#British Ecological Society

[mediocrephd]

I attended my first in-person conference on Tuesday, the British Ecological Society Aquatic Group annual meeting at Lancaster University! It was quite a small conference, but really enjoyable! So many incredibly interesting talks, ranging from global warming and ocean acidification to using meeting sponges to assess community diversity through eDNA!

Despite the grey, drizzly weather, it was a great experience, and I definitely have a few more papers to read and connections to make!

Lancaster uni also had a lovely campus with pretty architecture and lots of little green spaces! There was a gorgeous coffee shop on campus (who do amazing vegan hot chocolate!) called Coastal and co. If you're ever on campus, I highly recommend them! :)

Please enjoy this little photo I took outside of where the conference was! You can just about see the coffee shop I mentioned in the back!

#phd life #marine ecology #ecological modelling #marine biology #ecology and conservation #marine ecosystems #phd research #phdblr #phd #academic conferences #British Ecological Society #aquatic ecology #aquaculture #university journey #uk universities #lancaster #Lancaster University #building confidence #working with social anxiety

[hleavesk]

the winners are ... 

The annual photography competition of the British Ecological Society focuses on showcasing the beauty of ecology.

A striking portrait of a Helena's tree frog peering through the night has won the British Ecological Society's annual photography competition.

Conservation photographer and evolutionary biologist Roberto García Roa took the picture in the Tambopata reserve in the Peruvian Amazon.

"Like two beacons in the dark, the striking eyes... seem to glow in the darkness of the night," he said.

Illegal gold mining has taken a huge environmental toll on the reserve.

"It is paradoxical to see the eyes of this frog as small golden pearls," said Mr García Roa. "Because in reality, the true treasure lies in ensuring the protection of this area and its inhabitants." 

(text source: bbc news | 3 dec 2022)

#biodiversity photography #british ecological society #Helena’s Treefrog #conservation #protect biodiversity

[sitting-on-me-bum]

A smooth helmeted iguana clings to a mossy tree trunk, well camouflaged.

Photograph: Javier Lobon-Rovira

The British Ecological Society Annual Capturing Ecology Competition

#javier lobon-rovira #photographer #british ecological society annual capturing ecology competition #smooth helmeted iguana #reptile #iguana #animal #mossy tree trunk #camouflage #nature

[probablyasocialecologist]

A new study by researchers at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) reveals that in Europe, the forests that are most resilient to storms are those with a greater diversity of tree species and dominated by slow growing species with high wood density, like oaks. The researchers also found that the positive effect of tree diversity on resistance to storms was more pronounced under extreme climatic conditions, such as the hot-dry conditions of the Mediterranean region and the cold-wet conditions of northern Scandinavia.

[...]

“An important takeaway from our study is that monocultures of fast growing species such as pine, although valuable from an economic point of view, are more susceptible to storm damage. In a context of increasing storm losses across the continent, our study therefore argues for forest management practices that promote diversity and slow growing tree species such as oak.”

#trees #forest #ecology #conservation

[mindblowingscience]

Seasonal timings of plants are advancing an average of four times faster than insects, throwing key interactions like pollination out of sync. This is according to new findings from researchers at the University of Oxford and Chinese Academy of Sciences that will be presented at the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting in held Belfast December 12–15. A study of more than 1,500 species of herbivorous insects in Europe, spanning 34 years of data, has found that 60% of insects are already struggling to keep up with the plants they rely on because climate change is advancing key seasonal timings (phenology), such as plant blooming or insect emergence, earlier in the year, at different rates.

Continue Reading.

#Science #Enviroment #Ecology #Climate Change #Global Warming

[fatehbaz]

hi! SUPER interesting excerpt on ants and empire; adding it to my reading list. have you ever read "mosquito empires," by john mcneill?

Yea, I've read it. (Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914, basically about influence of environment and specifically insect-borne disease on colonial/imperial projects. Kinda brings to mind Centering Animals in Latin American History [Few and Tortorici, 2013] and the exploration of the centrality of ecology/plants to colonialism in Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World [Schiebinger, 2007].)

If you're interested: So, in the article we're discussing, Rohan Deb Roy shows how Victorian/Edwardian British scientists, naturalists, academics, administrators, etc., used language/rhetoric to reinforce colonialism while characterizing insects, especially termites in India and elsewhere in the tropics, as "Goths"; "arch scourge of humanity"; "blight of learning"; "destroying hordes"; and "the foe of civilization". [Rohan Deb Roy. “White ants, empire, and entomo-politics in South Asia.” The Historical Journal. October 2019.] He explores how academic and pop-sci literature in the US and Britain participated in racist dehumanization of non-European people by characterizing them as "uncivilized", as insects/animals. (This sort of stuff is summarized by Neel Ahuja, describing interplay of race, gender, class, imperialism, disease/health, anthropomorphism. See Ahuja's “Postcolonial Critique in a Multispecies World.”)

In a different 2018 article on "decolonizing science," Deb Roy also moves closer to the issue of mosquitoes, disease, hygiene, etc. explored in Mosquito Empires. Deb Roy writes: 'Sir Ronald Ross had just returned from an expedition to Sierra Leone. The British doctor had been leading efforts to tackle the malaria that so often killed English colonists in the country, and in December 1899 he gave a lecture to the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce [...]. [H]e argued that "in the coming century, the success of imperialism will depend largely upon success with the microscope."''

Deb Roy also writes elsewhere about "nonhuman empire" and how Empire/colonialism brutalizes, conscripts, employs, narrates other-than-human creatures. See his book Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909 (published 2017).

---

Like Rohan Deb Roy, Jonathan Saha is another scholar with a similar focus (relationship of other-than-human creatures with British Empire's projects in Asia). Among his articles: "Accumulations and Cascades: Burmese Elephants and the Ecological Impact of British Imperialism." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 2022. /// “Colonizing elephants: animal agency, undead capital and imperial science in British Burma.” BJHS Themes. British Society for the History of Science. 2017. /// "Among the Beasts of Burma: Animals and the Politics of Colonial Sensibilities, c. 1840-1940." Journal of Social History. 2015. /// And his book Colonizing Animals: Interspecies Empire in Myanmar (published 2021).

---

Related spirit/focus. If you liked the termite/India excerpt, you might enjoy checking out this similar exploration of political/imperial imagery of bugs a bit later in the twentieth century: Fahim Amir. “Cloudy Swords” e-flux Journal Issue #115. February 2021.

Amir explores not only insect imagery, specifically caricatures of termites in discourse about civilization (like the Deb Roy article about termites in India), but Amir also explores the mosquito/disease aspect invoked by your message (Mosquito Empires) by discussing racially segregated city planning and anti-mosquito architecture in British West Africa and Belgian Congo, as well as anti-mosquito campaigns of fascist Italy and the ascendant US empire. German cities began experiencing a non-native termite infestation problem shortly after German forces participated in violent suppression of resistance in colonial Africa. Meanwhile, during anti-mosquito campaigns in the Panama Canal zone, US authorities imposed forced medical testing of women suspected of carrying disease. Article features interesting statements like: 'The history of the struggle against the [...] mosquito reads like the history of capitalism in the twentieth century: after imperial, colonial, and nationalistic periods of combatting mosquitoes, we are now in the NGO phase, characterized by shrinking [...] health care budgets, privatization [...].' I've shared/posted excerpts before, which I introduce with my added summary of some of the insect-related imagery: “Thousands of tiny Bakunins”. Insects "colonize the colonizers". The German Empire fights bugs. Fascist ants, communist termites, and the “collectivism of shit-eating”. Insects speak, scream, and “go on rampage”.

---

In that Deb Roy article, there is a section where we see that some Victorian writers pontificated on how "ants have colonies and they're quite hard workers, just like us!" or "bugs have their own imperium/domain, like us!" So that bugs can be both reviled and also admired. On a similar note, in the popular imagination, about anthropomorphism of Victorian bugs, and the "celebrated" "industriousness" and "cleverness" of spiders, there is: Claire Charlotte McKechnie. “Spiders, Horror, and Animal Others in Late Victorian Empire Fiction.” Journal of Victorian Culture. December 2012. She also addresses how Victorian literature uses natural science and science fiction to process anxiety about imperialism. This British/Victorian excitement at encountering "exotic" creatures of Empire, and popular discourse which engaged in anthropormorphism, is explored by Eileen Crist's Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind and O'Connor's The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856.

Related anthologies include a look at other-than-humans in literature and popular discourse: Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out (Heholt and Edmunson, 2020). There are a few studies/scholars which look specifically at "monstrous plants" in the Victorian imagination. Anxiety about gender and imperialism produced caricatures of woman as exotic anthropomorphic plants, as in: “Murderous plants: Victorian Gothic, Darwin and modern insights into vegetable carnivory" (Chase et al., Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009). Special mention for the work of Anna Boswell, which explores the British anxiety about imperialism reflected in their relationships with and perceptions of "strange" creatures and "alien" ecosystems, especially in Aotearoa. (Check out her “Anamorphic Ecology, or the Return of the Possum.” Transformations. 2018.)

And then bridging the Victorian anthropomorphism of bugs with twentieth-century hygiene campaigns, exploring "domestic sanitation" there is: David Hollingshead. “Women, insects, modernity: American domestic ecologies in the late nineteenth century.” Feminist Modernist Studies. August 2020. (About the cultural/social pressure to protect "the home" from bugs, disease, and "invasion".)

---

In fields like geography, history of science, etc., much has been said/written about how botany was the key imperial science/field, and there is the classic quintessential tale of the British pursuit of cinchona from Latin America, to treat mosquito-borne disease among its colonial administrators in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. In other words: Colonialism, insects, plants in the West Indies shaped and influenced Empire and ecosystems in the East Indies, and vice versa. One overview of this issue from Early Modern era through the Edwardian era, focused on Britain and cinchona: Zaheer Baber. "The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power and Botanical Knowledge." May 2016. Elizabeth DeLoughrey and other scholars of the Caribbean, "the postcolonial," revolutionary Black Atlantic, etc. have written about how plantation slavery in the Caribbean provided a sort of bounded laboratory space. (See Britt Rusert's "Plantation Ecologies: The Experiential Plantation [...].") The argument is that plantations were already of course a sort of botanical laboratory for naturalizing and cultivating valuable commodity plants, but they were also laboratories to observe disease spread and to practice containment/surveillance of slaves and laborers. See also Chakrabarti's Bacteriology in British India: laboratory medicine and the tropics (2012). Sharae Deckard looks at natural history in imperial/colonial imagination and discourse (especially involving the Caribbean, plantations, the sea, and the tropics) looking at "the ecogothic/eco-Gothic", Edenic "nature", monstrous creatures, exoticism, etc. Kinda like Grove's discussion of "tropical Edens" in the colonial imagination of Green Imperialism.

Dante Furioso's article "Sanitary Imperialism" (from e-flux's Sick Architecture series) provides a summary of US entomology and anti-mosquito campaigns in the Caribbean, and how "US imperial concepts about the tropics" and racist pathologization helped influence anti-mosquito campaigns that imposed racial segregation in the midst of hard labor, gendered violence, and surveillance in the Panama Canal zone. A similar look at manipulation of mosquito-borne disease in building empire: Gregg Mitman. “Forgotten Paths of Empire: Ecology, Disease, and Commerce in the Making of Liberia’s Plantation Economy.” Environmental History. 2017. (Basically, some prominent medical schools/departments evolved directly out of US military occupation and industrial plantations of fruit/rubber/sugar corporations; faculty were employed sometimes simultaneously by fruit companies, the military, and academic institutions.) This issue is also addressed by Pratik Chakrabarti in Medicine and Empire, 1600-1960 (2014).

---

Meanwhile, there are some other studies that use non-human creatures (like a mosquito) to frame imperialism. Some other stuff that comes to mind about multispecies relationships to empire:

Lawrence H. Kessler. “Entomology and Empire: Settler Colonial Science and the Campaign for Hawaiian Annexation.” Arcadia (Spring 2017)

No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic (Keith Pluymers)

Archie Davies. "The racial division of nature: Making land in Recife". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Volume 46, Issue 2, pp. 270-283. November 2020.

Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (Urmi Engineer Willoughby, 2017)

Pasteur’s Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Aro Velmet, 2022)

Tom Brooking and Eric Pawson. “Silences of Grass: Retrieving the Role of Pasture Plants in the Development of New Zealand and the British Empire.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. August 2007.

Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History (Alan Mikhail)

The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800-1900 (Rebecca J.H. Woods, 2017)

Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914 (Kristen Hussey, 2021)

Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire (Kirsten Greer, 2020)

Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria (Saheed Aderinto, 2022)

Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942 (Timothy P. Barnard, 2019)

Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950 (Jeannie N. Shinozuka)

[transmutationisms]

original anon here tysm for the recs ! if the marxist frameworks was too limiting im also completely fine w general postcolonial botany readings on the topic :0

A Spiteful Campaign: Agriculture, Forests, and Administering the Environment in Imperial Singapore and Malaya (2022). Barnard, Timothy P. & Joanna W. C. Lee. Environmental History Volume: 27 Issue: 3 Pages: 467-490. DOI: 10.1086/719685

Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects: British Malaya, 1786–1941 (2018). Lynn Hollen Lees

The Plantation Paradigm: Colonial Agronomy, African Farmers, and the Global Cocoa Boom, 1870s--1940s (2014). Ross, Corey. Journal of Global History Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 49-71. DOI: 10.1017/S1740022813000491

Cultivating “Care”: Colonial Botany and the Moral Lives of Oil Palm at the Twentieth Century’s Turn (2022). Alice Rudge. Comparative Studies in Society and History Volume: 64 Issue: 4 Pages: 878-909. DOI: 10.1017/S0010417522000354

Pacific Forests: A History of Resource Control and Contest in Solomon Islands, c. 1800-1997 (2000). Bennett, Judith A.

Thomas Potts of Canterbury: Colonist and Conservationist (2020). Star, Paul

Colonialism and Green Science: History of Colonial Scientific Forestry in South India, 1820--1920 (2012). Kumar, V. M. Ravi. Indian Journal of History of Science Volume: 47 Issue 2 Pages: 241-259

Plantation Botany: Slavery and the Infrastructure of Government Science in the St. Vincent Botanic Garden, 1765–1820 (2021). Williams, J'Nese. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte Volume: 44 Issue: 2 Pages: 137-158. DOI: 10.1002/bewi.202100011

Angel in the House, Angel in the Scientific Empire: Women and Colonial Botany During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2020). Hong, Jiang. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science Volume: 75 Issue: 3 Pages: 415-438. DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2020.0046

From Ethnobotany to Emancipation: Slaves, Plant Knowledge, and Gardens on Eighteenth-Century Isle de France (2019). Brixius, Dorit. History of Science Volume: 58 Issue: 1 Pages: 51-75. DOI: 10.1177/0073275319835431

African Oil Palms, Colonial Socioecological Transformation and the Making of an Afro-Brazilian Landscape in Bahia, Brazil (2015). Watkins, Case. Environment and History Volume: 21 Issue: 1 Pages: 13-42. DOI: 10.3197/096734015X14183179969700

The East India Company and the Natural World (2015). Ed. Damodaran, Vinita; Winterbottom, Anna; Lester, Alan

Colonising Plants in Bihar (1760-1950): Tobacco Betwixt Indigo and Sugarcane (2014). Kerkhoff, Kathinka Sinha

Science in the Service of Colonial Agro-Industrialism: The Case of Cinchona Cultivation in the Dutch and British East Indies, 1852--1900 (2014). Hoogte, Arjo Roersch van der & Pieters, Toine. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences Volume: 47 Issue: Part A Pages: 12-22

Trading Nature: Tahitians, Europeans, and Ecological Exchange (2010). Newell, Jennifer

The Colonial Machine: French Science and Overseas Expansion in the Old Regime (2011). McClellan, James E. & Regourd, François

Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (2005). Ed. Schiebinger, Londa L. & Swan, Claudia

Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (2004). Schiebinger, Londa L.

#book recs

[climatecalling]

The More Than Human Rights (Moth) project and Animals in the Room (Air) are exploring bold tactics to further their cause, including authorship claims for forests, policy advocacy on behalf of bears and whales, and fungal strategies to spread ecological thinking. They represent a new wave of nature and animal rights movements gaining traction amid frustration over humanity’s ultra-exploitative relationship with other species and growing concern about the shortcomings of the technology-and-markets approach to the climate crisis. “We want to take the idea of rights of nature from the margin to the mainstream. The idea is to embed society in the biosphere,” said César Rodríguez-Garavito, a Colombian legal scholar who heads the Earth Rights Advocacy Clinic at New York University. Rodríguez-Garavito is the founder of Moth, which intends to set a legal precedent by establishing the creative rights of the Los Cedros cloud forest in northern Ecuador, which has already been recognised as an entity possessing legal personhood and rights under a landmark 2021 judgment by the constitutional court of Ecuador. In a test case, Moth will argue that a new piece of music was co-created by the forest with the British musician Cosmo Sheldrake. In Song of the Forest, Sheldrake recorded the forest’s voices, including birds, animals and trees, and then mixed this with his own words and those of other Moth members.

#climate crisis #ecology #earth rights #climate solutions

[beardedmrbean]

A police officer in Germany was accused of dumping oil on a radical climate protester accused of blocking the road and the matter is currently being investigated for potential disciplinary action. 

The climate activists from Letzte Generation ("Last Generation") glued their hands to the Konrad-Adenauer Bridge in Manheim, Germany, on Sept. 3. The climate activists made allegations that some in the group were intentionally doused with oil, and provided a video showing at least one instance where a police officer holding a container of oil spilled it on one of the activists, who wear orange vests in their protests. 

The alleged oil was used to separate the activists' hands from the pavement. The tactic of gluing their hand to the road has been used by climate activists to raise awareness of climate change.

One activist said the officer dumped so much oil on her arm that she ended up sitting in a pool of it on the road. Another activist says the officer spilled oil on his pants. 

MAN LUNGES AT CLIMATE ACTIVISTS BLOCKING ROAD ON HIS WAY TO WORK: 'YOU MOTHERF---ER'

"We are all part of the last generation who still has the chance to stop the complete ecological collapse of Earth, regardless of whether we want it or not," the Letzte Generation said. "We come together and offer resolute non-violent resistance to the fossil-fuel madness happening in our present. We are society's will to survive! We still have two to three years in which we can divert from the path of the fossil-fuel led annihilation."

According to the British newspaper The Express, "Ralf Kusterer, the head of the German police union in Baden-Württemberg, emphasised that if there is any misconduct by police officers, they must be held accountable, regardless of public sentiment. The allegations have sparked concerns about potential police brutality and overreach."  

The protesters have been staging frequent protests in Germany, causing major delays on highways and roads, and it has tested the public's patience. 

An August incident in Munich showed driver who refused to pause amid the protesters blocking the road. As the protesters approached to block the car, it slowly lurched forward. The climate protesters were dragged hundreds of feet into the roadway by the car. 

Around the same time period, a 41-year-old trucker in Germany got into a brutal confrontation with climate protesters, dragging them each to the side of the road and later dragging a protester forward using his vehicle. 

In July, a woman in Germany grabbed one of the climate protesters by the hair and dragged her to the side of the road. The woman was later dubbed a "brutal blonde" by European media.

 The activist was lightly injured in the altercation. Police said they were looking into videos and photos of the incident to determine if criminal proceedings were necessary against those who dragged the protesters off the road. They also said the climate activists were taken into custody. 

"The Last Generation aren't protecting the climate, they're engaged in criminal activity," Minister of Digital Affairs and Transport of Germany, Volker Wissing, said. 

#nunyas news

[eaglesnick]

“To some people a tree is something so incredibly beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes. To others it is just a green thing that stands in the way.”  William Blake

Everyone (of a certain age) knows the song Jerusalem. The music was written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916 to boost British morale during World War 1. This song, words by William Blake, is the official anthem of the British Women's Institute, and historically was used by the National Union of Suffrage Societies. It is also the song that traditionally ends the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms.

I mention this song as it contains the lines:

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green:

And was the holy Lamb of God,

On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In England’s green & pleasant Land.

Yesterday we were informed that in this “green and pleasant land” of ours, one in six of British wildlife species is in danger of extinction. Bird populations are expected to be reduced by 43%, and 26% of British mammals are expected to disappear.

Far from being a “green and pleasant land” we are knowingly destroying the very environment we depend upon for our well-being. From polluted waterways and beaches to the sanctioning of pesticides and herbicides banned elsewhere in the world; from anti-clean air campaigns to the promotion of more fossil fuel extraction and carbon emissions, we are knowingly walking into an ecological disaster.

Neither Sunak nor Starmer seemed concerned about our countries ecological future, and neither it seems do many of our fellow citizens. The former are more interested in personal power, the latter more concerned about how much it will cost them in monetary terms.

A lesser-known poem by William Blake is “London” wherein he describes:

“The bleak, polluted urban environment that resulted from the unrestricted burning of coal, the discharge of raw sewage into the Thames, and the inexorable spread of contagious disease."   (J.C McKusick: “The End of Nature: Environmental Apocalypse in William Blake and Mary Shelly.”; Springer Link, 11/11/15.

If Blake’s  environmental apocalypse turns out to be as true for the 21st century as it did for the 19th, then we will only have ourselves to blame.

#uk politics #william blake #environmental apocalype #oil #gas #clean air #womens institute #suffragettes

[projectourworld]

Overall runner up: Doron Talmi Every migration season, more than half a billion migratory birds fly over the Agamon Hula nature and ornithology park in northern Israel’s Hula Valley. As one of the world’s most important bird migration routes, the park regularly feeds the flocks to prevent the cranes from ruining crops in the surrounding agricultural areas.

This image was captured on an early winter morning from one of the feeding carts. Image Courtesy: the British Ecological Society’s annual photography competition #ecological #photography

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Wild Pearls

The golden-striped salamander is one of the species most vulnerable to water contamination, which is why its presence is used as a bioindicator. As vulnerable as it is elusive, this species breeds in caves and rock cracks, where pure water runs out of the rock bed. One single female can lay more that 500 eggs in every reproductive season, lining the walls with living pearls.

Photograph: Javier Lobon-Rovira

The British Ecological Society Annual Capturing Ecology Competition

#javier lobon-rovira #photographer #british ecological society annual capturing ecology competition #golden-striped salamander #salamander #amphibian #bioindicator #nature #animal

[azazelsazaleas]

Ok, so usually when an idiot on Reddit posts an absolutely awful take and it gets upvotes, I roll my eyes and move on with my life, but this one has been living in my head for a little while now so I feel the need to rant about it.

The Awful Take (TM) was as follows: Dune and Star Wars are not science fiction because they are not rooted in science, instead, they are space fantasy because it’s all just about politics in space and stuff.

Now, I’m fine with the Star Wars half of this. I actually agree with that part. It’s the Dune half that is absolutely asinine, ill-considered, and just plain wrong.

There’s a few reasons for this.

For starters, Dune is absolutely rooted in science, particularly the novels. The entire plot centers around planetary ecology, and explores the impact of ecology on resources and the way that the resulting scarcity of certain resources impacts culture, society, and politics at macro and micro levels. This really is about as science-driven as science fiction can get, and Herbert put an incredible amount of consideration into making it work.

All of which is to say, science fiction is fiction that is not explores how scientific and technological advancement, understanding, and exploration impact humanity, and Dune does exactly that. The political structures, economic structures, and social structures of Herbert’s universe are built around the aforementioned fictionalized ecology as well as a hypothetical future involving space travel and what humanity would look like in a post-AI, post-computer world.

Fantasy, by contrast, is rooted in folklore and mythology. Tolkien’s middle-earth works were (at least partially) an attempt to create a mythological history for British cultures, and were heavily influenced by Nordic and European myths such as the Kalevala. The Witcher is based largely in deconstructions of European folktales. Harry Potter blends mystery and coming-of-age genres with a setting that basically establishes European folkloric and mythological creatures and tropes as part of its universe. And that’s not even getting into the volumes and volumes of fantasy that’s basically just copies, deconstructions, reconstructions, parodies, and loving tributes to what Tolkien did with Lord of the Rings.

Which brings us to Star Wars. George Lucas has been extremely open about the influence the Joseph Campbell’s theories regarding mythology (particularly the Hero’s Journey as discussed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces) has had on the franchise he created. The aesthetics of Star Wars are rooted in old Flash Gordon serials; the world building was inspired by science fiction franchises such as Star Trek and, yes, Dune; and some of the characters and plot points were inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s jidaigeki films; but the overall story arc, the narrative heart of the films, and the broader themes that they dwelt upon were rooted in a Campbell’s hero’s journey (with a hefty dose of East Asian mysticism and philosophy thrown in there). The films that compromise the core of the Star Wars franchise -episode I though IX- have very little interest in exploring futuristic scientific and technological concepts; they are simply presented as either plot devices, or neat-looking spectacle that leans on Asimov’s maxim that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. What it is interested in is Luke’s growth from starry-eyed farm boy to archetypical hero, wizards of light and darkness battling each other in cataclysmic conflicts of good vs. evil, and a redemptive arc for a villain who was effectively a fallen angel figure. Star Wars pretty solidly meets the qualifications for fantasy.

Dune, by contrast, does not. Dune is not rooted in mythology. It is not rooted in folklore. The closest it comes is in its discussions of religion, but even that is explored through a (rather cynical) lens of political and social sciences. Dune is more interested in how humans interact with the world(s) they live in. Dune is, simply put, science fiction.

And while we’re at it, Star Trek is, too.

#science fiction #sci fi #sf #fantasy #dune #Star Wars #Star Trek #Reddit #rant #I hope this is coherent #I have two bourbons and an edible in me

[katiajewelbox]

Meet more notable women in plant biology during Women's History Month 2024.

Anna Atkins

One of the first female photographers was also a botanist. Although she did not attend college, Anna Atkins (16 March 1799 – 9 June 1871) received her scientific education from her chemist father John George Children. As an adult, she pursued her curiosity about plants by collecting and drying specimens of land plants and seaweed which she used to create educational and artistic “photograms” using cyanotype photographic paper. She self-published the book containing photographic illustrations, entitled “ Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions” in 1843. She was also elected as a member of the London Botanical Society.

Miriam Rothschild

Curiosity about nature and collecting came naturally to Miriam Rothschild ( 5 August 1908 – 20 January 2005)– after all she was the niece of the eccentric Lionel Walter Rothschild who created a natural history museum stuffed with specimens from around the world at Tring in the UK. Her long and eventful life included campaigning for the rights of animals, children, people with mental illness, and LGBTQ people as well as innovative scientific research on entomology, particularly chemical ecology and mimicry. Her botanical connection is her research on how Monarch butterfly larvae’s toxicity is derived from chemicals in the milkweed which they feed on.

#katia_plantscientist#womeninscience#womeninstem#womeninbotany#womeninsplantscience#womeninbiology#annaatkins#miriamrothschild#photography#algae#entomology#chemicalecology#botany#plantbiology#plantscience#history#womenshistorymonth

#katia plant scientist #botany #plant biology #plants #plant science #women in science #women in stem #women in biology #women scientists #female scientists #womens history #women's history month #historical figures #anna atkins #miriam rothschild #ecology #photography

[luxe-pauvre]

SEPTEMBER 2022

Read:

I’m a psychologist - and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health

The Ecological Prescience of Dune

The Greedy Doctor Problem

Is There Such A Thing As Good Taste?

We are all frail

Among Social Scientists, a Vigorous Debate Over Loss Aversion

To Be Energy-Efficient, Brains Predict Their Perceptions

After many false starts, this might be the true age of anxiety

Votes for children! Why we should lower the voting age to six

At the End of the World, It’s Hyperobjects All the Way Down

Three Theories for Why You Have No Time

How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution

Life’s Too Short to Finish Books You Don’t Like

Why the Hell Would You Want to Privatise Libraries?

Why Stories Are Like Taking Drugs

The Myth of Multitasking

The Odor of Things

The long, slow, rotten march of progress

Pop psychology has killed the villain

Brain scans look stunning, but what do they actually mean?

Is society coming apart?

Chronic illness and the pressure to get well

The Art of Lost Sleep

Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington

The Joy of Science by Jim Al-Khalili

In Defence of Witches: Why Women are Still on Trial by Mona Chollet

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

And Finally by Henry Marsh

Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence by Gavin Francis

Watched:

Brave New World vs Nineteen Eighty-Four featuring Adam Gopnik and Will Self

RSM Easter Lecture 2016 with Henry Marsh

Twelve Experiments That Changed Our World

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Bullet Train

Lupin pt. 2

Listened To:

How To Finally Stop Procrastinating: Oliver Burkeman*

Unholy by Sam Smith ft. Kim Petras

Renaissance by Beyonce (again)

Went To:

Henry Marsh in conversation with Will Self

Feminine power: the divine to the demonic @ The British Museum

Madama Butterfly @ Royal Opera House

#* Ignore the clickbait title - Oliver is great as always. #personal

[fatehbaz]

[T]he advent of imperialism in Myanmar. [...] [An] episode in the history of the ecological impact of imperialism [...]. During the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, Myanmar [British "Burma"] became one of the world's biggest exporters of hardwoods. [...] The rapid development of the timber industry was a vital motor in the expansion of capitalist and colonial relations in this often neglected corner of the Raj. Teak traders financed from Britain were vocal in lobbying Westminster and the [British] Government of India to colonise the [...] territory [...]. Following the eventual annexation of upper Myanmar in 1885, they continued to inveigle the local government into interceding on their behalf in the borderlands [...]. The booming rice industry developed alongside the growth of the teak industry [...]. Like teak extraction, rice cultivation in Myanmar was of transnational importance.

The rich alluvial soil provided fertile ground for the Ayeyarwady delta to undergo a dramatic transformation to become the largest rice-producing region in the world, having a ripple effect across the global cereal market. The white rice exported from Myanmar fed colonised labouring peoples (and some non-human animals) engaged in commodity production across the Empire, most notably in neighbouring Bengal. The delta was crucial to an interdependent network of food security established through and underpinning British imperialism.

The changes on the delta itself were profound, both socially and ecologically. [...] [F]rom the 1850s what was still predominantly a mangrove-forested backwater at the margins of political power became a febrile hive of activity.

Sparsely populated, isolated hamlets, hemmed in by the thick jungles and thickets of dense grass in the tidal delta, became enmeshed in an extensive tapestry of paddy fields, their populations growing fivefold to become thriving commercial hubs, connected by a busy riverine transport network to the bustling imperial port cities of Akyab (now Sittwe), Mawlamyine and Yangon. [...] Thick forest needed to be felled, the undergrowth burnt, and the remaining dense network of roots dug out [...]. Even then, they were in a precarious position. [...] This work was underpinned by heavy borrowing, mostly from local Burmese and overseas Indian sources, and misfortune could lead to them defaulting on their loan and losing their land to their creditor. [...] [P]rimary producers did not retain the wealth generated through rice production, and many agriculturalists were in a vulnerable position when the market went into crisis in the early 1930s. [...]

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Text by: Jonathan Saha. “Accumulations and Cascades: Burmese Elephants and the Ecological Impact of British Imperialism.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 32, pp. 177-197. 2022. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]