Just hung out this morning, thinking pleasant thoughts of my sweetheart, enjoying the sounds of heavy winds outside against the chimes. Contemplating where the day will take me today. I see a little journey out and about midday, perhaps. Playing with the new “voice-blog” thingum, and look forward to seeing how it turns out.

Random Scotto factoid – I had a huge crush on Melanie Chartoff in the early 80s, when she was on the SNL copy called Fridays. (I was about 12 at the time, but knew a cutie when I saw one, still do, in fact.)

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Turns out that climate changes may just be causing the common Monarch butterfly to be endangeredMonarch butterflies, which journey hundreds of miles to spend the winter in a mountain forest in Mexico, may be endangered within 50 years because a changing climate could make their winter refuge too wet and cool.

A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says climate models show that rainfall will increase significantly in the winter home of the monarchs as the planet warms during the next half-century.

This increased rainfall, combined with the persistent cold typical of the refuge area, could cause a massive die-off of the colorful migrating butterflies, said Karen Oberhauser, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota and the first author of the study.

An increased wetness in the winter refuge, a mountain fir forest west of Mexico City, will leave the butterflies with no place to spend the cold months, she said Monday.

“The conditions that monarchs need to survive the winter are not predicted to exist anywhere near the present overwintering sites,” said Oberhauser.

Monarchs, which have bright reddish-brown, black-edged wings, are one of the most common North American butterflies. The insects each season reproduce several times in an area stretching from Texas to the Minnesota.

As fall approaches, the final generation of the season starts a heroic migration, flying from as far north as the Canadian border to mountain groves of Oyamel firs west of Mexico City. The trees provide shelter from rain and from temperatures that can dip below freezing.

In the spring, surviving monarchs fly north, stopping at fields of milkweed to lay eggs. Succeeding generations continue the northward migration until the cycle starts over in the fall.

Oberhauser said the monarchs have a narrow range of temperature and wetness tolerance during the winter. A combination of freezing temperatures and rain can be lethal.

“If it rains and the temperatures drop and ice crystals form, it will kill them,” she said. These conditions occurred in January, 2002, and about 80 percent of the monarch population overwintering in Mexico died.

Based on computer modeling of global climate changes under way, Oberhauser said such conditions could begin to become common over the next 50 years in the monarchs’ winter home.

Under these changing conditions, she said, one of three things could happen: the butterfly could become extinct; the insect could find another winter refuge; or the monarch could adapt somehow to the changing conditions. Oberhauser said no other area exists near the current refuge that could shelter the butterfly.

“I think the question is whether they will have the flexibility to survive,” she said.

Climate experts predict that global temperatures will increase by a few degrees over the next century. This would cause more ocean evaporation, and would be expected to increase rainfall in many places including central Mexico.

Oberhauser said the plight of the monarch is an example of how the changing climate will put some animal species at great risk of extinction.

Well, all *I* have to say is, WHO’S been flapping their wings and causing all those hurricanes?

Hoist with their own petard, if you ask me.

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‘Da Vinci Code’ generates discussion (Sums up things very completely, I think)

Commenting on “The Da Vinci Code,” Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, has become virtually unavoidable. I’m not inclined to read popular thrillers, even those that purport to provide serious discussion of religious history and culture. Though friends and acquaintances sprinkled my e-mail with questions about its credibility, I resisted taking the book seriously enough to buy and read it. Then my daughter-in-law asked that I read it and sit in on her book group’s discussion of it.

In his tour de force laced with the familiar conspiracies associated with Western Christian history and culture, Brown mentions most of the usual suspects: the Vatican, Freemasons, the Knights Templar, even Opus Dei, the powerful, influential and semisecret Roman Catholic order. Central to the book’s plot is the author’s largely speculative story of a secret society allegedly founded in 1099, the Priory of Sion. Members of the Priory supposedly included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Leonardo da Vinci. The Priory has been the keeper of the secret of the Holy Grail.

In addition to these components, Brown uses two themes that give his story added currency: the scholarly and popular rehabilitation of Mary Magdalene from her former status of forgiven prostitute to that of important disciple, perhaps even apostle; and interest in the obliteration of goddess religion by a patriarchal power structure.

“The Da Vinci Code” mixes a good deal of historical fact with fictional narrative. Descriptions of geographical settings (mostly modern Europe), artwork and architecture seem to be quite accurate. Much of the historical information is commonplace material.

Some of the interpretation of legendary narratives and their alleged documentation is more problematic. There are generous servings of conspiracy theories and secret rituals, religion and eroticism, romance and violence, in premodern and postmodern contexts, and all presented at breakneck speed. Some chapters are less than two pages long!

Leonardo’s secret (revealed in his code) is that Mary Magdalene was the companion (wife) of Jesus and that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child and subsequent heirs who founded the Merovingian bloodline of European nobility. The French connection in this Magdalene legend is not a plot invented by Brown. In fact, little in “The Da Vinci Code” is original, but Brown deftly packages ideas others have been using in similar books.

I am primarily interested in the novel’s impact as cultural phenomenon. It has been at least 30 weeks on The New York Times’ best-seller list. What interest or need is it touching in so many readers? One thoughtful woman who didn’t necessarily buy into Brown’s whole argument e-mailed the following comment: “It’s so obvious that women were teachers, healers, interpreters in the early days until patriarchs decided that was blasphemy. How intriguing it is to think how Christianity might be today if we pictured Christ not as a single man with a halo, high above a circle of male disciples gathered at his feet, but as a family man.”

Karen King, Harvard Divinity School professor of New Testament and early Christian history, spoke wise words in connection with “Jesus, Mary and da Vinci,” an ABC news special that aired this past week: “Sometimes religion is presented as something that’s fixed and stable. When you have to accept and reject it. But the fact is that religious traditions, and certainly Christianity among them, are very diverse, very filled with possibilities.”

“The Da Vinci Code” has let readers participate in the adventure of historical debate on matters religious and cultural. Apparently large numbers of people are pondering theology and engaging in cultural criticism. Not a bad outcome for a popular thriller.
Apparently, the issue of Popular Science Magazine with my journal in it is in print, and on newsstands, now. I’ll have to pick it up.

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I did it in 0 seconds.
I deserved an A++!!
Take the How Dexterous Are You? Quiz!! Um, I don’t get it. I just hit the key and went straight in? I don’t know if I got lucky, or if it’s broken. I don’t get the trick to it being tough.