Haiti Earthquake

Early News Reports on Earthquake in Haiti:







Pat Robertson's comments:



(NOTE: Contrary to Rev. Robertson's statement here, the Haitian Revolution against France occurred about five decades before the reign of Napoleon III)

midterm review

ID Section (75%)

You will be required to identify at least 25 of the following names & terms in the multiple choice ID section of the midterm:

Plate Tectonics
Cretaceous Tertiary Mass Extinction
Milankovitch Cycles
Late Pleistocene Extinctions
Stephen Jay Gould
nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA)
"Hydraulic Civilization"
Ma'at
Yahweh
Karma
The Mandate of Heaven
The Flood
The Tower of Babel
Sodom and Gommorah
Santorini (a.k.a. Thera) Eruption
Vesuvius
“The Last Day of Pompeii”
Mt. Etna
Great Fire of London
Laki, Iceland
Mt. Tambora
Mt. Krakatau
Shaanxi Earthquake
Great Lisbon Earthquake
Voltaire
Gottfried Leibniz
New Madrid Earthquakes
Great Chicago Fire
Great Fire of Hong Kong
Galveston Hurricane
San Francisco Earthquake
Great Mississippi Flood
Yellow River Flood
Ashgabat Earthquake
Bihar Earthquake
Mahatma Gandhi
Rabindranath Tagore
Valdivia Earthquake
1970 Bhola Cyclone
Tangshan Earthquake
Loma Prieta Earthquake
Indian Ocean Tsunami
Hurricane Katrina
Haiti Earthquake
Pat Robertson
The Anthropocene


ESSAY (25%)

You will be required to write an essay on ONE of the following topics:

X. Discuss Stephen Jay Gould's concept of "nonoverlapping magisteria" or NOMA in relation to the problem of natural disasters. Citing specific examples, discuss how scientific and religious explanations for natural disasters competed in the past, and how they still sometimes compete in the present. What are the main reasons, in your view, that people are inclined to seek religious explanations for such catastrophes?

Y. Consider the evolution of human innovations such as agriculture, urbanization (from the very earliest cities to the present), science, and industrialization in relation to natural disasters and other large scale catastrophes. Citing specific examples, consider those cases in which our innovations have made us less vulnerable to large scale catastrophes, and consider those cases in which these innovations have made us more vulnerable to large scale catastrophes.

Hurricanes & Cyclones explained

Arianna Guiseponne found this excellent article from The Guardian (UK) on Hurricanes and Cyclones.

BBC documentary clip on the Great Fire of London, 1666

This clip is from the novelist and historian Peter Ackroyd's 2004 documentary on the history of London:

Mark Bittman essay on the FDA & GMO Foods

In light of our discussion on GMO crops earlier this week, this piece from today's NY Times is relevant. Very soon the question of GMO foods will include fish as well, as the FDA is expected to approve the marketing of a transgenic salmon patented by AquaBounty Technologies.

Gulf Oil Spill

The Anthropocene and Geoengineering

Iain Stewart on the Anthropocene:



Stewart Brand on his "Four Environmental Heresies" including Geoengineering:

volcano documentary clips

Ian Stewart's Earth Biography: Volcanoes (part 1 of 5)





David Attenborough on Icelandic volcanoes:




National Geographic film on early earth plate tectonics:

disaster movies of volcanoes