Tuesday, August 24, 2010

David Suzuki, Rachel Carson and Argon


I was listened to KDVS on my way home. They were playing this installment of the Bioneers Series by geneticist and television producer, David Suzuki.


It was part of the lecture series that the popular Northern California radio station presents "Restoring Life's Fabric, The Biological Bottom Line: Is the Economy the Most Important Thing?"

Canadian author, David Suzuki says the economy is just a subset of ecology. Drawing on native wisdom and state-of-the-art science, he vividly demonstrates that what we do to what surrounds us, we do to ourselves, and suggests how to restore the fabric of the biosphere.

That said, it was interesting talk about the "Green Movement" in Canada, and the battle that rages on that originally began with
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring published in 1962.


Yes, interesting until he started a riff about components of our respiration. The gases of our respiration comes into focus. The lecture became fascinating. His revelation about Argon was amazing; in that, Argon is a "Nobel" gas that forever is unchanged and unchanging.

Therefore, we statistically are breathing with every breath, the Argon inhaled and exhaled by Genghis Khan, Jesus, Buddha, Charles Manson, Bob Marley, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Nixon, Flipper and every Tyrannosaurus Rex that ever roamed the earth.

With that, you could say eeeeew! Or you could say that Argon is the gas that binds all living, respiring organisms together... not quite like sharing spit... but, not unlike sharing an old toothbrush amongst an Appalachian family of 16 (without the disease and stench). Except, Argon remains noble.

It is unchanged, un-modified, un-polluted, and impervious as well as indifferent to the vagaries of time, weather, and economies.

In a sense...Argon lives the life of a Deity as it floats effortlessly through our snotty nostrils and rests upon our "progrenitor and stem cells; and then assess cells from three sites and structural tissues within lung: 1) airway cells in bronchial mucosa (epithelial cells, mucus cells and glands, ciliated cells, and neuro-endocrine cells); 2) alveolar unit cells (Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 (Brush) cells and fibroblasts in the interstitium); and 3) pulmonary vascular cells comparing endothelial cells from different vascular structures, smooth muscle cells and adventitial fibroblasts." (Note from editor: uhh... is there a doctor in da house?)

"Helpful medical link about our lungs" ...giving us nothing but full lungs and a distribution of the other good and noxious gases that fill our atmosphere...

Argon, the Noble Gas or Argon, the omni-present and maybe, all-knowing? It's been around forever and the element will never leave.

All in all, the writers of the series "Lost" missed an opportunity. The "Smoke Monster" could have been Argon; the Noblest of the Noble gases.

Thanks to Big Poppah Jah for this "random" post!

(Note from editor: I beg to differ; the "Smoke" was a flawed character and Argon is pure nobility!)


Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Cool, Clean Water... Water, Water

Last Sunday while Wolf was giving a pre-trip safety talk at Chili Bar on our beloved South Fork American River, he had a spontaneous epiphany: it really is about California WATER...whitewater or otherwise.

Wolf waxed with evangelical urgency about the bounty of water that we enjoy in California that creates the richest and most productive agricultural region in the world while also providing us, you, and them the opportunity to enjoy that bounty of fluid from the source high in the Sierra that we climb, slide, glide, and jump on until it melts, and we paddle, row, swim, and splash in it.



As Wolf told me about what he told his clients he said that our clients smiled and knowingly nodded...they got it!



We all "get it" in some way. I had that same revelation as I went on my first rafting trip over spring break in 1978...I was doing something in and on water that I had never imagined even though I lived within 45 minutes of three amazing whitewater trips on American River. I got it.

"Getting It" is our goal as facilitators of this activity of choice: Whitewater Rafting. "Getting It" is more important than ever...it's crucial to our future and our planet. Clean, cool water is precious and always will be...go play in it!

Note from the Editor:: and we totally "get it!"
Here are excellent resources for saving and keeping our resources and water clean!