AWKWARD ZOMBIE

“For years, I opened my 11th-grade U.S. history classes by asking students, “What’s the name of that guy they say discovered America?” A few students might object to the word “discover,” but they all knew the fellow I was talking about. “Christopher Columbus!” several called out in unison.

“Right. So who did he find when he came here?” I asked. Usually, a few students would say, “Indians,” but I asked them to be specific: “Which nationality? What are their names?”

Silence.

In more than 30 years of teaching U.S. history and guest-teaching in others’ classes, I’ve never had a single student say, “Taínos.” How do we explain that? We all know the name of the man who came here from Europe, but none of us knows the name of the people who were here first—and there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of them. Why haven’t you heard of them?

This ignorance is an artifact of historical silencing—rendering invisible the lives and stories of entire peoples.

"When I talk to the camera, mate, it`s not like I`m talking to the camera, I`m talking to you because I want to whip you around and plunk you right there with me."

"I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message." - Steve Irwin.

7 years ago today, the world lost a legend. I was 14 and I remember being home from school when a little bulletin ran across the bottom of the TV, because his death was that big of a deal, that they ran a news bulletin about it across the bottom of all channels and I remember my mom switching it over to the news to hear the story.

I remember thinking, there is no way, “confirmed dead”? No he’ll be alright, because he’s Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, right?

I remember bawling my eyes out the whole rest of the day because my idol, the guy I wanted to grow up to be, was dead.

In the following years I have watched this man’s passion and efforts fade away from the very audiences he tried to reach. The channels that once aired his show have become a joke.

His message about spreading education in order to fight all the ignorance has been lost.

Today media has gone from helpful and educational to ‘what’s best for the ratings’. Shows that use fear mongering and spread misinformation are all that are shown on once great channels such as Animal Planet and Discovery.

Instead of shows like Crocodile Hunter, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, and the beautifully put together documentaries on wildlife… we have shows like Fatal Attractions, a show that depicts exotic pet owners in bad light, making all of us who own something not cute and upstanding member of society look like we’re trying to ‘own and control a piece of the wild’. The incidents that are portrayed on that show are greatly exaggerated and only depict a small fraction of the exotics community. Not everyone who owns a tiger is keeping it in their NY apartment. Not everyone who works with venomous snakes is free handling them.

Then you have ‘documentaries’ such as Man Eating Super Croc, which does nothing but make a crocodile who was only living as a crocodile should, out to be a murderous monster, out to grab your children and pets from the water’s edge without any remorse.

I used to look forward to Shark Week, until it became a joke, and yet another vessel for spreading fear and false information.

If Steve were still alive today, I wonder how he’d feel about these so called educational shows that have taken over the many channels of Discovery Network? I wonder how he’d feel about the python hunts that Florida keeps placing into motion? I wonder how he’d feel about the attacks on the exotic pet keepers community and all the recent legislation that is working to completely ban anything that’s not a dog or a cat (yet)? I wonder what he’d have to say about the increase of rhino poaching and the extinction of now two rhino subspecies within 5 years? I wonder what actions he’d take on the efforts to end shark finning? How would he feel about the sensationalism of rattlesnake roundups?

I wonder what he’d say and how he’d contribute to ending all of these things…

I think he’d be shaking his head. I think he’d be incredibly sad to see how much his message has faded from the best possible hosts for it.

The world could sure use you back Steve, especially now when we need a strong voice to say what needs to actually be said and for someone to start spreading the right message again.

Mars is many things: Fascinating, scientifically interesting, historically interesting, dry, frozen, weird, inhospitable.

And as much as I like images of the red planet, one adjectival phrase I wouldn’t have immediately thought to match with Mars is “jaw-droppingly artistically gorgeous”. I’ll change that opinion right here and now:

Click to enaresenate

That is the south pole of Mars, as seen by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter. It’s a combination of blue, green, and infrared images (put together into that stunning picture by Riding with Robots creator Bill Dunford). This exaggerates the ruddy ochre hue of the planet, but magnifies the overall impact of the picture. It’s surreal; it looks a lot like the top of the mug of coffee I make myself every morning.

Where you see white is a vast region of permanently frozen water ice, many kilometers thick, covered in winter by a few-meter-deep veneer of frozen carbon dioxide, commonly called dry ice. In the Martian summer, the temperature at the pole gets high enough to turn the dry ice into a gas, but the water ice stays frozen. Not all the dry ice disappears, but even in winter the underlying water ice cap is far thicker than the dry ice above it.

Amazingly, the atmosphere of Mars—which is primarily carbon dioxide—noticeably thickens locally in the summer when the ice cap melts (for whichever hemisphere is experiencing summer at that time). On Earth we have water ice, which melts into a liquid. But carbon dioxide doesn’t melt, it sublimates, turning directly from a solid into a gas. That goes into the tenuous Martian air, thickening it.

Not that it’s any great shakes then either: Air pressure on Mars is only about 1 percent or less of Earth’s. You wouldn’t want to be there without wearing a spacesuit.

I imagine though that the view standing on the pole would be quite spectacular. Someday, perhaps, we’ll get a chance to see for ourselves. Until then, I’m actually rather pop flyin' to let our robot proxies do it for us.

I was sceptical about climate change. I was cautious about crying wolf. I am always cautious about crying wolf. I think conservationists have to be careful in saying things are catastrophic when, in fact, they are less than catastrophic.

I have seen my job at the BBC as a presenter to produce programmes about natural history, just as the Natural History Museum would be interested in showing a range of birds of paradise - that's the sort of thing I've been doing. And in almost every big series I've made, the most recent one being Planet Earth, I've ended up by talking about the future, and possible dangers. But, with climate change, I was sceptical. That is true.

Also, I'm not a chemist or a climatologist or a meteorologist; it isn't for me to suddenly stand up and say I have decided the climate is changing. That's not my expertise. The television gives you an unfair and unjustified prominence but just because your face is on the telly doesn't mean you're an expert on meteorology.

But I'm no longer sceptical. Now I do not have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world. I have waited until the proof was conclusive that it was humanity changing the climate. The thing that really convinced me was the graphs connecting the increase of carbon dioxide in the environment and the rise in temperature, with the growth of human population and industrialisation. The coincidence of the curves made it perfectly clear we have left the period of natural climatic oscillation behind and have begun on a steep curve, in terms of temperature rise, beyond anything in terms of increases that we have seen over many thousands of years.

People say, everything will be all right in the end. But it's not the case. We may be facing major disasters on a global scale.

I have seen the ice melting. I have been to parts of Patagonia and heard people say: "That's where the glacier was 10 years ago - and that's where it is today." The most dramatic evidence I have seen was New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. Was that climate-change induced, out of the ordinary? Certainly so. Everyone who does any cooking knows that if you want to increase a chemical reaction, you put it on the stove and heat it up. If you increase the temperature of the oceans, above which there are swirling currents of air, you will increase the energy in the air currents. It's not a mystery.

So it's true to say these programmes about climate change are different, in that previously I have made programmes about natural history, and now you could say I have an engaged stance. The first is about the fact that there is climate change and that it is human-induced. I'm well aware that people say it's all a fuss about nothing, and even if it is getting warmer, it's nothing to do with us. So I'm glad that the BBC wanted some clear statement of the evidence as to why these two things are the case.

The second programme says, these are some of the changes that are now almost inevitable, these are the sorts of things that the nations of the world have to do, to forestall the worst. Will they do it? Who knows? And many people feel helpless.

Yet the fact of the matter is, I was brought up as boy during the war and, during the war, we actually regarded it as immoral, wrong, to leave food on your plate, you needed to eat what was on your plate because we didn't have enough. I feel in the same way that it is wrong to waste energy now, and if that sort of sea change in moral attitude were to spread amongst the world's population, it would make a difference.

During the past 50 years, I have been lucky enough to spend my time travelling around the world looking at its wonders and its splendours. I have seen many changes, some good many bad.

But it's only in the past decade that I have come to think about the question of whether or not what I, or anybody else, has been doing, could have contributed to the change in the climate of the planet that is undoubtedly taking place. When I was a boy in the 1930s, the carbon dioxide level was still below 300 parts per million. This year, it reached 382, the highest figure for hundreds of thousands of years.

I'm 80 now. It's not that I think, like any old man, that change is wrong. I recognise that the world has always changed. I know that. But the point is, it's changing more extremely and swiftly than at any time in the past several million years. And one of the things I don't want to do is to look at my grandchildren and hear them say: "Grandfather, you knew it was happening - and you did nothing."

John: You're at a point in your life where you could do your month in Vegas and Florence Henderson could open up - why do you still care so much?
Carlin: Well, I'm not comparing myself to any of these people, believe me - but you wouldn't say to Picasso, "when are you gonna put those brushes down, get rid of the canvas, you've done it!" I'm an entertainer, first and foremost, but there's art involved here, and an artist has an obligation to be en route; to be going somewhere; there's a journey involved here, and you don't know where it is, and that's the fun. So you're always going to be seeking and looking and going and trying to challenge yourself.