Author: gpare

Science Journalist Natalie Angier discusses  the production of precious stones underneath Earth’s crust, an unimaginably slow and difficult process. While gems were originally thought to be too commercial for study by academics, recent understanding of the importance of their formation has caused a shift in focus towards the “shiny rocks”  in the geology community. While diamonds are simply a crystalline structure of carbon atoms, they only form in very unique circumstances, so it is possible to gain information about history billions of years ago with the appearance of diamonds. In addition, they only come to the surface intact if they are shot out quickly, like through a volcanic eruption, because if they have time to decompress as they come to the surface, they can become graphite. Scientists have been able to replicate this process in the lab, turning valuable diamonds into graphite. Rubies, emeralds and sapphires all have trace amounts of elements which cause them to filter the light passing through differently, thus only reflecting certain wavelengths, which appear as the distinct red, green and blue colors. These coloring elements can give geologists information about the events which occurred in the past to bring together the necessary “ingredients” to form the stones.

Gemstones have always been a source of monetary wealth for royalty and the very rich, but now they can also act as a source of a wealth of scientistic knowledge. The process of creating graphite from diamonds in the lab shows that the understanding of this phenomenon is more important than the use of gems as wealth for geologists. However, the human need for power is behind both the destruction of a diamond and the wearing of one. Diamonds were worn by kings to display the strength of their command– that it extended into the depths of the earth, and that it was indestructible and lasting,  like the stones. How ironic, then, that this unbelieved destruction should now symbolize the growth of man’s understanding and power over nature. Reversing the process that earth took billions of year to complete is an extraordinary feat, one which was sought by scientists to gain knowledge. At a time when diamonds are now within reach of even the middle class, something more than beautiful display must be gained from them to make them truly valuable.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/11/science/gemstones-diamonds-sapphires-rubies.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

The Pantone Color Institute, a company which helps choose colors for designs on products, has chosen “Ultra Violet” as its color of 2018. In the past, the color purple was only obtainable from the mucus of snails which lived off the coast of Tyre, Phoenicia, and the process of gathering and processing this dye was disgustingly difficult and smelly. As a result, purple clothing and cloth was extremely expensive, available only to royalty and the very wealthy. Although the discovery of an artificial formula for purple die was discovered in 1856, making the color more widely available, purple continues to hold status as a symbol of royalty and honor to this day. One examples of its importance is the Purple Heart, an award given to wounded soldiers. The executive director of Pantone claims that purple is “the most complex of all colors”, since it combines red and blue, two colors which seem like opposites. Purple is perceived as an intense color. Recently, it was added to weather maps to represent possible rainfall higher than the dark red zones which had been the old limit, due to the downpour of Hurricane Harvey.  Purple is also connected with spirituality and mindfulness in meditation.

The various interpretations of the color purple all go back to its original source. People would only go through the horrible job of collected and boiling snails for a high price, and so the rich and powerful were the only market. As purple became connected to royalty, it developed into a symbol of power, and royalty guarded this image by forbidding that common people wear it. This, of course, added an air of mystery to the color. When Leatrice Eiseman, the aforementioned executive directer, calls purple “complex”, she refers to this mystery, as “complex” delineates from the Latin “complexus”, a word which refers to the twisting, intricate aspect of braided plaits. The scarcity of this resource led to its restriction from commoners, which lead to its rise as a symbol of power and complexity. Prince, of course, knows all about this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/style/purple-pantone-color-year.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=sectionfront

In this New Yorker article, Paul Bloom discusses the popular opinion is that perpetrators of violence dehumanize their victims in order to justify their actions. While there are numerous instances of dehumanization in history, such as Nazis tattooing numbers on the concentration camp inmates, Bloom argues that these instances are the abusers’ attempts to humiliate their victims, and thus they must, at some level, see them as human beings capable of humiliation. The racist gestures and name calling from Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel during the World Series this year towards Dodger’s Yu Darvish were an attempt to throw him off his game by humiliating him. If Gurriel really saw Darvish as less than human, he would consider such behavior useless. The intent was to embarrass and distract. In addition to the dehumanization of victims, humans also have the tendency to dehumanize horrible criminals, attempting to distance the behavior of a mass murderer or rapist from humanity. Criminals are often said to be acting under the influence of an animalistic rage or passion. But anthropologist Alan Fiske and psychologist Tage Rai believe that the exact opposite is true– that criminals often act from a very logical and human to right some wrong, “teach someone a lesson”, or create fairness in the world. The desire for vengeance is a very human trait, and thus a large part of criminality cannot be assigned to lack of humanity. This also extends into misogyny, a mindset that many people credit to the belief that women are less human than men– that they lack the same intelligence, and that they can be owned as objects. However, crimes that run along this worldview often are in retaliation against the very personhood of women. Philosopher Kate Manne argues that men have come to expect certain things from women, such as “attention, admiration, sympathy, solace, and of course, sex and love”. It is not that men see women as objects incapable of free will and choices, it is that women often choose against their expected behavior. Men who kill and rape women for these choices are also often seen as less than human, but in reality, they are logically extending their beliefs about the role of women to the extreme, and punishing “bad women”, not acting on rage or insanity.

The oppressors of human rights and perpetrators of violence have always had some justification– the slaveholders with their extended Darwinism, the Nazis with their scientific terms for murder. This justification, however, would not have been necessary if they really did not see black people and Jews as human. The human capability for cruelty is worse than we’d like to think. Psychologically, as soon as we see another human being, they are a potential “true friend or beloved spouse”, or, more sinisterly, “and intelligible rival, enemy, usurper, insubordinate, betrayer”.  Human perception of other humans is what makes hate and cruelty possible– one could not be cruel to a rock, and even cruelty towards animals is seen as more severe when the animal is more humanlike. The attempted justification of this behavior shows that all perpetuators see their victims as human, and thus feel the wrongness of their actions on some level. The proposed science behind cruelty– that it was confusion or failure to see the victim as human, was kinder than the truth that seeing others as human is the cause for cruelty. At least with this explanation, cruelty could be corrected by a physical brain implant, or education or training. But if humans intentionally are cruel to other humans because they are humans, the solution is a lot more difficult.

Bloom, Paul. “The Root of All Cruelty?”. The New Yorker. 27 November 2017. Web. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/27/the-root-of-all-cruelty

Waldstein, David. “Astros’ Yuli Gurriel Escapes World Series Ban, but Will Miss 5 Games in 2018”. The New York Times. 28 October 2017. Web. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/28/sports/baseball/yuli-gurriel-apologizes-racist-yu-darvish.html?_r=0

While archaeology primarily deals with artifacts found beneath the earth through extensive digs and excavations, aerial images have revealed huge historic structures in the desert of Saudi Arabia. Google earth’s images of the lava fields named the Harrat Khaybar on which these structures were built are the first bird’s eye images of the structures, since permission to fly above Saudi Arabia has been tightly restricted for years. From the ground, as Dr. Abdullah Al-Saed will testify, the formations look like simple, low stone walls. When he first saw the structures, he contacted Dr. Kennedy, an archeologist who spent the next decade recording 400 structures in the Harrat Kaybar, which he referred to as “gates” because of the semblance they had to a rectangular gate between two posts.  While archeologists do not know the exact purpose of these gates, they have found them intriguing because the barren lava fields were thought, for a long time, to be “devoid of human impact”. This remnant of human life and culture on the plains is evidence to scientists that the climate of these deserts was, at one point in time, quite different, perhaps even hospitable to human life and community.

The climate of a region and its natural resources directly affects the culture and behaviors of the groups of people who live there. Thus, the artifacts that people leave behind, the man made creations of a culture, can indicate what the climate and resources were in this area when the culture populated it. While the average rainfall in Saudi Arabia has not exceeded 20mm a month for the past hundred years, the magnitude of the structures suggests that at one period of time, there was enough water in the area for humans to exert tremendous effort in constructing them. In addition, the permanent walls suggest that there were established, non-nomadic communities of people living in the deserts.

“Average Monthly Temperature and Rainfall for Saudi Arabia from 1901-2015”. Country Historical Climate. The World Bank Group.

http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/index.cfm?page=country_historical_climate&ThisCCode=SAU

St. Fleur, Nicholas.”Hundreds of Mysterious Stone ‘Gates’ Found in Saudi Arabia’s Desert”. The New York Times. 19 October 2017. Accessed 30 October 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/science/saudi-arabia-gates-google-earth.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=20&pgtype=sectionfront

The destruction of forests and other natural resources is often seen as a relatively recent problem, but the deforestation of Iceland was completed over a thousand years ago when Vikings settled on the land and cleared the land to plant crops. Bog iron, easily gathered deposites of metal found at shallow depths in swampy areas and bodies of water, was also available in Iceland, and the Iron Age Vikings burnt the wood to charcoal to smelt it into weapons and tools on a large scale, at production sites known as “Iron Farms”. The tree cover, once at 25% fell to 1%, and with the slow growing rates on the windy and cold island of Iceland, the tree coverage has remained at this level to this day. Now since Iceland is situated on the border between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate, and was formed by the interaction of the two tectonic plates, volcanic activity is high (the entire northern quadrant of the island is basalt), and much of the land mass is covered in thick layers of ash. The ash is nutritious, but it doesn’t stay in place, due to the lack of tree cover, and so wind can pick it up and hurl it around at high speeds, creating sand storms which can completely cover entire tracts of land in a matter of minutes. Iceland is technically a desert now, with huge barren plains resulting not from lack of rainfall, but from lack of soil stability.  In addition to the issue of sandstorms (which can clear off entire crops), the lack of trees contributes to the problem of carbon emissions that Iceland has because of its aluminum and transportation industries. In and effort to meet the goal of a 40% reduction in emissions from 1990 to 2030, Iceland has planted over 3 million trees, but this huge number has increased forest cover by only one half of a percent.

The abundance of natural resources on Iceland contributed to the success of the Vikings as a warrior people during the end of the first millennium. Iceland provided both the metal needed to make weapons, as well as wood for the production of them, and space for farming on a large scale, which would feed population growth. The landscape of Iceland now is completely different than it was a thousand years ago, when forests covered a quarter of it, but this change has actually proved good for at least some industries. A favorite of film makers and tourists, Iceland’s wide open plains and stark mountain ranges are a stunning sight. Almost 1.8 million tourists went to Iceland last year, about five times the entire population of the country. The rate of reforestation at present is hardly high enough to expect a drastic landscape change, but it is interesting to consider how a shift in the image of Iceland which has existed for nearly a thousand years now would affect its perception as a tourist attraction. The need for trees is imminent, however, as farmers struggle against the loss of sheep and crops to the sandstorms, and climate change threatens.

Bowles, Bowker, and Samsonoff. “Viking Expansion and the Search for Bog Iron”.  Journal of Graduate Studies in Anthropology University of Victoria. 20 October 2017. https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/platforum/article/download/10321/2993

Fountain, Henry. “Vikings Razed the Forest. Can Iceland Regrow Them?”. New York Times, 20 October 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/20/climate/iceland-trees-reforestation.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&src=trending&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Trending&pgtype=article. Accessed 21 October 2017

“Tectonic Plates”. Iceland on the Web. https://www.icelandontheweb.com/articles-on-iceland/nature/geology/tectonic-plates