While watching a video by Bill Nye on axial precession’s effect on astrology, I was troubled by my visualization of his explanation. Not that I have an issue with axial precession, just it’s relation to the position of the Sun. In case you’re not familiar, let me begin with the definition of the precession.

From Wikipedia.org

In addition to the spinning of the Earth, The earth has a wobble. Imagine a fast spinning top that slowly wobbles. That’s a sped-up version of the Earth’s motion. Over the timespan of about every 26,000 years, the earth completes one axial precession or “wobble”.

In his video, Bill Nye explains that the position of the Sun in relation to the constellations has changed since astrology came about around 2000 years ago. This is where my visualization conflicts with what I’ve heard of the axial precession.

I understand that our perception of the stars’ positions should shift along the precession. What doesn’t make sense though, is the notion that a change in axial tilt would account for a lineal change of the Sun in relation to the stars. It seems to me that such an effect would have to occur from a wobble in the Earth’s orbital plane, not just the Earth itself.

I’ll be doing some research to, hopefully, better understand the precession and its relation to the position of the Sun and stars. If you have any information or resources that will help me explain the discrepancy, please let me know.

-Scott Jordan

Bill Nye’s Video
watch?v=1PNJtmizCUQ

Hows that for a title, huh? Let me give you a little background. About a month ago, my wife bought this evil insect killing kit called the Fatal Funnel to kill wasps building nests on our front porch. A yellow plastic flower from the kit is embedded into the side of a two liter soda bottle to create a very deceptive and effective trap.

We placed the bottle with it’s inviting yellow flower on our porch rail and my wife was quite pleased with herself as the layer of drowned insects began to grow at the bottom of the bottle. After a couple of weeks we had collected enough insect soup to sustain Bear Grills (and camera man) for days in the wild.

As we were enjoying our wasp-free porch though, nature had been twisting it’s fate up through our pine bark pebbles in the form of a beautiful, healthy pumpkin vine. By the time we noticed it, there were a couple feet of vine. Now, Halloween is out favorite holiday and we have a big pumpkin carving tradition so we were happy so see it take over our flower bed but its first yellow bloom brought to mind a major problem.

Yes, I’m sure you’ve figured this out already. The vine needs to be pollinated to produce pumpkins, yet all of the buzzing creatures that like yellow flowers are now rotting in the bottom of a coke bottle. Having destroyed the balance of nature, my wife has agreed to go out and transfer the pollen from the male to female flowers herself using an art brush. I now refer to her as the Pumpkin Sex Fairy.

Right now the vine is a complete stamen fest. The male flowers usually start to appear about a week or two before the females. Hopefully some females will appear soon so I can get some shots of the Pumpkin Sex Fairy in action.

Last night I sat on a discussion table at a UNCP Symposium called “The Many Faces of Bullying” which was organized by the Social Justice Symposium Committee.

Keynote speaker, Dr. Steve Long Nguyen Robbins, was a great choice! Most of his speech was aimed at explaining how our minds work to create prejudices and react without conscious thought. What I didn’t expect though, was that he and his family had such profound experiences with bullying. This part was hard to listen to but I’m sure everyone there left with a better understanding of the affects of bullying whether it’s intentional or not. If you get a chance to hear him speak, be sure to take it!

The YouTube video below is from his channel and shows a short section of the same talk he gave at UNCP.

After the keynote, panelists representing disabled, non-religious and LGBT groups answered bullying related questions pertaining to their respective groups. Ashton Young spoke of unintentional bullying of people with learning disabilities, and the available means of recourse for intentional bullying. Geri Weaver explained how bullying was contrary to Humanist viewpoints, and talked on the susceptibility of Atheists, being the most hated group in America, to bullying. Storm Silvermane spoke on the often tragic affects of LGBT bullying.

I applaud these people for standing up. It takes a lot of courage to stand up in front of hundreds of people, especially when many were only there as a class assignment and not necessarily friendly to their causes.

The one low point of what I considered to be an informative, effective symposium came from Robeson County District Court Judge Herbert Richardson. Judge Richardson was a member of the panel who decided that his rambling, Bill Cosby-esque speech on the evils of “playing on the internet” and the “failure of parents to do their job” was more important than the entirety of the Q&A session which he overran. I guess there’s no one in the court room to tell the judge when it’s time to shut up. A good time to do so may have been before he talked about how he likes to advocate bullying at the Robeson County Jail!

All in all though, I’m very glad I was there and I really appreciate everyone involved in making it happen. Geri, thanks for inviting me!

UNCP Symposium
Dr. Steve Long Nguyen Robbins
Central North Carolina Atheists and Humanists
Stop Bullying . gov 

There are a couple minor things I have issues with in this compilation, but it’s a very moving piece of work. Definitely worth 12 minutes of your time!

My only issues with the film are that first, the text for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction is confusing. It seems to say that surviving avian dinosaurs later evolved into birds, then mammals. I think the point was supposed to be that avian dinosaurs and mammals survived and that birds would later evolve from the avian dinosaurs.

Secondly, not that life was easy for early hominids by any means, but the depiction of an individual taking on dangerous game on his own doesn’t sit well with our evolutionary math. Our intellect and sense of community were much more likely drivers for survival than strength and bravery. A theory that fits into this realization is Persistence Hunting, another interesting topic I’ll be learning more about when I can find the time.