Interesting NEWS...not my usual Photography and Aperture topic but it made me laugh...GarageBand 400 Million years ago?

I picked up this article from the BBC...not my usual Photography and Aperture topic but it made me laugh...GarageBand 400 Million years ago?
Not quiet... but very interesting reading and I thought I share this with you... oh boy what they discover these days...

Grunting fish have helped scientists to date the origins
of vocal sounds to about 400 million years ago.

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Photo: Screenshot Courtesy of the BBC, click on the image
or use the link below for the video and complete article.

Toadfish and midshipman fish use a variety of different sounds to attract mates and scare off rivals. Now US researchers have found that the area of a fish's brain that drives vocalization is extremely primitive. Writing in the journal Science, they say it suggests that the ability to communicate through sound emerged very early in the evolution of vertebrates...read the complete article and watch the Video...
@ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7510443.stm

Mac Technology and fossils…they do have something in common... a very cool science article…if you interested in Fossils and Dinosaur you need to check this out.

The image below is of a fossilized Ammonite (an ancient relative of today’s Nautilus) from the Jurassic period, one of a few left in my collection, going back in time just like Time Machine…

01 blog ammonite 01 NAUTILUS
left: Ammonite from 160 million years ago - right: Nautilus a close
relative from Palau Micronesia

Some of you know my background with fossils or Paleontology…but what has a Mac in common with all of this?
Read this amazing and very cool article below…

Running with the Dinosaurs
Mac Technology Helps Put the Spring in a Hadrosaur’s Step

Read more about this amazing story with cool images @
http://www.apple.com/science/profiles

Website update and upcoming Photography Magazine spreads

Dear friends and photographers,

I like to inform you that I have just updated my website: www.deichmann-photo.com

New look at the home page, change of image, I have also added a new category on
Environment within the site. (top bar in between Tibet and Wildlife)
Within the next two weeks you be able to download also some pdf files;
Portfolio spread and the cover in Click Magazine, the Digital Photography Magazine from Malaysia.
Also Portfolio spread in the Asian Photography Magazine, talking about
Aperture and Photography, I inform you all on my blog once both Magazines can be downloaded as a pdf file from my site under publication.
Enjoy the new images and thanks for all your support,
thanks,
GD

www.deichmann-photo.com

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Global warming, Photo © Gunther Deichmann

Sharks and Discovery Channel, voices of concern

This is in response to my Blog (see below this one) regarding the open letter regarding the Discovery Channel, some of us are out there to voice their concern
and offered their support, please read the unedited letters I have so far received, thank you all for your feedback, from Germany, Australia and Singapore so far.
For those who have not read the letter please go to:
http://www.divephotoguide.com/discovery_shark_week.php


Gunther
www.deichmann-photo.com

Snail055@web.de
Subject: open letter (sharks)
Date:
July 21, 2007 4:50:21 AM GMT+08:00
To:gdeichmann@mac.com

Hi Gunther

Den offenen Brief zur Rettung der Haie ist sehr bewegend. Diese phantastischen Tiere muessen einfach in ihrer Artenvielfalt ueberleben. Leider ist der Mensch das groesste "Raubtier" und jagt diese Tiere manchmal nur aus Vergnuegen. Ich habe gesehen, wie ein Haendler (irgendwo in China) tausende von Haifischflossen gelagert hatte, nur um sie fuer die "Haifischflossensuppe" zu verwenden. Diese Flossen sind den Tieren bei lebendigem Leib abgeschnitten worden, was den sicheren Tod zur Folge hat. Leider koennen diese Tiere keine entsetzliche Schmerzensschreie ausstossen. Es ist ein Jammer, das diese Menschen es nicht verstanden haben, das diese Lebewesen zum Oekosystem der Meere gehoeren. Sterben die Haie aus, kippt das Meer um und bringt das Gleichgewicht der Natur durcheinander, was auch auf die Landtiere Einfluss hat. Diese Denke trifft natuerlich auch auf andere vom aussterben bedrohte Tiere (Berggorillas, Wale, Meeresschildkroeten, etc.) zu. Bedauerlicherweise haben die Menschen, die diese Tiere ausrotten, es nicht begriffern, das mit diesen Tieren der Tourismus eine sehr gute Einnahmequelle sein kann. Die Meere werden ueberfischt, unsere Luft wird verschmutzt, die Umwelt durch Gifte und Pestizide verseucht. In Deutschland wird zur Zeit mit einem Zeppelin, der in großen Hoehen fliegt, geprueft, ob die belasteten Luftschichten sich regenerieren. Passiert das nicht, erstickt die Menschheit an ihren eigenen in die Luft geblasenen Schadstoffen. Die Automobilindustrie ist an dieser Miesere nicht ganz unbeteiligt. Hinzu kommen noch die natuerlichen Belastungen aus den Vulkanen mit den pyroklastischen Wolken. Die Reihe laesst sich weiter fortsetzten. Es muss eine umweltgerechte Denkweise der Menschen einsetzen, die nicht nur auf den (schnellen) Profit ausgerichtet ist, aber in den "armen Laendern" ist dieser Denken reiner Luxus. Hier geht es ums taegliche Ueberleben.


Cheers Mojan



From:
dcallard@bigpond.net.au
Subject: Sharks.
Date:
July 21, 2007 9:56:36 AM GMT+08:00
To: gdeichmann@mac.com

Hello Gunther,
I have read your blog re shark conservation with great interest. I watch Discovery, History, Nat Geo to be educated. I too have been appalled by the negative portrayal of sharks as man-eaters while largely ignoring the larger vital role they play in the functioning of the ecosystem. I expect truly objective science from programs such as Discovery, and Nat Geo, which also seems to have sold out to the public fascination with disaster; I am thinking of NG programs like "Raging Planet", even docos about American prisons!

The sensational Discovery programs about sharks seems to have more to do with the ratio of ratings to the $ bottom line. It is certainly not objective science. Anyway, if it takes sensationalism to sell a program Discovery could objectively promote their cause and that of conservation by highlighting the real issue which of course is the truth about sharks. This approach would provide all the sensationalism they want while coincidentally telling the real story. In other words, the truth is likely to be more 'sensational' and marketable than mythological conceptions of sharks (and many other examples of Nature).

I find it interesting to contrast the issue of shark conservation with that of whales. The campaign to "Save the whales" has been high profile and effective in promoting that cause. I see no difference between the basic priorities: sharks, whales, frogs, butterflies and so on. We must protect them all from us!

Never has the world needed objective, informed and balanced media more than it does now. Yet what do we get? CNN devotes headlines to
Paris Hilton! For goodness sakes, enough, enough I say! The important truths will always sell, if only we can get them.


Well, those are my thoughts Gunther. Keep up the good work! I am just about to get back behind the camera myself.

Cheers,
David.



On Jul 20, 2007, at 3:04 PM, aaron@lennoxnooi.com wrote:

Dear Gunther,
I've just read through the letter. I agree 100%.

Aaron

Please help our Sharks and Turtles, an Environmental message

Unborn Shark, it's Mother and Baby got
Murdered!
W BABYSHARK
Stop the killing and say no to Shark fin soup, it is Disgusting.
Sharks are NOT man-eaters, it is us who eat and destroy them,
and why do we kill Turtles and burn our forests?
Why???????
Gunther Deichmann and his friends are fully in agreement with this letter!

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Photos © Gunther Deichmann, www.deichmann-photo.com

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Please take a good look at the images above, there is a community in Bataan, who used to collect turtle eggs and sell them.
No more, they now take care of these precious creatures, collect the eggs and once they have hatched release them back into our Ocean, I wish we had more communities like this, and who thought this is happen in the Philippines, but this is the fact, including road signs in this area have been put up for our oil guzzling cars.
More in details about this amazing Turtle loving community in one of my future blogs, but please read on regarding the letter which I have received
from my friend and supporter Jason Heller at DivePhotoGuide and get all the info @

http://www.divephotoguide.com/discovery_shark_week.php

F
or those of you have not seen this yet, please feel free to post it. It is a formal response from the world’s foremost shark scientists, researchers and conservationists regarding this year’s Shark Week content. If you support shark conservation, please consider posting or publishing it.

http://www.divephotoguide.com/discovery_shark_week.php
 

Our Environment-some of us do care!

Interesting note from David Callard in Australia, his comments on the Environment issue and images, please read below, some of us do care.
Thanks David for your views and nice words.
G.D.
From:
dcallard@bigpond.net.au
Subject: The planet in the oven.
Date: June 9, 2007 10:19:28 AM GMT+08:00
To: gdeichmann@mac.com

Hello Gunther,

Love the new environment images. I think my favorite is the plain water drop on the leaf; that really says it for me. Addressing climate change has to be the biggest challenge mankind has faced, yet I am not totally pessimistic about our ability to solve it. Unlike the Mesopotamians or the Aztecs modern man has the scientific knowledge to identify the problem and propose solutions. Yes, we will have to accept some major changes to our lifestyles and means of production but capitalism has clearly won the ideological wars and of course its greatest strength is its capacity to rapidly adapt to change. So, I put my faith in science to find alternative energy sources. I am in favor of nuclear power as a stopgap solution until we can get solar and other sources fully developed. More later - have to do some more study.
Cheers, David.
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To view my new collection on Environment images, please go to my Aperture Gallery:
http://homepage.mac.com/gdeichmann/ENVIRONMENT%20PART%202/

or go to my PhotoShelter archive for high res. images:
http://www.photoshelter.com/c/gdeichmann 

Some of us do care!

Just received this nice note from Mark Cox, please read below:

Hi Gunther,

You are so right mate! all we humans ever do is take take & more take, then we start crying when its too late, we will definitely destroy our selves its just human instinct I think. If all the tree's & rain-forest disappear human life will cease to exist. I'm the same as you Gunther the world has to come together before its too late really.

Great Work Gunther.

unknown
Mark Cox
mark@tech-dive-academy.com
Photographer & Adventurer

Global warming and water crisis


CAMEL SKELETONB86004 WATERDROPCRACKEDSOIL

I have created some images trying to portrait the on going world water crisis and Global warming issue.
enjoy these images and...
THINK!
It is indeed a serious problem world wide, lets do something about it.
THANKS!
You can help.
Too!

Click this link to view more images on my Aperture web Gallery

Blue Planet Run: The Water Crisis

This article has just come to my attention, and we should put some real thought into this issue.
We do have a problem, no arguments about that. Not only in Africa......
.......but on a Global scale.
I have provided a link to the Aperture Users Professional Network.
AUPN BLOG.
There you can read the whole article/story how we can be part of this and help,
I certainly will!
Gunther

074WDROP
Photo: © Gunther Deichmann
The world is just a drop away from disaster

0103ENVIRO
Photo: © Gunther Deichmann
It is in our hands to make a difference!