In reading one of the other posts a casual point was made regarding the relative safety of flying versus driving.  It is generally assumed that flying is, by far, the safest of the two modes of travel, but is this really true?  In looking at the data, it appears that the data is being skewed because of some strange assumptions that tend to favor flying.

Eusociality is the social structure where individuals cooperate to raise offspring.   How does it happen?   Some proponents have found the answer in kin selection theory, a 'gene's-eye' view of evolution made explicit by William Hamilton (1) in a pair of seminal papers and which sees organic evolution as a result of competition among genes for representation in the gene-pool -  organisms are simply vehicles that genes constructed to aid in propagation.

Petermann Ice Island Revisited

Petermann Ice Island (2010) Calved on August 05 2010.  The calving had been anticipated for some time and had been predicted to occur in summer 2010 by a number of people, including myself.  The actual calving event was observed in near real-time images by a number of people - credits at the foot of this article.


I give here some more background to my observations and my predictions of the Petermann calving event in a wider context of mechanical forces which may act on glaciers.


Greenland under observation