Bristlecone pine by Leonard Miller. Click pic for more.
Millennial Wood
With Labor Day
past and the beginning of Autumn less than two weeks
away, I'm mindful of our descent into
Y2K. Casually falling towards that
anticipated Winter night of December 31,
1999 and January 1, 2000, I suspect
the impact will be most
entertaining.
The cold is before us, but we still have
pleasant enough weather for a walk in
the woods. I must inquire of the trees if
they're concerned with Y2K.
They shouldn't be, but it's always polite to ask.
Time, as we
know,
is relative, yet ...some relationships are awkward and
embarrassing. Our upcoming New
Year/New
Millennium "event" is a Christian
biased calendric construction which the
rest of the world regards with various
degrees of indifference and disdain.
The "Christian" West says that Y2K is
important and the rest of the world
listens.
Sort of...
We should be
aware
of tonight/tomorrow's beginning of the Jewish New
Year, Rosh Hashanah (Tishri
1, 5760), the Islamic Ramadaan on December 9th,
1999 (Jumaada al-awal 20,
1420 A.H.), as well as the next Chinese New Year's
celebration, "The Year of the Dragon,"
on February 5, 2000. Our "Christian"
calendar, like time, is embarrassingly
(and often arrogantly) relative. Time is a
construct, perceived or deduced, but
always
imposed. We impose a lot on the
universe.
Time dilation,
as an arbitrary and relativistic event, demonstrates
our
fixation
with absolutes. A
throw-and-a-toss
behind theoretical physics, the socialists of
Mom Terra have joined to present a global
calendar and clock, measured with a
demanding exactitude, but subject to the
inevitable human difficulties
encountered when the Universe as "Sphinx"
is an enigma several billion years
old and we only understand a couple of
questions. So, we impose ...leap
seconds.
INTERNATIONAL EARTH ROTATION SERVICE (IERS)
SERVICE INTERNATIONAL DE LA ROTATION TERRESTRE
BUREAU CENTRAL DE L'IERS
OBSERVATOIRE DE PARIS
61, Av. de l'Observatoire
75014 PARIS (France)
Tel.
: 33 (0) 1 40 51 22 26
FAX
: 33 (0) 1 40 51 22 91
Internet :
iers@obspm.fr
Paris, 12 Juillet 1999
Bulletin C 18
To authorities responsible for
the measurement and distribution
of time
INFORMATION ON UTC - TAI
No positive leap
second will be introduced at the end of December 1999.
The difference
between
UTC and the International Atomic Time TAI is :
from 1999 January 1, 0h UTC, until further notice : UTC-TAI = - 32 s
Leap seconds can
be
introduced in UTC at the end of the months of December
or June,
depending
on the evolution of UT1-TAI. Bulletin C is mailed every six
months, either to announce
a time step in UTC, or to confirm that there will
be no time step at the
next
possible date.
Daniel GAMBIS
Director
Central Bureau of IERS*
*Click here
for more about the IERS.
So, I
would
imagine, the above allows for the insertion of a leap second this
coming June. Such fine tuning of
the Universe is a necessary endeavor, but most
"time" is tailored to fit the
individual.
We hold to individual cultural calendars,
all the while developing our own
chronologies
which arise from seasonal factors,
or are age, relationship, or employment
inspired. As my birthday is December
31st, Y2K has a special
significance
for me, but beyond that is an ominous sense
of change. Something seems to be
developing with Mom Terra and I believe it's
affecting us all.
Respect for
Mom
Terra is at an all time low. We plant Christmas trees when
we should be tending fruit trees.
Tobacco and coffee are grown where the land
cries out for wheat and rice.
Humanity
prospers, but the cost to Nature is
tremendous and burdensome.
Pollution,
ozone depletion, global warming,
deforestation, nuclear waste, and the
continued slaughter of various endangered
species, are some of the most troubling
concerns. We're still not exactly sure
what's killing the frogs...
We have an
Atomic
Era (A.E.) calendar which began on December 2, 1942,
at 3:45 PM, with the first sustained
nuclear
fission at Stagg Field on the
University of Chicago campus, although
no one has dared to enact a calendar
which marks Crick, Watson, and Wilkins
(mid-1953?) and the ongoing
investigation and manipulation of genetic
material. Some say that even if we
don't blow ourselves up, we'll probably
invent a germ that will wipe out the
planet. Others, myself included,
believe everything will be okay, but matters
may turn sad and messy before they get
appreciably better.
When I
conjunctively
think in terms of "science" and "Nature," I usually take
a mental walk in the woods. I've
the deepest respect for my elders and I regard
some denizens of the forest as honored
cohabitants of Mom Terra. Humans may
be reaching ever nearer 130 years of age,
but in the woods we find the eldest of
the old.
Bristlecone pine by
Leonard
Miller. Click pic for more.
In 1957 Dr.
Edmund
Schulman identified and dated a bristlecone pine tree,
from the White-Inyo mountain range in
California, as being approximately 4,723
years of age. This bristlecone pine,
nicknamed "Methuselah," remains the oldest
known, individual and free-standing tree
ever discovered. Even more important
than earning a minor mention in the record
books is that these eldest of trees
furthered the study of tree-rings
(dendrochronology),
which in turn was
instrumental in calibrating radiocarbon
(C14) testing in the late 1960's and early
1970's, a quiet revolution which, among
other things, pushed the dates for many
of the megalithic sites in Europe back
well before the pyramids of ancient Egypt.
[Click here
for more about C14 dating.]
King's Holly from
southwestern
Tasmania.
Though the
bristlecone
pine trees are rightly deemed eldest, a shrub in
Australia, King's Holly, has recently
been identified as being sexually
dysfunctional, unable to reproduce,
required
to clone itself to survive, and seems
to have been doing so for over 43,000
years. King's Holly, or Lomatia
tasmanica, is named after
it's discoverer, Deny King, rather than any monarchical
allegiance or reference to the botany
of Tolkien's The Lord of The Rings. The
shrub is a dreamtime freak, to be sure,
so I think I'll skip asking its opinion about
Y2K. Besides, I have some
unresolved issues regarding clones... [Click here
for
more on King's Holly.]
Who to talk
to?
Well, neither of the 250 million year old bacteria, recently
discovered in Carlsbad, New Mexico, seem
up for a serious discussion. Nor
does the Box Huckleberry (Gaylussacia
brachycera), another dysfunctional,
cloning-required plant, an example of
which is thought to be approaching its
13,000th birthday. Likewise, the
11,000 year old microbe culled from the
intestines of a mastodon and the Quaking
Aspen grove (Populus tremuloides)
which is said to have begun some 10,000
years ago, fail to establish individual
identities the way the bristlecone pine
trees do. [Note: the 1,500 year old
Michigan fungus and the 1,500 acre and
500-1000 year old Armillaria ostoyae
fungus in Washington state may have the
potential of driving French piggies
mad, but I'll stick with talking to trees.]
While it's
true
that Y2K is mainly identified with a possible problem of older
computers registering the year 2000, some
Christians who ardently look forward
to the "Rapture," or some such
end-of-times
event, oddly hope that a kid with
666 on his scalp will soon do war
with the "Resurrected Jesus," ...perhaps shortly
after their New Year's hangovers wear
off.
So, with Fall
ahead I plan to take a walk in the woods. Maybe I'll get lucky
and find some fungals. I
don't expect the trees to care much about Y2K, but
maybe they can suggest a short-list of
appropriate parties to attend.
remembering Norwegian wood,
Rick