Educators From England

"[T]hey came back with these two photos. One from , which was ', which was the Earth rising over the surface of the moon... before they'd landed on the moon, and the other on , the last of the Apollo missions, where they had the... full disk, the fully illuminated disk... '. ...That was when people started referring to the Earth as a "Blue Planet" because you couldn't look at that and not see that it was blue... [T]hen we spent 50 years not talking about the blue."

"As far as we know, the physical laws we observe... on Earth apply everywhere... You can test them for yourself."

"Critical thinking is essential... especially with advertisers and politicians all telling us... they know best."

"We are responsible for our civilization. We vote... choose what to buy and how to live... collectively [as] part of the human journey."

"[T]he called two or three... great series, '... but when did they actually say "What is the Blue?"... Not ever addressed."

"I did my degree in physics and... the telling of the history and the philosophy... is built into the telling of the subject, partly because of quantum mechanics, and partly because some of these ideas in physics are so big, you almost can't not discuss the philosophy of it... [T]he... mind blowing moment when Einstein presents general relativity and... unites these things, or these moments where Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is being worked out... [Y]ou've got to go and see why it's called that... [T]hese stories are built into physics, and in ocean science it's not really the same, and it's... not the same across the biology and chemistry and physics of the ocean, because they tend to be taught... separately..."

"Scientists always think that the most important thing about what they do is the individual things that they're learning. That's not true. The most important thing... actually the gift that you have as a scientist that you've been given through the training, is a perspective on the world. ...[W]hat NOC has is an amazing opportunity to share a perspective, and not to dumb it down or to sugarcoat it, but just to say, "This is what it is." and to say that really well... [T]hat's... where you really can change people's idea of what it means to live on planet Earth, if you do that well..."

"[T]he way I started to think about it... sometimes you get those kind of special effects where little pictures start appearing, making a , and then there's a shape left in the middle, and once you've got enough little pictures you can see the shape. But... until you've seen all those little pictures, you can't see anything. ...[T]he ocean's ...like that. The only way to really understand it, and we take this for granted as ocean scientists, is that you have to see it in lots of different ways. It's like the blind man and the elephant... One finds a trunk and thinks it's a snake. One finds a leg and thinks it's a tree. Yet you need all those perspectives, and then you start to build up a picture of what it means for an ocean to be there. ...[I]t ...bugged me that no one had done that and I thought I could find those stories."

"I paddle outrigger canoes with the and I also do that here in London. I work on research ships. I've worked on many of the world's oceans. ...I've had the privilege of working at Scripps and at the Graduate School of Oceanography... at NOC, or the University of South Hampton... and it felt like no one had told those stories, so I wanted to tell those stories... because I wanted people to see. I was so frustrated of people assuming that the ocean was just a place where the fish lived, or assuming that the ocean was just a big empty pond... and I realized, "Why would they see?" because no one had told them."

"I think that video... We made little DVDs of it that got shared around the participants on the cruise. They were all... interested in it, and... this was long before I'd done any stuff for the and... I didn't think of filmmaking as something I would want to do. But in retrospect... there was a story to tell, and I was interested in telling that story."

"[W]e have all these dry numbers and significant wave height is one of them... [W]atching what it really means for a significant wave height to be 10 meters and thinking about how small that is compared to the depth of the ocean... It's like... having a swimming pool and... blowing tiny ripples across the top. ...Being in that situation was... fascinating and fun... I wouldn't want to do it every day, but it was... a special experience."

"I've always studied the physics in the middle, even when I was doing my degree. ...I passed my exams in quantum mechanics and cosmology, but I knew I was never going to touch those things, but with the ocean it's something you can directly experience... I'm much more interested in the everyday world than in... s or something."

"It's very, very important to make the point that there are lots of ways to be an oceanographer. You don't have to go to sea... I would say to people, "I'm a physicist. I'm not an oceanographer." and they would go, "Oh you go to sea, so you're an oceanographer." But actually now we have much better data availability, data visualization... There are lots of people involved in coding and modeling and building devices and the engineering, who don't go to sea. But they are part of the ocean science community, and it's very, very important that they are there."

"And then they go down, and they go hunting for fish... [I]t comes time to go back up to the surface and hop out onto the ice past the s."

"[E]ven the ocean scientists don't really know all the little stories, the places where it's mattered in history... [S]o I went looking for those."

"So... The Blue Machine is the story of the ocean told through its messengers, passengers and voyages... [I]t's a mixture of natural history... human culture and human history... It's... a textbook dressed up as a bunch of stories."

"I think it's not an approach that many people have taken. I think oceanographers take those stories for granted. ...[W]e don't tell our own history..."

"And so this time NASA... the Artemis missions are... very much gearing up to go back to the moon. Different setup, different politics... but fundamentally, this time... for the first time in 50 years, we're going to be far enough away to look back at the Earth and to see... this blue planet. And this time we have to see that blue for what it is. ...[T]he timing of the book... from the point of view... of the arc of human history, this time... we have to understand the blue itself, is the point."

"I've collaborated with many people from NOC over the years... I visited Steph Henson and the group she works with that study ... [W]hat was great... was seeing the variety of practical ways of doing things, and this... contrasts with what looks very crude... these... big yellow plastic funnels, and then the technology that's coming down the line. This... holographic camera and other things that will let them watch marine snow as it's falling, rather then waiting for it to be scooped up and put on the sample plate. ...The huge benefit... of being at NOC is that you've got all these people, it's such an interdisciplinary place. You've got all these people right next to each other that can learn from each other... I definitely miss that, not being in Southampton any more."

"My [publisher] actually said she was very moved by... the scale of trying to track these tiny bits of that are drifting around in the ocean... [S]he found something about that very... awesome, in the traditional sense of the word "awe"... The enormity of it really caught her."

"[I]t's not just about pretty fish. We all like pretty fish, but... it's much more interesting than that, and we are shortchanging people if we don't really show what the ocean is. We all take it for granted as ocean scientists... So it's that opportunity that NOC has to do something really important. That's why I'm on board."

"This book is about linking the little things we see every day with the big world we live in."

"[M]ost of the south coast of England is underlain by a great layer of this calcium carbonate, mostly made of this one amazing organism."

"So after the calcium has been part of the cliffs it can crumble down... It goes back into the ocean and this cycle starts all over again."

"[J]ust being on the bridge when that storm came along... and watching those waves roll towards the ship and... rear up in front of us. It wasn't everyone's favorite thing, but I felt privileged to be there."

"For months the Muslim minority throughout India was safe from molestation. The R.S.S., by destroying the Mahatma, had given the country the shock it needed. Those who had been angrily criticising him now saw the tragic consequences of their own short sighted anger. They knew that he had been right."

"Mama Sarkar didn't raise a diplomat."

"The white British population has decreased by 600,000, while the minority population has increased by 1.2 million. So yes, lads, we're winning!"

"I'm on Team Hate."

"I'm literally a communist, you idiot."

"No ones saying that Jewish people don’t experience racism. That’s obviously true, especially online. But unlike me, you can *also* benefit from white privilege."

"The unfortunate truth is that, sometimes, the only thing that separates an anonymous troll and a journalist is a byline. Some of the worst abuse I’ve received is either from journalists or the direct consequence of their actions in spreading misinformation about me."

"[Asked what makes her tick?] Petty vengeance and hopefulness."

"If the super-rich can spend £250,000 on vanity jaunts 2.4 miles beneath the ocean then they’re not being taxed enough."

"The Titanic submarine is a modern morality tale of what happens when you have too much money, and the grotesque inequality of sympathy, attention and aid for those without it."

"We would ask the BBC to explain why someone who defended the desecration of a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has been invited to speak on a programme about the rise of the Nazis. Given the outrage her comments have caused, the invitation by the programme makers seems both insensitive and provocative."

"We get well-funded public services, they get saved from the consequences of their own hubris. What's not to like?"

"War is hell, and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace-time."

"What do you mean, funny? Funny-peculiar or funny ha-ha?"

"Basically, as a child, just like you do with any adult – and at that age, too – I don’t think I really questioned anything. I just felt that they knew what they were doing, and that I would fulfill what was necessary – what they needed me to do – to the best of my ability."

"Steaming onwards to the south-east between Methana and Ægina, we passed close under the island of Poros, with its hilly slopes clothed with groves of citron, an island which once bore the name of Calaureia, and was the scene of the death of Demosthenes. It was here that he sought sanctuary from the emissaries of Antipater in the temple of Poseidon."

"'Philology' was for a long time limited to linguistic studies, and was regarded as only including grammar, lexicography, exegesis, and textual and literary criticism; but, since the time of Wolf, it has been generally understood in a wider sence, as including the study of ancient life in all its phases, as handed down to us in the literature, the inscriptions, and the monuments, of Greece and Rome ..."

"In Petrarch we readily recognise a link between the mediaeval and the modern world. He was fully conscious of belonging in a peculiar sense to a transitional time. He describes himself as placed on the confines of two peoples, and as looking backwards as well as forwards ..."

"Experimental Science is represented by Bacon, in the sixth part of the Opus Maius, as a general method for the purpose of checking the results reached by mathematical processes, and also of prompting further researches in fresh fields of inquiry. He saw its bearing and its importance as a universal method of research."

"We are all of us accustomed to exaggerate the successes and magnify the prospects of the cause we favor. It is a habit arising mainly from a desire to convert others to our way of thinking, and since by far the largest part of mankind not only submit to the accomplished fact as soon as it is recognised, but accept it as satifactory, we are tempted to resort to this method of conversion as the most potent and expeditious. In proportion, however, as the prestige created is ill-founded, it is sure to be followed by discouragement and reaction. A cause which has solid elements of strength, is best served in the long run by unexaggerated estimates of its past, and sober forecasts of its future."

"In an English court of justice every effort is made to narrow down the discussion to a simple issue of fact. Every irrelevant allegation on either side is jealously excluded by the presiding judge. Usage and public opinion prescribe a course to the jury from which they cannot deviate; though even in England, on political trials, the animus of jurymen leads them sometimes to disregard the evidence. But at Rome, a State trial, though technically relating to a specified act, virtually dealt with the whole life of the accused. Nor was this all. The jury looked on it as their duty to take into consideration other circumstances which we should deem still more foreign to the question. Among these notoriously was the political bearing their verdict would have. A Roman jury never forgot that it was in some sort a committee of the Legislative Assembly."

"The government, worship, and doctrine of the Established Church are the most abiding works left by Elizabeth on the national life of England. Logically it might have been expected that the settlement of doctrine would precede that of government and worship. It is characteristic of a State Church that the inverse order should have been followed. For the Queen the most important question was Church government; for the people, worship."

"It could plausibly be argued that far from Christian theology having hampered the study of nature for fifteen hundred years , it was Greek corruptions of biblical Christianity which had hampered it , and the attitude to nature."

"This of course has always been the method of empirical science, which has been suspicious of deductive argumentation unchecked by reference to experiment; but in a more general sense, and outside the practice of science itself, scientists have sometimes been the greatest offenders in adhering to dogmatic ideas against all the evidence, especially when they have tended to limit 'experience' to laboratory experiment."

"A theory in its scientific context is not a static museum piece, but is always being extended and modified to account for new phenomena."