Tropical North Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef Educational Adventure

The New Scientist is accepting Discovery Tour idea submissions.  If your idea wins then you get two free tickets to partake. Here is my submission. 

Summary: This would be an immersive educational excursion through two of Australia’s greatest World Heritage Sites:  the Wet Tropics of Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef.   Accompanied along the way by botanists, entomologists, ornithologist, marine biologists, and zoologists, you will take close look at the plants and animals that comprise the Daintree Rainforest (the oldest continually surviving rainforest in the world), learn about the threats facing the world’s largest coral reef system, and gain an understanding of the most biodiverse regions of Australia. Join us for this once in a lifetime opportunity to explore the jungles and coasts of Queensland.  

Locations and Transportation: The two main cities that guests will sleeping in are Cairns (where there is a major airport), and Townsville.  The Spirit of Queensland rail service runs passenger trains between the two cities.  Island ferries and boats to the Great Barrier Reef launch from Cairns and Townsville.  Visits to National Parks and other coastal or inland sites would likely require a chartered coach.

Port Douglass and Cape Tribulation, Mossman (Pics from the Daintree Ecolodge website)

Trip Length/Departing:  I propose 14 days as the trip length (for those living outside of Australia it takes some time to travel there, so a longer Discovery Tour would be better).  To give the New Scientist tour organizers adequate time to prepare, I suggest that this trip take place in 2021, anytime between June through October, which is outside of the rainy season (‘The Big Wet’).  According to US News, “the area's low season (known locally as the wet or stinger season) takes place between November and May and brings more rain, resulting in poorer water visibility and an abundance of deadly box jellyfish.”  The best time to see humpback and minke whales in the GBR is between July and September.  Though travelers may not be able to avoid the mozzies and sandflies (which are prevalent after downpours and whose bites can be offset with insect repellent), ophiophobia could be eased by the fact that that fewer than 20 people have died from snake bites in Australia since 2011.  

Mossman (Pics from the Daintree Ecolodge website)

Accompanying Experts:
-A representative from the Biodiversity and Geosciences Collection at the Museum of Tropical Queensland
-A scientist from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
-A professor from the James Cook University (Townsville or Cairns campus)
-British historian and writer Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature

General Idea: Since the Cairns Airport is where most people who are arriving by plane would be flying into, that would make a sensible meeting spot.  The trip would combine urban and outdoor scientific elements along the coast of the Coral Sea from Townsville (350 km south of Cairns) to Daintree (110 km north of Cairns).  The urban element would consist of visiting (and perhaps attending lectures at) museums, aquariums, universities, botanical gardens, and wildlife habitats.  The outdoor scientific element would involve visits to National Parks, islands, and guided treks to discover Queensland’s stunning array of land and sea animals such as kangaroos, wallabies, other macropods, koalas, cassowaries, saltwater crocodiles, sea turtles (six of the world’s seven marine turtle species reside in the GBR), manta rays, dugongs, sharks, minke and humpback whales, and a myriad of tropical insects and spiders.  Obviously, the NS is particularly well-suited to incorporate educational elements of the tours (via lectures, guided tours, etc.) to help participants learn about the biodiversity and threats facing ecologically fragile places like the Daintree and GBR.  I believe such a tour would be remiss in its cultural obligations if it did not include the history of the Kuku Yalanji aboriginal peoples in Queensland. 

Daintree Insects (photos from Destination Daintree)

Itinerary:  While I’ll leave the day-by-day itinerary details and travel logistics to the experts (as you can see, if participants fly into Cairns they’d have to double-back through it if this itinerary is pursued), here are some ideas of places that I think NS readers and their families would enjoy.   Below is 1) a short list of some notable towns and other places of interest, 2) a screenshot of some of these locations mapped out as a route in Google Maps, followed by 3) another list of more specific sites and places of interest.  Left out of this route is the Great Barrier Reef. 

Babinda Boulders in Daintree, the Hinchinbrook Island (photos from Queensland Uncovered)

-Daintree Rainforest  (“The most extraordinary place on Earth” - Sir David Attenborough
-Mossman Gorge 
-Port Douglass
-Cape Tribulation 
-Girringun National Park (home to Australia’s tallest waterfall, Wallaman Falls)
-Undara Volcanic National Park (home to the longest standing lava tubes on Earth)
-Wooroonooran National Park
-Lamington National Park
-Springbrook National Park
-Hinchbrook Island 

(Left out of this itinerary are also the beaches of the Whitsunday Islands, which are regularly voted Australia’s best beaches and are three hours south of Townsville.) 

In and around Cairns (considered Australia’s ‘gateway to the Great Barrier Reef’ where fruit bats fly at dusk) and Daintree:
-Paronella Park
-Skyrail Rainforest Cableway
-Emu Ridge Gallery – A fossil and gemstone museum 
-Cairns Crocodile and Wildlife Park
-Port Douglass Wildlife Habitat  
-Daintree Entomological Museum
-Atherton Tablelands

Minke Whales and Sea Turtle Hatchlings (Photos from Queensland Uncovered)

In and around Townsville:
-Reef HQ (Largest coral reef aquarium in the world) 
-Museum of Tropical Queensland
-Townsville Palmetum

Other:
-Mamu Tropical Skywalk
-Head down to Nudey Beach (awarded the best beach in Oz in 2018) at sundown to play the digeridoo for the kangaroos. 

(Photo from Queensland Uncovered)

I found the blog site Queensland Uncovered to be helpful in preparing this submission.  I have never been to Queensland but hope to go one day.  If you have any questions or would like more details regarding my vision for this dream trip please do not hesitate to contact me. 

                                                                                                                 Sincerely,

                                                                                                                 Aaron Dames
                                                                                                                 New Scientist Magazine Subscriber 

The Officiant - Part III

On March 17^th, 2019 I had the privilege of officiating my friends wedding in Pleasanton, California.  Chen and Dalia were the third couple whose wedding I’ve officiated.  I’m very grateful to them for entrusting me to wed them, and for giving me permission to post the speech here.  This is what was said:

We are gathered here today to celebrate the marriage of Chen Tang and Dalia Martinez, two of Livermore’s finest residents. It is no small feat to draw over one hundred people to a golf course in Pleasanton without a golf tournament taking place, but Dalia and Chen have a strong network of family and friends who have come from near and far – including Los Angeles, Seattle, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, Texas, Toronto, and Melbourne –  to witness and support their wedding here.  In addition to those present, we must also acknowledge those loved ones who could not make it today but are here with us in spirit, and who’s support for Chen and Dalia’s marriage is not diminished by their absence or distance. 

For most of their lives, Dalia and Chen had lived in the same town but their paths never crossed until December, 2012, when they met at work.  Back then, Chen was Livermore’s most eligible bachelor, and in Dalia he not only gained a new co-worker but also a new friend.  Dalia and Chen shared common interests and enjoyed each other’s company, and luckily Hayden liked Chen enough to grant Dalia permission to date him. As their relationship developed from a friendship into a romance, Chen and Dalia began exploring their own backyard together by going hiking in regional parks, wine tasting, and trying out every new restaurant in the Tri-Valley area – something they still do to this day.   Gradually, their adventures expanded beyond the borders of Alameda County, and they took road trips and excursions to the Russian River, Muir Woods, Yosemite National Park, Lake Tahoe, and up and down the California Coast from Santa Cruz to Santa Monica and beyond.  Despite six years having passed since the start of their relationship which has played-out like a Disney love-story featuring an Asian Price Charming and Mexican Cinderella, Chen and Dalia’s exciting journey has just begun.  And I’m not referring to the honeymoon in Hawaii that they will embark upon next week, I’m alluding to the fact that Chen was a bad boy and Dalia is now six months pregnant and is on her way to providing Hayden with a little sister named Kennedy –  not to mention adding a new member to the Tang family dynasty.  Though this is not downplay the honeymoon – Hawaii’s cool, too. 

Chen and Dalia have a bright future and they can achieve anything they set their minds to.  Surely there will be challenges and losses, but the almost-annoying positivity they possess provides a strong foundation for them to overcome any form of adversity realistically foreseeable.  They embody characteristics that one cannot attain through education or purchase for any dollar amount.   A person cannot attend a university and learn how to become compassionate; you cannot buy the ability to discern right from wrong or the strength to continually do the right thing.   For so many here Chen and Dalia have proven to be reliable friends and family members. Chen is the type of guy who you can call when you’re facing a problem in the middle of the night and he will pick up the phone and he will be there for you.   We are thankful to their parents for raising such outstanding children and for all the sacrifices that they have made so as to allow them the opportunities to pursue success.  We especially owe a great deal of gratitude especially to Chen’s amazing grandmother, for if it were not for her, none of us would be here right now. Chen and Dalia have come so far but have even farther to go, and if all goes well then one day in the future they may be on a golf course watching their own grandchild getting married, but only with more robots.

With that said, it’s time to exchange vows.

Dalia, do you vow your love and devotion to Chen, promising to care for him in the joys and sorrows of life, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse? 

Do you promise to support him throughout his fasting and raw food diets, to love him as your corazon even when is behaving like a pendejo, and take care of him after he returns from long work days in the kitchen no matter how badly he smells of banh khot, pho hai san, and bun bo Hue?

Chen, do you vow your love and devotion to Dali, promising to care for her in the joys and sorrows of life, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse? 

Do you promise to continue to take her to pumpkin patches and Latin music concerts, to make her pickled pork feet, and be there to celebrate all the Cino di Mayos, Dias de las Muertos, Feliz Navidads,quinceañeras, and sweet sixteens that will come your way over the years?

Chen and Dalia, please turn toward each other and repeat after me:

I, Chen, take thee Dalia to be my lawfully wedded wife; to love, honor and respect, from this day forward.  With this ring, I thee wed. 

I, Dalia, take thee Chen to be my lawfully wedded husband; to love, honor and respect, from this day forward.  With this ring, I thee wed. 

Now, by the power vested in me, and in accordance with the laws of the state of California, it my honor to declare across the entire Tri-Valley area - from the top of Mount Diablo to the bottom of Lake Chabot – Chen and Dalia as man and wife.  You may now kiss the bride!

Chen and Dalia.  Godspeed.

Dispatch from the Philippines

Here’s an email that I wrote to my family while I was visiting my fiancé’s family in the Philippines in October. 

Hello family,

I just wanted to send you a quick update from the southern Philippines, where I’m hanging out on Lovely’s family’s patio (there was a chicken walking around here a couples mins ago).  I’ve been here for the past five days and am going back to California tomorrow.  

I’ve included some pictures of her family’s front yard, which extends out to the street where they have a little eatery; across the street is an elementary school.   There’s a little farm in her backyard, and over the past several days her family’s slaughtered and roasted two goats, two pigs, two turkeys, and one duck, and those are just the ones I know about.   For dinner the entire neighborhood comes over and the house is filled with around fifty family members and friends attending the feast.  If you walk up the road you pass the hospital, high school, and then hit the main part of town, where popular Zumba lessons are held for the public in the town square every evening.  (I say town but it’s more of a village.)    

Lovely’s home is in the province of Hagonoy, which for the second year in a row has been awarded the top Rice Achievers Award (or something like that) in the country.  I’ve included a pic of the rice harvest that Lovely’s mom was overseeing on the rice field they own.   Far beyond the rice fields lies Mount Apo, the tallest mountain in the Philippines.  It’s an overnight trek to the top of the mountain, which is allegedly swarming with bandits, so we just visited the base of the mountain where we went zip-lining and then had lunch in the “land of peace.”

The beach pictures were taken on a little island near the main city of Davao del Sur, the main city on the island of Mindanao, where the airport is located.  The current president of the Philippines used to be the mayor of Davao del Sur, and his daughter is now the mayor.  Durterte seems to have massive support among citizens here, whom largely appear to endorse the state of martial law which is in effect on Mindanao (there are checkpoints on the street ((I’ve been driving Lovely’s friend’s manual Toyota to town because none of her friends have driver’s licenses – a nerve-wracking experience since my skills with a stick shift are limited)), and metal detectors in malls and hotels).  The martial law, which has been extended throughout 2018, seem to be targeted at reducing rampant criminality and terrorism.  There are cells of Islamic fighters who have proclaimed their allegiance to ISIS on the western edge of the island, which is comprised mostly of Roman Catholics.  Signs in town display photos of the dozens of “most wanted terrorists.”  The overall situation is presently peaceful and quiet, though the neighboring town was overtaken by ISIS militants and bombed to the ground by the Filipino Air Force last year.  

We’ve been eating a lot, and there are edible gardens everywhere.  We can’t go anywhere or visit anyone without being fed or leaving without food.  You can be standing outside and someone will hand you a papaya from their yard, then they’ll ask if you’ve ever had the fruit that you’re standing under (“watery-rose apple”), then they’ll go and hack down some coconuts or offer you a tuna steak on a stick, and always there will be mangoes, and this process goes on ad infinitum. I just took a break from writing this letter to eat a breakfast that Lovely’s mom made which consisted of a delicious array of fruits and vegetables.  The food derives from immediate sources and is ubiquitous   On more than one occasion I’ve been sitting down eating one meal and they are already preparing the next.  Yesterday I was eating a pig’s blood and liver soup in the backyard and Lovely’s dad’s friend walks to the side of the house with a turkey, casually breaks its neck then begins the bloodletting process because it’s what’s for dinner.  While we were eating breakfast two sparrows flew into the kitchen to eat grains of rice. Yesterday I was having a beer in the kitchen a gecko fell from the ceiling onto my lap.   After the rice harvest mung beans and watermelons are planted, but before this people go out into the fields at night with lights and gather the frogs, which are supposedly tasty (after they’re cooked).   There was only one delicacy that I couldn’t stomach and almost threw up chewing which was balut: the 18-day old embryo of a duck that’s boiled and eaten from the egg shell.   No thanks. We’re going to go to Crocodile Park today, where Lolong – the largest crocodile in captivity (20 ft., 2,300 lbs.) lived and died and is now preserved in formalin – and I have a feeling we’re going to eat crocodile meat there.

This trip has been awesome and has been made extremely unique because of Lovely and her family. Her parents are kind, generous, and gregarious.  (Her father, a retired police officer, isn’t home right now because he fell off his motorcycle a couple weeks ago and injured his wrist – so he’s been seeing a “quack doctor” who heals him through touch and having him drink “miracle oil.”)  I look forward to my next trip back here (definitely for a longer duration of time).  In the meantime, it’s back to work to prepare of Lovely’s arrival to California in January.  I’m working more than I ever have in my life at the moment, and I truly hope it pays off.

Hope you enjoy the pics and videos.

Love, 

Aaron 

I forgot to mention that I’m the only white guy in sight for many, many miles.  I was reminded of this as I heard some giggling behind me and a squad of little school girls were hiding in the plants smiling.  I got up and pretended to be angry and chased them away. :oP

 

Message From Auckland

What follows is a short e-mail I wrote to my brother regarding some time I spent in Auckland, New Zealand over the past week.  The message is followed by a slideshow featuring photos of some of the places and things I mentioned in the email, such as the library, books and magazines, and the 100 year-old Tepid Baths – the main swimming pool in downtown Auckland.   Separate blog postings will be provided for the visits I made to the Auckland Botanic Gardens and the island off Auckland called Rangitoto.  In addition to several random shots of the city, the slideshow includes some pictures of the New Jewellry shop on Lorne Street in Auckland, which is run by artist John Walters, who was kind enough to take the time out of his day to explain the jewelry making process and let me take a picture of him at his workbench.  The slideshow also features three pictures of awesome paintings by New Zealand artist Roger Mortimor.  I realize how banal is it to post an email I’ve written to my brother instead of a actual blog post, but in this case I think it works.

Dear Brother, 

I hope all is well.  I've been laying low in Auckland for the past few days while my fiancé is at work.  Her employer wanted the kids around for the holidays but they're all going back to Queenstown on Tuesday, when she starts her leave.  At that point we'll do some traveling around the South Island which I'm looking forward to.  That's when the pictures will start rolling in.  So far I've pinned down a constructive routine of going to the library and exercising.  There's an amazing fitness center here in Auckland called Tepid Baths.  It's 100 years old but the pool and gym are modern.  It's $15 USD a day to work-out and swim, so I'll usually swim a mile to loosen up and then hit the weights, mainly dumbbell workouts as well as squats.  There's a hot tub there too but I haven't dipped because I'm not really a hot tub type of guy.    

The Auckland Library is also fantastic and has an overwhelming amount of good books and magazines.  I always bite off more than I can chew and fail to read the majority of things I take off the shelves, but I make sure to put them back where I found them so as to alleviate work for the librarians.  There's a stack of magazines and some books right beside me as I write these words right now and I haven't even made a dent in them.  Most of the magazines are old New Scientist that I'd like to catch up on, and the other magazines all pertain to New Zealand (one magazine is called Forest and Bird and from what I understand it's all about the state of country's ecosystems, which, according to the magazine, are in alarming decline).  One of the books that I'm not reading is called Natural New Zealand, and it looks really good - you can tell someone really put a lot of work into it.  The other books are called The Water Book (subtitle: The extraordinary story of our most ordinary substance) (just typing that made me thirsty), and Claxton (subtitle: Field Notes from a Small Planet) by Marx Cocker.  I very truly wish I could stick to this routine for a year straight.  That would indeed make me a happy camper, and a much smarter man.

Having said that, I'll most likely break my routine tomorrow because I want to visit this little island off of Auckland called Rangitoto.  You can get there by ferry and visitors are advised to bring their own food and water because there's no food or fresh water on the island.  

The other place I want to visit before heading to the South Island is the Auckland Botanic Garden.  Auckland and every other NZ city I've been too is super green because they've built around they trees and hills, instead of leveling and razing them.  I read that from the colonial onset there was a firm understanding and conviction that trees were the "lungs" of the city.  So it's super green and gorgeous everywhere here.   And the trees are huge and sprawling and tropical and beautiful and intricate, kind of like much of the vegetation in Hawaii.  So I want to learn more about them by visiting the Botanic Gardens.   I may even try to do that today. It's located outside of the central city so I'd have to take a bus there, which is fine with me.

I actually did read some of Natural New Zealand and enjoyed learning this:

         New Zealand's long isolation from other landmasses has resulted in one of the world's highest rates of endemism (species that are unique to a particular area) among its flora and fauna.  According to scientist George Gibbs, in his excellent book Ghost of Gondwana, New Zealand has over 2,000 endemic plant species, some 200 endemic vertebrae species, and, astonishingly, more than 20,000 endemic invertebrate species.  Only Hawaii and the Galapagos Islands can lay claim to such high levels of endemism.

          New Zealand is also home to several biological refugees, including the prehistoric tuatara, unusual frogs that don't croak, accent wrens that are among the most primitive of passerines, and giant weta that have changed little over 200 million years. Some of these life forms survived here long after others of their kind disappeared from the rest of the world.  As a consequence of the geographical isolation, birds like the kiwi evolved from an ancestral group of ratites (I had to look that one up) into the unique creatures they are today.

Conversations About the End of Time and The National Gallery of Art – Part 2: Back to the Apocalypse – Jean Delumeau

      This is a follow-up to a previous journal entry which also features excerpts transcribed from the same book, Conversations About the End of Time supplemented by photographs of paintings on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.  The other entry presented excerpts from a discussion that the book’s editor had with the late biologist-paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.  The following excerpts are transcribed from an interview titled Back to the Apocalypse, in which French historian and theologian Jean Delumeau discusses, among other things, the role of Western religions in influencing the end of the world hysteria that intermittently manifest in civilizations and societies throughout history.  (To see Part 1 of this series, which features excerpts from an interview between the editors of the aforementioned book and the late biologist-paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, click here.)

If there hadn’t been any great fear in AD 1000, can you explain how and why eschatological fears recur from the end of the fifteenth century onwards?

I believe this is the be connected to the series of misfortunes which befell the West from the fifteenth century onwards.  I shall list them.  The first, and indubitably the most important, was the Black Death of 1348, which was a veritable demographic disaster.   A quarter, perhaps even a third, of the population of Europe died in the space of three or four years – a truly vast number.  Second, a little later, there occurred the great schism (1378 – 1417), with two, and at times even three, concurrent popes.  The French theologian Jean Gerson was of the opinion that this could only be a punishment inflicted on sinning Christianity, and he even added that no one would enter paradise until the great schism was brought to an end.  The schism was repaired at the beginning of the fifteenth century, but a century later, the Protestant reformation broke out.  On this occasion, Christianity in the West was split in two and has remained thus divided to this day.  To all this must be added the many famines, the Hundred Years War, the War of the Rose and the Turkish threat: the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, that of Asia Minor and a large part of the Balkans, the fall of Egypt at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman protectorate extending over the whole of North Africa with the protection being given to Barbary pirates who ravaged Christian shores, and so on.   And on top of that, wars of religion broke out in the sixteenth century.  It was in this dramatic context that the expectations and fears about the end of the world flourished again.  It was in the spirit of the age to look for guilty parties, since all these misfortunes had occurred.  And more rather than fewer were identified.
 

Are you referring to the Inquisition and the witch hunts?

Yes.  Throughout the 250 years during which these misfortunes were befalling the West, there was a constant search for scapegoats: Turks, Jews (it was the greatest age of anti-Semitism), heretics, witches.  One has to realize that the great age of the persecution of witches was not the Middle Ages, as is often believed, but a period stretching from the end of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth: in other words, the Renaissance.  Think about Michelangelo’s tragic Last Judgement on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, or Durer’s series of fifteen etchings of the Apocalypse, which made it famous at a stroke.  People at this time did not have the notion of progress as part of their mental baggage.  They did not think that humanity could have a long future ahead of it, or any future at all.  They looked upon it as old and close to its end.  Christopher Columbus wrote in 1500 that the end of the world would occur in the 150 years at the very most.  Nicholas of Cusa declared that the victory over the Antichrist would happen between 1700 and 1734.  Luther stated that ‘We have reached the age of the pale horse of the Apocalypse… the world will not last another hundred years.’ I could give many other examples of quotations of this type.  Millenarians were in the minority; for most people, the end of time was close at hand; the world was rushing headlong towards the Last Judgement. 

Isn’t there, at least in Christianity, a distinction between the particular judgement of a soul which occurs after death and the collective judgement of a soul which occurs after death and the collective judgement of humanity which will take place at the end of time?

Traditional Christian theology, especially in the Middle Ages and during the modern era, indeed distinguished between the judgement of individuals, which takes place immediately after their death, from the general judgement of mankind.

And this would occur after the end of time?

Exactly, at the end of time, when God decides to stop the passage of time and bring history to a close.  According to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), what will then happen is a cosmic event called Parousia.  This is the return of the risen and glorious Christ who will come to judge the living and the dead.  Jesus proclaims this very explicitly:

But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.  And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory.  And then he will send his angels, and shall gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth tot ends of heaven (Mark 13:24 – 7).

Who will the elect be?

I have no authority to speak out on this matter.  But I think it is important to turn to Chapter 25 of Matthew, where we read that the criterion of judgement will not a theological criterion, or a criterion of faith or belief, but a criterion of love and service to one’s fellow human beings.  It is worth recalling this famous text, which lies at the heart of what we are talking about:

When the Son of man comes in this glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.  Before him will be gathered all the nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.  Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come O blessed of the Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked, and you clothed me, I was sick, and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’  Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and feed thee, or thirsty, and give thee drink?  And when did we see thee a stranger, and welcome thee, or naked, and clothe thee?  And when did we see thee stick, or in prison, and visit thee?’  And the King will answer them. ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’  (Matthew 25:31 – 40).