Brian Skerry reveals.

DeepSea has another powerful find. Graphics can be brutal.

This photo (Dan Froomkin) is gut-wrenchingly aesthetic, as is the post it links to. Read the article - by presenting the Gulf spill as a short-cut for what fossil fuels do to the environment anyway, it tries to raise the catastrophe to a graphic representation. If the populace / politics would subsequently change behaviors as a result, the whole nasty event would win a silver-lining. Hate to be pessimistic, but it seems unlikely.

Deepseanews writes up why the oil spill catastrophe goes so far beyond the animals caught directly in the drifting oil.

Die gefährlichste aller Weltanschauungen ist die Weltanschauung der Leute, welche die Welt nie angeschaut haben

The most dangerous of all world-views is the world view held by those who have never viewed the world.

(This is my own translation attempting to respect the linguistic playfulness of the German original. Weltanschauung would be more closely translated as ideology.)

Extracted from Prof Dr Reinhold Leinfelder’s opening speech of the Reef exhibition at the Stuttgart Museum of Natural History. edit: 1) Dr. Leinfelder has a blog, and he was so kind as to point me to the article in which he was able to place this fantastic quote. It’s a slightly different version of the text, one that appeals to me even more, so I’ve corrected this post. I should also mention that it is used in the context of the appreciation of the world’s reefs, which we are rapidly destroying. If you follow my blog, you know this is a matter close to my heart!

If you can read German, be sure to visit Dr. Leinfelder’s blog!

http://www.vimeo.com/7712454
Surprise number 2 from the sketch crawl at the Wilhelma in Stuttgart: the back fins of this skate have clearly functioning foot like characteristics. I wasn’t aware that there were species of skate that had such fins, so it was a surprise to me - he seemed so happy to show them off, I thought I’d pass it on.

I’ve been very absent here due to activities surrounding the fmx/09, and will now be away for a bit of recreation. Before I go, I hope to share my talk from the fmx here, but until then… well, indulge in my parallel interests: parasites fascinate me.