It’s not a symposium until somebody dangles their ‘nads

Scholarly debate can warm things up, but it isn’t until the pants come off that the logical arguments really start to fly.  At least, that was my impression on seeing Peitro Testa’s drawing “The Symposium” at the Uffizi gallery in Italy.  I am not an art person.  Nor am I a cultural person.  But a went to the Uffizi anyway because I had a day to kill in Florence, and even thought the subject isn’t my thing, I appreciate just about anything done well, and I try to do activities while traveling that I can’t do at home.  As a premier collection of Renaissance art, the Uffizi fulfills both requirements.

I did not take a tablet, speaking tours, or other digital media for simultaneous information gathering as I went through.  I did get a guidebook just so that I knew what was where, and I took a paper notebook and a pen, on the off chance I would have a thought or two and put a few sentences down.  My notes ran to five pages, and are typed up here for the amusement of those of my dear friends and family who are art people.

The Roman copy of a (presumably lost) Greek Herucles and the centaur Nessus statue is astounding- the look of concentration on his face is gripping, and the detail is such that you can see the veins bulging out of his forearms.

The whole gold leaf fad of the 1300’s could not have ended too soon.

I think this Botticelli guy could have spent a bit more time and effort depicting the water around the shell. 

Pallas and the Centaur is good- I need to read up on whichever myth puts them together.

One subtle but interesting feature of the Botticelli room is that if you glaze out- or even (in my case) take off glasses to totally defocus- and cast eyes around the room, The religious paintings that dominate the west and north walls are noticeable darker than the mythological ones on the south and east.  Part of this could just be contrast- there is shiny gold leaf on some of the religious ones (I thought you were above that, big B).  But I think there is more than that.  The religious paintings are dominated (in terms of fractional surface area) by people in dark or deep red robes.  The buildings are also dark, and the skies are generally dusky.

In contract, the classical paintings have brighter skies (forest excluded), fewer dark buildings, and more bright water.  Most importantly, perhaps, the people who dominate these paintings are wearing far fewer clothes than their religious counterparts.  So pale white skin replaces drab dark robes.  Also, the west wall isn’t actually Botticelli (glasses back on now so I can read the tags), so maybe it is just a personal style thing.

I like the lizard in the skull of Signorelli’s crucifixion.

Leonardo’s landscapes are more impressive, relative to his contemporaries, than his people.

Perspective must have been the 15th century equivalent of computer graphics.  Crazy math changing the way we render images of the world we see.

Nice floor in the classical sculpture room.

Grotesque hallway ceilings more interesting than the classical busts. 

The porphyry she-wolf could be ground up for zircons!

Ceilings have changed from grotesque cartoons to perspective heavens.  I like the one with the soldier falling back to Earth.

The mom in Michaelangelo’s Holy trinity reminds me of one of those WWII working women posters.  Must be the biceps.

Ariadne get a new head every 200 years!?

The murder of innocents is as horrible as it sounds.  Horrible, but masterful in its depiction of evil and the effect on society.  The expressions on the mother’s faces are heart-rending.

Montegna’s circumcision is fun to look at.  I like the composition, the style, the fantastical landscapes.  Not sure the foreskin ascending to Heaven adds much, tohugh.

Vecchio’s Adam and Eve:

Adam has bedroom eyes, and Eve is like, “The apple?  Are you kidding me?”

The boy with the thorn sculpture- random awesomeness.

“Rooms of foreign painters” Because all those masterpieces you’ve been looking at so far?  Those are just the local talent, bitches.

Allegory of Vanity.

I doubt Pereda meant it this way, but the Angel comes across as a passive-aggressive minion of evil.  I see no salvation in his dark lurking figure or slack-faces, cold-eyed stance. 

The hopeless decadence of the skulls, weapons, wealth, and trinkets is palpable, but the unsympathetic angel and fiery Armageddon suggest that the ministry of angels offers nothing but the perpetration of European destruction.

The brightest thing in the painting is the globe, centered on “America si ne India Nova”.  This suggests that the only hope of salvation lies in the New World.  Or maybe that’s just my American eyes interpreting it all.

Is Saint Jerome penitent or shocked? “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

Was there an obesity epidemic in the 1600’s?  Potatoes coming back from the new world?

The landscape with dead birds ain’t all that, but I like the turtle.

“Ships in a storm” by Plattenberg.  Now that is a seascape.  Send notes ro Mr. Botticelli.  Seriously, though, the Dutch landscapers are pretty good. I’m guessing they inspired the Hudson River school north of New Amsterdam a few centuries later.

Every American should see Reuben’s Bacchanalia

Stella’s painting looks more like Christ scolded by angels.  The angels go from adoring to stroppy from back to front.  Did he use the same model and keep deferring her payment?

Gabbiani’s Ganymede looks like he’s about to be dumped.  The expressions are fantastic.  The boy is blushing, “Is this love?” and the eagle’s cold predatory eye is utterly remorseless.

So was Mazzola one of those folks who thinks kids should breastfeed until four?

Zimbo’s corruption of time is gruesomely graphic.  Rich people with sick taste commissioning horrors evidently ain’t a new trend.

I want to see the original Perseus and Medusa by Foggini.

Carvaggio’s Bacchus is suitable jaded, but his Medusa shield is cheesy and shallow.

The expressions in Stormer’s Annunciation are fabulous. “Who, me?”

Spardino’s banquet of the Gods is oddly portentous of a not-too-distant future where the powerful look down on earth, half in a stupor, from their windowless server farms and wreak havoc on those who displease them, or dare threaten their carnal bacchanalia.

And just when my brain filled up, there was the end.

Except…

You know you’re in an art museum when you aren’t sure if it is a urinal or a watersculpture.  Sometimes, all you have is context.  So if you need to go, and it’s just across from the stalls…

The best book you've never read...

My current job involves a fair amount of long haul air travel. This isn't great, but it does mean that I get to read a bit more than I used to. I generally chew through a paperpack per long haul flight.  So I've knocked off the usual suspects- Hunger games, Game of Thrones, various offerings, cultural and otherwise, from the late Iain M. Banks.  But I've also been lucky enough to catch some lesser known books.

The Woodenman series by Harry Connolly is a prime example.  A rare example of navel-gazeless urban fantasy, these books combine the velocity of a page-turning action story with the twists and turns of a whodunnit against the backdrop of unimaginable Lovecraftian horror. Refreshingly free of pretense and unapologetically relentless in their depiction of the corruption of power, the series balances accessibility and heft with style. The final book in the series is particularly gripping and poignant.  But just as Ray, the protagonist, is relentlessly drawn into battles between forces crueler and greater than himself, so went the books themselves.  "Circle of Enemies" was released just as the bookselling giant Borders was demolished, and failed to sell enough copies to extend the series.  Which makes is a very good book with a tiny circulation- a rare treasure in the ponderous landscape of pulp.
Ironically, though the loss of a bookstore chain doomed this story, its ghost lives on in the purgatory of the online retailer that slew it.  The e-books can still be conjured up via the internet, and even some paperbacks seem to still be in stock.
I'm don't know if the novelist will be publishing anything else- for all I know he's just a well constructed pseudonym of J. K. Rowling- but I hope he gets another chance, as his first three books were quite enjoyable.
 

这是一个语言的科学吗

Since the end of WW II, English has been the dominant language of science.  This was not always the case.  The late 19th century industrial and scientific explosion in Germany made German a potential contender before geopolitical events depopulated Germany of its scientists.  And earlier in the 19th century French, and originally Latin, were the languages of the day.

The reasons for this are simple.  England has long been a leader in scientific inquiry, and the post-war assimilation of European scientists by the USA and subsequent technological revolution there during the space race and information revolution has kept English on the forefront.

None-the-less, many scientists do still publish in their native languages.  And even when they do publish in English, there are many Journals, such as the Journal of South American Geology Earth Sciences, which offer abstracts in other languages, such as Portuguese and Spanish, the dominant languages of that continent.  Similarly, Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research publishes French Abstract, since is is based in France and published by a French research organisation.

None-the-less, I was surprised to see that the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences is now publishing abstracts in Chinese for its English articles.  Australia is an English speaking country, and although there are small but locally important groups of immigrants who speak various Chinese languages, they are not over-represented in the Earth Sciences.  And while Chinese geologists compete internationally better than their scientists on other fields, and Chinese investment is important in the Australian mineral export industry, it is still a bold move by the AJES editors to pick Chinese as the next language of science.

p.s. If you can't read the title, check that your operating system has Asian characters enabled.

Grains of sand

How many grains of sand are there on earth?  That is a good question.  But a ball-park estimate is fairly simple.

We will look at fine sand (grain size = 100 microns), and coarse sand (grain size = 1 mm).

So a cubic mm can hold 1000 grains of fine sand, or 1 grain of course sand.  Obviously grain size is important.

There are 1x10¹⁸ cubic millimeters in a cubic km.

How many cubic km of sand, sandstone, etc we have Is a tricky question.  But if we say the average thickness of all sand for the globe is 200m (a thin number in any sedimentary basin, but most of the Earth is not a basin in the traditional sense.  The surface area of earth is 5x10 ⁸ km2, so a 0.2 km layer gives 10 ⁸ cubic km of sand.

This brings the total grain count to somewhere between 10³ x 10 ¹⁸ x 10 ⁸ = 10 ²⁹ for the fine sand, and a thousand times less than that, or 10 ²⁶ grains of the coarse sand.  If you want to know how that compares to the number of stars in the sky, ask an astronomer.

How many of your co-authors have you actually met?

In my meandering career from academia to government to private sector, and back into all the grey areas in between, I've been an author on a few journal articles, government reports, and other publications. Usually, these are collaborations between groups of separated people, not all of whom interact with every other member of the team.  For example, in the academic literature, I have a total of 21 co-authors, of whom I have met 9.  If we include government reports as well as papers, then I have 42 co-authors, of whom I have met 17.  I find it interesting that this ratio is so similar between the two types of reporting (about 40%).  So I was wondering: for those of you who read this blog and publish, is your ratio about the same?

Universities Australia sticks it to the Australian high technology industry

Universities Australia has launched a recent ad campaign decrying proposed funding cuts to university research.  This ad showcases the products of off-shore corporate giants which are trying to destroy the Australian high tech industry. 

The complicated scientific instrument pictured in the ad from 0:12 to 0:17 is something called a IMS-1280, manufactured by the American technology amalgamation Ametek under the brand name of Cameca, a European tech company which Ametek took over last decade. Ametek is perhaps the most aggressive corporate giant around in trying to leverage the recent high Australian dollar to destroy the Australian technology industry. 

Obviously, Australia is only a mid-size country, and most instrumentation in Australian universities is sourced from off-shore suppliers.  But many of these suppliers are good corporate citizens, who set up Australian subsidiaries, employ Australian graduates, and work closely with Australian agents, subcontractors, and scientists to sustain the high technology industries that define advanced economies in the 21^st century.  Indeed, one of these companies, the Japanese technology group JEOL, has an electron probe installed just across the hall from where the picture in the ad was taken.

Ametek is not a good corporate citizens.  Instead of collaborating with Australian manufacturers, they hire foreign lawyers to block sales around the globe.  While other companies reinvest in Australian research they hire slick Morden-like spokespeople to belittle the achievements of Australian academics.  And instead of helping Australian universities improve productivity and reduce costs through co-developed hardware and software modifications, they lock their customers into exorbitant service contracts, the proceeds of which allow them to underbid Australian companies whose instruments are generally preferred by researchers all over the world.

Every time one of the instruments pictured in this ad is purchased instead of an Australian equivalent, Australian universities lose hundreds of thousands dollars in direct payments from Australian companies and their international customers. It also means that Australian companies cannot create jobs for university graduates, such as those pictured in the first part of the ad.

The government is proposing cuts to university funding because of a revenue shortfall.  Revenue is down because aggressive corporate tactics by companies like Ametek are denying work to Australian companies, resulting in fewer hours worked, reduced income for the employees, and reduced income tax payment to the government.  So the approach of Universities Australia to showcase one of the most aggressive job-killers in their ad asking for government money is incredibly callous to all Australian trying to earn a living outside of the Ivory tower.

The Wool Sock’s Carbon Footprint

Four years ago, I blogged about the cognitive disconnect between the ecological perceptions of wearing wool and eating beef.  However, I did not actually calculate out exactly what the carbon footprint of a wool sock is.  Here it goes:

According to Wikipedia’s wool bale article, a bale contains about 60 fleeces, and weights 150 ± 50 kg.  This gives a fleece weight of about 2.5 kg.

This wool sock weighs about 100g, meaning that you can get about 25 socks per fleece.  A sheep produces one fleece per year.

A ballpark estimate from the NSW department of primary industries suggests that a medium sized (45 kg) adult sheep in warm weather needs about 500g of dry feed per day to survive.  If this feed is mostly cellulose, it will metabolize to produce about 800g of CO₂ per day, or 297 kg/ year. Assuming 25 socks per year, that gives about 12 kg of respired CO₂ per sock.

However, in addition to respiration, sheep also produce a fair amount of methane, which is generally considered to be 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.   This paper estimates a methane yield of about 20 grams / day/ sheep, or about 7.3 kg of methane per year.  Using the 25 times multiplier, we get a CO₂ equivalence for that methane of about 180 kg / sheep/ year, which is a bit over half the direct respiration emissions.  Dividing by 25 socks/sheep gives is a CO₂ equivalent of 7.3 kg per sock (300 grams methane).  In total, our CO₂ equivalent emissions from the sheep are about 19 kg of CO₂ per wool sock- 12 from respiration, and 7 from methane.  This figure only includes the CO₂ footprint for growing the wool.  It does not include additional emissions from shearing, transporting the wool, spinning it into yard, and manufacturing the sock.  This is the same amount of CO₂ released by burning about 8 liters of gasoline (which is enough to drive a mid-size car 100 km), or one sixth the emissions of a top fuel drag race (with 2 cars in it).  So a hackey sack game with more than three pairs of new socks in it is worse for the atmosphere than this.

In contrast, a 50 gram synthetic sock (synthetics weigh less than wool) probably has a carbon footprint of 10-25 grams*.  It production is one THOUSAND times less carbon intensive than a wool sock.  So the next time some green evangelists starts looking down their noses at your car or your plate, check out their feet.

* In both the case of the plastic sock and the wool sock, the carbon in the sock itself is sequestered in the sock drawer for the lifetime of the sock, and in a landfill for several decades afterwards.  Unless you burn your old socks, which smells, or recycle your used synthetic socks into drink bottles, which is disgusting.

Why deflecting asteroids is a really bad idea

In the aftermath of the Chelyabinsk fireball last month, there have been increasing calls to identify asteroids on a collision course with Earth and develop technologies to deflect them.  This would be a very stupid thing to do.

The reason for this can be seen in figure 1, below.  In part A, this figure shows the minimum deflection necessary to make an asteroid on a collision course with  Earth to miss.  The deflection angle depends on how far from Earth this deflection occurs; the farther away, the smaller the angle.  In practice, very small angles from very far away would be used. 

The green line shows the minimum translational distance an asteroid must be deflected in order to miss the Earth.

Figure 1. An illustration for how the deflection needed to make an asteroid miss can be used to make many more hit.

The problem with such a system is shown in part B of the figure.  Here, an identical deflection is applied to a harmless asteroid that never would have hit Earth.  However, by deflecting it towards the Earth, this harmless rock ends up exploding in the atmosphere.  For a rock the size of the Chelyabinsk bolide, this is similar in force to a large nuclear weapon.

The area of the red circle- the smallest radius necessary to protect the earth- is three times the cross section of the earth.  So for every rock you deflect, there will be at least three harmless rocks that can be turned into weapons of mass destruction.  By definition, a “planetary defense system” turns every rock that passes close to the Earth into a potential weapon of mass destruction. 

Who would actually crash a space rock into a populated area of the Earth?  The same people who crash airplanes into skyscrapers of course.  And while only a few rouge countries can launch satellites, any spacecraft in radio contact with Earth can potentially be hijacked by a hacker on Earth with enough chicken wire to erect a makeshift dish in a desert.  Amateurs already pick up signals from our most distant space probes; an asteroid deflection mission would be a magnet for every doomsday cult, terrorist fanatic, delusional hacker, and other misanthropes whose imagination had previously been limited to shooting up schools.  Obviously nobody is going to design a space deflector to be hackable, but then the drone the Iranians hijacked wasn’t supposed to be vulnerable to those sorts of attacks either. 

The threat of an asteroid impact is miniscule.  More people were killed in floods this week than were killed by impacts in the known history of the human race.  A quick glance at the morphology of our planet will explain why.    Even the giant extinction-causing impacts are less common than large flood basalt eruptions of similar ecological lethality.  But developing the technology to deflect asteroids potentially gives all the wrong people access to a weapon the size of a large hydrogen bomb for a fraction of the development cost.  This is not a smart thing to do.