[NMCAVER] Conserving Caves
Conserving Caves That is, of course, our big dilemma. The National Park Service tries to deal with it too, but the non-cave Blutocrats get involved. That complicates the issue. I cannot count the number of times I have been in virgin cave (lucky me) and thought "I cannot go through there. I will break something, and just screw it up by trying to pass." And, of course, others later do go through, sometimes finding WONDERFUL places. I tell myself that I did the right thing. Thanks for your reply. I am going to send this out to the Greater Guano. This is an eternal issue that only gets worse as more folks discover caves and caving. I have no answer, but all of us that appreciate caves must think about it. DirtDoc -- Original message -- From: Mike Flannigan > I'm afraid you are right. > Mike x > Save the caves by not going into them. > DirtDoc >Jewel Cave NM Celebrates Centennial ___ NMCAVER mailing list nmca...@caver.net http://caver.net/mailman/listinfo/nmcaver_caver.net
[Texascavers] Conserving Caves
Conserving Caves That is, of course, our big dilemma. The National Park Service tries to deal with it too, but the non-cave Blutocrats get involved. That complicates the issue. I cannot count the number of times I have been in virgin cave (lucky me) and thought "I cannot go through there. I will break something, and just screw it up by trying to pass." And, of course, others later do go through, sometimes finding WONDERFUL places. I tell myself that I did the right thing. Thanks for your reply. I am going to send this out to the Greater Guano. This is an eternal issue that only gets worse as more folks discover caves and caving. I have no answer, but all of us that appreciate caves must think about it. DirtDoc -- Original message -- From: Mike Flannigan > I'm afraid you are right. > Mike x > Save the caves by not going into them. > DirtDoc >Jewel Cave NM Celebrates Centennial - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
[Texascavers] flying or echolocation
That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought there was any controversy, and said it was pretty obvious that bats flew before the echolocated. Echolocation would be of limited use if you weren't flying, and anyway a major subdivision of bats, the megabats (family Pteropodidae, flying foxes) don't echolocate, although they fly. I guess that just shows how little I know (or how desperate specialists are for controversies to write papers about). -- Mixon -- You may "reply" to the address this message came from, but for long-term use, save: Personal: bmi...@alumni.uchicago.edu AMCS: edi...@amcs-pubs.org or sa...@amcs-pubs.org - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
Re: [ot_caving] Vinyl is good but...
I still listen to my vinyl records. Most of mine are rock from the mid-70's. I have all of the Bill Wither's albums, Gerry Rafferty, Jim Croce, Kiss, and occasionally I will a vinyl record at Half-Price Books, if it is in excellent condition and semi-rare. I am looking for Steeler's Wheel, the Humblebums, or anything rare relating to the groups above. http://www.mediawars.ne.jp/~mundo/collect/file/humblebums.html http://991.com/newGallery/The-Humblebums-The-Humblebums-286493.jpg http://www.audiophileusa.com/covers400water/45506.jpg http://991.com/newGallery/The-Humblebums-First-Collection-258021.jpg I had nearly 300 CD's stolen which was valued at around $ 3,000, and would cost me more than that to replace them. I wish I had burned them or converted them to MP3's. All my Beatles stuff, and other 60's bands, and CD's of the groups above, along with a lot of 80's stuff like Donald Fagen. I hope someday, I can get all my favorite music on a portable gadget. My new gadget I am posting about ( N800 ) is supposed to have a good music player in it. David Locklear - Give this to a friend: ot-subscr...@texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: ot-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: ot-h...@texascavers.com
[ot_caving] a new gadget report
A few days ago, I mentioned I bought a new gadget. It is not a PDA, although it looks like one and has some of the same features. It is the Nokia Internet Tablet. No other shirt-pocket sized device surfs the web as good as this - not even the iPhone. Check out it's "Internet Calling" capability with the built in video camera. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE2fhlh3hJs I can safely say that it is obvious that in 10 years or so, something like this is going to be mainstream. Nokia is already selling a newer version of this gadget, with a few more bells and whistles. And you can order this one on the internet for $ 220. http://www.tigerdirect.com This device is great for downloading suspicious web-sites that you are curious about but don't want to infect your home computer. If you carry a tiny phone, but sometimes want to be able to surf the web away from home, then this is your gadget. It is a great portable photo viewer - maybe one of the best.And I believe you can but up to 8 gb of photos or mpeg type videos. If you already have a new PDA, or an iPhone, then you will not find much interest in this gadget.As it does not make cell phone calls, or come with a lot of applications already built in. However, if you don't have a gadget like this yet, I would recommend it to anyone with the patience to learn how to use it. So far, I am glad I bought it. It should come in handy when I resume my motor-scooter road-trips. It appears to have a strong Wi-Fi antenna, as I can usually surf the web from a distance of the hot-spot. I don't know anything about hot-spots, so feel free to give me some advice if you know anything about them. I can turn the device on, and be reading my Gmail, in about a minute. And the gadget can be left on in standby mode, for a long time, so I don't need to power it off. It comes with 3 good games. I have tested one of the games, "Marbles" on a computer illiterate relative and they immediately became addicted to playing it. The other 2 are a powerful chess game, and a chinese card game which I don't know how to play. For specs on the N800 open the PDF link below: http://static.tigerdirect.com/pdf/NokiaN800Datasheet.pdf There are geeks on the web that have written several progams for this device, as it it uses some kind of basic linux. I haven't figured out how to install any of those programs yet. One of them turns the video camera into a regular camera. I have a Toshiba PDA that has seen little use. Almost everything the N800 does, it does better than the old Toshiba PDA. The Toshiba with PocketPC crashed twice and each time, I lost all the information and programs stored on it. 2 B continued ... David Locklear - Give this to a friend: ot-subscr...@texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: ot-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: ot-h...@texascavers.com
[ot_caving] Vinyl is good but...
As a bit of a follow up to my ravings about vinyl. After hooking up the large amp to the big speakers and playing some classic Frank Zappa (Holiday in Berlin, Regyptian Strut) at very high decibel levels - I must digress Digital Sounds Good Too. -WaV
[Texascavers] RE: Bat fossil solves evolution poser...
David Locklear said: >That fossil may resemble a mini-pteradactyl that was recently found in China. I don't think so. The pterodactyl has a beak and only tiny "fingers" whereas the new bat has long fingers. Here's another report on the new bat: <http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080213/ap_on_sc/bat_fossil>. Mark Minton
[Texascavers] What came first--flight or echolocation?
In this week's issue of Nature is an article about the analysis of a 52.5 million-year old bat fossil. The authors conclude that the bat was able to fly but unable to echolocate, thus suggesting that bats evolved flight first. Reproduced below is the News and Views article describing the importance and implications of this work. Nature 451, 774-775 (14 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/451774a; Published online 13 February 2008 Evolutionary biology: A first for bats by John Speakman Abstract: Which came first as bats evolved — flight or echolocation? Newly described fossils favour the flight-first hypothesis. But these creatures may have been otherwise equipped for flying at night. A long-standing debate about the processes that led to the evolution of modern bats takes a new twist with the discovery of remarkable fossil bats recovered from the Green River formation in Wyoming. The fossils, which constitute a new genus and species, are described by Simmons et al. on page 818 of this issue(1). Phylogenetic analysis and comparison with other fossil bats recovered from the same formation, and from the Messel formation in Germany, indicate that this is the most ancient species of bat yet discovered. The problem of understanding bat evolution dates back at least to Charles Darwin, who in The Origin of Species enumerated a list of difficulties he saw with the theory of evolution by natural selection. The example often discussed is the origin of the eye. But Darwin also mentioned the vexed issue of how bats had arisen from terrestrial ancestors. The discovery of echolocation in bats about 50 years ago(2) added an additional feature to the conundrum of the early evolution of bats. This currently boils down to one big question: which came first, echolocation or flight(3,4)? For a long time, 'echolocation first' held sway. Ancestral 'pre-bats' were hypothesized to have been small terrestrial or arboreal echolocators that detected passing insects using their echolocation and snatched them from the air4. This favoured the extension of the arms and digits to facilitate prey capture, perhaps with webbing between the digits. Eventually, these animals started leaping out to capture insects, using their echolocation to guide them to a landing spot and their extended arms and digits as an aerofoil. From this point they started hunting from perches (known as perch hunting) and eventually developed fully powered flight (called aerial hawking; Fig. 1). Supporters of the echolocation-first hypothesis pointed to the existence of terrestrial animals, such as certain shrews, that have rudimentary echolocation systems; and to the fact that the most primitive extant bats often use perch hunting, and lack a feature known as the calcar, which is also absent in the most ancient fossil bats. (The calcar is a cartilaginous spur projecting from the base of the lower limb and running along the edge of the membrane between the hind limbs and tail.) Moreover, the idea that bats might have evolved the ability to fly before they could orient themselves in darkness was seen as highly unlikely. However, around the end of the 1980s, evidence accumulated, including work from my own group, that favoured the 'flight-first' hypothesis. One paper(5) showed that, for a bat hanging at rest, echolocation is extremely energetically costly. This high cost probably explains why no terrestrial mammals have evolved full-blown echolocation systems such as those used by bats. However, a second paper(6) showed that when a bat takes flight these costs disappear. This is because of a remarkable coupling of the beating of the wings with the ventilation of the lungs and production of the echolocation pulses(7). When a bat hangs stationary and echolocates, it must contract its muscles specifically to generate a forceful expiratory burst, and this is where the large costs come from. When a bat is flying, it is already contracting these muscles, so in effect echolocation when flying is free (or at least substantially cheaper). But what about the problem of bats flying in darkness before they could orient themselves? A hypothesis I favour(8) is that the earliest ancestors of bats may have been diurnal, and had visual means of orientation — but were perhaps forced to become nocturnal by the appearance of avian predators, shortly after the dinosaurs became extinct around 65 million years ago. Some then evolved echolocation, whereas others became nocturnal vision specialists. Until the discovery of the specimens reported by Simmons et al.(1), the fossil record has been rather unhelpful in resolving these issues: the earliest-known bats, which have been recovered from Eocene deposits around 50 million years old, are fully formed bats very similar to extant ones(9, 10). It has been possible t
Re: [Texascavers] Bat fossil solves evolution poser...
That fossil may resemble a mini-pteradactyl that was recently found in China. http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2008/TECH/science/02/12/petite.pterodactyl.ap/art.pterodactyl.ap.jpg - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
[Texascavers] Bat fossil solves evolution poser...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7243502.stm -- Stefan Creaser stefan.crea...@arm.com ARM Inc.Phone: (512)314-1012 Austin, Tx http://www.arm.com -- IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you. - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
Fwd: [Texascavers] Jewel Cave NM Celebrates Centennial
next time we are in South Dakota, need to check this out :) -- Forwarded message -- From: Mike Flannigan List-Post: texascavers@texascavers.com Date: Feb 13, 2008 6:38 AM Subject: [Texascavers] Jewel Cave NM Celebrates Centennial To: MOCAVES , Cavetex >From an archaeology mail list: Jewel Cave NM Celebrates Centennial On February 7, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a proclamation that established Jewel Cave NM under the authority of the 1906 Antiquities Act. The monument was established to protect the small, but extraordinarily beautiful cave, which is known for the jewel-like calcite crystals that line the cave walls. Jewel Cave has the most extensive known collection of different types of calcite crystals. The most abundant formations are called dogtooth spar and nail-head spar. Helictites twist and turn as though they were formed in a chamber without gravity. Another formation, called popcorn, grows in small knobby clusters. Veins of calcite deposited in a crisscross pattern are called boxwork. Frostwork, needle-like formations of calcite or aragonite, is as delicate as blown glass. Some formations are translucent, formed of pure calcite. Other crystals contain additional minerals and appear yellow, red, or opaque white. Individual crystals range in size from a grain of rice to a goose egg. When Jewel Cave NM was proclaimed in 1908, less than half a mile of cave had been discovered. Currently, Jewel Cave is the second longest cave in the world, with a current length of over 141 miles. Exploration continues to reveal the hidden miles of passages beneath the Black Hills, South Dakota. Beginning in the 1950s, explorers Herb and Jan Conn mapped over 62 miles of cave passages. Jewel Cave NM will celebrate its centennial through a series of events, programs, and exhibits that will highlight the theme "Generations of Discovery.� The centennial celebration will formally begin on February 9, 2008, in the visitor center of the monument with a special program to commemorate the anniversary. Honored guests and former cave explorers Herb and Jan Conn will present a program on their 21 years of exploration as they mapped over 60 miles of cave passages, beginning in 1959. The caving parties led by this husband-and-wife team made 708 trips into the cave and logged 6,000 hours of exploring and mapping. A new generation of cavers has continued to push the known boundaries of Jewel Cave, but the mystery of its magnitude remains. As the Conns once said, “We are still just standing on the threshold.� Other special guests will join the Conns for this celebration, which will kick off a series of monthly programs focusing on a variety of topics related to the past, present, and future of Jewel Cave. For more information about Jewel Cave go to www.nps.gov/jeca/index.htm (From contributions by Eric Peterson on www.howstuffworks.com/) - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
[Texascavers] Jewel Cave NM Celebrates Centennial
>From an archaeology mail list: Jewel Cave NM Celebrates Centennial On February 7, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a proclamation that established Jewel Cave NM under the authority of the 1906 Antiquities Act. The monument was established to protect the small, but extraordinarily beautiful cave, which is known for the jewel-like calcite crystals that line the cave walls. Jewel Cave has the most extensive known collection of different types of calcite crystals. The most abundant formations are called dogtooth spar and nail-head spar. Helictites twist and turn as though they were formed in a chamber without gravity. Another formation, called popcorn, grows in small knobby clusters. Veins of calcite deposited in a crisscross pattern are called boxwork. Frostwork, needle-like formations of calcite or aragonite, is as delicate as blown glass. Some formations are translucent, formed of pure calcite. Other crystals contain additional minerals and appear yellow, red, or opaque white. Individual crystals range in size from a grain of rice to a goose egg. When Jewel Cave NM was proclaimed in 1908, less than half a mile of cave had been discovered. Currently, Jewel Cave is the second longest cave in the world, with a current length of over 141 miles. Exploration continues to reveal the hidden miles of passages beneath the Black Hills, South Dakota. Beginning in the 1950s, explorers Herb and Jan Conn mapped over 62 miles of cave passages. Jewel Cave NM will celebrate its centennial through a series of events, programs, and exhibits that will highlight the theme "Generations of Discovery.�? The centennial celebration will formally begin on February 9, 2008, in the visitor center of the monument with a special program to commemorate the anniversary. Honored guests and former cave explorers Herb and Jan Conn will present a program on their 21 years of exploration as they mapped over 60 miles of cave passages, beginning in 1959. The caving parties led by this husband-and-wife team made 708 trips into the cave and logged 6,000 hours of exploring and mapping. A new generation of cavers has continued to push the known boundaries of Jewel Cave, but the mystery of its magnitude remains. As the Conns once said, âWe are still just standing on the threshold.�? Other special guests will join the Conns for this celebration, which will kick off a series of monthly programs focusing on a variety of topics related to the past, present, and future of Jewel Cave. For more information about Jewel Cave go to www.nps.gov/jeca/index.htm (From contributions by Eric Peterson on www.howstuffworks.com/) - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
