Who actually shuts down in a shutdown

So the government has been shut down for over a week now.  What does this mean?  NASA is shut down.  If you want to learn about the International Space Station, you'll need to learn Russian. The USGS is mostly shut down, except for hazards programs that are on skeleton staffs. On the other hand, the spy agencies are operating as normal. Taxes are still being collected. And you can still register as a congressional lobbyist. So all the unpleasant aspects of government are still business as usual. I guess that's what essential means. The main people suffering are those off work, and small business owners and employees and their suppliers.  See the Riprarian Rap to see how non-federal employees get screwed because contracts and grants get delayed or cancelled.

How the shutdown plays in SE Asia

I have been flying home from Korea via SE asia the last couple of days, and reading a few local newspapers.  What is happening here is that while the US Government remains shut down, the premier and PM of China have been engaging on a major goodwill tour, offering things like a billion dollars towards a new monorail project in Indonesia, or 40 billion dollars in increased trade with Malaysia over the next four years.  In contrast, the US has cancelled the Presidents trip, sending John Kerry in his place.
The local take on this, from the Persian Gulf to Japan and everywhere in between, is that it makes America look weak and unreliable, and that it is a serious blow to the new "Asian Pivot" strategy. China's rivals are worried that this inability of America to project soft power will tip the regional balance too far in China's favor.  Whether the bickering factions in Washington are too myopic to see or too shortsighted to care is not entirely clear.

The wood between the worlds

I’m typing this blog post on the airport wifi, while sitting in a lounge chair with full AC power.  Behind me, the waterfalls of the koi pond water gently tinkles, while to my left, the butterfly garden gently sleeps in the pre-dawn darkness.  I’m in Singapore airport, the long-haul air travel version of Narnia’s wood between the worlds.  

Singapore airport is everything LAX isn’t.  Spacious, relaxing, and accommodating to visitors, be they on the ground for half an hour or half a day.  As a long-haul transfer point, they know that people will need to stop somewhere, so they try to make themselves as attractive as possible to travelers.  It works, more than 50 million people came through here last year, most bound for somewhere else.

Never complain about your stove again

Geologist have it pretty easy, in terms of lab safety.  Compared to chemists and biologists, we have to deal with a relatively low number of lethal chemicals, and our habits confirm this.  It is not coincidence the people call us rock-lickers.  But there are still some reagents which are genuinely dangerous, and command respect.

For most rock knockers, the chief among these is hydrofluoric acid, or HF.  HF is a volatile (evaporates easily) acid which is notorious for being a contact poison.  You don’t have to drink it for you to kill you, as it will diffuse through skin, and attack muscle tissue and bone inside your body.  If the muscle it attacks is your heart, then you die.  As a result, geologists are taught from a young age to observe strict safety protocols with HF: gloves, face shields, aprons, appropriate supervision and fume cupboards are all part of the drill.

But not all fluorine health effects are as dramatic.  excess fluorine consumption can often cause dental fluorinosis, a condition in which excess fluorine is deposited in the teeth, discoloring them.  In more severe cases, fluorine deposition in the bones can lead to osteofluorosis, which can cause disfigurement, deformity, and chronic pain.

One area in which osteofluorosis is distressingly common is Guizhou, China.  Over the past decade, this disease here was linked to the combustion of high Fluorine coal.  Studies showed tha the clay that was intermixed wit hthe coal was high in F, and a steady stream of recommendations has come along describing how this must be getting aerosolized in smoke ,and adhering to food, particularly corn and chilies hung up in houses to dry.

But something didn’t add up.  People were educated to wash their vegetables, to not breathe coal smoke, and still the disease persisted.  Finally, recent studies showed that the F was not adhering to the food products.  TOF SIMS showed that  it appeared inside uncut chilies, and sometimes was associated with silica- particulate matter which should not be able to penetrate food and is biologically inactive.

This was the key to a renewed investigation into the coal.  Which, as it turns out, was not just rich in fluorine, but also rich in pyrite- fools gold.  And all of a sudden, everything fell into place.

When burned, pyrite reacts exothermically with oxygen and water to form iron oxide and sulfuric acid:

2FeS₂ + 8.5O₂ + 4H₂O -> Fe₂O₃ + 4H₂SO₄.

Sulfuric acid is not great to breathe, but it doesn’t cause fluorine poisoning.  It will, however, react with fluorite (the most common fluorine mineral like this:

H₂SO₄ + CaF₂ -> CaSO₄ + 2 HF

And there is the chemical that terrifies geochemists even in controlled lab spaces, HF, being generated in the household stove. It, in turn reacts with coal ash to form the toxic gas SiF₄, which permeates plant and animal tissues and deposits silicon inside of vegetables. In short, domestic cooking stoves are generating incredibly toxic F-bearing gases inside the home. Not even your brother-in-law’s cooking is as hazardous as this.  This was the coolest talk from the session I was fortunate enough to chair this afternoon; there is a paper here.

There’s no such thing as a climate scientist

 Here in Australia, the new Coalition government, which won office in 2013 on a head-in-the-sand approach to climate change, is busy dismantling all of the federal early warning and advisory bodies on climate.  There are snide gloating remarks floating around the internet to the effect that the climate scientists have been exposed, and that the conservatives need to cut the dole before these fake scientists can get any more government money. The election of Donald Trump to the American presidency in 2016 has generated similar chatter on their side of the internet. However, these ungracious comments also suffer from factual deficits.  There are no climate scientists; there are only scientists who study climate.

       Most of these scientists are Earth scientists. However, a substantial and growing proportion of them are also physicists, astronomers, mathematicians, meteorologists, and other physical scientists. The type of scientist generally describes how they attack scientific problems, not which problems they attack.

     A person who has mastered the physical and chemical tools that allow us to understand the Earth system can apply those tools to whatever knowledge suits their fancy.  I know el Niño experts who started out on gold mines, and frackers who started out studying el Niño.  I know isotope specialists and paleontologists who have applied their skills to both ocean heat uptake and oil & gas exploration.  Even Tim Flannery, the recently sacked chief of the climate commission, had a previous career in vertebrate paleontology.  

       So you don’t need to worry- or gloat- that the end of climate funding will mean these climate scientists will have nowhere else to go.  Sure, they will be disruptions, but the same skills that make them good at climate will let them pursue other Earth Science goals, or other careers that value the ability to constrain complex systems with limited and unusual data.  Many of these folks may even stay in climate, generating predictions that inform insurance companies who to raise rates on, or hedge funds who to divest out of. In fact, they might even end up better off.

There is an oft repeated criticism of climate researchers that they are only in it for the money. But nothing could be further from the truth.  Most recipients of university and advanced degrees in physical science are able to pull down significant salaries, because people who have these skills can solve a wide variety of important and lucrative problems. It is hard to say exactly how much a climate scientists is underpaid by, since academic career tracks are notoriously fickle, and comparative industry tracks often have share options, bonuses, profit sharing, or other financial inducements which can be difficult to predict. But by applying a broad uncertainty envelope, I think it is safe to say that from the moment a geologist finishes their undergraduate university degree, choosing a career in climate research rather than energy or mineral resource extraction generally results in a lifetime earnings deficit of somewhere between one and five million dollars. So climate researchers are not fattening up at the research funding trough. They are quite literally sacrificing a fortune to determine what kind or world we will be leaving our children.

    What this means is that the recent shuttering of government climate organizations will not mean the end of climate scientists, or even of climate science.  It simply means that Australians- and now possibly Americans- as a whole will no longer be the beneficiaries of their immense talents. Even if you, the reader, don’t have a job, these scientists will. It’s just that they won’t be working for you- or the rest of the public-  anymore; they’ll be working for someone much richer than you are, who probably doesn’t share your interests or values.

updated: 14 June 2017

You had me at “citation”

I recently attended the 2013 Goldschmidt conference in Florence Italy.  This is the largest geochemistry conference in the world.  It migrates between Europe and North America every year, with occasional forays into the Asia-Pacific region.  It is a big conference, with attendance in the mid thousands.

Unlike workshops, symposia, and little topical conferences, big conferences serve more as social and professional networking events than scientific problem solving sessions.

Senior scientists present the direction of their big projects.

Grad students show what they are capable of.

Junior scientists make sure they get widely known enough to pass their tenure review.

For young scientists looking for their next career move, it is important to meet people in their field.  Having been asked for advice on this topic, I thought I’d present the basics:

It is important to match those names that block out half a page of your thesis references with a face. These people will probably evaluate your proposals, work with you or your colleagues, and review your papers. 

The best way to do this is just to introduce yourself.

Try not to be nervous.  Or at least strive to be nervous gracefully.  And if you are nervous, don’t cover it up by trying too hard to show how smart you are.

The basic point is that if you see the name of a paper you like on a nametag, say hello.  Let the person know you liked their work.  There are very few scientists who don’t like being told that their research is interesting and useful.  Tell them you’re basing your work on theirs, and you’ll have them at “citation”

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.