Star Dust: Being True to our Clay-like Calling

Human beings are made of dust.

This is both scientific fact and theological proposition. 

Our physical bodies are 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, 10% hydrogen, 3% nitrogen and about 4% "other" - as illustrated by the pie charts below, courtesy of Wikipedia. 

Sand or soil, meanwhile, are composed of many of these similar substances, albeit rearranged in radically different proportions and states. 

The bible affirms our dust-likeness in numerous ways:

• Adam is made by God from the dust of the earth - his name being derived from the Hebrew word for ground, earth or clay. 
• Following his fall, Adam is told that death awaits him in the future -  "for dust you are and to dust you will return."
• King David celebrates God's mercy towards mankind - "For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."
• The apostle Paul, meanwhile, portrays the relationship of the believer towards God as that of clay in the hands of a potter - dependent on the creation and shaping of the skilled craft-worker.
• The glory of the new covenant is expressed by Paul as "treasure in jars of clay" - contrasting the magnificence of God's salvation with the mundane nature of its recipients.

Professor Brian Cox explains the science of our dust-like qualities in this classic clip from the BBC's 2011 series Wonders of the Universe. 

Our dust-like existence has some important consequences: 

1. We have a profound connection with the physical soil 

Our original calling as human beings was to "work and take care of the garden"; every seed-bearing plant and every fruit tree are our staple diet. As Satish Kumar puts it, we are to be about agriculture not agri-business. 

Such an eco-theology may seem hopelessly naive in the digital age of globalisation and genetic science. However, the original calling of men and women to work the garden has not been removed; we remain stewards of the soil from which we were made and to which we will return.

2. We have confidence before God because of his grace

Our frailty, our humanity and our vulnerability do not disqualify us from God's plans and purposes. On the contrary, God remembers that we are dust. He knows our frame. Therefore, we can learn to live with our limitations - and indeed to see them as the context and setting for God's glory to be displayed and revealed. 

We are not crushed by the magnitude of God's glory and power, compared with our own physical, spiritual and psychological weaknesses. Rather, we are honoured and included in his great plan and purpose.   

3, We are to be submissive to God's shaping of us

Shall the clay tell the potter what to do? There is an inner peace that can be experienced by submitting to the hand of God in our lives. Whether he chooses to make us for "noble or ignoble purposes", we can find dignity in our relationship with him.

Furthermore, we can celebrate that whatever the differences in our day-to-day circumstances and existence, our clay-likeness is shared by all human beings. There are no real super stars - just a glorious God who is at work in all of his creation, shaping and working towards the fulfilment of his eternal purpose - bringing all things in  heaven and earth together under Christ. 

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50 Things We Know Now Which We Didn't Know This Time Last Year

There are some gems in this list.

Here's a favourite:

9. Babies pick up their parents' accents from the womb, and infants are born crying in their native dialect. Researchers found that French newborns cry in a rising French accent, and German babies cry with a characteristic falling inflection.

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Forget the Fireworks This 4th July - Check Out the Planets!

NASA reports today (July 4th and tomorrow) an impressive planetary alignment visible with a telescope from the northern hemisphere.

The place to look, apparently, is halfway up the western skyline, just above the twilight glow of sunset, where Mars, Saturn and the bright star Regulus will converge to make a bright 1st magnitude line. I am reliably informed that this is a good thing to see. Map here.

The celestial wonders continue on Saturday when the Moon joins the line to make it even brighter. Map.

A small telescope should be able to pick out Saturn's rings, the distinct red hue of Mars and also craters and other formations on the surface of the Moon.

Although they cannot be seen by amateur telescopes, NASA also reports that the man-made craft circling these bodies at this time include the Cassini (around Saturn), Chinese and Japanese probes investigating the moon ahead of planned human landings and several craft around Mars , two from NASA and one from the European Space Agency.

Fascinating though all this is, I'm afraid as a city dweller my chances of finding some night sky free of light pollution this 4th July are remote.

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NHS Faces the Challenge of Carbon Reduction

The NHS has produced a Carbon Reduction Strategy for England, highlighting how Europe's largest employer creates CO2 and what it needs to do to reduce it.

The study, which was created in partnership with the Stockholm Environment Institute, concludes that:

• Procurement (obtaining medicines, equipment and office resources) is the largest area of carbon production - accounting for 59% of carbon emissions
• Building energy use accounts for 22% of emissions
• The NHS generated 3.2% of England's total CO2 emissions in 2004

The reports recommendations are:

• The production of a strategic approach to travel plans within the NHS. Derriford Hospital in Plymouth is cited as providing an effective example of such a plan.
  
• Targeting wastage of pharmaceuticals
• Sub-metering building energy

The report covered all NHS estates and activities in England.

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And Now for Something Completely Different

It's not quite The Apprentice and the pace is, well, quite slow, but for sheer originality and kudos value, you could do a lot worse with tonight's TV viewing than pull up a mouse and click on the NASA website for live and recorded images from the surface of Mars.

When not showing live pictures of soil and rocks, which have their own charm, NASA is also broadcasting Martian weather updates (-80 at the moment).

Strangely compelling.

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Electricity from Dirt - a Breakthrough for Africa?

A cluster of Escherichia coli bacteria magnified 10,000 times.

Students from Harvard University - four Africans and two Americans - have just won an award for their pioneering work on Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) which turn soil into electricity.

The project has won a grant of $200,000 from the Development Marketplace at the Lighting Africa 2008 event in Accra, Ghana this month. Entrants were invited to submit technology projects that enabled Africans to access reliable electricity generated without fossil fuels. Currently three quarters of Africans do not have access to an electricity supply.

The winning project involves placing an anode and cathode in the ground, laying soil and sand on top and connecting to a circuit board that charges a battery. The energy is generated by the activity of soil microbes (typically bacteria or fungi) as they break down organic matter. The charged battery can then be used to charge an LED light, a mobile phone or a radio.

Although the quantities of energy generated are small, and will never compete with wind power, the project winners Lebone (pronounced La-bo-nay from the Sotho word for light, lamp or candle) have designed the cell for use at a local micro level and believe that the quantities of energy produced can be increased as the technology is developed over the coming 18 months. Circuits can also be linked together for larger supply outputs. Spokesman Hugo Van Vuuren from South Africa predicts that viable systems will be available for under $10 each in three years' time, contributing significantly to the goal of producing low-cost green energy to 250 million people across Africa.

Source: IPS

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British Government Urges Biofuel Rethink

News from the Guardian (here) that Chancellor Alistair Darling is calling for an urgent review of Europe and America's use of biofuels is a welcome piece of news for those who have been concerned about the potential environmental and social harm caused by a rush to ethanol - despite its apparent "green" credentials.

The Chancellor's call - ahead of the G7 summit in June - comes amid growing international awareness of the link between, on the one hand, the increase in greenhouse gases caused by clearing land to grow crops for ethanol and, on the other, the effect on world food prices of a shift in agricultural production from traditional foodstuffs to "ethanol crops".

A previous post on this site highlighted the problems facing a number of Asian countries as the cost of rice has soared this year. Meanwhile, the increased costs of wheat, soya and other staples is triggering unrest in several African and Asian countries, with demonstrations and riots in Bangladesh, Egypt and Indonesia as well as violent protests in Ivory Coast, Senegal and Cameroon over recent weeks.

Darling is quoted in the Guardian as saying, 'If the developed world is serious about meeting the millennium development goals - and we are currently way off track - we have got to do something about rising food prices."

Tony Juniper, meanwhile, director of Friends of the Earth, has called to an immediate halt to grain-based biofuel production because the unintended consequences have become so damaging. "Policymakers have inadvertently created a competition between the drivers of big vehicles and people who do not have enough food to eat," he said.

More provocatively, a quote from David Strahans in his The Last Oil Shock: the rush to diodiesel could leave us "starving to death in a traffic jam."

All posts on the biofuel issue can be followed on this blog by clicking here.

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Climate Change Could Dispalce 125 Million People in South Asia

Dr Sudhir Chella Rajan, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras has warned of the possibility of mass migration from coastal regions of South Asia as sea levels rise due to global warming and as fresh water supplies are disrupted.

In a paper entitled Climate Migrants in South Asia: Estimates and Solutions Dr Rajan warns that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow as projected, leading to a global temperature rise of 4-5°C, the South Asian region could face a wave of displaced migrants.

Bangladeshi environmentalist Mohon Kumar Mondol, responded to the prospect of millions of Bangladeshi refugees:

“India would certainly be the first country to experience an inflow of refugees. This is a reality in my lifetime. I don’t want to see the day I lose my home to the sea and saline deserts where people have to live without clean water. It can be prevented and we are the last generation that can stop it; governments across the world have no choice but to stop this nightmare from becoming reality.”

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Space Junk Update

Hot on the vapor trails of my previous post - describing a large piece of rocket casing narrowly avoiding collision with a sheep farmer's outside toilet in central Russia - it has emerged that more space junk has been falling to earth, this time in northern Australia.

Cattle farmer James Stirton (pictured) announced on Friday the discovery of what he believes to be an item from a rocket used to launch a communications satellite.

Discovered in the Australian outback, about 500 miles west of Brisbane, the twisted metal object is described as "hollow" and "covered in carbon-fiber material".

"I know a lot about sheep and cattle but I don't know much about satellites," admitted the self-deprecating farmer, who came across the item on his 40,000 hectre farm, "But I would say it is a fuel cell off some stage of a rocket."

In 1979, large parts of the Skylab space station fell to earth near a tiny outback town in western Australia. A local council sent NASA a ticket for littering and the then US President Jimmy Carter responded with an apology.

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Space Junk Threatens Privvy

A Russian farmer is suing the country's space agency for compensation after he claimed a 10-foot-long chunk of metal from a space rocket fell into his yard, just missing his outdoor toilet.

Boris Urmatov, who is visually handicapped, lives in the village of Kyrlyk with his sister Marina. The village lies under the flight path of rockets launched from the nearby Baikonur space centre and is, according to locals, frequently the location of near-misses from assorted space junk falling from the sky.

Mr Urmatov, a sheep herder, is suing the agency for 1 million rubles (£21,000) after what he describes as "an enormous metal casing" woke him in the night as it landed adjacent to his home: "It nearly crushed the outhouse," claims his sister.

Mr Urmatov is seeking damages for stress suffered as a result of the incident.

Russian paper Izvestia (News) says that the Mr Urmatov has legal precedence for his claim. In 2001, the Russian space agency Roskosmos paid compensation of 10,000 rubles (£212) to a private individual when a piece of space junk fell on his yard as he was outside chopping wood.

For archive (though not very interesting) film of a Russian satellite taking off, please click here.

Source: Reuters









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Somalia - Some Good News

Polio has been eradicated from Somalia, despite the absence of a functioning central government in the war-torn country.

The announcement comes from the World Health Organization and is the result of a mass movement of volunteers and health workers who have implemented a pioneering immunization programme over recent years.

The 10,000-strong team of Somali volunteers successfully visited every household in every settlement across the entire country several times to administer the polio vaccine to more than 1.8 million children under the age of five. This was achieved without any national database and against the backdrop of mass migration and widespread conflict between rival militias, government forces and Ethiopian troops.

Mass community participation and repeat vaccinations within short time periods have been factors in the programme's success, which has resulted in health workers not reporting a single case of the disease since March 2007.

"This truly historic achievement shows that polio can be eradicated everywhere, even in the most challenging and difficult settings," said Dr Hussein A Gezairy, Regional Director for the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean.

Polio remains in only four countries - Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria. Stopping the disease in these nations would result in the complete eradication of the polio from the planet.

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Ethanol News

Several Ethanol stories have been breaking this week:

• 15-year targets to produce ethanol from waste products will not be met in the US, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Current legislation requires companies to produce 6 billion gallons of biofuels a year by 2022 as an alternative to gasoline.
• the US Department of Agriculture has signed agreements with US companies worth $55 million to help develop the ethanol industry in the Philippines.
  
• President Bush - who famously described America as "addicted to oil" has expressed concern over the rising price of corn and other food stuffs as crops are increasingly being used for ethanol production and their value rises.
• The UN World Food Program has urged Europe to give more thought to its biofuels policy and targets. As previously reported, EU targets on biofeuls are said to be generating land grabs in parts of Asia and Africa, along with human rights abuses and the emergence of large monocultures that are damaging local food production in developing countries.
  
• Meanwhile, supporters of biofuel are busy promoting Fields of Fuel, a new film extolling biofuels as the answer to American energy security. An alternative view can be found here.

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James Lovelock - We've Passed the Tipping Point

James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia theory, has stated that he believes the world has passed the "tipping point" of environmental degradation and that widespread environmental collapse is likely within 20 years.

His basis for this apocalyptic prediction:

• the melting of the Arctic ice cap at a faster than predicted rate [see here for more on this]
• the Arctic Ocean then starting to absorb heat rather than reflect it back
• the likely release of vast quantities of methane from the Arctic permafrost - the gas being significantly more potent that CO2
  
• the predicted rise in sea levels - Arctic melting will cause a rise in sea temperatures of 7 meters

The social consequences of this level of climate change are severe according to Lovelock:

• widespread displacement of millions of people - from low-lying coastal areas as well as from areas affected by desertification such as northern Kenya, Greece and Spain. Lovelock claims that 100 million refugees will be created for every one meter of sea level rise.
  
• large-scale famine resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths
  
• wars - local and international - over increasingly scarce resources, especially food and water
• the collapse of civilization and government - resulting in widespread rioting, murder and rape

Of course, Lovelock may be wrong. The Canadian Nobel-prize winning climate scientist Dr Andrew Weaver puts the time scale till collapse at nearer 40 years.

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Leap Year Trivia

Here are the vital facts you can't do without on February 29th:

• In the English-speaking world, it was the day when women could traditionally propose to men
• In Iran, leaps years are every 4 years - however every 33 years the leap year is five years later rather than four
• The Hindu calendar has thirteen months every three years instead of an extra day every four
• The Coptic and Ethiopian leap year has its extra day added at the end of its year rather than in February
  
• February 29th is also known as bissextile day
  
• February 29th was the birthday of British actor Joss Ackland and footballer Darren Ambrose
  
• The day is statistically more likely to fall on a Monday than a Sunday

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Little Brother is Watching You

The prospect of friends (or enemies) identifying your exact location in real time came a step closer this week with the launch of new social networking site Gypsii, which allows users to share their exact whereabouts via their mobile phones, effectively using them as tracking devices.

The site has near global coverage and allows users to upload images, text, videos and audios from and about anywhere in the world in real time. The software also lets users find people, places and events in their local area.

The application is compatible with Facebook, so expect lots of integrations of Gypsii into the former, although the software is currently only available on higher-spec phones.

Location-based services based on mobile phones were spectacularly displayed last summer when Real Time Rome was trialled in the Italian capital, allowing people to see on giant screens and on the Internet the real time movements the the city's population via their mobiles. The link has some spectacular images of the experiment.

There's no doubt that location-based social networking is here to stay.

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Best Way to Have a Large Family? Marry Your Third Cousin

Icelandic researchers studying the relationship between kinship and human fertility have concluded that the male-female relationship most likely to produce a large number of offspring (that survive infancy) is between third or fourth cousins. Relationships before or after that level of kinship produce smaller surviving batches of children during the couples' lifetime.

The authors' research into the known couples in the Icelandic population born between 1800 and 1965 suggests "a significant positive association between kinship and fertility."

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