Hellos Hiatus, My Old Friend

Despite my best intentions, the blog is on hold for a little while. I am finishing up my thesis and getting through my third semester of graduate school. With my thesis out of the way, next semester should be much calmer and I hope to resume my blog then. Meanwhile, I am going to attempt to write a few reserve posts so that I can keep the blog going through my busier times. I'm also trying to build up a Pinterest and Tumblr following, so I should still be active on those sites. I am hoping to update some of my old posts with pictures from my trips and I'll be posting those, at least.

I have a lot of ideas for different things I want to talk about. Dance is really on my mind at the moment, as well as the cultural uses of accessories (like fans). I also need to finish up/continue the series I have going on the mythical origins of writing and on astronomical mythology. So when the blog comes back, it'll be better than ever!

I am hoping to continue the Share Spotlight, so hopefully that will start up again next week, just to keep content going on my blog.

Share Spotlight: The Emancipation Proclamation

Read The Emancipation Proclamation

Since the Battle of Stones River has so much to do with the Emancipation Proclamation, in fact the only reason it happened was that Lincoln wanted a victory before it went into effect, I thought it would be a fitting Share Spotlight.

Now the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free a single slave (seriously, it "freed" slaves in territories not controlled by the Union) but it did provide for the raising of Colored Regiments, which meant that those enslaved people who freed themselves when the Union army came to town had a place to go and a way to fight to keep their freedom. When you see USCT on a Civil War era headstone, that's a US Colored Troop, many of whom built and are buried in the Stones River National Cemetery.

The Most Important Civil War Battle You've Never Heard Of

I’m doing a summer internship at the Stones River National Battlefield, so of course I have to do a post on the battle!

The Battle of Stones River (as the Union called it, apparently they loved naming things after rivers, including their armies. It’s the 2^nd Battle of Murfreesboro for the Confederacy) occurred from December 31^st, 1862 to January 2^nd, 1863. Those dates are pretty important because they tell you that something weird is up with this battle. If they can at all help it, armies don’t march in the winter. The reason this one did has to do with a document that should be pretty familiar to my readers, The Emancipation Proclamation.

A Typeset Copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln (Wikimedia)

The EP went into effect on January 1^st, 1863 and the Union hadn’t won a battle since Lincoln had announced it. Since the EP was issued under Lincoln’s authority as Commander in Chief of the US Army, the Army kind of had to be winning the war for the EP to mean anything.

Lincoln also knew that the war was losing favor with the public in the North. Midterm elections hadn’t gone well for the Republican party and people were getting to the point where they were willing to let the South go if it meant the war would end. Lincoln needed to win some battles to boost Northern morale and regain support.

Finally, England and France had been making motions like they were going to come in on the side of the Confederacy. If that happened, it would be nearly impossible for Lincoln to reunite the country. So he also wanted a victory to show England and France that the North would be winning the war and there was no reason for them to get involved.

So Lincoln sent General Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland (like the river, remember what I said about the Union and rivers?) out to find the enemy, in this case, General Bragg and the Army of Tennessee.They found them just north of the town of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a flat area made up of a patchwork of cedar brakes and crop fields.

My own picture of the Stones River Battlefield

The Union would very nearly suffer a devastating loss on the first day of battle. Luckily for Lincoln, they were able to hold on and over the next couple of days make it difficult enough for the Confederates that Bragg decided he would rather retreat than try to hold on to the field.

Thus Lincoln gets his victory, the EP goes into effect, Northern morale goes way up, England and France stay out of it, and the American Civil War continues for another two and half years.

Pretty important battle, right?

Share Spotlight: Lilo and Stitch - Main Title (He Mele No Lilo)

Since we were talking about Hawaii last week, I thought I would share a good representation of both traditional Hawaiian music and hula dance. Disney really did their homework for the Lilo and Stitch movie.




Traditional Hula always tells a story, often about the Hawaiian gods and goddesses, including the daughters of Haumea, several of whom are given credit for the invention of Hula.
Schools for Hula are making a comeback in Hawaii, teaching both traditional Hawaiian Hula and a new style that is fusion of traditional and the more modern version created for the tourist trade.

Dwarf Planet Haumea

Haamea is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt (a band of space objects out beyond the orbit of Neptune) that was discovered in late 2004 by CalTech astronomer Mike Brown and his team and in 2005 by Jose Luis Ortiz Moreno and his team in Spain. (There is some controversy there, but it outside the scope of this post.) Objects in the Kuiper belt are named after creation deities, so Mike Brown’s team’s name, Huamea, was accepted over the Spanish team’s name for the Dwarf Planet. They named the object Huamea after the Hawaiian goddess, in honor of the place where they had first observed it.

Artist rendition of Haumea and its two moons (A. Field via StScI)

As with many myths, Haumea is associated with many names and stories. Some stories equate her with Papa (also Papahānaumoku), giving Papa as her human form to the spirit form of Haumea. Papa, with her husband Wakea, is often said to be the origin of the Hawaiian people, or sometimes the entire human race.

As Huamea, she is said to have given birth to a number of children, not in the normal way, but from various parts of her body. Pele, the goddess of volcanoes, sprang from her thighs while other children sprang from her mouth or her forehead. She is considered the goddess of Childbirth and Fertility.

This giving of herself to make her children is also the reason her name was picked for the Dwarf Planet. The DP Huamea was part of a collision long ago, which resulted in Huamea’s moons, Ki’iaka and Namaka, named for two of her daughters, and the dwarf planet’s oblong, rather than round, shape.

The goddess Huamea was also said to have been able to change her shape and age with the assistance of a variety of magical objects, some of which she obtained in return for assisting people with births. Huamea is often associated with the Kalihi Valley of Ohau, where she is said to have lived with her husband Wakea, once saving him from death by hiding them both in a breadfruit tree. The Kalihi Valley is now part of the suburbs of Honolulu and these local stories are only remember by a few people.

Share Spotlight: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming

This week's Share Spotlight is a book by Mike Brown, the astronomer who made the discovery that resulted in the new category of Dwarf Planet and Pluto's expulsion from Planethood. I wrote about the book in one of my Book Roundups a while back, but since it really was the inspiration for the new Astronomical Mythology series I'm working on, I figured it deserved its own Share Spotlight.

The book is funny and moving. I never would have believed that a scientist could write so well. This is how science writing should be done. Just read the book and you will understand. Once you do, tell me what you think!

Mike Brown also has a sort of sporadic blog called Mike Brown's Planets that is well worth a look.

Astronomical Mythology

This week I’m starting on a new series on the Mythology surrounding the figures the different things in our Solar System (and maybe out of it) are named for. We’ll start off with how they get their names.

Everyone knows the names of the 8 (formerly 9) planets in our Solar System. Most of us even know where their names come from, Greek and Roman mythology. But what about all the other bodies in the solar system?

Turns out there are pretty specific rules that govern what a discoverer can call something, based on what sort of thing it is. For example, the moons of Uranus must all be named after Shakespeare characters while the moons of Jupiter must be named after Zeus/Jupiter’s lovers or children.

The four Gallilean moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. (Wikimedia)

Some bodies, such as the first four of Jupiter’s moons back in the 1600s, were named by the people who discovered them. When the formal naming process was created, these names were confirmed and others were made to follow in their mold. Others held a scientific notation, such as Jupiter VI, until the official rules were created.

But who decides what these rules are?

In the 1970s, the International Astronomical Union put together a taskforce to deal with what things should be called and now decides on the “unambiguous astronomical nomenclature” (read How Space Things Are Named So No One Confuses Them with Something Else) that results in the names used for various types of astronomical objects. The IAU is an organization of thousands of astronomers and other cosmologists from around the world that get together every year to decide on important issues in astronomy. They’re the ones who decided that Pluto was a Dwarf Planet back in 2006.

Astronomers, professional or amateurs, must submit their discovery and proposed name to the IAU for scrutiny before it becomes official. They make sure that the name is not already taken and that it accords with the rules for whatever has been discovered.

Curious what all of the rules are? Check out the International Astronomical Union’s website.