Crown-of-Thorns Seastar: threatens Japanese coral reefs

A follow up to my coral reef posting of last Monday, The Japan Times Online reported an increase at the coral reefs of Shirahama in the number of crown-of-thorns seastars, a species of seastar that feeds - and feeds ravenously - on coral.

Shirahama is located on the western Kii Peninsula just below the middle of Japan. Normally, the crown-of-thorns' range would be held in check by its preference for warmer tropical temperatures where, within a healthy reef ecosystem, it is held in balance as a predator by virtue of the dominance of coral. But the temperatures have been increasing and, along with human development (eutrophication) that has increased certain nutrient levels which weaken the coral, this has allowed the crown-of-thorns to expand its range and explode in numbers.

Unfortunately, the only immediate solution to the problem is a controlled eradication of the seastar. A small group of local divers have been enlisted in this effort which could carry on for several years. Care must be taken as the crown-of-thorns is covered on the outside with many spines (hence its name) that are actually sheaths for sharp poisonous needles.

"'If we keep removing (the starfish) in limited areas on a regular basis, there should be some effect,' said Katsuyuki Nakaya, 53, who runs a shop catering to divers and chairs an environmentalist group based in the city of Wakayama."

I have experienced the effect of the seastar's defensive weapons firsthand. When I was a novice diver, a came across my first crown-of-thorns in Hawaii. Fascinated with this ornate creature, I carefully turned it over to examine its underside and when I placed it back on the reef, I noticed a countless number of green threads streaming from the palm of my hand. Odd, I thought, until I realized the green color was blood having lost its red hue in the ocean depths. For the rest of the day my hand tingled as a subtle reminder: look but don't touch.

Read online article.

"Lone Cypress tree"

Buck Forester says "I recently made the 17 Mile Drive loop near Carmel while in the area watching my nephew play golf. This was early evening at the infamous Lone Cypress tree." For more photos by Forester, click on the heading above.

How to make "dummkopfs"

CBS' 1965-71 sitcom "Hogan's Heroes" revolved around a slick American colonel and his colorful band of fellow prisoners at a Nazi POW camp. Every week, these wily prisoners made dummkopfs of their German captors. Shown above is Werner Klemperer's Col. Klink who was bamboozled weekly by Bob Crane and his fellow prisoners on the TV series.

All six seasons of the series arrived on DVD this week in the 28-disc "Hogan's Heroes: The Complete Series, Kommandant's Kollection," from CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment. Extras include a new interview with Richard Dawson, best known as the kissing host of "Family Feud," who played the cockney Cpl. Peter Newkirk; a segment of the old variety series "Hollywood Palace," featuring the cast of "Hogan's Heroes"; and an extended version of the pilot episode, "The Informer."

The Carbon Bathtub: MIT professor makes a clear climate analogy

There's a brief but interesting article in the December issue of National Geographic that describes a simple analogy for looking at CO2 emissions. In The Carbon Bathtub, writer Robert Kunzig reports on a concept that John Sherman uses with his grad students at MIT: a bathtub filling up with CO2.

Imagine the faucet represents the CO2 emissions we are putting into the atmosphere - currently, around 9.1 billion (that's with a "b") metric tons per year, most of that coming from fossil fuels. The drain represents the approximate 5 billion metric tons of CO2 being absorbed - 30% absorbed by plants and soils, 25% by oceans, 1% by sediments and rocks, and the rest remains in the atmosphere adding to the rise in temperature.

Because we have been putting more into the tub than it can drain out, the tub has been steadily filling up. Currently, the tub is at the 385 ppm level, heading towards the 450ppm level by mid-century. The 350 ppm that has been recommended by some scientific groups still represents 745 billion metric tons of carbon! So, how do we drain the tub and how long will it take?

Unfortunately, with the bathtub analogy, it will take a long time. Even if we were to stop all CO2 emissions tomorrow, the drain works slowly - plant and soil absorption can get maxed out, ocean absorption is slow and rocks and sediments are even slower. It's been estimated that to go from 450 ppm to 350ppm could take centuries.

Discouraging? Well, perhaps, but it can also be viewed as a reason for saying "no time like the present" for making some significant changes. The CO2 emissions issue is not a light switch - flip it and it all goes away. It is our responsibility to future generations to act now and act decisively.

MIT's John Sherman will be at the international Copenhagen Climate Conference in December to help diplomats better understand the problem by illustrating the bathtub analogy (in much greater detail than I have done here). Hopefully, he will have an impact least a potential sensible climate treaty goes down the drain.

Read the article online.

"Massteria" as produced by the Jonas Brothers

Looking at Both Sides -- starting Friday

Memories are wonderful . . .

This picture is from the 1976 reunion of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis at the MDA telethon at the Sahara in Las Vegas. Frank Sinatra was the one who orchestrated this memorable event.

(Photo from the Coolness is Timeless blog and posted by Keith. For more "coolness" click on the heading above.)

Do you remember THIS Wayne Newton ???

"Partners"

Walt Disney and Mickey

"Shining Mountains"

To Native Americans it is known as "Shining Mountains" but most Americans know it as Glacier National Park.

Apparently, they deliver . . .

Photo from "Your Scene" (Los Angeles Times) -- "North 605 at Rose Hills" by dcsjeeep (Strange But True, Weird L.A.)

"You'll Never Know . . . "

The BMW Werks brings a wild, futuristic supercoupe concept to the stand, the Vision EfficientDynamics – lousy name, though. With doors that open like dragonfly wings and a composite body with LED welting as seams, the car is dazzling, if only in sheer candlepower. The doors, for example, are photochromatic polycarbonate – they lighten and darken depending on lighting conditions. The Vision ED is a demonstration platform of BMW’s current best hybrid thinking: A 1.5-liter turbodiesel (163) backed up by a 51-hp electric motor and a six-speed dual clutch transmission. All that feeds the rear wheels, while a separate high-hp electric motor drives the front wheels (if needed). Sum it up: 356 hp in a car that weighs less than 3,000 pounds. Probability of production? What’s less than zero?

"geoengineering"

Constructing a forest of 'artificial trees' is one of the most promising technologies to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, according to a report published by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in the UK. The report also calls for a national UK programme for research and development into "geoengineering" projects that could provide a better understanding of the risks and costs of manipulating the climate. The artificial "trees" shown above along the highway would take in more carbon dioxide than do real trees.

Most attempts to deal with climate change involve reducing emissions of CO2 and in December the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen will attempt to set binding targets for lowering such emissions for the first time. Yet even an agreement to cut CO2 emission by 50% by 2050 may not be enough to stop the planet's average temperature rising by 2 °C by the end of the century.

Geoengineering – deliberate intervention into the climate system to counteract man-made global warming – offers an alternative approach. The new report, Geoengineering – Giving us Time to Act?, looks at different geoengineering options for tackling climate change, including adding iron to the oceans to produce phytoplankton blooms that then absorb CO2 and constructing giant sunshades in space that can reflect the Sun's rays.

Jet Man forced to ditch by the weather

Yves Rossy, the Swiss adventurer nicknamed Jet Man, was forced to ditch in the sea during a failed bid to make the first intercontinental flight using a jet-powered wing attached to his back.

Rossy, 50, planned to fly 24 miles across the the Strait of Gibraltar from Tangier in Morocco to Atlanterra in southern Spain, at a speed of almost 140mph, a flight that should have taken about 13 minutes.

The former fighter pilot planned to jump from a plane at 6,500ft and use his four-cylinder jet pack to power the eight-foot carbon fibre wing at speeds of up to 180mph from Africa to southern Spain. He was then going to cut his engines, open his parachute and land in Spain.

After about 15 minutes into the flight, however, Rossy disappeared from live television pictures.

Organisers wrote on the micro-blogging site Twitter: “He may be in the sea. We have a search and rescue team in place.” Television pictures later showed Rossy in the Atlantic, swimming around beside his parachute, while a helicopter prepared to winch him to safety.

Canadian Geese Migration: animal intelligence without need of a GPS

I was watching a charming movie on cable today, one I had seen when it first came out in the theaters some years back: Fly Away Home. It's a father-daughter drama that incorporates some of the interesting studies that have been done in training orphaned Canadian Geese to learn their migratory routes. Ultralight airplanes have been used to teach the geese to follow the plane and memorize the long route from Canada to the Carolina wetlands in the U.S.

What's particularly interesting is the intelligence these birds are able to display, actually learning the visual landmarks over a 2000 mile route so that they can return again and again. Do you think you could memorize aerial landmarks in one pass over a 2000 mile stretch? And yet this is a bird with a brain the size of a small grape! (See movie trailer.)



Just another example of amazing animal intelligence and the importance for man to understand animal smarts on its own terms - not to judge or compare it to human intelligence. Animals have evolved intelligence supported by senses that relate to feeding, breeding, and basic survival. From that some social interactions and relationships develop but, again, we must be careful not to ascribe human characteristics to it. It's a different animal, literally.

I have seen this misplaced humanizing with other "wild animals." Take sharks, for instance. These are animals with a wide aware of astounding sensory capabilities but with a relatively small brain (a rather fragmented or un-centralized brain actually, when compared to other land animals). In the presence of humans (ie: divers), sharks can demonstrate behaviors that we might regard as human-like interactions or relationships. That can be a mistake.

It is important that we appreciate animals for what they are and how they evolved; different from us, the end result of their successful evolution within their environment, and often superior to us in many ways within that environment.

"Brazilian protests greet Ahmadinejad at start of South American tour"

"The problem, not surprisingly, is money"

The latest piece of architecture to disappear into the economic abyss? It's Toyo Ito's remarkable design, above, for the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Unveiled last year with some fanfare, Ito's plans for a new home for the museum, known as BAM, suggested a light, airy spin on the idea of the white-cube art gallery -- a series of spaces with their paper-thin walls curling in memorably on themselves, like stickers half-peeled from their backing.

The building was meant to replace BAM's current home along the south side of the UC Berkeley campus, a notable piece of architecture in its own right, by Mario Ciampi, that opened in 1970 and is plagued by seismic problems. Along with the crisp appeal of the Ito design -- the Tokyo-based architect's first project in the U.S. -- the big news of the plan was that it promised to deliver a university art museum and film center into the heart of downtown Berkeley, outside the campus proper.

Last week, though, the museum announced it was abandoning plans for the Ito building. The problem, not surprisingly, is money.

"sailing along between the skyscrapers"

A vision of green kicked off New York's famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade yesterday when a 60-foot-tall Kermit the frog floated high above Manhattan's streets.
Thousands of tourists and holiday revellers gathered to watch giant inflatable versions of their favourite characters - including Dora the Explorer, Spiderman and Father Christmas - sail along between the skyscrapers.

"battered by winds, changed by time"

Director David Lean would do many films in his 83 years, but he would become a master of sweeping historical dramas, "Doctor Zhivago" and "A Passage to India" among them. On Friday night, the Egyptian Theatre will have one of Lean's greatest in "Lawrence of Arabia." The 1962 film won seven Oscars and became a career changer for its star, Peter O'Toole. The tragedy is that too many movie buffs have never witnessed O'Toole as Lawrence on the big screen -- racing on horseback across an endless desert, battered by winds, changed by time. The sheer beauty and magnitude of the images will truly take you away. For those of you who've never experienced Lean in breathtaking 70-millimeter (and no, a 60-inch plasma doesn't count), celebrate the day after Thanksgiving watching instead of shopping. Who knows when Lawrence will return again?

"creating the werewolf effects for "The Twilight Saga: New Moon"

Darkness may be a visual effects artist's best friend, but his biggest enemy isn't bright sunlight -- it's the overcast day. So adding all those CG werewolves to scenes shot in cloudy Vancouver, Canada, was a particular challenge for "New Moon" visual effects supervisor Phil Tippett and his team. "On a sunny day, you get really nice contrasts, but with flat lighting and a furry thing -- the fur really soaks up the light and everything appears flat," Tippett said. "So to make it appear three-dimensional, we had to goose reality. We emphasized their shadows and used rim lights" to make the wolves stand out from the background. But that's not the only way Tippett and company played with reality. When that wolf checks out Bella, it's not a wolf's eyes, it's Jacob's. "We brought Taylor [Lautner] in and had him haul his eyelids back as far as possible and shot close-ups." They then added those eyes to the giant animated timber wolf used in the scene.

-- Patrick Kevin Day

"Three Stooges" Festival

The Alex Film Society is going for the nyuk-nyuk-nyuks on Saturday as it presents "At Your Soivice -- Professional Mayhem With the Stooges," its annual Three Stooges festival at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. The program features four Curly titles and a Shemp, Moe and Larry short in 3-D. On hand will be Allison Booth, of the Stooges' 1939 comedy "Three Sappy People." The film society is offering a matinee and evening of Stooge insanity. www.alexfilmsociety.org.

"unseen for nearly 70 years"

A major work by French painter Paul Delaroche, thought to have been virtually destroyed during a World War II German air raid on London in 1941, has been unrolled and found to be in good condition.

"Charles I Insulted by Cromwell's Soldiers," depicting the British king shortly before his execution in 1649, was damaged in a May 1941 bombing. The 1837 canvas was taken down, rolled up and moved to a country house in Scotland, where it has remained unseen for nearly 70 years.

Representatives of the National Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Scotland asked if they could inspect the work ahead of an exhibition on Delaroche to be held in London from Feb. 24-May 23 next year.

They discovered about 200 tears caused by shrapnel but, contrary to expectations, the painting was "almost entirely legible and has lost none of its emotive intensity."

Bold Venture

Ira "Babe" Hanford, who as an 18-year-old apprentice jockey rode 20-1 shot Bold Venture to victory in the 1936 Kentucky Derby, died Saturday in Ocala, Fla., after a long illness, said his wife of 67 years, Virginia. He was 91.

He was the oldest living jockey to have won the Derby and the only apprentice to have done so.

Hanford did not get a chance to ride Bold Venture in the Preakness because racing officials suspended him for 15 days after the Derby. He retired in 1953 without running in another Derby. He is one of 22 jockeys to win the Run for the Roses in their only appearance.

Hanford said officials never told him why he was suspended, along with two other jockeys. He said in a 2006 interview that he suspected it had to do with the rugged nature of the sport at the time.

Back then, the starting gate didn't have front or rear doors to lock the horses in a somewhat uniform line. They were led in and stood there until a bell rang.

Hanford looked to his right and saw Bien Joli standing at an angle and about a neck in front of him and Bold Venture. He called out to jockey Lester Balaski to straighten his horse.

"I didn't get 'horse' out of the mouth and the bell rang," said Hanford, who as an apprentice got to carry less weight than senior riders. "When he made the first or second jump out of the gate, he hit me and turned me almost sideways."

Hanford and Bold Venture careened to the left and into Granville, knocking jockey Jimmy Stout to the ground.

Bold Venture's trainer, Max Hirsch, replaced Hanford with George Woolfe for the Preakness, which the horse won. Bold Venture did not run in the Belmont.

"Morning Over Mono Lake"

Photo by Los Angeles Times Your Scene by KAbraham.

"Blue Jay about to perch"

Photo from Los Angeles Times Your Scene by dotunderscore.

"The Princess and the Frog"

The Princess and the Frog will be released to theaters on December 25, 2009.

"the intermittent click-click sound of the cranking"

Films may have been silent a century ago, but the film projectors weren't. Back in 1909, projectionists would stand in the middle of a venue and hand crank 10-minute one-reelers. Some moviegoers would even sit near the projector because they liked the intermittent click-click sound of the cranking.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is re-creating the sights and the sounds of the moviegoing experience 100 years ago with its "A Century Ago: The Films of 1909 -- The Stars Are Born" on Monday evening and "A Century Ago: The First Films of Mary Pickford" on Tuesday. Both events take place at the Linwood Dunn Theater.

Besides Michael Mortilla's live accompaniment to these vintage films, Joe Rinauldo will be hand-cranking the movies on a restored 1909 Nicholas Power Co. Model 6 Cameragraph.

Throughout the silent era, projectionists hand-cranked film. "It was an art of pride," says Rinauldo. "A lot of these itinerant projectionists would travel to towns that didn't have theaters. They would usually travel in a wagon or old truck, bring a piano and would set up tent shows."

And it was a real skill to crank correctly. "The frame rate is kind of a tricky thing," says Rinauldo, who fell in love with old films as a boy.

"The mean speed was around 16 frames a second. One turn of the crank handle is 16 frames with one crank equaling one second. Movie cameramen would hum 'The Anvil Chorus' in their mind to keep their speed even. But often cameramen wouldn't hold their speed and different cameramen would film a scene."

So just as 100 years ago, Rinauldo adjusts his cranking to correct any problems with the frame speed.

Rinauldo will be projecting an eclectic mixture of films both nights, including early films of comic Ben Turpin and stage star Maurice Costello.

For the "couch potato"

For the true TV lover, Thanksgiving is the greatest day of the year. If you aren't cooking -- and you aren't part of one of those wacky families that actually interacts -- you're probably planning to spend the better part of the afternoon parked on the couch, remote control in hand. And if changing channels sounds too taxing, there is more than enough TV to fill the hours, flip-free. There are many to choose from.
The Brady Bunch" marathon will provide lighthearted entertainment that will take your mind off your scary in-laws. Get the theme song stuck in your head starting at 9 a.m. on TV Land.

Thr Zeppelin is back !!!

The 246-foot zeppelin Eureka, which can carry 13 passengers and a crew of two, flies over Long Beach Harbor, with the Queen Mary in the background. The German-made airship, which is filled with nonexplosive helium gas, is permanently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. It will offer a limited number of Southland scenic tours out of Long Beach Airport.

The last time something like this was seen in Los Angeles was 1929, when the Graf Zeppelin dropped in on Westchester's Mines Air Field before starting its nonstop Pacific crossing during its record-setting around-the-world flight.

The era of the rigid-framed zeppelin came crashing to an end in 1937, when the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg exploded as it attempted to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. Thirty-six people were killed. But now the zeppelin is back and filled with non-explosive helium. A privately run company based at the Bay Area's Moffett Field has returned the German-made craft to California skies.

Although airships such as the Goodyear blimp are a common sight in the Los Angeles area, blimps are smaller than zeppelins and carry only six passengers. The 246-foot zeppelin, called the Eureka, can carry 13 passengers and a crew of two. Those on board have unobstructed views of landmarks through giant plexiglass windows that line all sides of its cabin.

The Getty Gardens

We all knew they would be beautiful -- and they are. (Los Angeles: Photo by tfb on Your Scene/Los Angeles Times)

Leiden, Netherlands a Dutch haven

Snow dusts trees along a canal in Leiden. The city, about 25 miles southwest of Amsterdam, was a refuge for the Pilgrims, who eventually came to America.Snow dusts trees along a canal in Leiden. The city, about 25 miles southwest of Amsterdam, was a refuge for the Pilgrims, who eventually came to America.
Leiden, which is like a compact Amsterdam, is also laced with canals.
A worker tends a pond containing giant Victoria lilies in the Hortus Botanicus, founded in 1594. The botanical garden cultivated some of Europe's first tulips, a flower emblematic of Holland.

"as if it happened yesterday"

A team of Canadian and U.S. marine archeologists has discovered a long-lost shipwreck in the depths of Yukon's legendary Lake Laberge that is being hailed as a "national treasure" and a "time capsule" from the Klondike.

The "perfectly preserved" 19th-century sternwheeler A.J. Goddard — named for an intrepid U.S. shipping merchant who pioneered Yukon River transport during the wild race for Canadian gold in the 1890s — went down in a storm more than a century ago in the setting made famous by the Robert Service poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee."

In the ghoulish rhyme, a Tennessee gold-seeker's frozen corpse finds blissful relief from the fatal Yukon cold in the fiery boiler of a sternwheeler stranded in ice on Lake Laberge.

The lake, a widening of the Yukon River north of Whitehorse, was a key leg in the treacherous, five-day journey by steamboat for tens of thousands of "stampeders" who came from across the U.S., Canada and elsewhere to search for gold in the Yukon's Klondike region in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

Many of the miners trudged from Skagway, Alaska — which could be reached by Pacific steamers — across dangerous mountain passes to the Yukon River headwaters in northern British Columbia.

Goddard took the same arduous route with the materials used to build his sternwheeler, which was assembled on the shores of B.C.'s Lake Bennett and became the first steamboat to reach Dawson — then only a tent city filled with fortune hunters — in June 1898.

Goddard's historic arrival at Dawson in his self-named boat — to the thunderous cheers of miners — has become part of Klondike lore, recounted in the works of author Pierre Berton and other Gold Rush chroniclers.

The ship sank in October 1901, and three of the five crewmen on board at the time drowned.

Doug Davidge, president of the Yukon Transportation Museum, and B.C. archeologist John Pollack, a research associate with the Texas-based, international Institute of Nautical Archaeology, had led several searches for Klondike-era wrecks before discovering the sternwheeler in 2008 and positively identifying the 15-metre wreck earlier this year.

"She is, indeed, a Gold Rush time capsule," INA president James Delgado, former director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum, told Canwest News Service.

"The boiler door is hanging open with the firewood they'd thrown in," he said. "There are bags of tools and somebody's coat lying there on the deck, and the boots that the engineer probably kicked off as he was drowning lie close to his station."

In a statement announcing the find, the researchers also describe how a trapper camping on the shore of Lake Laberge in 1901 "saw Goddard's tiny pilothouse, torn off the sinking steamboat, with two survivors, half frozen, clinging to it. He saved them . . . Diving on A.J. Goddard, it is as if these events happened yesterday."

Above, the steam-powered sternwheeler A.J. Goddard, loaded with men, supplies and firewood, heads toward the Klondike gold fields along the Yukon River in 1898. Photograph by: Handout, Alaska State Library

Little tramp

A long-planned museum dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, pictured, will be constructed at the site of the actor's former home in Switzerland. (Radio Suisse Romande)

Photo: Charlie Chaplin with Virginia Cherrill in a scene from "City Lights." Credit: Los Angeles Times

Coral Reef Ecosystem: complex with multiple variables at risk

Coral reefs are one of the ocean's most colorful and complex creations. I'm sure you have read about how they are in peril. Climate change, acidification, human development - all are having an impact, most often represented by coral bleaching which is the result of the loss of the symbiotic algae that lives within the coral.

I was reviewing several scientific papers and found that there are many studies going on to determine more specifically what is happening to the reefs. As it turns out, the external factors of temperature, pollutants, and others can trigger a variety of eco-systemic or internal components that adversely affect the coral. Oh, if it were only simple, then the solutions might be simpler too.

One study examined the impact on several species of reef fish and their aerobic scope, or ability to breath, in elevated temperatures. Ever felt your breathing was a bit more labored on a really hot day? Well, according to this study, reef fish can have a similar reaction when water temperatures rise. This causes a reduced capacity to absorb oxygen which weakens the health of the fish, its level of immunity, and overall lifespan.

Water quality was found, in another study, to impact the sensitivity of corals to coral bleaching. "Terrestrially-sourced dissolved inorganic nitrogen" or DIN was found to make coral more sensitive to the temperature threshold that triggers coral bleaching. Higher levels of DIN are often found in areas of human development in the form of runoff from urban development or construction.

The levels of nutrients within a coral reef system can also effect the balance between hard corals, anemones, and algae. All three live in relative harmony, with hard corals as the dominant species. But in the typically low-nutrient world of a healthy coral ecosystem, warmer temperatures can increase nutrient levels and, at various levels, the anemones become more aggressive towards the coral and at the highest levels, the algae becomes dominant.

Coral reef ecosystems are tremendously complicated and we are continually learning more about the inter-relationships of species and the environment. And not everything falls into perfect agreement. One study that reviewed the relationship between temperature and salinity at a mass bleaching in Thailand, found that salinity did not seem to play a critical role in triggering the event. Whereas, another study concluded that higher salinity levels can impact both the coral host and its symbiotic algae, effecting its long-term health.

We still have much to learn but the research must continue so that we have a clear understanding as to what is happening to the earth's coral reefs so that we can both potentially treat and prevent the abuses that are impacting these critical marine ecosystems.

"Stimulus of the Season"

Shoppers watch a demonstration by aerialists at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles. The mall plans to hold 60 free holiday performances starting Friday. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Conservation of Nature & Faith: author brings two ideologies together

What motivates someone to care about the environment and conservation? Is it political ideology or commercial interests, something personal or a broader altruistic concern? Obviously, there can be as many reasons as the number of micro-organisms in a seasonal plankton bloom, but one motivator was recently brought to my attention that, frankly, I have not given much thought about: religion.

I received a copy of Beauty of the Lord, part of a four-volume paperback set of books on environmental theology, written by Richard Austin, a Presbyterian minister. This book - and indeed the entire series - tries to establish a Christian perspective on why we should appreciate and protect the environment. Through detailed biblical references, the author establishes a religious foundation for accepting our need and moral responsibility to be active conservationists.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I do not adhere to any form of organized religion. In fact, I believe that some of the tenants of Judeo-Christian dogma have contributed, perhaps subtly, to our current ecological crisis. For man to have dominion over the earth, I feel, has been subverted over centuries to mean to dominate, taking only for our personal gain - and we are now realizing the price to be paid.

Austin recognizes this viewpoint:
"In Western culture Christianity has been a major interpreter of life's meaning and purpose. Like other social institutions, though, our churches were not prepared for the change in perception of the earth. This lack of foresight has generated resentment among some who are frustrated by our society's sluggish response to this new reality and look for a scapegoat. In his famous essay, 'The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,' Lynn White, Jr. claimed that the primary culprit of the contemporary crisis was the traditional Christian affirmation of the right of humanity to dominate nature. White's view is accepted widely, often uncritically, in the environment movement."

Rather than debate this issue, Austin lays out a path for re-orienting religious thinking, citing biblical passages that support the need for man to actively participate in preserving our natural resources. He makes the argument that man is not truly whole in a religious sense without an appreciation for nature.

"The Christian event of 'awakening' or 'conversion,' characteristic in the American religious tradition, may lead to a more creative personal identity; yet human identity is not complete without an affectionate relationship with nature and a sense of moral purpose that reaches beyond human culture to other life. Regard for nature may contribute to the moral beauty of our faith."

This volume from the four-volume set makes many references to Jonathan Edwards, an 18th century theologian, and in other volumes Austin turns to John Muir and others for support. For myself, in reviewing the book as an agnostic - or to be contemporary and hip, as an adherent to a "personal spiritualism" - I found the book to be impressive (almost overwhelmingly detailed) in its position that a religious foundation exists for conservation.

And Austin brings a positive spin to a situation that often seems mired in doom and gloom: "Campaigns for environmental protection are often built on fear - fear of the disaster which will ensue if we do not, for example, control pollutants or protect genetic diversity. However, I believe that love for the earth is a stronger motive than fear. It is more likely to generate creative action, and it is more likely to persist through the long effort required for change."

I am not too particular as to what motivates a person to embrace conservation - the why is less important to me than the what, what is accomplished. I have said that industry will probably be pulled kicking and screaming until they realize a commercial incentive. And politicians may act for fear of retribution at the voting booth. So, if you are a person of religious faith and you are struggling with, or even just mildly curious, as to where your beliefs and nature intersect, I would suggest you take a look at this environmental theology series of books by Richard Austin.

"We have built our nest in the tree of life; now we must save the tree."

The books are available online individually or as a set at Creekside Press.

She "Dreamed a Dream"

The upcoming debut album by British singing sensation Susan Boyle has become the largest global CD pre-order in the history of Amazon.com, the online retailer said Thursday.

Boyle's album, "I Dreamed a Dream," will be released Tuesday by Sony Music Entertainment.

It is the first album since the 48-year-old church volunteer from Scotland took the Internet by storm with her unlikely star turn on the TV show "Britain's Got Talent" in April.

Amazon said Boyle's album is not only the top CD pre-order in the United States, but it's also the biggest around the world in the 14-year history of its website.

"Downtown on Ice"

Take your mittens and scarves out of the closet, strap on your skates and prepare to glide into winter. Pershing Square transforms into a winter wonderland at Downtown on Ice, L.A.'s biggest outdoor holiday skating rink. Noon to 10 p.m. today, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. Adults, $8. Includes skate rental. Pershing Square Park, 532 S. Olive St., Los Angeles. (213) 847 4970. www.laparks.org.