Total eclipse: The terminator moves faster than you think

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Between the new and full moon the terminator - the line demarcating what is lit from what is dark changes all the time. This is imperceptible with the naked eye.	A telescope at low magnification reveals the moon in all its glory. At a higher power with manual control you have to keep moving to keep up, as the moon other-worldly slides out of view.
What of the terminator between poverty and wealth; ultrapoverty and ultrawealthy?	It is plain to see and so - easy to deny; but their instruments are hopeless, they watch indoors, fixed on their screens.

Total Solar Eclipse – August 12, 2026

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_(solar) 

Previously: 'terminator' 

I don't want to look cool ...

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"What is it with all this  stuff, tat, rubbish  they try to sell you?  I don't want to look cool:
	... what I want is for those  with the power, to  keep the planet cool."

Apollo - Artemis II and the Joy of Earth

Since Artemis II was launched, several more-senior people in the media have been interviewed, with their reflections on certain lunar events in 1969 with the Apollo programme.

 

I too remember being woken up, taking several giant steps down the stairs and huddling around the black & white TV set in the early hours. I'm so glad I did that.

 

Thanks mum and dad. X

 

Following the livestream from Artemis, it's brilliant to see Christina Koch and Victor Glover onboard too.

 

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art002e008487 (April 4, 2026) - NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels towards the Moon. Image Credit: NASA

"I have not complained about the weather one single time. I'm glad there is weather. I've not complained about traffic. I'm glad there are people around. One of the things that I did when I got home - I went down to shopping centers, and I'd just go around there, get an ice cream cone or something, just watch the people go by, and think: "Boy, we're lucky to be here. Why do people complain about the Earth? We are living in the garden of Eden."                     Alan Bean. Apollo 12

Image: NASA

Text: https://www.livingspace.earth/home/2018/5/remembering-alan-bean
 

Previously: 'Apollo' : 'exploration' : 'moon' 

A time for reflection S-N solstice :: equinox

Analemma image: Anthony Ayiomamitis

Ever since we first took note of the passing Seasons, and what is left of them today, we have marvelled and come to recognise the extremes of the calendar in the sky.

For humanity in the North and the South. 

The emergence of culture, societies, and civilization has been  dependent upon the calendar - whether recorded in customs and rites, giant blocks of stone, papyrus, or binary code.

As the solstice fast approaches - Sunday, 21 December 2025 15:03-4 - and the Sun touches its lowest, southernmost point, I think of (former) family and friends 'way down' south, and the distance between the hemispheres, represented in the analemma. Of course then there is the solstitial experience of humanity in the south as the sun crests the highest point in their sky.

It must be amazing to see the nightsky from the far south(?). 

How might we explain this culturally, with the benefit of foresight? This apparent celestial 'opposition' of Earth's path around the Sun, is reflected N-S in who bears the impact of climate change and the need attend to planetary health.

But, then look at the equinox, the north and south are seemingly united? 

Is there a baton passed in March and September?

Perhaps, this can be a celebration of global health, for both hemispheres. With a simultaneous 'nod' to planetary health and the search for social and climate justice.
 

What Complex Threads We Weave

Half-turns ... to orbit

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	"If you can get your ship into orbit, you're halfway to anywhere."

See: Where did Heinlein say "Once you get to Earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System"?

Hodges' model: A person - Everyone else [x2!]

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	'Michael Collins, the astronaut who took this photo in 1969, is the only human, dead or alive, that isn't in the frame of this picture.'   (Image credit: NASA/Getty Images)
“If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so… The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.” 'Alan Watts on our search for meaning and the antidote to our existential loneliness'

Image: https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/spaceman-who-photographed-every-living-being-but-himself-rip-michael-collins

Text: https://x.com/themarginalian/status/1876298178326069285

https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/11/01/alan-watts-wisdom-of-insecurity-3/

So good I'm repeating myself ... https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2019/07/2-everyone-else-1-thank-you-michael.html

'dance' :: 'meaning'

Fragile: This way up - Frozen goods!

Apollo 17 'Blue Marble' Photograph

 

Apollo 17 1972 NASA Original Blue Marble Photograph

Or, some water 'heading your way' ...

'NASA’s archival designation for it is AS17-148-22727, and the original image was taken upside down with the South Pole at the top. In its myriad reproductions, it’s flipped up to match what we would normally expect to see.'

Text: https://www.thephoblographer.com/2013/12/09/behind-blue-marble/

Does the model still 'work' -

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- this way ...?

Image source: https://www.forum-conquete-spatiale.fr/t15428-apollo-17-1972

Prompt for 'Blue Marble' - Plate 1 in Brotton, J. (2024) The Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction, London: Allen Lane.

Previously: 'compass'

A planet is not just for Christmas.

'Earthrise' c/o Bill Anders RIP

Earthrise in 4K

"In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth." 

See also:

Earthrise: The Story of the Photo that Changed the World | Short Film Showcase

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsShNeDvccc

Thank you Bill and all the Apollo team and subsequent space faring families across the Home planet.

P.S. I'll leave it to you to relate the significance of Apollo 8's 'Earthrise' to Hodges' model.

Point Nemo: 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W

The oceanic pole of inaccessibility

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	Point Nemo: 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W
Social care

Al-Othman, H. Notes from the remotest place on Earth: father and son voyage to Point Nemo. The Sunday Times, 31 March 2024. p.11.

https://brown.co.uk/expeditions/point-nemo

Image: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/nemo.html

COP 28: The water runs deep and broad - Solastalgia for all?

me - you INDIVIDUAL - the few
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climate anxiety eco grief ... as yet unforeseen impacts ... [personal and collective]

Raise A Paddle © Fenton Lutunatabua / 350.org

Underwater Cabinet Meeting in the Maldives

political malaise? "'Solastalgia' was first coined by the philosopher Glenn Albrecht almost two decades ago; it is a blend of the Latin word "solacium" (comfort) and the Greek root "-algia" (pain or grief). Solastalgia, argued Albrecht, was a way to convey the idea of distress caused by irreversible environmental transformation. It is 'the homesickness we feel while still at home', he writes." Where exactly do politicians and capitalists 'live'?

Frankopan, P., How to avert an 'eco grief' epidemic, The Daily Telegraph, 12 August 2023, pp.6-7.

Maldives image c/o:
https://sos.noaa.gov/education/phenomenon-based-learning/underwater-cabinet-meeting/

Raise A Paddle c/o NMS:

https://media.nms.ac.uk/resources/raise-a-paddle-fenton-lutunatabua-350-org

The politics of 'real' power: Mitochondria

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	The Song of the Cell
	The Climate Book

See also:

Book: The Vital Question

My source: Whipple, T. Where all life begins - the magic of cells, Saturday Review, The Times, November 5, 2022, p.16-17. Blakely, R. The Greta Thurnberg guide to saving the planet (same pages).

Gaia and Philosophy – international seminar

Dear all,

Here is the program for an upcoming international symposium: 

Jean Michel Etchecolonea, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons / Cropped

Gaia and philosophy

1-3 December, Donostia – San Sebastián
Basque Country University (UPV/EHU)
Organised by IAS-Research – Outonomy project

 

The recently edited volume of James Lovelock's and Lynn Margulis scientific correspondence will be presented for the first time at the occasion. Different lectures will discuss the scientific and philosophical status of Gaia theory and contemporary approaches to the understanding of the Earth as a self-organised entity. 

The seminar will be available to follow online. Feel free to distribute to however might be interested.

Registration form.

best regards
Alejandro Merlo 

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IAS Research Centre for Research on Life, Mind and Society
Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science
University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

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n.b. I plan to attend online.

May 10th Lecture: "Planetary Law for the Anthropocene"

Dear followers of H-net Environment,

Planetar denken

the Panel on Planetary Thinking of the Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, cordially invites you to join our kick-off event of our Planetary Lecture Series which may be of interest to many of you:

On May 10th, at 6:15 CET, Prof. Dr. Dr. Louis Kotzé (North-West University, South-Africa), will be giving a lecture on "Planetary Law for the Anthropocene" . Prof. Kotzé currently holds a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, and is a Senior Professorial Fellow in Earth System Law at the University of Lincoln, UK. Prof. Dr. Thilo Marauhn (Chair of Public and International Law, JLU) will open the discussion with a response. The lecture will take place in a hybrid format, allowing you both digital and analog participation.

Feel free to spread the word to interested colleagues and friends. You can register at panel AT planet.uni-giessen.de or join us spontaneously in our BigBlueButton Conference Room.

Warm regards,

Liza Bauer

(on behalf of the Panel on Planetary Thinking).

Hot carbon air

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	Carbon Capture c/o CNN
	HOT air?*

Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, IPCC, 2022.

 

 

*We hope not ...

 

Michel Serres in "A planetary art beyond the human"

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"In the mid- 1990s, Michel Serres was already registering the devastating impact of ‘dense tectonic plates of humanity’ on a hitherto ‘mute world’.1 Our excesses, he writes, have awoken the ‘mute, passive, obscure things’ around us that had ‘obediently slumbered’, but will now respond to us with violence.2 In such discourse we recognize the now common tropes of thresholds and tipping points, often deployed by climate scientists and echoed by scholars who assert that humans are now truly ‘geological agents’ in their impact on the planet.3 ...

... Getting to grips with the consequences of human activity for the Earth’s systems is unarguably an essential step in forging policies to mitigate the damage. But in the political urgency that shapes many debates about climate change, there is a risk, as Dipesh Chakrabarty points out, that ‘humans emerge as the subject of the drama of the Anthropocene’ while geological time fades from view.4 An emphasis on human agency may simply lead us full circle, back to the anthropocentric conception of a docile Earth made up of inert matter, only stirred by our own excesses, and waiting to be saved or destroyed by its human inhabitants." p.31.

 

Page, J. (2021). A planetary art beyond the human. In Decolonizing Science in Latin American Art (pp. 31–65). UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv18kc0mw.6

 

Joanna Page is Reader in Latin American Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Cambridge. 

See also:

Jones, P. (2008) Exploring Serres’ Atlas, Hodges’ Knowledge Domains and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons, IN Kidd, T., Chen, I. (Eds.) Social Information Technology Connecting Society and Cultural Issues, Idea Group Publishing, Inc. Chap. 7, pp. 96-109.

Michel Serres on W2tQ

Consider also - 'deep' within Hodges' model:

DEEP space, time, ecology, links, design ... DEEP CARE.

  

"Mother"

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"Mother!"	Mother Earth Mother Nature
MOTHER	Mother Country

"MOTHER" - model theory emergency - COP26

Marsel Van Oosten, NOW YOU SEE THEM... The Sunday Times Magazine, May 30, 2021. pp.34-39.

Hodges' model: a Reflective and Reflexive resource

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	"Sea what I did there? A diver and a humpback whale appear to fly over the Indian Ocean in this inverted photograph taken in waters off the island of Réunion."

 

The Times, April 15, 2021, p.29.  Ack. Sebastien Pontoizeau

Spaceship Earth

Ack. Azuma Makoto

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BIOSPHERE: ALL LIFE

Azuma Makoto

Photo source:
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/374643262755074853/

My source:
Quick, H. Forces of NATURE, FT Weekend, September 8 2020.

 

Eco-Visionaries: Confronting a planet in a state of emergency c/o Royal Academy

Discover how architects, artists and designers are responding today to some of the most urgent ecological issues of our times.

"From climate change to species extinction and resource depletion, the damaging effects of modern life are more tangible than ever. Eco-Visionaries examines humankind’s impact on the planet and presents innovative approaches that reframe our relationship with nature. Through film, installation, architectural models and photography, the works in this exhibition interrogate how architecture, art and design are reacting to a rapidly changing world, beyond mainstream notions of sustainability.

In the 1950s, scientists started raising serious concerns about the damaging effects of modern life on the environment. Since then, architects, designers and artists have joined the urgent effort to draw attention to the planet’s fragile and endangered ecosystem."

Royal Academy - source and continued ...

Planning to visit the exhibition and related event in February.


Previously posted:
Thursday, October 15, 2009

Blog Action Day: Imagine a generation taking nothing for granted from the start

Climate Strike: An Anthem from Yesterday for Tomorrow...?

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	Rocky Mountain High Climate
TY JD and so many others ...	STRIKE