 A QUIET
STAND OF ALDERS "The alder, whose fat shadow nourisheth All set neere to him long flourisheth." -- William Browne, c. 1613 |
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A QUIET
STAND OF ALDERS "The alder, whose fat shadow nourisheth All set neere to him long flourisheth." -- William Browne, c. 1613 |
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Welcome to A Quiet Stand of Alders, the author
website of Stanley Rice, a science educator
and writer. If you care passionately about the natural world and its
evolutionary history, this website is for you. Here you will find essays about ecology, evolution; and ethical, political, and religious issues connected with them. I intend my approach as constructive, although I do not hold back from criticism when the facts demand it. At the same time, I want to preserve a context of peaceful meditation, such as you will find in a quiet stand of alder trees down by the river. Peace and zeal are the fire and ice of a scientist, an educator, an evolutionist, or a naturalist. About every two weeks, a new essay will be posted. You can find all of the old essays in the archives. I am embedded in the creationist and anti-environmentalist heartland of rural Oklahoma and will report to you from the front lines! I consider myself a missionary for evolution and ecology. Please feel free to contact me at the email below, or by posting comments on my evolution blog. Facing Uncomfortable Truths February 28, 2010
This website, as with all my books, is filled with praise of nature. We need to remain aware, however, that the natural world can be a very dangerous place. The generation of Americans that was raised on Bambi tends to forget this sometimes. When I was in elementary summer school, I was in a journalism class. A local newscaster, Ken Clifford, was a forerunner of right-wing talk-show hosts, but also liked to spread alarming stories. But this story was true. Culex tarsalis mosquitoes spread viruses that cause encephalitis, and in fact in our very county there was a hospitalized man who was, Clifford said, a "vegetable" because of what the virus did to his brain. Clifford was calling for mass spraying, right during the time when the environmental movement was getting started. Well, I wrote a little newspaper article about this. (Yes, I even included the Latin name.) When the article came out in our "newspaper," which was fragrantly dittoed in blue, I saw that our teacher, Mrs. Webb, had rewritten it, removing all reference to disease, and substituting the mere statement that when you go outside for July 4, there will be mosquitoes, so you should use repellant. My story, which contained an uncomfortable but very interesting truth, had been defanged. But there is an even more uncomfortable (I resisted saying "inconvenient") truth: Our disturbance of the environment has worsened many of our disease problems. Mice spread ticks and thus Lyme disease in disturbed forest fragments more than in forests. Deforestation has chased bats out of intact forests into fruit trees around pig farms, where they infect the pigs with Nipah virus. Schistosomiasis spread in Egypt because the snail that carries the parasite exploded in the reservoir and in the permanent irrigation conditions created by the Aswan High Dam; that snail had not been very abundant in the seasonal flood waters before the dam. Even global warming tilts the balance in favor of the spread of disease, especially when tropical mosquitoes (such as those that carry dengue fever) move northward into the United States. The extensively irrigated fields of the San Joaquin Valley, where I grew up, bred lots of mosquitoes. This was not true prior to irrigation. The Valley had originally been a vast marsh, which would seem to be an excellent place for mosquitoes to breed, but there were also lots of fish (absent from irrigated fields) that ate the wrigglers (mosquito larvae). If I had known that, and put that in my article, what would Mrs. Webb have done? January-March 2008 April-June 2008 July-September 2008 (includes Welcome to the Republican climate! and Goodbye, from the world’s biggest polluter!) October-December 2008 (includes A Good Time to be a Vulture Shoot Something Furry and Conservatives Are Nature-worshippers) January-March 2009 (includes The Sabbath of the Earth) April-June 2009 (includes The End of Altruism and If Humans Vanished…) July-September 2009 (includes You Are an Ecosystem) October-December 2009 (includes Absurd Creativity and Fiscal Responsibility -- In Plants) January-March 2010 Christians Burning Bibles? A Beautiful Mind Deep Time and Deep Intestines |
  Honest Aba blog about evolution and related topics Books:  New York: Facts on File, 2007.  New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Upcoming Books: Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Encyclopedia of Biodiversity Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-Aged, Stressed-Out Planet Encyclopedia of Evolution (Revised Edition) Articles Presentations |
