tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65079710718959996022024-03-05T17:15:59.955+00:00The Book of Barely Imagined BeingsA 21st Century BestiaryCaspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.comBlogger1217125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-14342249193231689712013-05-27T06:57:00.000+01:002014-02-28T11:32:54.417+00:00The Blog of Barely Imagined Beings
Welcome to the blog of The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. I posted more than a thousand entries between February 2008 and February 2013 relating to every animal and theme explored in the book, and more. See a summary of highlights in the right hand column, and the blog archive further down below the quotations from Bertrand Russell to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Update: RecentCaspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-41718630096074328032013-05-22T07:19:00.000+01:002013-09-25T09:26:05.922+01:00Conclusion
Conclusion
page 377: mappa mundi. As Caleb Scharf writes in Gravity's Engines, “Our current map of the known universe contains a vast amount of information, yet it is barely a scrap of parchment compared to the full atlas.”
page 377: a gardener wants to...see into the future. “The trick is to live in the moment and in the future at the same time,” says Todd May. (We need to believe in life Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-25654987541170998082013-05-21T07:27:00.000+01:002013-05-22T13:10:49.532+01:00The 30 tonne primate
Chapter 27: Zebrafish
page 370: what we may...learn. Recent advances include visualizations of the activity of nearly every cell in the larval zebrafish brain and of live memory retrieval in the whole [adult] brain.
page 372: immortalist scenario. Todd May observes:
If you start imagining us as fundamentally different from who we are,
then the question is, are we really talking about us Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-82435916085725665872013-05-20T08:46:00.000+01:002013-05-20T13:55:37.713+01:00Yeti crab
Harlequin shrimp (page 357). Heaps of Yeti crabs here
Chapter 26: Yeti Crab
NPR's On Point featured this chapter as an excerpt on the page for their show, Fantastic Creatures.
page 355: An introduction to deep sea vents here. The deepest discovered so far is 5000 metres down in the Cayman trough.
page 359: robot...nurturance...killer app. See, for example, When are we Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-39915163402726029772013-05-17T07:09:00.000+01:002013-06-01T21:23:09.660+01:00Page-TurnerIn the Page-Turner blog of The New Yorker James Guida says that The Book of Barely Imagined Beings
is about earth’s adventure as a whole...much of the news is abysmally sad. Should one be completely frank and
insistent about this great tragedy, keep stressing the dimensions of
what is being undone? Or will bright facts about the animal world,
working indirectly, better aid the cause of actionCaspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-61425692199557189472013-05-16T08:03:00.002+01:002013-05-16T09:30:28.849+01:00Strange world
Sea pig
Chapter 25: Xenophyophore
page 343: undersea mountains, abyssal plains. Deeper still are trenches, which teem with microscopic life forms.
page 344: seabed sediment also holds radioactive iron ejected by a supernova 2.2 million years ago and preserved in the fossilized
remains of bacteria.
page 344: Dali painting. See image above.
page 349: Julian Barbour [suggests] timeCaspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-33461576432751382402013-05-15T12:36:00.000+01:002013-05-19T10:13:59.210+01:00Owl at dusk
Horned owl
Chapter 24: Xenoglaux
page 334: tipping point. Some scientists say an Arctic thaw may be the first in a cascade.
"Perhaps the worst news of all is that there may be no warning of
impending flips." But there is also push-back against the idea.
page 335: sixth extinction. Today's extinctions, say some scientists, may be the result of damage humans did
inCaspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-34584217988394810482013-05-14T20:21:00.000+01:002013-05-14T20:36:20.417+01:00On Point online
I talked to Tom Ashbrook for On Point on NPR today. The talk is available to listen again here.
I referred to a poem by Les Murray. It's about cuttlefish (not squid):
Spacefarers past living planetfall
on our ever-dive in bloom crystal:
when about our self kin selves appear,
slowing, rubber to pulp, we slack from spear,
flower anemone, re-clasp and hang, welling
while the design of play Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-49536919182136661012013-05-14T06:40:00.000+01:002013-05-14T13:46:38.301+01:00Floating in a most peculiar way
Chapter 23: Waterbear
page 322 A greater and more durable [human] presence in space. John Fallows looks at a future mining the Moon and living on Mars. John Quiggin has fun with the arithmetic of interstellar travel.
page 322: Tardigrades in space. Not only the adults but waterbear eggs can survive in space.
page 325: no [animal] apart from Waterbears. But scientists have found a way Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-50045734828270491622013-05-13T07:58:00.000+01:002013-05-13T10:03:07.062+01:00Conjuring with rainbow names and handfuls of sea-spray
Mnemiopsis leidyi
Chapter 22: Venus's Girdle
page 316: [Cteonophore] lineage is uncertain. A major for reason for this is that their DNA appears to be evolving extremely fast.
page 316 (marginal note): bioluminescent glow. A readable introduction to remarkable bioluminescent creatures in the ocean here. Another good resource here.
page 319: animal pleasure is not something Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-40890377064767167992013-05-10T08:12:00.000+01:002013-08-05T14:41:14.247+01:00Unicorns
Rhinoceros beetle
Chapter 21: Unicorn
page 307: Unicorn's horn was the Viagra of its day. Rhino horn is the "natural" Viagra of ours. In February it was reported that a rhinoceros has been killed every 11 minutes since the beginning of the year. In April the last 15 rhinos in a Mozambique park were killed by poachers.
page 308: An informative post on narwhals today at Why Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-71706246464117886012013-05-09T14:36:00.003+01:002013-05-10T22:18:08.380+01:00Stranger things in heaven and earth
Petroglyphs etched into desert varnish, Utah
I've written about Weird Life by David Toomey for the May edition of The Literary Review, and have put a version online here.
Two posts on this blog in March touch on Toomey's work and some of the issues it raises. They are Cloud beings and In the long term.
Lee Billings invites us to broaden our ideas of what Earth-like planets could be like. Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-81292378664014750112013-05-09T06:37:00.000+01:002013-05-09T14:43:39.784+01:00Thorny devil
Escher meets Ouroboros. Armadillo girdled lizard, southern Africa
Chapter 20: Thorny Devil
Page 297: analogous systems...in other arid places. Old growth forest in Tennessee is not exactly arid, but for some creatures there moisture is hard to find. In The Forest Unseen, David George Haskell notes:
Dehydration is the [lone star] tick's main foe during their quests [for blood]. Ticks sit in Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-13558358073159281482013-05-08T21:38:00.001+01:002013-05-08T22:15:18.716+01:00Librarians go wildThe verdict in the May 15 edition of Library Journal:
This readable volume...will appeal to the serious reader with broad interests in science, mythology, folklore, and speculation on questions of the human condition.
Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-15418249692145181722013-05-08T12:56:00.000+01:002013-05-08T22:16:59.855+01:00Peony
Peony had arthritis and was very old, so she could barely move. She
would try to climb into a climbing frame where a bunch of chimps were sitting
and grooming each other. She wanted to join them, but she could barely get in
there. The younger females would walk up to her, put their hands on her behind,
and start pushing until she was up there with the rest. We’ve also seen cases
where she Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-9834607692451483682013-05-08T07:24:00.000+01:002013-05-15T14:10:18.374+01:00Sea butterfly
Chapter 19: Sea butterfly
page 285: the oceans have absorbed...much of the additional heat. See Missing heat found in oceans, global warming has accelerated in past 15 years
page 285: change in ocean acidity. A recent report here. And Julia Whitty summarizes ten key findings.
page 286: in addition to cyanobacteria, most known species of bacterial plankton can be found everywhere.&Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-58206921773668672752013-05-07T13:43:00.001+01:002013-05-07T19:52:42.310+01:00Two modes of existence
An additional note for chapter 13:
page 204: two states of...trying to live utterly in the moment, and...trying to live in memory of reflection. Julian Baggini points out that Søren Kierkegaard articulated something like this:
Human beings are caught...between two modes or ‘spheres’ of existence. The ‘aesthetic’ is the world of immediacy, of here and now. The ‘ethical’ is the transcendent,Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-90321124769512443732013-05-07T07:45:00.000+01:002013-05-07T14:15:25.234+01:00The burning archangels under the seaChapter 18: Right whale
page 270: Balaenidae. The evolution of baleen whales may be linked to the freezing of Antarctica from about 34 million years ago
page 271: Bowheads...have the biggest mouths on the planet. And inside the mouth is a 4 metre (12ft) brain-cooling penis-ish thing, which no one noticed until 2012 or 2013.
page 278: reduced noise. See recent news story WhaleCaspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-56135852375219489912013-05-06T06:48:00.000+01:002013-05-08T14:28:39.445+01:00Quetzalcoatlus
'Let us deliver mankind from the ancient, universal tyranny...of gravity!'
Chapter 17: Quetzalcoatlus
Choosing an animal beginning with Q was hard. The quokka would have been a happy choice.
page 248: the Great bustard may be heavy but ever year it migrates 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles).
page 249: California condors were brought to the brink of extinction, in part, because of lead Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-27713365229944425962013-05-03T00:01:00.000+01:002013-05-10T18:31:14.469+01:00Pufferfish
Ocean sunfish
Chapter 16: Pufferfish
page 242: appetite...out of control: especially when food is painstakingly engineered to addict. "Salt+Fat²/Satisfying crunch + Pleasing mouth feel = A food designed to addict."
page 243: unholy and savage. Truth as metaphor here. In Immoderate Greatness William Ophuls quotes Seneca:
A bull contents himself with one meadow, and a forest is Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-13526378409990519352013-05-02T06:03:00.000+01:002013-08-07T08:51:41.537+01:00Octopus
Chapter 15: Octopus
The New York Review of Books has published an excerpt from this chapter.
page 229: a bleached version of Marge Simpson. A photo of Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis here.
page 223: giant squid. It has been suggested that Architeuthis dux is actually as many as different 21 species. Recent research indicates that it is one only one, with global distribution.
page 236:Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-61984206172593920782013-05-01T06:01:00.000+01:002013-05-01T20:39:30.172+01:00Nautilus
Chapter 14: Nautilus
page 213: nothing so odd will do long. More about Nipponites here.
page 222: Motion pictures...have enhanced and altered our sense of what it is to be. In Street by James Nares, each six-second pan of a New York scene is distended to two minutes. It may, writes J. Hoberman, "suggest an updated version of Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 Koyaanisqatsi...actually, it is quite Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-21541346154615807672013-04-30T06:42:00.000+01:002013-05-07T13:27:13.314+01:00Flame-knee, Graysmoke, Hobo
Audax jumping spider. See page 200
Chapter 13: Mystaceus, a jumping spider
page 199 (marginal note): approximately 110 families of spiders. In Field Notes from a Hidden City, Esther Woolfson delights in the names given to various species:
Who could fail to be entranced by the Cloud-living, the Dew-drop, or the Garden-ghost spider? Who could resist the allure of the Flame-knee spider orCaspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-80308187870063656402013-04-29T06:29:00.000+01:002013-05-01T20:39:06.583+01:00Leatherback
Chapter 12: Leatherback
page 186: throat...lined with sharp...spikes. See photo here. Jellyfish are bread and butter. See photos here.
page 191: A study published in January estimated that only about 500 Leatherbacks are now nesting at their last large site in the Pacific.
This is thirteenth in a new series
of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6507971071895999602.post-90947853599660236472013-04-27T07:30:00.001+01:002013-04-27T07:30:57.665+01:00Hanging on in there
For all the grandeur of rainforests, savannahs and coral reefs, deep life is probably a more persistent feature of our planet.
-- Deep LifeCaspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.com0