The Extremophile's Lair

(Another (personal) version of the Wizards Oath from Young Wizards books by Diane Duane)

In Life/Green's name and For life's Sake
And looking towards the wellspring from which all life springs
I swear to keep the world growing
To turn my leaves always towards Sunfire and Rainstorm
And to transmute them to the stuff of life's need.
To place my roots between hard rock and seedling
And to respect all that grows well in it's own way -
                                                                                          Without harm to others
To look towards growth and life - when it is right to do so
(keeping in mind)
               (the invasive)
                           (The cleansing fire that enriches with ash)
And to respect and love the red land and the black (and all their people)
Looking always towards the wellspring of water that exists within all things
And from which their life extends...

From Adam Kotsko:

"In light of recent proposed budget cuts in various countries, I feel compelled to mount a defense of the common sense concept of the government being able to “afford” something:

• If we can afford to spend billions of dollars on weapons systems we will almost certainly never use, we can afford to have a system where a dedicated tax stream pays for some bare-bones retirement and disability benefits, with no more overhead than it costs to print and mail the checks.
• If we can afford to endlessly occupy two countries for no apparent reason, surely we can afford to help people get health insurance.
• If we can summon up $700 billion out of thin air to bail out banks, surely we can afford to fill in the state and local budget gaps that would lead to firing people who provide essential services.
• If we can afford high-tech laboratories to do scientific research the results of which we will basically give away to corporate interests for nothing, then we can afford humanities instruction, which requires a teacher, a chalkboard, and enough chairs for all the students.
• Again, if universities can afford to run money-losing athletic programs, then they can afford to provide the minimal research support funds humanities people require — basically time off to focus on research and maybe the occasional plane ticket, since the other resources they need consist of little more than the pre-existing infrastructure of a good library that you’d need for the university anyway.

The pattern is the same again and again and again: the thing that actually costs not too much money is denounced as unaffordable, while the insanely expensive thing is never even questioned. It’s like if I overdrew my checking account and decided I needed to start buying store-brand cereal while never questioning if I can afford that Lexus."

That wold be Love/Metta in action.

Also another good site:
http://liberationforall.wordpress.com/

This is hopefully going to be the start of a series on the diverse and unusual forms of life in this world. 

Extremophies are life forms that can do very well in unusual or "hostile" situations due to unusual physical set-ups.  Sometimes this means they don't do as well in typical circumstances.  Extremophiles inhabit extreme environments, colonize stony, non-living areas first and lead the way for other life, and sometimes inhabit unusual roles in an ecosystem.

Cereus:

Cereus (also called Night-Blooming Cereus, or Queen-of-the-Night) is a tough small cactus (of the Peniocereus family)  that grows in the Sonoran Desert.   It looks about like a bundle of sticks, but instead of being the typical brown or beige, it's a light gray-green.  They usually grow in the middle of a bush like a creosote making it well-nigh invisible and elusive.

Creosote bush in bloom


Cereus plant in foreground

It's one of those plants you can have a fun time keeping your eyes peeled for.

But for 2 or 3 nights of the year - it changes entirely.  It puts out white flowers the size of your palm or larger.  They are night-pollinated so the flowers have a definite scent.  The people in my neighborhood would keep an eye on all the known cereus plants near the road, and would take "cereus walks"  where in the evening we would walk around the neighborhood and congregate at whoever's cereus was blooming.  There is always photigraphy and soft voices, discussing the news but in a way that I can only describe as soft, or maybe quiet.  Although it was as much a tone as a lack of loudness.





These flowers become a important nectar source for sphinx moths and bats.  Symbiosis is incredibly important in the natural world - two organisms each giving something and getting something, but what they are getting is more than what they gave.  In this case nectar (food) for the ability to spread pollen and make the next generation of plants.  The plants and animals have evolved over time to be more suited to eachother.  The cereus bloom is white and strong-smelling to make it easy to spot in the night.  The moths and bats have evolved long tongues to reach down into the flower.  Which in turn, gets longer to make sure they get plenty of pollen on their faces. It's not as pretty or peaceful as it sounds necessarily.

The moths also have a part of their brains that tells them to go to shiny white things which may be why they behave so dangerously around porch lights.

The secret behind all this?  Cereus cacti have a huge tuber underground - about the size of a watermelon where they store water and sugar.  This  is how they make it through the year - waiting for the right season.

(Incidentally,I leaned a lot about managing resources from cereus.  And then promptly dismissed what I learned in order to "pass"/survive.  If you have limited resources or capacity to do certain things, like talk, you don't have to be going at full-capacity all the time, just some of the time really well at the right time.)


Drawing of cereus root

Here's a post inspired by Elizabeth of  Screw Bronze! .    Both her wonderful style of posts involving beautiful pictures and her desire to go up to Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii.




 

Here's my favorite star cluster.  It's called the Wild Duck Cluster.  It's a bunch of newly formed stars heading out into the world.  Soon they'll break up into ones and twos and threes - but most stars have at least one other star with them throughout their lives.  We used to think that bianary stars were the exception!  Now we know they aren't.  And they can even have planets orbiting around both of them.

 
I can tell you from experience, going to an observatory can be harrowing and fun - sleep deprivation can do wierd things, but it's worth it.

 
But it's more fun if you go with people you like to be with!

 
Stars are born in nebulae (clouds of gas and dust) like this one.  They collapse out, until they're dense enough to burn on their own.  Sometimes stars blowing up close to them help the process out.

 
What I DON'T want to happen to Beth.  This is the remenant of a dead star.  Our sun's going to look like this someday.

 
But even when you do die, you'll leave this kind of thing behind - because you spread that much beauty around.  I really admire you for it.  But it shouldn't be soon. When stars are big enough they don't go gently into the good night.  When they run out of fuel and collapse, they do it so fast that atoms run into eachother with enoug force to make it explode outward. This is a Supernova remenant - a star that EXPLODED.

 
A Galaxy, plus some stars from ours. Rule of thumb: everything you can see it with your naked eye is in our galaxy.  Except on a really dark night, you can see a faint smudge which is our neighboring galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy.

 
Eventually old blown-up star nebulas turn into collapsing back into new stars nebulas.  It's more complicated than that - they need to drift together into a bigger nebula. This only happens sometimes.