungsten makes our iPhones vibrate."

Unfortunately, like many metals, this important industrial element is a conflict mineral, as the mining of it is linked to human rights abuses and the financial support of wars. While most the world's commercial tungsten comes from China, which produced 51,000 of it in 2009, representing 83 percent of the world total, it is also mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which ranks among the top 20 most corrupt countries, according to Transparency International.

"I've never reported on a war more barbaric than Congo's, and it haunts me," New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote in 2010. "In Congo, I've seen women who have been mutilated, children who have been forced to eat their parents’ flesh, girls who have been subjected to rapes that destroyed their insides. Warlords finance their predations in part through the sale of mineral ore containing tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold."

For those women and children, tungsten is indeed a "heavy stone" to bear.

ACTION ALERTS
  • Tell companies to sign the Conflict Minerals Pledge and commit to ensuring that their products are conflict-free (Center for American Progress)
  • Tell your U.S. senators to co-sponsor the Captive Primate Safety Act (S. 1324) to prohibit interstate commerce in monkeys, apes and other primates in the exotic "pet" trade (Born Free USA)
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
PAST SERIES

image: Tungsten rods with evaporated crystals, partially oxidized with colorful tarnish. Purity 99.98 %, as well as a high pure (99.999 % = 5N) 1 cm3 tungsten cube for comparison. Alchemist-hp
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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Purity Month | Liquid Gold: Pure Argan Oil

"What does women's rights have to do with argan oil? Well, that's one of the reasons I am so intrigued by it." -- Melissa Breyer, Senior Editor for Healthy Living, Care2.com

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

The semi-desert savanna of the Sous region in southwestern Morocco is dominated by a tree found nowhere else in the world: the argan (Argania spinosa), a gnarled and thorny tree between 25-30 feet high that lives up to 200 years. And this is the source of an oil that the natural beauty industry has called a miracle oil and "liquid gold."

Goats like to eat the argan's fruit, which has a hard pit that contains one to three small seeds. In ancient times, Berbers collected the undigested pits from the excrement of goats and ground them to produce a nutty oil used for cooking and cosmetics. Today, the fruits, which take a year to mature, are harvested directly and the goats are kept away. (Sometimes, as this photo shows, the goats outsmart the farmers.)

A relict species from the Tertiary age (between 65 million to 2.6 million years ago), the argan is endangered, and Morocco's arganeraie forests—about 3,200 square miles—are part of a protected UNESCO biosphere reserve that has designated 10,000 square miles as an argan-growing region. The sustainable cultivation of the argan tree and the expanding international market for its highly-prized oil drive an ecosystem reforestation project led by the Moroccan Water and Forests Authorities and Union des Cooperatives des Femmes de l’Arganeraie (UCFA), a fair trade working cooperative staffed by Berber women.

Co-sponsored by the Social Development Agency (SDA) with the support of the European Union, the UCFA shares its profit with the women of the local Berber community. The project's goals are to "allow optimal tree growth, plant argan nurseries, and create education programs," writes Melissa Breyer, Senior Editor for Healthy Living on Care2.com. "The community realizes the value of the argan tree and they are involved with its protection."

The value is derived from its oil, one of the world's rarest vegetable oils. Due to high concentrations of tocopherols (Vitamin E) and carotenes (Vitamin A), it has been celebrated for its supposed support of healthy skin and hair. Used by Berber women for centuries, in recent years argan oil has become a hot beauty product, particularly among consumers who appreciate it's support of a women's cooperative and ecosystem conservation.

"When I first found argan oil, I brought it back to the U.K. to have it analyzed," says Liz Earle, who runs an organic skin-care line in England, according to the New York Times. "It was so remarkably high in vitamin E and had these very interesting phytosterols, which are good for scar tissue and so many other things," adding, "Culturally, what it does is good…It provides income to a group that wouldn’t otherwise have it."

"Even without the beauty claims I think I’d be clamoring for argan oil in support of the cooperatives," says Breyer. "[B]ut as it turns out I think I am beginning to believe the hype. I first tried products featuring argan oil when I tried the Aveda Green Science line—but as much as I love the Aveda products, it was hard to tell what the argan oil was like since it is just one ingredient of many. More recently I have tried pure argan oil from a company called Eden, and boy oh boy is it something else. I have always been a huge fan of using jojoba oil on my skin, and this is even better. It is lustrous and rich, but very quickly absorbed. Now I suppose I’ll have to try it for a few weeks before I notice a difference, but at this point an improvement feels inevitable."

ACTION ALERTS
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image: Goats on an argan tree (Argania spinosa) in Morocco. Goats climb these trees to eat their fruit. (credit: marco arcangelli
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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Purity Month | Purification of the Temple

"Is it not written, my house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? But ye have made it a den of thieves." -- Jesus of Nazareth, Gospel of Mark, 11:17 (King James version)

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

One day, so the story goes, Jesus was visiting the temple of Jerusalem. He saw that traders and moneylenders had overtaken this holy place of worship, transforming it into a busy marketplace. Jesus, the radical son of a poor carpenter, wasn't happy about it one bit. He did what any good (and rather resourceful) savior of mankind would do: He drove the profiteers out with a whip he fashioned out of cords, overturning tables and chairs and generally trashing the place. For those who appreciate Jesus as good guy action hero, this is a scene to relish.

That, basically, is the story of the Purification of the Temple, also known as the Cleansing of the Temple. All four Gospels recount the tale with some variation: Matthew 21: 12-13; Mark 11: 15-18; Luke 19: 45-21: 4; and John 2: 14-17.

In the early 1570's, soon after arriving in Rome following his studies under Titian in Venice, El Greco depicted this tale in his famous painting, The Purification of the Temple. Though he painted the story several times, this particular one has generated the most interest because it includes an homage to his influences: In the bottom right corner, four masters of the High Renaissance can be seen (left to right): Titian, Michelangelo, Clovio and Raphael.

And while the painting itself may not be a "pure" depiction of Jesus' famous temple wrath, the Biblical theme of spiritual purity, devoid of the cares and ways of money, remains vital today, especially in light of the unfair lending practices of banks and the populist rage expressed through the global Occupy movement. In particular, the collision of greed and faith came to a head in November of last year, when the Church of England clashed with Occupy London Stock Exchange activists who were parked outside St. Paul's Cathedral.

In regard to the global financial crisis, the famous question arises: What would Jesus do? Well, for one thing, he'd probably stop banking with Chase, though he probably would never have even opened an account to begin with. The only kind of purity that interests the bank—which recently abused the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—is pure profit. If CEO Jamie Dimon were living in the early 1st century and hanging out at the temple of Jerusalem, you can bet he wasn't inside praying. And his moneylending table would have been squarely in JC's line of fire.

P.S.: If you don't want to help fund global warming, don't bank with JPMorgan Chase, Citi and Bank of America. A recent report from BankTrack.org entitled Climate Killers found that these three led banks worldwide in financing dirty coal since 2005.

ACTION ALERTS
  • Close your Chase checking account (eHow.com)
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
PAST SERIES

image: El Greco, "The Purification of the Temple," oil on canvas, 1571-76.
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Monday, February 20, 2012

Purity Month | Zebra Mussels: The Great Destroyer of the Great Lakes

“Don't let anyone tell you there is anything good about the zebra mussel; this is a huge ecological disaster.” -- G. Thomas Watters, mollusk curator, Ohio State University.[1]

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

A small freshwater mussel, the Zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) is native to the Black and Caspian seas in Eurasia. But since the early 19th century, they have been an invasive species, hitching rides on boats. Today, they are impacting environments in North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Sweden.

In all cases, they pose a threat to ecosystem purity, pushing out native species and damaging not only waterways and ships, but also water treatment plants and power plants by clogging up intake pipes. Though they are edible, they are filter feeders and can accumulate pollutants and consequently are not recommended for human consumption. They were first detected in North America in 1998—in Lake St. Clair, which lies between Ontario and Michigan.

"Zebra mussels have devastated native fish in the Great Lakes—consuming the small organisms that would otherwise be food for larger fish—and contributing to conditions that lead to the toxic algae blooms that kill massive numbers of fish and birds," according to the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund. "Stopping invasive species before they enter is critical to the health of the Great Lakes."

The annual cost of Zebra mussel management in the Great Lakes is more than $500 million, according to the Center for Invasive Species Research at the University of California, Riverside.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed new requirements for the water discharged from the ballast tanks of commercial vessels—where invasive species like the zebra mussel hitch a ride into the Great Lakes. But the proposed requirements still permit these vessels to unload exotic organisms into the Great Lakes.

The American public has until tomorrow (February 21) to tell the EPA to stop ecosystem destroyers like the Zebra mussel by strengthening requirements for vessels to expunge their ballast water of small organisms before dumping it into the Great Lakes.

ACTION ALERTS
  • Tell the EPA to protect the Great Lakes from new invasive species by strengthening the 2013 Vessel General Permit for ballast water discharges (National Wildlife Federation Action Fund)
  • Ask your senators to support the RESTORE Act (S. 1400) to ensure that fines collected from the BP oil spill are used to support ecosystem restoration in the Gulf of Mexico (Surfrider Foundation)
  • Ask the Thai ambassador to intercede on behalf of 103 animals taken from the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WFFT) and Elephant Nature Park during a raid (Care2)
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
PAST SERIES
NOTES
[1] Bogue, Ellie. "Zebra mussels plague region's waterways." News Sentinel, Fort Wayne. June 11, 2011. Accessed February 20, 2012.

image: Live zebra mussels underwater with shells open, animals respiring, siphons visible. (credit: GerardM, Creative Commons)

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Friday, February 17, 2012

Purity Month | The Most Endangered Insect in America

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough." -- Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Bengali polymath

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

In addition to habitat loss due to human expansion and the effect of climate change, native species have to contend with a growing threat to ecosystem purity: invasive species. These are species that are non-native to a given range and whose presence reduces the population of native species, often through predation, depleting food sources or destroying habitat.

The term "invasive species" makes it seem like a particular species "invaded" a foreign ecosystem, but in reality, it is primarily the action of humans that bring about such "invasions." One of the earliest human vectors occurred when the Pacific rat (Rattus exulans) was introduced to Polynesia and Southeast Asia during prehistoric human migrations across the Pacific.

A current example can be found in Florida, where a non-native population of Central American green iguanas (Iguana iguana) is thriving, due to irresponsible pet owners who unintentionally let their pet lizards escape or purposely release them into the wild.

These lizards love to eat the leaves of the nickerbean (Caesalpinia bonduc), a vine-like tropical shrub. Little do they know that those leaves are the only place where the critically endangered Miami blue butterfly (Cyclargus thomasi bethunebakeri) lays its eggs.

The Miami blue is native to the southern Florida coast, and at one time it was a common insect. But in the last 50 or so years, urban development resulted in a major loss of its native habitat and its numbers plummeted. Today, it is considered to be the rarest insect in the United States: There are only a few hundred individuals living on isolated islands off of Key West. And the lizards are just one of its many foes.

"In addition to the iguanas, climate change, too much butterfly collecting, pesticides and habitat loss are also potential culprits in the Miami blue's disappearance," writes Mekell Mikell on the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) blog.[1]

In the wild, Miami blue adults are short-lived: females live around five days, males just two. And during those short lives, they remain within thirty feet of their birthplace.

In August, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) evoked a rarely used emergency measure to declare the Miami blue endangered, extending full protection for up to 240 days to allow the agency to go through the formal process of placing it on the Endangered Species List. Capturing, killing or selling a Miami blue is a third-degree felony under Florida state law. But that's really the least of its problems. The main issue is that it has lost the purity of its ecosystem due to human activity.

Still, there is hope. Though past efforts to breed them in captivity and release them back into the wild have failed, a current program at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville is showing promise.

Jaret Daniels, the museum's assistant curator of Lepidoptera and director of the captive breeding program, called it "far and away the most successful breeding program of any imperiled butterfly."[2]

The adult lifespan of the Miami blue may only be a few days, but if the efforts of the museum and the FWS are successful -- and iguana owners keep their nickerbean-eating lizards safely at home -- the Miami blue may survive for many years to come.

"It boils down to persistence and a numbers game," Daniels said. "The more individuals you get out there and the more frequently you do releases, the better the chances."[3]

Ken Warren, an FWS officer at agency's Vero Beach office, is determined to save the tiny and visually striking creature. "We are going to exhaust every possible avenue."[3]

ACTION ALERTS
  • Ask your senators to support the RESTORE Act (S. 1400) to ensure that fines collected from the BP oil spill are used to support ecosystem restoration in the Gulf of Mexico (Surfrider Foundation)
  • Ask the Thai ambassador to intercede on behalf of 103 animals taken from the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WFFT) and Elephant Nature Park during a raid (Care2)
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
PAST SERIES
NOTES

[1] Mikell, Mekell. "Vanishing Beauty: Endangered Miami Blue Butterfly Losing to Invasive Green Iguana." Wildlife Promise. National Wildlife Federation. February 16, 2012. Accessed February 17, 2012.
[2-4] Morgan, Curtis. "Rare Miami blue butterfly gets emergency protection." Miami Herald. August 10, 2011. Republished by Center for Biological Diversity. Accessed February 17, 2012.

image: Miami blue butterfly (credit: Chad'sCapture, Creative Commons)
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Thursday, February 16, 2012

Purity Month | Pure Insanity

"Too much sanity may be madness." -- Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

Tanner Foust, a stunt driver of the car chase scenes in the upcoming spy thriller "The Bourne Legacy," currently being filmed in the streets of Manila, recently called the infamously chaotic traffic of the Philippine capital "pure insanity."

Last month, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Tony Norman called efforts to sanitize Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn "pure insanity."

Earlier this month, the blog Giant-Size Nerd-Thing described a Lego sorting machine, itself made out of Legos, as "pure insanity."

And you don't need to be a basketball fan to get a little caught up in the pure "Lin-sanity" that has swept the world, thanks to the unbelievable, out-of-the-blue, record-shattering playmaking of the newly-minted Knick point guard, Jeremy Lin. Even the Chinese government has rejiggered their television programming schedule to make sure its citizens get a chance to watch the overnight superstar in action.

The phrase "pure insanity" is so common that a visitor from another planet would think sanity were in short supply on Earth. In many ways, they'd be right. But medically speaking, what exactly is pure insanity?

In fact, sanity and insanity lie on a wide-ranging spectrum of behaviors. "During a schizophrenic break," writes Aaron Reina in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin, "one moves between the spectrum of sanity and insanity and is gradually pulled from the clear light of reason to that of madness."

While America's courts often hear insanity pleas, the medical profession generally avoids the word "insanity" in favor of the more general term, "psychopathology," or any number of specific mental disorders as codified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Published by the World Health Organization, the ICD organizes mental and behavioral disorders into 10 groups:

1. Organic, including symptomatic, mental disorders
2. Mental and behavioural disorders due to use of psychoactive substances
3. Schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders
4. Mood [affective] disorders
5. Neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders
6. Behavioural syndromes associated with physiological disturbances and physical factors
7. Disorders of personality and behaviour in adult persons
8. Mental retardation
9. Disorders of psychological development
10. Behavioural and emotional disorders with onset usually occurring in childhood and adolescence


But while the medical community may, in general, embrace these distinctions and definitions, there is no absolute consensus. In his book The Psychology of Self-Esteem, psychologist Nathaniel Branden writes:

"One of the prime tasks of the science of psychology is to provide definitions of mental health and mental illness...But there is no general agreement among psychologists and psychiatrists about the nature of mental health or mental illness -- no generally accepted definitions, no basic standard by which to gauge one psychological state or other.

"Many writers declare that no objective definitions and standards can be established -- that a basic, universally applicable concept of mental health is impossible. They assert that, since behavior which is regarded as healthy or normal in one culture may be regarded as neurotic or aberrated in another, all criteria are a matter of 'cultural bias.'

"The theorists who maintain this position usually insist that the closest one can come to a definition of mental health is: conformity to cultural norms. Thus, they declare that a man is psychologically healthy to the extent that he is 'well-adjusted' to his culture…The obvious questions that such a definition raises, are: What if the values and norms of a given society are irrational? Can mental health consist of being well-adjusted to the irrational? What about Nazi Germany, for instance? Is a cheerful servant of the Nazi state -- who feels serenely and happily at home in his social environment -- an exponent of mental health?"


If insanity even exists, the concept of "pure insanity" would still be debatable. Anyway, if psychologists ever figure it out, it's probably still best to avoid driving in Manila during rush hour; that is, if you don't want to completely lose your mind.

ACTION ALERTS
  • Ask the Thai ambassador to intercede on behalf of 103 animals taken from the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WFFT) and Elephant Nature Park during a raid (Care2)
  • Ask your senators to support the RESTORE Act (S. 1400) to ensure that fines collected from the BP oil spill are used to support ecosystem restoration in the Gulf of Mexico (Surfrider Foundation)
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image: Taft Avenue intersection, EDSA International Entertainment Complex in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines (credit: Storm Crypt, Wikimedia Commons)
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Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Purity Month | Pure Land

"The pure realm [is] the abode of all buddhas and bodhisattvas, the place of bliss, the place of birth." -- Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Tayé (1813-1899), Tibetan Buddhist lama

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]


In Mahayana Buddhism, the celestial realm of Buddha or a Bodhisattva (enlightened being) is known as "pure land," an idea that may have origins in the Uttarakuru, a divine continent that existed in the cosmology of ancient Dharmic traditions. According to the sutras of Mahayana, there are numerous pure lands, places of enlightenment where time is relative. The most popular pure land is Sukhavati, which means "Land of Bliss."

Want to get to this blissful place? It's accesible to anyone, but only through meditation or sadhana, a mind-based discipline that attempts to achieve a spiritual goal by transcending the ego.

One person who has been there is Jane Tromge. Born in 1946 in Port Arthur, Texas, Tromge worked as a magazine fact-checker and freelance writer in New York City. In the late 1970s, she bought an around-the-world air ticket, ended up in Nepal and met the renowned Buddhist teacher Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche. They were married in California in 1979 and she changed her name to Chagdud Khadro. She was ordained as a lama 1997.

In her book P'howa Commentary: Instructions for the Practice of Consciousness Transference as Revealed by Rigzin Longsal Nyingpo, Khadro wrote:

"According to the sutra known as the Rolling of Drums, countless eons ago there was a joyous kingdom whose sovereign had great devotion for the buddha of that time, Lokesvararaja. The king renounced his kingdom, became a monk, and vowed to reach enlightenment. He expressed his bodhicitta intention through forty-eight vows, and promised to refuse buddhahood if any of these vows were not fulfilled. With these words, the earth trembled and flowers rained down from the skies. Praises resounded and with them the prophecy that this monk would surely become a buddha. And so he did, as the Buddha Amitabha.

"In his lifetime as this bodhisattva monk, Amitabha saw that countless pure realms existed for realized ones who had been victorious over the mind's delusions, but no such realm was accessible to those still struggling on the path. Among his forty-eight vows was the aspiration to create a pure realm for all those who heard his name, wished to attain that realm, established the roots of virtue, and dedicated their merit in order to be reborn there. So powerful was his intention that he swore to refuse buddhahood if it did not enable him to manifest such a realm."


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image: Twenty-Five Bodhisattvas Descending from Heaven, Anonymous, c. 1300, Japan, Kamakura period, Pair of hanging scrolls; gold and mineral pigments on silk, Kimbell Art Museum, Wikimedia Commons

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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Purity Month | An Elephant Mother's Love

If a mother's love knows no bounds and an elephant never forgets, where does that leave elephant mothers?

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

Humans have a tendency to complexify things. Take love. The ancient Greeks had several words to describe it: agape (unconditonal love), eros (passionate love), philia (friendship) and storge (affection). The Japanese have the word "ai" for a giving type of love and "koi" for a wanting type of love. In Arabic, love to a man (ana uhibbuk) is different from love to a woman (ana bahibbik).

But of all the different kinds of love that we've identified and categorized, there is perhaps no stronger love than the kind a mother feels for her child. Insomuch as a child is the physical extension of a mother's own body, mother-to-child love can be viewed as a selfish kind of love, i.e., self-love. In this regard, it is the most unique kind of love. Fathers don't have this internalized physical relationship to their offspring. Yet, for better or worse, human mothers are still human, and thus susceptible to all the human foibles that go along with love.

To see pure love in action, without the distinctions and strings that humans so often attach to it, look to the non-human animal world, and in particular, elephants. These highly intelligent animals have language, ritual and strong familial bonds. Love in the form of caregiving is an important part of their lives.

Yesterday, India TV News reported on the death of an elephant calf, who was electrocuted by a live wire near a sugarcane field in Odisha, India. The weeping mother elephant was guarding her dead child for days. Heartbreaking, gut-wrenching and painfully real, this may be love in its purest form.

ACTION ALERTS
  • Support the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, America's largest natural habitat refure developed specifically for endangered African and Asian elephants (Elephant Sanctuary)
  • Say NO to wolves being poisoned over Canada's tar sands (National Wildlife Federation Action Fund)
  • Stop the reopening of cruel diving horse show (Change.org)
  • Save the last 130 western gray whales (WWF)
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image: Mother elephant guards body of dead calf, Odisha, India (India TV News)
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Monday, February 13, 2012

Purity Month | Februa

"Rare is the union of beauty and purity." -- Juvenal, 1st century Roman poet

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

In ancient Rome, today was the beginning of Februa, a three-day festival, possibly of Sabine origin, marked by purification and fertility rituals. In the Roman calendar, February was the last month of the year and also the beginning of spring. Thus, the sense of "spring cleaning" emerges with this festival.

According to the Roman poet Ovid, the Latin word februa ("the means of purification") is derived from the older Etruscan word purgamentum, meaning "purging." The Roman god Februus, named after the month, was the personification of purification.

Februa was later incorporated into Lupercalia, a pastoral fertility and purification festival meant to purify the city by banishing evil spirits, associated with the god of shepherds Lupercus ("he who wards off the wolf').

After Lupercalia's fertility rites were conducted, men drew the names of women from a jar to determine partners for the rest of the celebration. Because of this romantic partnering, Lupercalia is often seen as an early version of Valentine's Day.

In the 5th century, however, pagan customs began their decline as Christianity took hold in Rome. Eventually, these rituals would no longer be observed.

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image: The Roman Baths (Thermae) of Bath Spa, England (credit: Diliff, Wikimedia Commons)
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Friday, February 10, 2012

Purity Month | Lake Vostok


"The discovery of this lake is comparable to the first space flight in its technological complexity, its importance and its uniqueness." -- Valery Lukin, head of the Russian Antarctic expedition that has penetrated the waters of the ancient subglacial Lake Vostok

[February was named after the Latin term februum, meaning purification. Februa, or Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification based on washing or cleaning, held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. From purification rituals throughout history to the importance of pure substances in science and technology, from the issues surrounding ecosystem purity to the growing interest in pure foods, the concept of purity in its various forms is the focus of Purity Month on 13.7 Billion Years. Have a suggestion? Send an email to 13.7billion@gmail.com.]

It took more than a decade of drilling through almost 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of rock-solid ice, but Russian scientists have finally broken through and reached what they were looking for: Lake Vostok, a massive freshwater lake that hasn't been exposed to sunlight or air for a period of 15 to 34 million years. It is believed that the lake, which has been perfectly preserved by a hydrostatic seal created by the polar ice cap, may contain life forms that existed before the Ice Age. If there is an ecosystem on Earth that has maintained its environmental purity through several epochs of geological time, Lake Vostok is it.

Ice in Antarctica appeared some 35 million years ago, around the time that many modern mammals appeared. If life is found in Vostok, it raises the possibility that life can survive in the icy water on Europa, a moon of Jupiter that is believed to have a deep ocean of liquid water under its solid ice surface.

400,000-year-old samples from a more shallow section of the ice core above Vostok revealed colonies of microorganisms adapted to the cold temperatures. These bacteria derive their energy from the minerals in the water and are similar to those organisms found near hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, which are believed to be possible sites for the origin of life on Earth. Vostok's water remains liquid due to the geothermal heat and pressure emanating from the planet's superhot interior.

One of the challenges for the Russian scientists has been how to maintain the purity of this ancient ecosystem. There is great concern about contaminating subglacial lakes with foreign debris and drilling fluid from the drilling process.

To prevent this from happening, the scientists plugged the bottom of the bore hole with Freon, an inert fluid, and then drilled the final few meters with a hot-water drill instead of a motorized drill coated in kerosene (used as an anti-freeze). When the lake was reached, water flowed up into the bore hole, then froze and formed an ice plug. The scientists contend that the possibility that any foreign material went into the lake is low.

Still, some remain concerned that the samples that the Russian team takes from the lake may become contaminated because the clean technology that was used at the bottom of the borehole is not being used in the upper section near the surface.

"This isn't the first time science has been in a position to learn a tremendous amount about a new environment but at the same time, risked contaminating exactly what was being studied," says CBC science correspondent Bob McDonald. "Just look at the tons of equipment left scattered all over the moon. At least the robotic landers sent to Mars are baked before leaving Earth to get rid of microbes."

For now, the Russian project is on hold, as the work can only be done during the warmer summer months of the southern hemisphere, from November to February. Hopefully when the team returns next season, they will have a more stringent plan to ensure the purity of all the samples they retrieve. The United States and the United Kingdom have similar projects that are scheduled to penetrate two other subglacial lakes under the West Antarctic Ice Sheet next year.

McDonald also brings up the fact that there is another viewpoint to consider. "If new forms of life are found down there and the water is contaminated," he notes, "that life will have to deal with what to them would be an alien invasion by humans."

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image: An artist's cross-section of Lake Vostok, the largest known subglacial lake in Antarctica. Liquid water is thought to take thousands of years to pass through the lake, which is the size of North America's Lake Ontario. (Nicolle Rager-Fuller/NSF)
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