Geologic time scale – Fossil Wiki, the paleontology wiki.

Today is the 41st Earth Day. When it started in 1970, April 22nd wasn’t really a day dedicated to saving the Earth, it was more a day of protest about a lot of things that were happening on Earth. There has been an Earth Day every day I have been alive on the planet Earth. And I am here to tell you today, Earth Day is still not about saving Earth, it is about saving you – humanity – and making your time on it last as long as you can.

The infographic above illustrates the history of the Earth since it was formed roughly 4.75 billion years ago until the present day. Anyone who has seen Cosmos since it first aired in 1980 might remember Dr. Carl Sagan talking about the billions and billions of years since the big bang started, our universe formed, and our tiny little planet came into being among a vast celestial sea of billions and billions of stars. The key point to note in the graphic above, that if it was a 24-hour clock, humanity would only exist in the very last second of the very last day.

Mammals rose to prominence on planet Earth after the age of dinosaurs, which lasted from about 230 million years ago until a large object struck the planet about 65 million years ago. The human evolutionary lineage diverged from other primates about 5 million years ago. Homo Sapiens, us, first appeared on this planet about 200,000 years ago.

Humans have spent most of that time living in harmony with their planet as just animals. About 10,000 years ago, though, we had a revolution and figured out how to grow plants, herd and raise animals to eat, and transitioned from hunting and gathering to a settled society.  Since we weren’t worried about being eaten or what we were going to eat, we had time to develop writing and have been passing on our accumulated knowledge and experience ever since, developing more sophisticated technologies to better our lives and our population has flourished. And that has led to us shortening our own window of existence on the planet.

Mammals are fragile animals, and humans are fragile beings. Regardless of if you look at from the 65 million year-ago slice, the 200,000 year-ago slice or the 10,000 year ago slice, our slice of time on this tiny little planet earth is only a fraction of the time that the dinosaurs had. That window of time ran very long, it took giant objects from space to create and end it. At the rate we’re going, it won’t take a comet to wipe us out. The Earth will continue to circle the sun and life will grow and live on it with or without us. It has changed greatly through time, and it will continue to change.

The real deal about Earth Day isn’t about saving the Earth, it is about saving OUR Earth, humanity’s Earth. We don’t need to save the environment, we need to save OUR environment,  the air, the water, the plants and animals that we people need to survive.

So maybe the biggest issue in communicating this climate problem is that we made it about Earth, and it isn’t about Earth at all. It’s about you. Save yourself. While you still can.

                          

Today there is a debate about what the war was really about, slavery or states’ rights, but let’s be clear about that states’ rights thing…. it wasn’t about states’ rights other than the central right that those states would kill for and die to maintain —  the right to own other people as slaves.

Our new government is founded on the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man

- Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President, Confederate States of America

In 1861, 4 million people living America – one out of every seven men, women, and children – were not considered american citzens, they were owned by other citizens and forced into labor, forced to live in poverty, forced to breed with others to increase the labor pool because importation of new slaves was illegal, forced from their families and children, forced to support an economy that benefitted the very few richest people in a culture that conservatively refused to act humanely or adopt technology that could significantly progress their economy and society into a stronger future.

That conservative choice continues to economically impact that entire region of the nation today. The American Southeast counts among its states some of the poorest in the nation. While they continue to vote for conservative moral issues and against federal programs and clamor for an end to federal spending, they receive more federal spending dollars than they pay into the government in taxes. The taxpayers of the northeast subsidize the lives of citizens in the old south.

There was nothing – absolutely, completely nothing – glamorous about the old south for anyone who wasn’t in the richest echelon of society. This is not a story of magnolia blossoms or some idyllic Stephen Foster song. It is the story of an American Holocaust, an organized and systematic program that worked people to death because of their skin color, a shame so great it took a war to drive the point home and drive it out.

There’s no sugar-coating this story, and there is no honor in being on the wrong side of it. You can read it for yourselves from those who lived it — who survived it — below. Their stories were captured by a government-funded project during the greatest economic depression our nation has ever experienced.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938.

                          

I saw the tweet about click through and take pictures and NG would mail you artifacts if you played their game Mission Expedition | Expedition Week- National Geographic Channel. But I didn’t think they’d be real, actual artifacts. And then I saw the sponsor banner link for Ancient Resource.

Ancient Resource is the name that Gabriel Vandervort does business as. Vandervort is a former documentary producer and writer, having worked on programs that aired on the History Channel.

Vandervoort claims on his site that his inventory comes from old collections that were brought into the U.S. prior to the UNESCO conventions.

These items come from years of collecting and study. Many of my pieces have been purchased at auction (single items, or as lots). I also buy old collections and museum deaccessions. I never purchase or export items from forbidden countries such as Egypt, Mexico, Greece, Iraq, Italy or Turkey. All such items have come from old collections brought into the USA prior to 1969 and the UNESCO conventions.

National Geographic has come under a great deal of criticism from the archaeological community for how it deals with treasure hunting. The black market trade in stolen and looted antiquities is only surpassed in global value by the trades in drugs and arms, it rivals human trafficking.

                          

From Greek and Roman shipwrecks to 20th-century warships; from ancient streets with intact buildings and mosaics to am­phorae and ingots, the Mediter­ranean is a subaqueous treasure trove. So BP’s plans to drill exploratory oil wells off Libya has raised serious concerns among archaeologists, historians and heritage preservation organisations.

The global energy giant says that it will begin the $900m project to drill five exploratory wells in the Gulf of Sirte “before the end of this year” despite the fact that the cause of the blowout of its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico has yet to be determined. The Libyan wells will be 200 metres deeper than the Macondo.

“An oil spill off the coast of Libya would be a complete disaster,” said Claude Sintes, the director of the subaquatic team of the French archaeological mission to Libya and director of the Museum of Ancient Arles, France. According to Sintes, there are two archaeologically rich areas along the Libyan coast—Cyrenaica and Tripoli­tania. Within Cyrenaica lies Apollonia, an ancient harbour submerged five metres under the water. “It’s a complete town under the sea with streets, walls and houses. Slow tectonic movement caused it to sink,” said Sintes.

via Archaeo­logists attack BP’s drilling plans | The Art Newspaper.

                          

The current team, led by Julie Schablitsky, chief archaeologist for the highway agency; Susan Langley, the state underwater archaeologist; and Robert Neyland, head of the Navy's Underwater Archaeology Branch in the Naval History and Heritage Command, faces similar constraints. Working with a budget of $200,000 cobbled together from different sources, it only has money to do limited underwater excavation. More than a million more would be required to dam off the site and excavate the vessel under dry conditions.

via Shipwreck could yield the USS Scorpion from the War of 1812.

                          

Philippe Cousteu Jr. dons a hazmat diving suit and splashes in the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Horrific.

                          

The History and Evolution of Email.