The Cure for Black Friday Blues

November 30, 2008

Sure, it's a northern elephant seal, but it's doing a passable imitation of yours truly on the day after Turkey Day, otherwise known in the shopping world, apparently, as Black Friday. Luckily, I was too stuffed to even go looking for the 52-inch plasma screen television I don't need. Which meant that I, again luckily, did not suffer this ugly and ignominious fate, which was grotesque beyond words. Instead, I went trolling for something to blog about. And that's when I find this oily-skinned delight to the left, on a website called Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). EOL is, as billed on the site, "an ambitious, even audacious project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all information about life present on Earth." Ambitious indeed, when you consider that means EOL is trying to create websites for each of the 1.8 million known species on the planet. And not just websites with a bit of text. We're talking rich, detailed pages, with full taxonomies for the specialists, and lots of great photos and videos for anyone, old or young, who wants to explore the vastness of life on the earth.

The man behind EOL is none other than Edward O. Wilson, Harvard biologist extraordinare and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his non-fiction writing. I had the good fortune to listen to Professor Wilson speak about his work a couple of years ago as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. I remember his quiet, thoughtful passion for his work, and I remember how excited he was when, just at the end of the seminar, he briefly mentioned the EOL project.

Here's a link to a video of Wilson talking in-depth about EOL.

The best part of the EOL project is that there are many cool ways you can help. My personal favorite is a Flickr page where you can upload photos that EOL can then use as part of their web pages on various species. OK, so now I'm thinking I should have  braved the crowds, and bought that fancy dSLR camera on Friday...

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