Skiing Mount Improbable

Moon Trees and Mars Landers

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 01:37:00 +0000

I'm a fan of expeditions. I like driving places and just seeing new things, but I like it better when there is a definite goal in mind. Today, I'm lucky enough to have two to inflict on my family. Tonight, we're going to watch the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory live at Union Station Science City. It promises to be an interesting evening, albeit at late one (Curiosity isn't due to land until 12.15am Monday, local time).

Our earlier expedition, however, takes a bit of explaining.

Mitchell, Shepard, and Roosa

During NASA's Apollo lunar exploration program, the third mission to land on the moon (after the ill-fated Apollo 13), was Apollo 14. Commanded by Alan Shepard Jr., with the Command Module "Kitty Hawk" piloted by Stuart Roosa and the Lunar Module "Antares" piloted by Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 went to explore the Fra Mauro Formation on the near side of the Moon. While Roosa remained in Kitty Hawk, Shepard and Mitchell were to land on the lunar surface in Antares and examine the local geology.

I imagine that the Apollo astronauts never saw it this way, but particularly as I child I always thought that Command Module pilots got the rough end of the deal. Fly all the way to the Moon, watch your co-astronauts get to rocket down to the surface while you sit orbiting, waiting for them to come back. It was an important job, of course: the lander's crew had to have something to return to.

The plaque beneath the Atchison moon tree

Whatever his feelings about staying behind, Roosa had other things to do. There was some difficulty in docking the Command and Lunar Modules on the latter's return from the lunar surface, which he handled with the skill that one expects of this generation of astronauts. He probably didn't even give much thought to the small cylinder he had taken with him. As a part of a project undertaken by the U.S. Forest Service and NASA, the cylinder was full of seeds. Seeds, specifically, of trees.

A moon tree today, variety sycamore.
Atchison, Kansas, 5 August 2012

Roosa had begun his career in the Forest Service, where he worked as a smokejumper (a firefighter who parachutes into remote areas to fight wildfires) before joining the Air Force. The seeds were carried as part of an experiment to find a simple answer: would a seed still germinate after travel in space?

The answer, of course, was yes. As the story goes, the seedlings were then sent around to various national and international forestry organizations, in 1975 and 1976, so that they could be planted as a part of the celebration of the American Bicentennial. By then, they were known by the somewhat confusing but thoroughly enchanting name of "moon trees". There are moon trees in most states, in various locations: schools, aboretums, public buildings, and the like.

When my former colleague LB first told me of them, I looked up the location of the nearest moon tree, and found that it was about an hour away in the city of Atchison, Kansas. The other night, at a birthday dinner for a friend, my wife happened to mention them in passing, and I was seized with a desire to take a short road trip. So today, we hopped into the car and were off.

The sign at the entryway to the
International Forest of Friendship

The Atchison moon tree is located in the International Forest of Friendship, which was planted in the 1970s. It's not terribly difficult to find, although I first made the mistake of taking us to their mailing address, which is in an industrial section of town where trees were disturbingly scarce. A quick internet search led us in the right direction, and after a bit more fumbling around, we found it, about fifteen minutes southwest of downtown Atchison.

There were several varieties of moon trees: loblolly pines, sweetgums, redwoods, Douglas firs, and the variety located in Atchison, a sycamore. As it was planted in the mid-seventies and sprouted slightly before then, the tree is nearly as old as I am. In turns of ageing, I think that it is making out better than I am, but I am the one with the camera, so who knows what the tree felt? Despite the drought conditions the area has experienced this year, this particular sycamore looked healthy, still holding onto its array of bright green leaves. I compelled my children to pose under it for a picture, to their dismay, but they'll be glad of the photograph, I hope. Someday.

The memorial to those killed in the Columbia disaster

Appropriately and poignantly, there is also a memorial near the tree to the astronauts lost in the Columbia disaster of February, 2003.

Atchison is also the birthplace of the legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart, and she should be seen as the founding spirit of the place, in a way. Although the mystery of her disappearance may never be satisfactorily solved, she is celebrated here. Her bronze statue is only a few short paces from the sycamore grown from a seed planted after a trip to the moon. I can't image that, had Earhart lived thirty or forty years later, she would not have been among the first women in space, instead of lost on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

The Forest was a quiet place - we were the only visitors, although it certainly looks as though there are well-attended events held there. If you're in the Kansas City or Atchison area, however, it's worth a side-trip to go and have a look, and maybe tell your friends or your kids about the tree that started its life after a trip to the moon.

Amelia Earhart statue, International Forest
of Friendship, Atchison, Kansas

Review: No Blade of Grass by John Christopher

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:55:00 +0000

No Blade of Grass by John Christopher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

John Christopher's No Blade of Grass (also known as The Death of Grass is one of those books which will haunt me, of that I have no doubt.

I read and adored Christopher's Tripods books as a boy. There is something in the dystopia, in the vision of a land from which millions upon millions have vanished, leaving only a few survivors, which appealed to me even as a boy. Knowing this, and knowing vaguely the subject of No Blade of Grass, I was not prepared for how brilliant - and how terrible - this book was. With none of the usual mechanisms of science fiction - not even a Triffid (in tone, Grass does strongly resemble John Wyndham's classic book) - John Christopher shows why sometimes, all it takes to build a terrifying future is just a little imagination. Sometimes, it only requires a tiny virus which acts on certain select plants.

Quickly, precisely, and brutally, Christopher recounts the events of a future-present in which a virus appears in China and runs amok through the rice crops, causing starvation, dehumanisation, and the deaths of millions from starvation. An anti-viral agent is found, and the West breathes easy, but the reprieve is short-lived. The Chung-Li virus has many different phases, and the most recent strain which has emerged does not merely attack rice, but all strains of grasses. The practical upshot is starvation: without grass, there is no wheat, no barley, no rice, no oats - and therefore no livestock, bar pigs (which, it is mentioned in passing, can thrive on almost anything). As the virus spreads and foodstocks dwindle, brothers John and David Custance plan to retreat to the family farm in the north of England, where David is certain that he can fortify the valley and make it a refuge for his immediate family.

When the balloon goes up, John Custance's friend, Roger Buckley, a civil servant with his ear to the ground, gives them advance notice, and, in the company of Pirrie, a gun merchant, and their families, the three groups flee London with mere hours to spare, which is one of the many cities slated by the government for destruction - via nuclear weapons - rather than to allow the wholesale degradation and misery that might follow on from slow starvation.

What follows is a nightmare tour through the heart of England, against the backdrop of famine, murder, rape, uxoricide, and a desperate race for survival. As familiar towns are imagined to have fallen, either to the threatened nuclear attack by the RAF or by looting and pillaging of a populace quickly rendered desperate, the groups struggles toward what they imagine is a safe haven.

This does not read like a children's book to me, nor was it sold as one, as near as I can tell. It is a quick, compelling read, and the template for anyone who wants to write - or read - quintessential post-apocalyptic fiction. It is certainly a great pity that this book is out-of-print, but one may hope that the fashionable vogue will swing back to reprinting more of Christopher's work. Also, as indicated elsewhere, it is a cautionary tale written before the advent of genetic engineering, although it is hard to imagine anything going so hideously wrong. It is better that such things be kept in the world of fiction, to make us wary of the possibilities of reality.

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The Banality of Evil

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:39:00 +0000

Every year, an old woman shuffles past the booth.

The gem show bustles to varying degrees at different times of day, so she is just one of the anonymous horde: asking questions, listening to answers, moving on. But because she is an old woman, she moves on slowly, and with difficulty.

Infirmity in every step, she stops, and then she poses a question. My colleague repeats it to me: do we have any covellite?

Covellite, for the non minerally-inclined, is a copper sulfide mineral: the chemical composition essentially consists of one copper atom for every one sulfur atom. Crystal structure is determined by the angles of ionic bonds: in this case, covellite crystallises on the dihexagonal dipyramidal system. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We don't have any covellite. It's at that moment that I see the list in the woman's hand. It's covered in spidery handwriting, and I can clearly read the name "covellite". Above it, underlined, is another word. The word is "cancer". In her other hand, there is the inevitable book describing the mystical powers of "crystals". You get to be able to recognize them, if you read enough mineral books. I don't recall which one, maybe it was The Book of Stones. Maybe it was some other one. It hardly matters.

I want to tell this woman that she needs to see a doctor. That if she's seen one, she needs to see another. Or to consider palliative care. Or to do anything, but to stop following the path that she's on right now, and to look for real answers or real relief.

But I don't. It's too personal. It's too far beyond the limits of propriety. And I am not, in any way shape or form, a medical professional. So I put on my best, most solicitous manner, the kind that I use for dealing gently with people. I apologise, and she goes on her way.

And now the seething with rage begins.

Let me explain why.

I've lived around minerals all of my life. My grandfather was a collector, who travelled all around the country, often buying from miners who would set up stands at the side of dusty roads that week-ends. My father was a collector - my childhood home still has a basement full of minerals from all over the planet. And I collect as well. I've studied mineralogy, and read about minerals and the science surrounding them for twenty-five years, give or take.

Crystal healing types like to make claims about minerals. Claims like "clinochlore minerals have extensive healing properties", or "covellite connects strongly with physical reality and earth energies and at the same time carries much of the higher spectrum of vibrations from the etheric plane and beyond".

Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

For all of those minerals being all over my childhood home, it never seemed to make any medical difference, oddly enough. They didn't stave off cancer, heart disease, hypertension, pneumonia, influenza, broken bones, chicken pox or even premature baldness in my family. They also failed contribute in any material way to the amelioration of those conditions. Nor have I ever once heard, read of, or spoken to a proper collector or mineralogist who went from a complex scientific discussion of his subject to add “oh, and they cured my diabetes, which was a boon.” No, when you don't get ill, or when you get better if you fall ill, that's the province of medicine. Real medicine. The kinds that works, if anything will.

There is reality, and there is the world of ghosts. There is knowledge, a candle in the darkness, and then there are the remains of things left over from the millennia when human beings didn't have answers to questions like "what is that made of", or "where did we come from", or "why does that make a spark", so early humans tried to invent stories and gods and monsters and mystical objects in an attempt to make sense of the world. It was only with the invention of science, though, that the world really did make sense.

I don't know why it is that, consciously, some people choose to live in a world of phantoms. Maybe school was too hard. Maybe their made up knowledge makes more sense to them, or it's comfortable, like a ratty old cardigan on a cold autumn night. Maybe they've never been exposed to any real answers. Pick a reason, it doesn't really matter. They are now the prey.

Somewhere among those people are cynical, opportunistic vermin whose sole interest is in making a quick buck. To do that, they write knowing articles, make ridiculous claims, encourage people to wave their hands over minerals and pretend to feel some “energy”, suggest outlandish and expensive purchases and practises, and then vanish under the guise of "I wasn't really prescribing medicine, so the laws surrounding licensing and malpractise don't apply".

This, too, is bullshit.

Because as far as I can tell, they know that they're talking out of their fundaments. They are cynically and deliberately taking the money from people, promising health benefits, and delivering – well, delivering a pretty crystal and a headful of nonsense , and not much else. And at worst, they kill. They take the last shiny copper coin from these unfortunately people, and then leave them to die.

And honestly, I don't just find that unethical, deceptive, or morally offensive, although it is those things. It is more. It is wrong, and it is evil.

Medicine doesn't always work. At times, palliative care is all that remains. When cancer strikes down a big, strong man in the span of three, or maybe six months, then that is a tragedy, and one which we cannot yet solve. But that does not mean that it is time to send in the crystal wavers. That means it's time to redouble our focus on education, research, and scientific innovation: the only things that actually work.

Review: Free Air, by Sinclair Lewis

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 13:36:00 +0000

Free Air by Sinclair Lewis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Free Air, Lewis' 1919 novel adapted from a magazine serial, is the story of Claire Boltwood, a Brooklyn society girl who has elected to make a cross-country journey via motor car with her father, Henry Boltwood, as chaperone. Passing through Minnesota, they make the acquaintance of one Milt Daggett, the son of a poor country doctor and now garage owner, who is smitten with Claire and elects to follow her across the country to Seattle.

The book is essentially divided into two parts. The first two thirds cover the Boltwood / Daggett journey from Minnesota through the Dakotas, Yellowstone, Montana, Idaho, and finally into Washington state. The final third shifts gears, as it were, to address how the blossoming relationship between Claire and Milt plays out against the backdrop of pre-World War I Seattle society. The primary tensions between Claire's nouveau riche familial ties and Milt's hard work nobility are drawn fairly crudely, as is typical in early "pot boiler" era Lewis.

The depiction of road travel, now taken for granted by Americans, in the second decade of the motor car is interesting, though some of the detailed references are missing, and others are obscured by the passage of time. The vehicles themselves, for one, are completely unfamiliar except, one imagines, to the automotive historian (a Teal bug, for example, or a Gomez-Dep are completely unfamiliar to me). Still, this part of the book is interesting, consider that it takes place some thirty years before the advent of the interstate highway system.

The resolution of the burgeoning romance is relatively straightforward and largely predictable, again in the vein of Lewis' early work. Apart from the motoring backdrop, and the depiction of early 20th century Seattle, there isn't much to recommend this book except to Lewis' most ardent admirers and completists. For more interesting works, his writing of the 1920s (Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry) are more to be recommended. But there is a charm in this book, even as there is an awkwardness in it's writing and composition which might surprise the reader of today.

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Lastday

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:20:00 +0000

If you're like me, you probably remember the 70s sci-fi film Logan's Run with some fondness. What was there not to like? Sandmen, Jenny Agutter, Carousel, lifeclocks, a maniacal central computer, Jenny Agutter, Michael York's stony performance as Logan, Box, the human-freezing robot, Peter Ustinov, a giant city of classic 70s-era shopping mall luxury. Oh, and I think that Jenny Agutter was in the film.

For those who have somehow missed this gem, the premise was that, in order to avoid overpopulation of the enclosed environment after an undescribed holocaust, populations in large containment domes, who were otherwise a young and carefree populace, were cut short at the age of thirty. When a "lifeclock" - a sort of crystalline flower implanted in the hand - turned red and then black, they submitted to a ritual called Carousel on what was known as their Lastday, wherein some were supposedly "renewed", but funnily enough, no one ever saw the renewed populace again.

Occasionally, people would try to escape this fate and leave the dome, and this was where the Sandmen came into the picture, with their natty black and grey suits and cellular disruption weapons. If you ran, the Sandmen chased you, caught you, and you were dead. Naturally, Logan, played by York, elects to run, and takes Jenny Agutter's character with him, because she is rumoured to know something of the world beyond the city. It's a fascinating sort of sci-fi future dystopia, and anyone who knows me can attest to my love for a good dystopia (with the possible exception of the modern Republican/Tea Party idiot vision for America and the world).

Anyway, thinking about Lastday comes to mind as I'm choosing how to spend the final day of my thirties. So far, it's looking pretty mundane. Maybe a light meal out. Possibly a movie. There might be games. Very low-key. Which is all well and good, and though it may seem that I protest too much, I'm not really all that overwrought about my age. Why should I be? Forty is just another year, and, from our plans so far, it's going to be a good one.

But all this reflection casts me back to the final day of my twenties, which, rather being all raucous and ceremonial and "coming of age" and whatever other nonsense was instead extremely quiet and subdued, as I suddenly had newborn twin children in the house, which - and I don't intend to surprise anyone here - tends to suck all of the air out of the room which might otherwise have fueled the fires of a debauched end-of-the-twenties party. The next day, I turned thirty, and they were ten days old. I distinctly remember sitting on the sofa at about 6am, watching the old Robert Newton version of Treasure Island with the sound on the telly all the way down, holding one - fortunately sleeping - tiny child on each shoulder. Later in the day, to celebrate the birthday itself, I swapped for a newly acquired VHS copy of the Doctor Who classic "Planet of the Daleks". And that was as exciting as it got.

Memory is a fickle thing. And it's not going to get any better with age, I suspect. But on this Lastday, I'll spend some time with my family, and just not think about it. Tomorrow is another day.

Friday Music

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:42:00 +0000

There's no excuse for laziness, so while I'm working on a new post or two (or three, or four - you get the idea), here's a song that I haven't been able to get out of my mind for about a week now. It's the 2005 recording by Sunderland-based post-punk band The Futureheads of their cover of Kate Bush's "The Hounds of Love". I really enjoyed this disc and have picked up their subsequent releases, including 2010's The Chaos.

Straightforward, fun, playful approach to Kate Bush's haunting lyrics. Enjoy.

Quick Note

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 23:33:00 +0000

I've decided, for reasons which remain unclear even to me, to resurrect my other blog, Science Books Reviewed, with a new entry regarding some reading that I've finally caught up with, after our family trip to Utah last summer, on the great state of Wyoming.

The new review will be the first of several (I have at least two more planned), so if you're looking for an idiosyncratic but mildly well-informed view of some current science books, take a look. The new review covers, briefly, John McPhee's Rising from the Plains and the Mountain Press volume covering the Roadside Geology of Wyoming. Take a look!

At the Mercy of Technology

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:34:00 +0000

For tens of thousands of years, human beings lived very closely to nature. In fact, much of the existence of early humans was a struggle against nature. For most of the course of recorded human history, one of the greatest forces mitigating against human survival was, collectively, nature. Flood, drought, wildfire, pestilence, plague... these were the things which laid empires low and drove armies back into their own territories. But in the last hundred years or so, an unusual thing has happened. Instead of struggling against nature, we now struggle against our technology.

Technology was how humans began to combat nature. Fire brought light to darkness. Sharpened stones and pointed sticks gave early humans tools to fight against predators, to take their skins and bones and use them to build shelter. Fire and ores yielded their metals, making sharper weapons, better tools. In short order, human beings, through the use of techology, did unimaginable things to the world.

There is a price, however, even in advancement. Who has not now learned to feel slightly helpless when the internet connection goes down, if your mobile or landline telephone fails, the lift is stuck between floors, or when the cable television goes out? People are now reliant upon these things, to such an extent that their absence is more than a mere inconvenience: lack of some devices present a serious detriment to how well we live our days.

And as, in most cases, we don't necessarily understand enough to fix these devices, the sense of helplessness when they go wrong is almost palpable. Perhaps "almost" is sugar-coating the question. It is a real sensation, a digging at the guts that feels like the gnawing of rodents. Skin grows clammy and cold. That cold shiver crawls up and down the spine, as the realisation dawns that, yes, you may have to do something on your own. Or do without.

This is the dilemma of the modern world, nowhere more starkly played out than when a car suddenly and unexpectedly fails.

As my vehicle has done exactly that, I'm fairly confident of my mastery of the topic (he says, ruefully).

We've had some good times, my car and I. We've driven to Minnesota and back, on countless expeditions of exploration around the state. It was the first car that I bought and drove around in with my children. It was the car that I had when I met my wife, when we used to commute back and forth across town to see each other. And, with some expected exceptions, it has been largely trouble-free. But after doing nearly 175,000 miles, a couple of seemingly routine maintenance needs quickly ballooned into something unmanageable, and unreasonable for an eleven year-old car. The replacement cost versus new cost equation, as compelling as the calculation based on various interest rates, make the decision for you sometimes.

Ironically, today's death knell falls on the anniversary of the announcement of ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic computer (compared to the devices such as those from Bletchley Park ( Wiki | Official Site ), which were intended as code-breaking devices). With the introduction of the computer, ostensibly a labour-saving device, have our lives really become that much simpler? Granted, it is possible for scribblers such as myself to routinely publish these random screeds to an indifferent audience, but does that really make the world a better place? Much like the utility and world-changing nature of all our other technology, that is a question which I will leave you to answer in your own time, and in your own way.

For my part, I think that once this car disaster is over, we will go home and try to enjoy ourselves... technology free.

Serious Friday

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:45:00 +0000

I've written before about my respect for the work of Jacob Bronowski. His 1973 television series, The Ascent of Man is the cornerstone on which nearly all good science documentaries are built.

Over at his blog Respectful Insolence, Orac has posted one of the most moving moments from that series, where Bronowski visits Auschwitz. As this visit occurred some thirty years after the atrocities committed there, it seems almost more poignant than a similar commentary might now. In the event that you don't read Orac (and you really should), I thought that this clip, which first set me out on a search for the entire series several years ago, deserved any additional viewers that I could provide it. Bearing in mind much current American political rhetoric, a warning against the perils of dogma is opportune, at the very least.

If you're interested in watching more of The Ascent of Man, much of it can be found on YouTube, or, in the United States, it may be obtained through Ambrose Video. Most good public libraries should have it too.

Friday Humour

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 14:23:00 +0000

Completely unconnected with anything else, here's a sketch with John Cleese and a Not the Nine O'Clock News-era Rowan Atkinson, discussing beekeeping. Enjoy.

Quick Follow-Up

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:56:00 +0000

A bit of a retraction is due here: in a previous post entitled Wish Me Luck, I lamented what I expected to be the inevitable outcome of trying to lead a discussion of geology, all to earn the Webelos Geologist Pin, with a particular group of children. I was worried on two scores; first, that I'd look like a plonker in front of my own son, and second, that these kids would be not be particularly well-behaved. This latter idea was based on previous experiences, and I had rather written off the whole exercise in my head.

Honestly, I was not in the best of tempers when I got there. There were lots of little reasons why I was already annoyed, not least of which being that my car had performed the automotive equivalent of a nervous breakdown, leaving me up in the air as to the status and cost of repairs to a vehicle which we planned to keep through the end of this calendar year. Sitting and waiting for the endless stream of suburban assault vehicles to move just enough so that I could find a place to park, I tried to keep in the back of my mind the whole time the idea that I was doing it for the benefit of my son, but I was still more than a little irritated.

What I neglected to remember, however, was that (a) children mature and grow up, (b) any topic which sufficiently captures the interest of ten year olds will keep their attention for at least the required hour, and (c) if you're sufficiently confident in your mastery of the subject, and you enjoy it, kids will pick up on that. At least, this group did.

In other words, it didn't go badly. Not at all. For the most part, the kids were interested and engaged, and asked some good and thoughtful questions (and kept the silly ones to a minimum). And while I'm still not the sort of person who genuinely enjoys hanging out with children other than our own two, I can see that this is the age, where, with careful and appropriate guidance and only the occasional stern talking-to, they could well take those first steps on the road to being interesting people. And Ian, who for reasons of his own is sometimes wary of his classmates, seemed pleased with the outcome. Or, at the very least, not appallingly and fatally embarrassed.

So I eat my words, more than just a bit. I hope that I'm enough of an adult myself to admit when I was wrong. Sometimes I wonder.

"Astronauts Are Just Like Us... Except Better"

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 04:02:00 +0000

Listening to last night's podcast of the Rachel Maddow Show on one of my forty-five minutes drives this afternoon, I was delighted to hear the audio for this piece, which I was finally able to see on returning home much later tonight. Take a look:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I could make some moderately profound statement at this point, something about how humans meld art and science by carrying music, in a small way, into space. There's a history there, going back to the Voyager missions, both of which carried a golden LP of the best music from the Earth, just in case that some wandering extraterrestrial should happen across one of those craft in a million years' time. But frankly, a large part of my enjoyment derives from being a long-time Jethro Tull fan. The notion of Ian Anderson having leant a flute to an astronaut for a space mission strikes me as rather a wonderful gesture.

As a result, this, like Christmastide, puts me in a Tull sort of mood. Here's a clip of classic Tull which isn't one of the two songs ("Aqualung" and "Locomotive Breath" which most people generally know), the title track of their 1977 LP:

I spent far too long selecting this clip, looking for something that was just right. Almost went with "Hunting Girl", but decided against it. There are lots of other great ones out there, especially from the late 70s. Just have a look.

The other amusing element in the first clip is Rachel Maddow's unfettered delight at the astronauts' zero-G antics. Which led, of course, to the post title. And after all, if you found yourself in orbit, wouldn't you do the same?

Of Seabed Widows and Ghost Brews

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 03:44:00 +0000

I'm partial to a drop of Veuve Clicquot on the right occasions, and I also happen to enjoy a decent beer ~~on the right occasion, in the right company, or as a way to end a day, with dinner~~ almost anytime. Substitute wine, scotch, or a number of other tipples ad libitum.This evening, because tonight it was either a question of ploughing mindlessly through news stories or worrying about the repairs to my car, which has chosen this delightful weather as the ideal time in which to undergo a collection of major malfunctions, I elected instead to make a cup of tea of and have a look around the web. Blogging gold! Some related stories which I had somehow managed to miss in the past few weeks and months caught my eye, and off I went.

First, the BBC's reporting of this story Shipwreck's 'oldest beer' to by analysed, brewed again leapt out at me. I must confess that the notion of encountering a late 18th century ale set my imagination running. This could conceivably have been a French ale - perhaps even made before the head-chopping began in 1789. Would this be the sort of beverage that Voltaire might have imbibed, or perhaps Diderot (almost certainly Diderot, from what I recall of his work)? Could Marat have nipped down the pub for a quick pint of this brew before going to his ill-fated bath? Scholars of 18th century French literature and history, have at me for not doing any better research than whimsical imaginings, by all means.

It almost seems like stunt casting, in a way, trying to resurrect lost and forgotten food and drink. On the other hand, I must confess myself curious, to say the least. I appreciate, but don't know a great deal about, what are generally considered "good" ales, whiskeys, and wines. Is there a difference between a six dollar bottle of plonk and a sixty dollar one? That depends on the reason that you're drinking it, presumably, but if you're interested in the complexity and nuance of taste, the answer is almost certainly a resounding "yes!"

There's been a lot of interest in "spirit archaeology", if that's not too peculiar a term, in recent years. Announcements and citations are plentiful; for example, a plan to attempt to analyse and learn from the Rare Old Highland Malt Whiskey carried to Antarctica by British explorer Ernest Shackleton in 1907, with the eventual view to understanding the state of distilling in the late 19th century, and recreating the drink for public consumption (I'd buy a bottle, in a heartbeat). The same shipwreck which produced the vintage 1800 ale mentioned above also produced a number of bottles of champagne, and the world's oldest surviving ones at that, including what were thought to be some very early (and pre-Revolution) examples of Veuve Clicquot. Further, discoveries made both in China and Egypt have further expanded our understanding of the different kinds of alcohol which humans have enjoyed. Hell, we've even discovered one of the oldest known wineries, a six thousand year-old setup found in Armenia. Making and consuming alcohol has been a part of human culture ever since the first time that some early human got tipsy from some fermented fruit.

My long ago co-worker and occasional drinking companion Matthew Rowley of Rowley's Whiskey Forge is a dedicated distiller, cookery writer, and generally entertaining and knowledgeable egg, so I tweeted him to ask his thoughts on this topic, but, like mine, they mainly centred on how nice it would be to get hold of a bottle of the widow's work. A fair cop. Regardless, if you're interested in the art and science of food, you should read Mr Rowley's blog, or even buy his book, Moonshine!. I'm going to pick up a copy myself, just as soon as I save enough of my pocket money that I don't already have allocated to booze and viands of various descriptions. In the meantime, raise a glass to the history and science of alcohol, that most delightful of accidents of nature.

Seeing the Beauty?

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 15:07:00 +0000

I meant to post this photograph when I was talking about the climatic conditions the other day, and just thought that I would share, for those of you who are inclined toward meteorlogical smugness:

As you can see, at some point in my life, I obtained a slightly kitschy outdoor thermometer. With birds. Not too long ago, I found it again, and had the brilliant idea of putting it up on the front porch so that I could see how warm (or cold) it was. You know, in the way that really old people obsess about the weather?

Well, it now appears that I'm getting old. It was a lovely morning all the same, if you go in for the snowbound look:

It was, however, much better appreciated from inside, preferrably with a good hot mug of tea and a roaring fire.

GHR often says that she can't imagine why the early settlers of America would have voluntarily stopped here, after experiencing both one average summer and one average winter in rapid succession, with the two-week interval which typically passes for autumn. I can only conclude that our ancestors were far hardier, and far less troubled by frostbite, than our own namby-pamby modern selves.

Appropriate Moments in Reading, Volume 9

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:22:00 +0000

I took a quick look at the bookshelves a few minutes ago, sighed in some disgust at myself, then started moving stuff around and trying to make all of the shelves look a bit more tidy. The result?

Don't judge me. I've had a bibliomania problem for a long time, but honestly, it's getting better (the Kindle app for my iPad has genuinely helped here).

On the positive side, apart from the reoranganisation, I found a book that I only vaguely remembered picking up last summer, but one which seems particularly appropriate considering the local weather today: Snowball Earth, by Gabrielle Walker. Since first learning about this hypothesis a few years ago, I've been fascinated by the notion of the Earth essentially being a bit like Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back, in what is now known as the Cryogenian Period. The Snowball Earth hypothesis suggests that, somewhere between 650 and 750 million years ago (a number I see sometimes which is right in between those is 700 MYA), the planet essentially froze. Because this freezing effect would have killed off many members of closely related species, the suggestion of the hypothesis is that, for reasons we won't go into here, this die-off may actually have kick-started the proliferation of multicellular life, which characterised the later Edicaran and Cambrian eras.

The evolutionary pressure of the high relatedness in the context of a post-glaciation population boom may have been sufficient to overcome the reproductive cost of forming a complex animal, for the first time in Earth's history."

This is obviously a hypothesis that is still the subject of some debate, but it does fit a large number of the facts available to us from rocks of this age (700MYA, +/-50MYA).

So, rather than focusing on the snow outside, which is (a) merely weather, rather than climate, and (b) absolutely nothing compared to what might have gone on in the Cryogenian, never mind in the last Ice Age, I can sit back and read into some geological history, safe in the knowledge that it can absolutely get worse.

Or, alternately, perhaps I've got a good book about a nice warm tropical island to read instead?

Wish Me Luck

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:25:00 +0000

In three days, assuming that the coming snowpocalypse doesn' engulf us all, I'm going to be teaching a class for a group of Webelos scouts (for those not familiar, it's the level below being a fully-fledged Boy Scout, with cooler scarfs): the class will be a quick survey of the requirements to receive their Geologist pin. The pins indicate more advanced achievement in understanding basic concepts, or at least, as much advanced as a group of nine or ten year-olds can have.

I've taught these requirements several times before, and this is material that I know extremely well. I just hope that the darling little nine and ten year-olds are ready to pay attention and learn something. I've met these kids before, and I can only think of the "Not the Nine O'Clock News" sketch, you know, the one about the football hooligans. Remember?

No, really, it's not that bad. First off, did I mention that they're only nine and ten? So really, the comparison is only made for comedy value.

It's not that I doubt my side of things, or that the subject isn't intrinsically interesting. But the other groups that I've gone through the requirements with were - not to put too fine a point on it - well-behaved. They had been taught that it was rude not to pay attention. And while my son is a good quiet lad (and no, I'm not just saying that, ask anyone), the rest of them are... not. But maybe they are now.

Mainly, though, it's about not looking like a berk in front of my son. I mean, not yet. I'm sure that time will come, if it hasn't already. But I can take comfort from the fact that really, he doesn't particularly care about the other kids in his scout group... mainly, he's just in it for the badges. Which sentiment I completely echoed, once upon a time.

"I Was Told There Would Be No Math"

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 05:12:00 +0000

The other day, one of the regular Science Club families was in the store, and one of the teen-aged boys, after showing me an interesting fossil, was persuaded by his mother to ask what my feelings were on having to learn math in order to be a paleontologist. Fortunately I managed to avoid making any references to Chevy Chase's impersonation of Gerald Ford.

Since I'm not a paleontologist, I couldn't speak first-hand, but I do know that there are some areas of the discipline where advanced maths are, if not a necessity, certainly helpful. Although there are computers and calculating machines almost everywhere, it's still important to understand how one arrives at an answer, in order to be able to have a sense not only of what your answer means - say, in performing radiometric dating, for instance - but if it makes sense in the context of the fossil.

As someone who struggled with some considerable difficulty through pre-calculus and then stopped, I say this without a trace of irony. I have a great respect for maths, and know that I should probably set about learning some things again, and some for the first time. I'm not sure when I'll find the time to do this. Perhaps after the book is a solid international bestseller? We'll see. But the point is this: if there's a chance that you're going to need at least some mathematical background (and in the sciences, this is pretty much a racing certainty) why would you put it off, or try to avoid it? Never mind calculus: the young man wasn't all too thrilled with algebra. For that matter, though, neither has anyone else ever been.

The next question made me feel less of a hypocrite: was being able to write important? Yes: absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt. I proceeded to drag out the oldest cliché in the file: if you want to write well, read authors who write well. In the case of a young man interested in paleontology, I recommended the books of the late (and much-missed) Stephen Jay Gould. Not only was Gould a phenomenal writer, but he was possessed of a remarkably lucid and wide-ranging intelligence, and was a damned good writer.

I don't know that I changed the young man's mind, but I hope that, if I have any credibility at all, I used it to his advantage, and reminded myself of some of the things that really do matter.

Sometimes a Great Photo

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:00:00 +0000

...is the one that you miss.

I happened to look out the window last night, and was greeted by a sight that I couldn't quite believe... the sun, warm and orange-red, descending, seemingly through a layer of cloud, over a desolate, snowy landscape. It was one of the prettier things that I'd seen recently.

Of course, I'd stopped carrying my digital SLR daily a while back, so it wasn't close at hand. The only recourse? My mediocre three-megapixel mobile phone camera. Which I attempted to use.

The photos that get away, though, as I said, are the ones that would have been the best. By the time I traversed the twenty metres out the door and down the pavement to get a clear shot mostly unobstructed by trees, the effect was gone, and I was left with this:

I understand that, even with the best camera in the world, I'm not a great photographer. I'm a passable hand at capturing family events, holidays, and a rough idea of the scenery. But what I know about the art and technique would not even fill a page. I do know, however, that trying to capture something poetic and moving on a mobile phone's built-in camera is doomed from the outset.

Next time, maybe?

Genuinely Shocking

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 19:03:00 +0000

Quackery has been with us ever since someone decided to hold a particular coloured stone or bit of weed over someone's aching head and pronounce them healed.

Unscrupulous types trying to make quick money off of too-trusting types are a feature of our world today. In the 1930s, as you could see recounted every Sunday night - seemingly - when I was a boy, farmers in Yorkshire would buy a bottle of patent medicine for an ailing cow or pig, dose them with it, then call out the long-suffering James Herriot, as ably played by Christopher Timothy. The ensuing conversation would go something like this:

Farmer:'ere, vitin'ry, thou 'as t'stuff I've been dosing 'er with.

Herriot: (Sniffs bottle) Blimey, George! That's pure turpentine!

Farmer: Wha'? But 'e were such a nice feller! Only charged me 'alf a crown!

Periodically, as in the case of the lamentable supplement, Airborne, these charlatans are brought to some sort of justice and made to redress the balance by offering refunds to those they have bilked. But like the turpentine seller illustrated above, they never truly seem to go away.

So when I saw this curious water jar the other day, let's just say that I wasn't surprised:

In the event that it's not clear from the photo (and here I should note that it's rather difficult to photograph text on a transparent glass bottle), one side says "Electrified Water Co. | Shreveport, LA. | "A Natural Pure Water" ", and the opposite says "Drink Electrified Water for Health | 8 Glasses A Day". A quick internet search yielded only one relevant result, from a blogger in Memphis, who was poring over an old performance programme and noticed a similar advert for "electrified water".

Guessing that this bottle dates to somewhere in the first three decades of the twentieth century, it falls in line with other known bits of quackery from that time, including lethal ones, like radium tonics and radium revigorators. But what is "electrified water"? I'll hazard a guess that it was probably simply water from the public mains, but if it were treated in some way, was electricity used for purification, perhaps?

Honestly, I don't know the answer, but when I find it, I'll be sure to add it to this post. In the meantime, enjoy this bit of historical oddity, and if you see that a live wire has fallen in your water glass, please, don't think drinking it will be good for your health.

EDIT: Already found one interesting addition if you're reading about water quackery anyway: H₂O dot con: Water-Related Pseudoscience Fantasy and Quackery. It doesn't address "electrified water", but is worth a look anyway...

Extreme Pot-Holing

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:59:00 +0000

Ever been down in a cave? If you have, like me, you most likely have memories of tight squeezes, crawling on your hands and knees, or even on your belly, cold, damp, dripping, and peculiar sort of cave-y smell. It's a peculiarly claustrophobic experience, the sort of thing that you don't readily forget having done.

Missouri is an American state known for its wealth of caves, and there are something on the order of five thousand in the state (by one figure, at least), a number of which are open to the public. There's also an excellent book discussing some of the caves in the region, entitled The Wilderness Underground, which is pretty lavishly illustrated and a good read if this is a subject on which you wish to learn more.

When I was younger I was in the Boy Scouts (full disclosure, I actually did earn the Eagle Scout award), and went to the Camp Osceola, formally known as the H. Roe Bartle Scout Reservation, near Iconium, Missouri. (I didn't learn who Osceola was until much later, sadly.) There were caves on the premises there, too, although I now suspect that the two I remember have been closed to the boys at camp: one was reached via a vertical drop of about fifteen feet which was only accessible by an iron girder with foot and handholds welded to the sides at regular intervals. Not the safest of passages, but a lot of fun if you were a bunch of anarchic fourteen year-olds.

Caves seem to feature in our family holidays as well. When camping in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, the Cave of the Winds was not far distant and a logical choice for an outing. On a short holiday in the Ozarks of southern Missouri, Fantastic Caverns was a cool stop on the way to the lake. I think that all of us enjoyed those experiences: it's a way to get acquainted with geology in a curiously human way, especially in those caves in which people have sheltered for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

However, these were nothing - and I say this in all seriousness - to compare to this cave in Vietnam, the world's largest:

I want to go. Sign me up!

Musical Interlude

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:48:00 +0000

Is it just me, or does everything seem a bit more heroic with Murray Gold's music from the revived Doctor Who playing in the background?

One of my favourite moments from the past few years, when the Emperor Claudius regenerates into Sam Tyler... or do I have my series confused? =)

Tributes in Unexpected Places

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:38:00 +0000

Some of you will have heard by now of the demise of Keith Olbermann's MSNBC news and comment programme, Countdown. I mentioned it in an earlier post, and I certainly wasn't the only person writing on the topic.

While casting around today, I found two things of quick interest: first, that Mr Olbermann has tweeted his intent to further tweet, so to speak:

"At exactly 8 Eastern tonight I will issue my first tweet. Well, other than THIS one :)"

...so that's 7pm, CST, and if my damned internet connection (which goes down everytime there's a light rain in the vicinity, never mind six inches of snow - curse you, Time Warner [but not as much as Comcast]) stays up, I'll be checking in.

What I noticed with some surprise, though, was that on Mr Olbermann's baseball blog, at which I have glanced in the past, of the fifty-three comments on his most recent post (Thursday, 20 January), after the first eight, the remainder appear to be about the cessation of Countdown, and the majority are overwhelmingly supportive.

A number of the commenters also mention that they aren't really baseball fans at all. Here, I should admit that I am a marginal fan: I like going to a game now and again, and I can appreciate the history of the game and even watch Ken Burns' excellent documentary with interest, but I'm not on superfan level - not even close. I've read one book about baseball ever, David Halberstam's Summer of '49, which I read on a bet and very much enjoyed, but that's as far as it goes. I don't remember statistics, and I don't even really have a favourite team, these days. When I think of baseball, I think more of a rural idyll, of playing - badly - as a youth, on a small town ball diamond, composed largely of cracked, dried dirt and a variety of enthusiastic weeds. I think of being smacked in the mouth in Cub Scout baseball and bleeding profusely - but not losing any teeth. I think of the only home run that I ever hit that same year. Gifted at sports, I was not.

Perhaps, though, I should read more, and maybe even make an effort to care, just a little bit more. If other well-rounded and intelligent people enjoy sport so much, am I perhaps allowing my own personal history to keep me from something genuinely wonderful? It's worth considering.

Equally worth considering are these tributes of other non-fans, who take the time to seek out a sports blog, and leave a comment, thanking Keith Olbermann for standing up and saying what certainly appeared to be the right thing to say, at the right time.

Which, in my own small way, I'm doing here.

Thanks.

... or, Perhaps Not

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:14:00 +0000

Apparently, I may have to leave Facebook. Boo hoo. Such a first world problem.

Here's the story: at one point, I had set up my blog to post automatically to FB when I actually got around to writing something. Ego, mainly. Now that I'm working at writing regularly again, I can't quite figure out how to disable to automatic posting, and some things that I want to say just don't have any place as Facebook posts. But when I disable Networked Blogs, and then post again... well, up comes the new blog entry in my FB feed, like a bad seafood dinner. Like this one did, no doubt.

There are other problems anyway. FB is a bit vapid, and a bit of a time suck. There are a few people whose posts I look forward to, and enjoy, I grant. As I often complain that I don't have any time, though, the obvious next step is clear. And just as I start to think "it would be nice to keep in touch with people", I realise that this is an unrealistic expectation. With a few exceptions, I simply don't have the time or the patience. I have enough for my immediate family and a few friends - most of the time.

GHR, as some of you will know, my wife and sometimes co-conspirator, gave up the Face-thingy last year, citing the waste of time factor. She's also been on a simplification kick since the new year began, and I am coming to see the charms of having fewer distractions from the truly important things. I don't know why I don't classify Twitter in the same way, but for now, I don't. Blame Stephen Fry, I guess.

Additionally, some of the privacy concerns which swirl around Facebook seem to be real, and I honestly don't want to have some vast swathe of my life spilled into the public domain because some git marketer got nominal permission to do so through some noxious trick or other (nor even a tiny trickle, as I don't add a lot to Facebook, but more still than I want in the hands of marketers chosen by bearded cardigan-wearing louts.)

So, people, if you actually read what I write (and I have no reason to expect that this is the case, in fact, I'd be rather surprised), or care otherwise, bookmark the blog, or otherwise drop me a line. But the FB presence will be gone before too long. Just a few last things to do.

Oh, and Facebook? You think you're going to trademark the word "face"? Really? Don't be a berk.

If It's Saturday, Then It Must Be Opera

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 20:43:00 +0000

I'm not particularly a fan of opera. This is not through want of trying. There's just something about it that I can never quite make myself enjoy. So when a bit of it came on the radio (well, on Classic FM), I was surprised by just how visceral and immediate my reaction was.

I was aged eleven years. It was a grey and wintry January Saturday, and I was driving round with my father in the early afternoon, because he wanted to go to estate sales and see if he could find any interesting bargains. My father always had the radios tuned to the local classical station - not because he particularly enjoyed it, I don't think, but because it was the least offensive thing to him on the airwaves, and he didn't just want silence. And on Saturday afternoons, the Metropolitan Opera of New York was always broadcast. Although I would listen, honestly, I could never learn to like it. So the grey January and opera became associated - quite unfairly, as much of it was written by Italians - in my mind. Never the twain shall part.

The winter sense of this recollection was very stark. As I write, another winter storm is bearing down, purportedly promising snow and ice in significant volumes. The older I grow, the less fond I am of winter, and no longer really have the thoughtless sense of diablerie that I had at twenty-five when it comes to going out in the cold. But as a child, well - children love the snow. I see it with my own kids, and can remember what it felt like then to be faced with the chance of a "snow day": words to conjure by. I just can't quite share the feeling. I can get close, but never entirely there. Which is a shame, and a defect on my part, I imagine.

The degree to which the sense memory triggered by a few snatches of opera was quite surprising, almost Proustian. And it makes me rather conscious of the fact that - inadvertently, I could produce the same result in my own children, twenty or thirty years from now. Hopefully, the association will be slightly better than mine.

Goodbye, MSNBC

noreply@blogger.com (William) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 13:44:00 +0000

(apologies in advance if this is something of a blurt)

Last night, I think that something in American media died.

Whatever reality emerges as 'fact' in the wake if Keith Olbermann's sudden, indeed, precipitous departure from his flagship MSNBC programme, it is difficult to see how the media landscape can be enriched by this event. Yes, there is a proliferation of Internet sources that cater to not merely left-leaning audiences, but to those of us who prefer our news to be built on fact, rather than on ham-handedly spun webs of illogic. No, I'm not sure that any of them are quite enough.

There has always been something in Mr Olbermann's presentation that I thought that I recognized. At times bombastic, as was his privilege, and occasionally taking what seemed to me to be the wrong emphasis on a topic, there was something familiar in his voice, something which resonated with me. A man who cited the life and work of Spike Milligan, for example, to my mind was of the same stripe as me. And yes, he also rekindled a liking for James Thurber in me too. And even if the Thurber segment was born out of his own personal tragedy in the death of his father, even his handling of that painful moment demonstrated what seemed to me a very dignified, and human, response to the realities of life and living, without descending into maudlin sentimentality or the crassly offensive platitudes of the religious.

Yes, the constant summoning of the ghost of Bill O'Reilly (link to him yourself, I'm not going to help his traffic) was a bit overmuch. The vile excrescence that is Glenn Beck likewise, Olbermann's anger and obvious bewilderment that some of the more vile people on the media and political scene of late had careers, never mind followings, was a reminder that we as members of a notionally-advanced western society have a right to demand more of our public figures, certainly more than what we are getting now.

Many people are just stunned. While Twitter burst to life on the announcement, other media was, at first, more muted. It's more likely the fact that so many people are bound by their contracts to keep quiet, like Rachel Maddow, the super-intelligent and sparkling Olbermann protege, who was a guest on HBOs Real Time with Bill Maher when the news broke. The LA Times has a good précis in this morning's edition, but it seems to add little to what broke last night. Even Fox, which announced his departure with ill-restrained glee and are certainly no more gracious winners than they are losers, covered this story with their usual half-addled blend of journalism and spittle-flecked venom.

Finally, I wish that I could draw some other conclusion than that the sinister hand of Comcast was behind this, despite their immediate denial. Sometimes a denial is true, sometimes it is merely convenient and plausible. No one who knows can tell us, so let the speculation begin. Start feeding the rumor mill. If there are other conclusions to draw, let's have the evidence, but it just looks bad. In fact, you'd think a media company would have more sense about appearances and timelines, unless they're incompetent, or contemptuous. Which is it, then?

In the meantime, what to do with MSNBC? Reward them for this in some way? I both watch the channel (thankfully not on Comcast, who ever thought I'd be grateful for Time Warner?) and listen to their Sirius satellite feed when I drive (despite the rubbish adverts that they run). I consume two - well, now one, I guess - of their podcasts. And I won't immediately abandon the Rachel Maddow Show, nor Lawrence O'Donnell, for whom I am developing a taste. But I will be suspicious. And, ultimately, turning off the Telly and reading a book is often a better way to learn things. So take that, Phil Griffin and co.: you get ambiguity and a tentative sense of suspicion and betrayal. From your base. Happy?

Finally, thank you, Keith, if i may be so familiar. It has been a good run, and I've appreciated what you have done and tried to do. Your exit, whatever the motivation, was dignified and premature. Best wishes.

The Countdown website is still up for the moment. Enjoy it while you can.

Good night, and good luck.