Bearcastle Blog Cerebral Spectroscopy / Nullus pudor est ad meliora transire

I am so enchanted by this concept–and ultra-simple recipe–for a personal, one-serving size, made-from-scratch-in-the-microwave recipe for chocolate cake that I'm putting a link to it here so I won't lose it before I get to try it. Y'all are free to try it, too.

It's called "Chocolate Cake in 5 Minutes!" and takes only 3 minutes in the microwave. The ingredients couldn't be simpler:

• 4 Tablespoons cake flour
• 4 Tablespoons sugar
• 2 Tablespoons cocoa
• 1 Egg
• 3 Tablespoons milk
• 3 Tablespoons oil
• 1 Mug

Refer to the link above for instructions with visual aids. Let me know if you try it first!

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
— George Bernard Shaw

This week's beard belongs to one Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819–1900), who served as Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888. That's not the reason for my interest, however. It's his pioneering work in pyramidology that I found out about today and wanted to bring to your attention. At the center of it all: the "pyramid inch".

One of the books I'm reading right now is Mario Levio's, The Golden Ratio : The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (New York : Broadway Books, 2002). Indeed the book is about the irrational number often denoted by the greek letter phi, and also called "the golden ratio". On page 53 & 54, in a chapter looking at what generally turn out to be crackpot theories about the ancients' use of the golden ratio in building virtually any building that has attracted the attention of mystical fantacists over the past couple hundred years, we encounter one of the more amusing: Mr. Piazzi Smyth. This brief version of the story comes from Levio's book, but there are plenty of other versions that cover the same ground with different words (e.g., the Wikipedia page for Piazzi Smyth).

First up was John Taylor who wrote a book called The Great Pyramid : Why Was It Built and Who Built It? This was well before von Daniken's ideas about aliens doing virtually everything for early people so it was assumed that the Egyptians did build them, but that they were divinely inspired: "Taylor was so convinced that the pyramid contained a variety of dimensions inspired by mathematical truths unknown to the ancient Egyptians that he concluded that its construction was the result of divine intervention."

Our author explains that, at the time, there was a popular theory that the British were the remnants of the "lost tribes of Israel" and Taylor worked out the idea that the cubit, that famous biblical unit of measure, was also the basic unit used in building the pyramids and that the cubit contained 25 "pyramid inches", which were slightly larger than the British inch. You can see where this is going: the obvious deduction, given the lost tribes of Israel thing, is that the British inch was the vestige of the pyramid inch, thus ordained by god.

Taylor's book, we're told, found great favor with Piazzi Smyth, particularly this theory about the "pyramid inch", largely because Piazzi Smyth was bitterly opposed to the introduction of the metric system in Britain. As Levio explains:

His [Piazzi Smyth's] pseudoscientific/theological logic worked something like this: The Great Pyramid was designed in inches; the mathematical properties of the pyramid show that it was constructed by divine inspiration; therefore, the inch is a God-given unit, unlike the centimeter, which was inspired 'by the wildest, most blood-thirsty and most atheistic revolution' (meaning the French Revolution).

Piazzi Smyth, by the way, wrote three very large books on the Great Pyramid in the 1860s. The first was called Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid; the inheritance included, of course, the British inch, which he saw as a cultural and theological heirloom. Most of today's mystical and numerological nonsense about the pyramids had their origins in the works of Taylor and Piazzi Smyth.

Anyway, Levio concludes his consideration of Piazzi Smyth this way:

After reading this text [from The Great pyramid, Its Secrets and Mysteries Revealed), we cannot be too surprised to find out that author Leonard Cottrell chose to entitle the chapter on Charles Piazzi Smythin in his [1956] book The Mountains of Pharaoh "The Great Pyramidiot."

Isn't it surprising how religious crackpots tend to sound the same century after century?

Here's a bit more reading on pyramids and pyramidology:

• "The Pyramid Inch and Charles Piazzi Smyth in Egypt", by Jimmy Dunn — a nice recounting of Piazzi Smyth's obsession with the Great Pyramid, his odd theories, and some of his useful contributions
• "The Great Pyramid", at Skeptic World — lots of facts and recounting of some strange notions of pyramidology
• "The Great Pyramid - Reflections in Time", By John Tatler — an analysis by a true believer that a "detailed look" at the dimensions of the Great Pyramid reveal that there's much more going on than just a tomb
• "Great Pyramid of Giza", reference.com — lots of facts and numbers, plus a section on dating, and one on "alternative theories"

I've always aspired to be a polymath,
But so far I've only made it to dilettante.
—me, last night

There's the woman in the short, red dress who brought on her own rape because she dressed provocatively. Or any number of black men in the south who had to be lynched because they got uppity. Martin Luther King, Jr. got plenty of advice from helpful white folk about how he could help his movement by keeping a lower profile and upsetting fewer of those fine people. And, of course, there are any number of caring, sensitive non-homophobes who have nothing against gay people if only we wouldn't keep shoving it down their throats [!]. Need I mention the so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and its overt scapegoating?

It's fascinating, albeit tiresome, how bullies always look for someone to blame for their own shortcomings.

And now there's Bishop Gene Robinson, of New Hampshire. You remember him: the seven-headed fifteen-foot tall fire-breathing dragon in the purple robes? Well, mild-mannered Gene, since he is widely recognized as the cause of the possible Anglican schism that may be happening even now by the African bishops and their embarrassing American hangers-on who are actually doing the apoplectic bullying, was not invited to the Lambeth Conference.

The Lambeth Conference, you recall, is a small do for Anglican bishops that happens once every ten years and to which all bishops come — except that Bishop Gene was uninvited. The spineless "leader" of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, seemed to think that by uninviting Bishop Gene, rather than uninviting the blood-thirsty mob who's been heckling Robinson and panting for schism, he could quell the blood-lust and contain the wild fire of schism. The word "appeasement" has been much in the news recently for being so widely misunderstood and misapplied, but this might be a reason to put it back to use in headlines.

Williams' strategy hasn't worked, and he should have known it wouldn't work. (The ever entertaining and wise Archbishop Desmond Tutu has made some remarks.) Bullies bully because that's what they like to do, appeasement never coaxes the genii back into the bottle, and besides, it was wrong. One could try to claim that Williams had a doubly devious strategy in which he announced that he would uninvite Robinson and set off the firestorm in which the braying pack of schism-hyenas would confirm to the world the homophobic bullies they are–but I think that probably gives Williams too much credit for deep strategic thinking.

Speaking frankly as the atheist observer, it's all mildly amusing. I have no good reason to try to cheer on the Anglican Communion by offering good advice, but if I thought Archbishop Williams were listening I'd call for him to reverse his position, lead for a change, and do the right thing. Stiff upper lip, and all. Then, when he did, I would take credit for it

Doing the right thing is hard to do, but we know this because, otherwise, everyone would be doing it.

We had some good friends over for dinner last night. I tried to keep our menu on the light, summery side, but it was also the case that the supermarket had a really good sale on (beef) top round roasts, so that was to be our main course. Here's the menu we settled on:

1. Cold Piña Colada Soup
2. London Broil
   Oven Roasted Potatoes
   Italian Green Salad
3. Light Lemon Cheesecake

I'm happy to say that it all came out tasting quite nice, which was a bit of a surprise since two of the recipes were getting tried for the first time. Yes, yes, I know what everyone says, but most times I can't really get up the motivation for trying out something new for just the two of us. Besides, these were friends–we invite them to dine with a sense of adventure and we can always order Chinese carry-out if things really go awry.

But things didn't go awry. I was really impressed with this technique for roasting the london broil / top round roast, too. It was easy, it seems trustworthy, and it cooked the meat to exactly the rare to medium-rare that I wanted. With the marinade it came out juicy and full of flavor with an expectedly firm texture, no sauce necessary.

I'd been wanting to try the Light Lemon Cheesecake recipe for awhile now and I'm glad I finally got around to it. It came out tasting quite a bit like Cold Lemon Soufflé with a lot less work. Now, to be fair, the Soufflé has a much more refined texture and taste and I will still be making it, but the Light Lemon Cheesecake was remarkably satisfying for something so easy to put together. Not to mention that, made this way, it has virtually no carbohydrates, making it low in guilt for us diabetics. It also appealed to my retro leanings and my fascination for all things Jell-O.

The salad was basically what I've described before as an "Italian Green Salad". This one was a big bowl of mixed greens, dressed with olive oil (only), then topped with cucumber, pear, raisins, and green onions.

On to the recipes!

— Cold Piña Colada Soup —

• 2 cans (20 oz ea) crushed pineapple in its own juice (about 2 cups), with juice
• 1.5 cups (one can + a little milk) coconut milk
• 1/4 cup sweetener (I use the equivalent amount of granular Splenda)
• 3 tablespoons rum

In two batches, process everything in the food processor until it's rather smooth. I put about half the amount of everything into the processor for each batch and then stir both batches together in a big bowl so it all comes out uniform.

Serve well chilled.

This amount makes four generous servings or six modest servings. It's a bit on the filling side, so judge accordingly. NB: The soup really, really tastes better if you chill it overnight in the refrigerator.

[Originally from The Fruit Cookbook, by Nicola Routhier.]

— London Broil (Top Round Roast) —

• 1, 3 lb. beef top round roast (about one inch thick)
• 1 bottle prepared marinade (I used a commercial "soy sauce and ginger" marinade)
• some tablespoons olive oil

Put the roast in a large plastic bag and pour in a generous amount of marinade. Seal the bag and marinate overnight in the refrigerator.

Preheat the over to 425°F.

Oil a jelly roll pan and put the roast on it. Roast 30 minutes to an internal temperature of 125°F for medium-rare.

Out of the oven, put some aluminum foil loosely over the roast and let it sit at least 10 minutes, then cut across the grain into very thin slices.

(More or less from the meat man.)

— Oven Roasted Potatoes —

• 2 pounds of potatoes, or more or less; red-skinned ones are good
• about 1/4 cup olive oil
• dried herbs: rosemary, or "italian seasoning" is good

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Scrub potatoes and leave the peels on or peel as you prefer. Cut them into pieces about an inch on a side.

Put the potato pieces in a large mixing bowl, sprinkle on the herbs and salt and pepper as you like, pour on the olive oil, and stir to coat the potato pieces with the herby oil.

Bake on a cookie sheet for about 45 minutes to an hour until very crispy and browned to your taste.

(adapted from Suzanne Dunaway, Rome, at Home : The Spirit of La Cucina Romana in Your Home Kitchen, New York : Broadway Books, 2004.)

— Light Lemon Cheesecake —

• 3 tablespoons graham cracker crumbs (two to three 4-segment cracker's worth)
• 1 package (4 serving size) sugar-free lemon-flavored gelatin
• 2/3 cup boiling water
• 16-oz package cream cheese (at room temperature)
• zest of one lemon
• juice of that lemon
• 2 cups thawed non-dairy whipped topping

Spray all side and bottom of an 8-inch spring-form pan with cooking spray. Sprinkle crumbs around the rim of the pan.

Put gelatin in the food processor. Add the boiling water and process until gelatin is thoroughly dissolved.

Add cream cheese to gelatin and process until smooth. Pour into a large bowl.

Stir in the lemon juice and lemon zest. Fold in the whipped topping. Pour into the spring-form pan and chill for at least 4 hours.

(from The Magic of Jell-O : 100 New and Favorite Recipes Celebrating 100 Years of Fun with Jell-O, New York : Sterling Publishing, Inc., 1998.)

The year–that would be 2008, if memory serves–is now half over so it seemed like a good time for me to give a brief update on the official Ars Hermeneutica "Science-Book Challenge 2008".

I am pleased to report ample success at the same time I can note the year is only half over and anyone and everyone is still invited to take the challenge. Just this week we passed a milestone: we now have just over 100 book notes on a wide range of informative, enlightening, and entertaining nonfiction books that have a scientific outlook or a science theme. (Yes, there are even a few that we suggest you avoid).

This has come about through the efforts of seven reviewers, challengers all, who have contributed 35 notes on books read since the beginning of 2008. We are grateful to each one of them and delighted at the variety of titles and the diversity of the voices writing about them.

Here's the mid-year roundup of books, book notes, and the notes' authors. Read some notes, choose some books, and enjoy yourself and learn something at the same time!

• —Melanie—
• George Johnson, Miss Leavitt’s Stars : The Untold Story of the Woman who Discovered How to Measure the Universe
• —Eva—
• Neil deGrasse Tyson, Death by Black Hole : And Other Cosmic Quandaries
• Matt Ridley, The Red Queen : Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
• Natalie Angier, The Canon : A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
• Clea Koff, The Bone Woman : a Forensic Anthropologist’s Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo
• Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief
• —Melanie—
• Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire : A Plant’s Eye View of the World
• Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food : An Eater's Manifesto
• —Emily Barton—
• James D. Watson, The Double Helix : A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
• —Maggie—
• Bill Hayes, The Anatomist : A True Story of Gray’s Anatomy
• Natalie Angier, The Canon : A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
• —RRT—
• Jackson and Jamieson, unSpun : Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation
• Howard Bloom, Out There : The Government's Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials
• Astronaut Mike Mullane, Riding Rockets : The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut/a>
• David L. Boslaugh, When Computers Went to Sea : The Digitization of the United States Navy
• —SJB (Isaac)—
• Linda Simon, Dark Light : Electricity and Anxiety from the Telegraph to the X-Ray
• Dr. Nick Trout, Tell Me Where It Hurts : A Day of Humor, Healing and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon
• —JNS (your humble blogger)—
• Chet Raymo, Walking Zero : Discovering Cosmic Space and Time Along the Prime Meridian
• Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee : The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
• Edward O. Wilson, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth
• Andrew Robinson, The Story of Measurement
• John H. Lienhard, Inventing Modern : Growing up with X-Rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfins
• Scott Huler : Defining the Wind
• P.W. Atkins, The Periodic Kingdom : A Journey into the Land of the Chemical Elements
• Colin Tudge, The Time Before History : 5 Million Years of Human Impact
• Peter Watson, Ideas : A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
• Erik Larson, Isaac's Storm : A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
• Simon Winchester, The Map that Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
• Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable
• Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus : The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
• Wallace Arthur, Creatures of Accident : The Rise of the Animal Kingdom
• Janet Lembke, Despicable Species : On Cowbirds, Kudzu, Hornworms, and Other Scourges
• Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell : Notes of a Biology Watcher
• James Schwartz, In Pursuit of the Gene : From Darwin to DNA
• Simon LeVay, When Science Goes Wrong : Twelve Tales from the Dark Side of Discovery

Ars Hermeneutica and I are looking for a very special volunteer, just the right person to double our full-time volunteer staff. I intend this to be a volunteer-to-hire position since our top priority will be to bring some projects to the money-bearing stage sooner rather than later so that we can pay ourselves and hire others. Obviously the selected person will have a significant affect on the course of Ars' trajectory, and I'd like to think that it has the potential to be a very satisfying career wager.

I operate quite well as the ideas guy; I desperately need a doer. Here is the position description and associated information, where it will remain until I identify the right person. So, if the link is there I'm still looking.

I don't need instant full time, and we'll be working for awhile yet without offices, but when we alight we will be located in or near Bowie, Maryland, which is in the Washington, DC / Baltimore, MD / Annapolis, MD triangle.

I am posting this here in the hopes of gaining a little more widespread exposure. If you know someone who might be interested, or you know someone who knows someone, etc, please pass the information along.

This week's very smart beard, which might live up to calling it a van Dyke, belongs to geneticist and cellist Edmund Beecher Wilson (1856–1939). On the Columbia University Website, where he is one of their "Living Legacies" (despite his being deceased these last 70 years), he is hailed as the first "cell biologist", with which history seems agreeable. He spent the bulk of his career at that institution. That "living Legacies" article, "Edmund Beecher Wilson: America's First Cell Biologist", by Qais Al-Awqati, is a good appreciation of E.B.Wilson's work and life, and the source of these two photographs of the younger Wilson.

Early in his research life, just after getting his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, Wilson became interested in studying the connection between evolution and phylogeny, or phylogenetics (the course of evolution of a species). Later he moved into cell biology and made his greatest discoveries through careful and detailed observation of cell divisions during development, starting with the first division after fertilization of an egg cell by a sperm cell. His work set the course for genetics: the discovery of chromosomes, his own discovery that X and Y chromosomes determine sex (gender), which was a controversial finding at the time, and integrating Mendelian patterns of inheritance into genetics (which wasn't quite genetics at the time, of course).

Some of this I knew about because I recently finished reading In Pursuit of the Gene : From Darwin to DNA (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press 2008) by James Schwartz. I liked the book very much, predominantly for these two reasons: 1) it was a thoroughly researched history of the idea of the gene and how it evolved from its earliest (and rather strange) germ of an idea in the theories of Darwin; and 2) author Schwartz actually discussed experiments and their results as a way to comprehend how the idea of the gene made its perilous journey to the modern idea that everyone recognizes and takes for granted. Of course, I wrote a book note.

Even though Schwartz took a biographical approach to telling his story, which he could do largely because the gene-meme almost moved from person to person, as though stepping across a stream on stones, the biographical material were there to serve his main story, that of the idea of the gene. One thing that I did not pick up from Schwartz' book was Wilson's love of music, nor the fact that he was a fellow cellist. This is from Qais Al-Awqati's piece (linked above):

It seems that everybody in Wilson’s family played an instrument. His father played the violin and cello, his mother and sister played the piano (as did both of his aunts), and his brother Charles was a violinist. Wilson began by taking singing lessons, and although he did not have a good singing voice, he says that these lessons left him “with an inveterate habit of reading all of music in do re mi language.” He learned to play the flute, but when he went to Johns Hopkins, he developed a lifelong passion for playing the cello. He wrote, “I was too old to take up so difficult an instrument with any hope of mastering it.” But he eventually became an accomplished cellist and reveled in playing quartets in Bryn Mawr, Philadelphia, and New York.

What a treat: a cute, bearded scientist who was also a cellist! I feel a strange connection across the decades.

This evening we were listening, with quite a bit of pleasure, to a recording we recently purchased. It's called "Heavenly Harmonies"; it records the 13-voice a capella group "Stile Antico" singing William Byrd's (c. 1540–1623) "Motets" (from Cantiones sacrae I & II) and "Mass Propers for Pentecost (from Gradualia, 1607), interspersed with "9 Psalm Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter" by Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585). (Harmonia Mundi USA, HMU 807463).

Naturally, while we were listening Isaac was doing some research. In particular he wanted to see whether the musical score for the Tallis was online, so that we might consider singing them sometime. Happily they are, at the Choral Public Domain Library (an invaluable resource for stuff like this). See: "Nine Psalm Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter (Thomas Tallis)".

It seems that Archbishop Parker published, in 1567, English-verse rhyming translations of all the biblical psalms. These versions apparently were of dubious value even at the time since, we are told, the published work never went on sale.

Anyway, as an example, here are verses 1 & 2 of psalm 68, as translated by Parker (this from the liner notes to the recording):

Let God arise, in majesty,
And scattered be his foes;
Yea flee they all, his sight in face,
To him which hateful goes;
As smoke is driv'n, and comes to nought,
Repulse their tyrrany;
At face of fire, it's wax doth melt,
God's face the bad might fly.

Wow!

Tallis wrote 9 tunes that were to be matched with the appropriate psalm translation according to the "accent" that was indicated for each psalm. The guidelines for the matching, not surprisingly, are presented in another poem (from the CPDL page) that describes "The nature of the eyght tunes":

~ 1 The first is méeke: deuout to sée,
\ 2 The second sad: in maiesty.
\ 3 The third doth rage: and roughly brayth.
/ 4 The fourth doth fawne: and flattry playth,
/ 5 The fyfth delight: and laugheth the more,
\ 6 The sixt bewayleth: it wéepeth full sore,
\ 7 The seuenth tredeth stoute: in froward race,
~ 8 The eyghte goeth milde: in modest pace.

I can't say for sure that we heard exactly those natures in the recording, but perhaps we weren't listening closely enough.

Our eyes were drawn particularly to this note about performance:

The Tenor of these partes be for the people when they will syng alone, the other parts, put for greater queers [= "choirs", of course!], or to suche as will syng or play them priuatelye.

Helpfully the CPDL page provides this remaining fact that may answer a question your didn't even know you had:

It is interesting to note that Psalme. 2. THE THIRD TUNE is the "theme" used in Ralph Vaughan Williams' popular "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis".

I'm sure that at this point some remark would be appropriate about how even the sweetest smelling flowers do grow from manure.

I apologize that I neglected to wish all my Canadian friends a happy Canada Day, although we did talk about maple trees on the second. Honestly, Chris, I adore maple trees, just some more than others. To celebrate y'all might enjoy looking at Bill's "Canada Day, 1976" photo album. As one friend wrote, he understood that today was Canada Day down here in the US.

We did rejoice a bit around here on the news of Jesse Helms' death, but not for long because his memory doesn't deserve much of our time. He was more like that big, festering wound that you just want to forget about when it finally goes away. Say something positive about the dead? He was a positively horrible Senator.

One blog I like to keep in my feeds (listed at right) is ManBabies. (I know, I've mentioned it before, but this is a party!) The idea is easily explained: once a day we get to see a photo (maybe two) of a baby with its dad (or some other man, perhaps) in which their heads have been interchanged. Of course it's peculiar–like a good friend should be. Sometimes it's a bit unsettling, but it's always worth the few moments it takes to look. These are a few favorites of mine from the past months that I keep looking at:

• "I WANT THE CHICKEN STRIPS"
• "doorwayyyy" (those sweaters are too precious)
• "lil cub scout" (this one creeps me out a bit, but the facial expressions are fabulous)
• "AAAH A MONSTER!" (this one makes me laugh every time, like a joke told with perfect timing)

You know that I adore the comic xkcd ("A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language"), which is most definitely not to everyone's taste, so I will reveal more about myself by sharing the three that I've saved over the last few months that I find inexplicably hysterical.

• "How it Happened" — It's the way the little guy on the right doesn't move at the end that's the kicker. It's okay: I made Isaac look and he didn't understand why I was slapping my knees either.
• "Purity" — One of my favorite memories from the time of the great Pons & Fleischmann cold-fusion debacle was news reporting from a meeting of the American Physical Society (in Baltimore, that meeting) where there were the first, very well attended sessions of experiments not replicating their results. One news reporter got some physicist on tape actually saying (paraphrasing) "Well, what did you expect? They were chemists." This cartoon summarizes what the whole professional pecking order are thinking, but nobody's supposed to say it aloud for consumption by mere mortals.
• "Unscientific" — I just can't help but laugh at the idea of "zombie Feynman". As a bonus, he's defending "Myth Busters" in a way I approve.

I've also saved things from Boing Boing over the last couple of months and can't think of anything to do with them, so here they are.

• "Concrete washbasin shaped like a fossil ammonite" — this is just a gorgeous picture of something I wouldn't mind having in my own very-high-concept bathroom, if I had one. I bet Mike, who's a real fossil fan, would like one of these.
• "Google 'shell' for your browser" — It's called "goosh" (of course). Some of us really old-fashioned Unix types just prefer an interface where we type and results appear in bad computer-terminal typefaces, at least sometimes. Old fart that I am, I still use "vi" (or a derivative) for lots of stuff because it's faster for me.
• "We could have colonized Mars with the money we spent on the Iraq war — what else could we do?" — That's a pretty self-explanatory title: what could we have done with $6 Trillion that might have been better than wasting it in Iraq? Every time I saw this article in my saved list, it made me think of the joke that goes, in brief: The son goes into the kitchen to talk to his mom; she's chopping vegetables for dinner. "Mom, I have something to tell you: I'm gay." She stops chopping and points the knife at him. "Does that mean you men's penises in your mouth?" she asks. Rather embarrassed the son answers, "Yes." Mom resumes chopping: "I don't ever want to hear you complain about my cooking again!" After $6 Trillion I'm thinking I don't ever want to hear complaints about how $10 million for the National Endowment for the Arts is money the US can't afford. (May Jesse Helms spin in his grave, as soon as he gets there.)
• "Slate's John Levin on computer solitaire" — Mr. Levin apparently offers several high-brow reasons why solitaire games on computers are so popular but seems to overlook two obvious components of the answer: 1) solitaire has been a very popular, one-person pastime for a very long time; and 2) playing on the computer means not shuffling and playing out the cards, thus keeping the fingers from getting sore.
• "Rats are ticklish!" — with video! Apparently rats, who laugh in ultrasound, enjoy being tickled.
• "Band 'shoots' video by sending Data Protection Act requests to CCTVs that caught them performing" — Their song doesn't do all that much for me — not my favorite genre, so mark it up to personal taste — but I love the concept.
• "Patriot Act gag-order on the Internet Archive clobbered by EFF and ACLU" — This was just a bit of good news about one of the most un-American bits of the so-called "Patriot Act", wherein not only could a federal agency seize information so long as they wrote a letter about it, the person from whom the information was seized was enjoined from even talking about it.

[Later additions follow: there were a few more from Boing Boing I had pinned that Bloglines finally coughed up from the database. I'd wondered where they got to.]

• "Ill. Rep. Monique Davis: it's dangerous for children to know atheists exist, orders atheist to stop testifying" — I'm an atheist; naturally I think it's dangerous for people to hear anything that Monique Davis has to say.
• "Lush visualizations of ON THE ROAD's language" — this one caught my eye just for the ideas about interesting ways to visualize textual structures.
• "Dan Proops's digital culture-inspired oil paintings" — Mr. Proops is quoted as thinking that cubist art had an influence on computer interfaces. It's an interesting idea but also rather silly. I thought I might write an essay on the topic sometime.
• "Science News on food science" — The excerpt mentions Harold McGee's fabulous book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, which I read a number of years ago (there seems to be a new edition–book note anyone?), as well as the "Physicist in the Kitchen" lecture some years back by Nicholas Kurti. I saw him (Kurti) when I was in graduate school. His demonstrations were great fun, like the "Inside-Out Baked Alaska" that he made in a microwave oven.
• "Libraries for clothes" — mentions "the Belmont Clothes Library in Western Australia", where you can check out an outfit. What a delightful idea.

In one short news story on the radio this afternoon I simultaneously learned two things:

1. For the last 30 years, the Bradford Pear has been the official tree of Prince George's County, Maryland; and
2. As of today, the Bradford Pear is no longer the official tree of Prince George's County, Maryland.

To make a long story short, here's a good, brief summary of the tree and its popularity:

Bradford pears are a variety of a pear native to Korea and China, Pyrus calleryana, which was first introduced to Western horticulture in 1908. The seedling which later became Pyrus calleryana "Bradford" was brought from Nanking in 1919, but it wasn't until 1963 that the USDA introduced the variety commercially.

The tree was supposed to be the perfect street tree, with profuse early bloom, a restricted pyramidal shape, and good fall color. So many landscapers, urban planners, and homeowners agreed with your assessment of this tree's beauty that today it can be found almost everywhere.

[Marc Montefusco, "The Pros & Cons of Bradford Pears", Frederick County Master Gardener Program, accessed 1 July 2008.]

They are indeed very pretty in the spring, especially by the dozens lining suburban roads, as they do in many places around here. Here are some lovely pictures of rows of Bradford Pears in bloom: one, two, three.

As the announcer said in his brief news story, the Bradford Pear does not age well. It seems that as they mature they become brittle and easily broken by wind or ice. We've been discovering that around here the last few years. Some of the streets in our neighborhood had Bradford Pears at their sides, but the last couple of years have taken their toll and we now have several fewer of the trees left.

Rarely does an entire tree get destroyed, however; more typically, a big branch, maybe half the tree at a time, will be split off. There was one tree just up the street that had been dealt such a serious blow twice in as many years so that all that was left was a six-foot trunk with this long, skinny branch-like thing growing out of it. I thought it had a lot of character, actually, but the home-owner apparently disagreed with me and finally cut the whole thing down.

It is a bit of a shame, really, because they are quite beautiful when they all bloom and during the rest of the year they have a very graceful shape. Alas, we seem to be left with only the red maples, which are nice enough trees but one can tire of red maples by the gross.

This lovely beard, a beautiful example of a mid-twentieth-century schnauzer, belongs to the chemist Richard Willstätter. I confess that his name was not familiar to me despite his having won the 1915 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Here are two short excerpts from his Nobel biography that summarize his prize-winning research.

As a young man he studied [c. 1902] principally the structure and synthesis of plant alkaloids such as atropine and cocaine. In this, as in his later work on quinone and quinone type compounds which are the basis of many dyestuffs, he sought to acquire skill in chemical methods in order to prepare himself for the extensive and more difficult work of investigating plant and animal pigments. [From Munich he went to work in Switzerland for seven years, returning to Germany in 1912, where he took up a position in a newly established Institute of Chemistry in Berlin/Dahlem.]

In the two short years before the outbreak of the first World War he was able with a team of collaborators to round off his investigations into chlorophyll and, in connexion with that, to complete some work on haemoglobin and, in rapid succession, to carry out his studies of anthocyanes, the colouring matter of flowers and fruits. These investigations into plant pigments, especially the work on chlorophyll, were honoured by the award of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1915)….

His main achievement, according to the Nobel presentation, was elucidating the chemical nature of the chlorophyll and "having been the first to recognize and to prove with complete evidence the fact that magnesium is not an impurity, but is an integral part of the native, pure chlorophyll - a fact of high importance from the biological point of view (source, the rest of which makes for very interesting reading)." By the way, "Plant Pigments" was the title of Willstätter's Nobel lecture.

He continued to be productive after winning the prize and worked until he chose to end his career in what must have seemed a startling move.

Willstätter's career came to a tragic end when, as a gesture against increasing antisemitism, he announced his retirement in 1924. Expressions of confidence by the Faculty, by his students and by the Minister failed to shake the fifty-three year old scientist in his decision to resign. He lived on in retirement in Munich, maintaining contact only with those of his pupils who remained in the Institute and with his successor, Heinrich Wieland, whom he had nominated. Dazzling offers both at home and abroad were alike rejected by him. In 1938 he fled from the Gestapo with the help of his pupil A. Stoll and managed to emigrate to Switzerland, losing all but a meagre part of his belongings.

He lived in Switzerland until he died on 3 August 1942, of a heart attack. I was interested to read that a memorial to Willstätter was unveiled in Muroalto, where he lived his last years, in 1956, the year I was born.

This portrait photograph (source) was taken in 1942 by an unidentified photographer. And now we come to the original reason that Willstätter is this week's BoW, namely so that I could mention that the Smithsonian Institution's Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology has put some of their large collection of portraits of scientists and inventors online at Flickr: "Portraits of Scientists and Inventors". This collection has 144 portraits; they tell us that the entire collection is available online in the "Scientific Identity" digital collection.

I first read about the Smithsonian Library's adding photographs to the Flickr commons project by reading an entry in the Smithsonian Library's blog. It wasn't long ago that the Library of Congress delighted fans of photography by putting big chunks of their collections on Flickr in a first-of-its-kind collaboration.

It's a lot of fun with wonderful images to see; it's also a great sink of one's time. But this is culture and heritage and history, right? Besides, I think we're all better people for knowing more about Richard Willstätter now. What a learning experience is Beard of the Week!

I expect we'll be exploring more of these portraits in the future.

When conversation really, really lags and I feel the need to do something desperate, I have long relied on my metaphysical topics: 1) the potato-chip question^*; and 2) the antique-car question. Topic #2 is our purpose at the moment.

The question is rather simply put, as it should be. Imagine an antique or classic car, say, a 1956 Ford Thunderbird, long one of my favorites, the one with the removable fiberglass top. In "Thunderbird Green" should do nicely, I think.

Anyway, imagine that this Thunderbird is exceptionally well maintained. As light bulbs burn out they are replaced. As other parts wear out, they, too, are replaced. The engine has probably been taken apart and put back together at least twice, and perhaps the transmission has been replaced. Over time body work is necessary here and there, possibly a new fender and a new bumper were required.

You get the picture. Over time little bits of the Thunderbird are replaced. After some number of years it becomes possible, then likely, that none of the physical materials of which the Thunderbird is currently constituted were actually incorporated into this car in the factor. In fact, every piece of the original car has been replaced at one time or another. And yet, provided the replacements are made small enough at any one time, the car will still be considered an original and well-maintained 1956 Thunderbird by most people, collectors and connoisseurs in particular.

And yet no piece or particle of the car is in any way original. Where, then, resides the essence of the car? The question appears in other guises, too. I once read a fascinating article about different attitudes between American conservationists and Asian conservationists, the former being aghast to learn that the latter conserved old buildings by tearing them down and building them afresh every 100 years or so.

I think it's a fascinating question; some people think it's trivial and irritating, but they're not very interesting people anyway, so they can be ignored.

But the question itself, interesting as it is, is not the point of this essay. The real point is that I had always thought this was my question, having never encountered anyone else who had put this notion quite this way. Until this morning, that is.

My current reading, one of it anyway, is the mystery novel by Reed Farret Coleman called Empty Ever After. So far so good, but I'm really only getting started.

Regardless, what should I read this morning but this (from p. 89):

How much, I wondered, peering at my tired-looking reflection, had I changed without noticing?I thought back to philosophy class at Brooklyn College.

Essay #1
If you own a car for a number of years and over the course of those many years you replace part after part, at what point does that car cease being th original car? Does that car ever cease being what it once was? If you were to replace every part, would it cease being the old car?

I was startled, but now I know that I'm not alone, for better or worse.
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^* Without going into detail, the question has to do with how to distinguish between a "potato chip" and "part of a potato chip". In any group I find that everyone feels the question is trivial and the answer obvious, but if the group is larger than 5 or 6 there can be serious disagreements on the obvious answer.

I've been thinking lately about continuity in narrative, "continuity" rather in the sense it is used in film: what the author narrates to the reader in getting a character from one point in the plot to the next point. I imagine it's been on my mind since I recently finished a novel by an author who had ideas that diverged from my expectations about what was necessary to narrate, resulting in something akin to a badly edited film.

When I'm writing fiction I sometimes think explicitly about continuity, but more often my characters move around and the plot unfolds according to my intuition–until one of my initial readers points to a problem where his expectations differed from my intuition. It's also under the heading of "continuity" where I file most of my thoughts about what makes one writer different from another. At the most abstract (and silliest, tautological) level, different authors choose to put different words after each other from the gazillion of available choices.

Still rather on the obvious side: different authors choose to show us different things to tell their story. Some authors show and describe in lots of detail; others go for a less opulent approach. I tend towards the latter, partly because I don't tend towards flowery, over-abundant prose^* I also prefer psychological characterization to physical characterization, particularly when I want the reader to fill in many of the details to suit his own taste, for example. I also have a taste for ambiguity.

But still, all of us writing fiction have to get characters from here to there, whether in physical reality or in psychological unreality (with the exception, I suppose, of some experimental writing). There clearly is a great deal of latitude in what an individual author can choose to show, but just as clearly there are boundaries not to cross. Where are the boundaries? Are the boundaries the same for different readers?

For instance, this passage cuts way to quickly for me not to be jarred by reading it.

Mona looked quickly around the hotel lobby. Near the stairs she saw a glint off gun metal. She had to get out of there!

She floored the accelerator in her Porsche, squealing tires as she backed out of her space and sped out of the parking lot.

On the other hand, this level of detail is hardly necessary, until the author feels it is revealing something about the character.

Mona looked quickly around the hotel lobby. Near the stairs she saw a glint off gun metal. She had to get out of there!

Mona rotated forty degrees to her left and began striding quickly towards the revolving door ahead of her, starting with her right foot. After forty-two paces she reached the revolving door, which she pushed heavily to get it moving. The rubber flashing on the door flapped twice as ….

Sorry, but that was just getting tiresome and I didn't really care to figure out just how many steps in her red high-heels (2.5" heels) it would take to get to her car.

Some of the continuity choices affect the pace at which the action seems to move. Quick cuts and fast action go with a sort of blur of background detail as it rushes past. Slower action and more detail might accompany a more reflective mood on the part of the character in the middle of the action.

I hate for this to be like the joke where I say "have you heard the one about…" and then realize half-way through that I've forgotten the punchline, but I don't think I have many good answers–I'm not even quite sure what the question is yet.

I'll get back to you on that.

__________
^* This is not to say, however, that I don't tend towards writing excessively baroque sentences. In my first drafts I can easily have subordinate clause pile-ups that endanger writers in neighboring states, but at least that gives me something useful to do to get into editing a story.

This week's beard belongs to Philip Cave, who has recently taken up the post of music director at All Souls Memorial Episcopal Church in Washington, DC.^†

Philip Cave (his website) is an accomplished tenor who has sung with the Hilliard Ensemble, The Sixteen, the Choir of the English Consort, and the King's Consort, among others, as well as his own ensemble Magnificat. As you can surmise he makes a specialty of renaissance and baroque music.

This past Saturday, 21 June, as part of the Washington, DC Early Music Festival he led an all-day workshop that he called "Schütz, Schein, and Scheidt: Early Music Masterpieces from Germany". Isaac and I went, along with our early-music cohort HelenJean. It was an exhausting but exhilarating experience.

There were about 60 participants in the workshop. We had a pretty good assortment of men's and women's voices with, perhaps, a slight excess of sopranos (in number but not in vocal power). There was a wide range of musical experience, but everyone shared a keen interest in the music and most were not timid about singing lustily and with often surprising accuracy.

The pace of the workshop was quite brisk. We had a good chunk of repertoire to get through:

• Heinrich Schütz, Cantate Domino canticum novum, SWV 81
• Heinrich Schütz, Ehre sei dir, Christe (from "St. Matthew Passion")
• Heinrich Schütz, Selig sind die Toten
• Heinrich Schütz, Die mit Tränen säen werden mit Freuden ornten, SWV 378
• Heinrich Schütz, Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt ("The Echo Psalm"), SWV 36
• Johann Hermann Schein, Die mit Tränen Säen (Psalm 126)
• Johann Hermann Schein, Studentenschmaus: "Frischauf, ihr Klosterbrücker mein" and "So da, mein liebes Brüderlien"
• Samuel Scheidt, Benedicamus Domino, SSWV 259

From about 10am until 1pm we spent our time reading through each piece and then rehearsing bits of it (generally back to front) and then going through one more time. By lunch time we had gotten through each piece, a total of 55 pages of music. We had a brief lunch break and were back to singing by 1:45 in the afternoon. Here our strategy was to revisit each piece in our repertoire to check for tempi and to have one last look at the rough spots in each piece. Our time for rehearsing was limited because at 4pm we had about a dozen people show up to listen to our concert (who knew?) at which we performed each piece. To be honest we performed them surprisingly well, too!

It's all glorious music. I become a bigger fan of Schütz with each new piece I hear or learn or perform. It was just a year ago that I performed the Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt with Isaac's choir (see "Beard of the Week XXI: Renaissance Polyphony") and I was delighted to see it again in our music booklet. I'm sure there was a bit of relief from seeing something familiar, but also I was excited to be singing it once again, it is so much fun to sing. The ending of it, a doxology with amen is stunning to hear but even more stunning from the inside, as it were.^*

The other pieces were largely unfamiliar to me but they were all good choices, each one with some choice bit to savor. Music of this period is rich in complicated rhythms and delightful and surprising combinations of independent voices that sometimes produce the most startling harmonic effects. you can hear some of that in this not entirely successful performance of the "Cantate Domino". Finding out how the effects are produced by singing one of the parts is a real ear-opening experience. You also find out, if you had any misconceptions about it, that four-hundred year old music is not simplistic music!

You may recall that I don't sing in performance all the much. A couple of musicals a year, maybe, and perhaps a few pieces a year with our early-music nonette (more or less) at Isaac's church. I've been singing early music like this with that group for maybe seven or eight years and loving every bit of it, but this workshop probably doubled my personal repertoire.^#

I feel pretty sure that my sight-singing has improved by one big chunk because of the experience. There was no coddling in this workshop. Philip was a good choir leader, effective and efficient and good natured, although he did seem to keep saying, after we'd been through a section once: "Okay, now that you've got the notes let's pay some attention to the words!" Okay, my vocal German pronunciation has also improved substantially and I know more about the words and all the musical painting that goes with them, too.

As I said, it was an exhausting but rewarding–if unusual–way to spend a day.
__________
^† The church is located in Woodley Park, just off Connecticut Avenue on Cathedral Avenue. The rector since last summer is John Beddingfield. This is the church where Isaac became the new parish administrator last December.

^* First, remember that his setting is called "The Echo Psalm", because he uses two choirs, the "large choir" and the "small choir", and the small choir mostly echoes what the large choir sings; large choir sings a phrase, small choir echoes, and sometimes there's overlap. With physically separated choirs you get stereo. Anyway, after mentioning the father, son, and holy ghost there is the "amen", in which all the voices of the large choir sing "amen" in overlapping scales and the small choir echoes, also in overlapping phrases. There's lots of "amens" just tumbling all over the place as the harmony moves towards its conclusion, at which point all the voices come together in the closing chord on "a-men", except the small-choir tenors, who sing "a-". Everyone else stops abruptly and the small-choir tenors are left alone singing the closing "-men". It gives me chills. I loved being a small-choir tenor both times.

^# In case you're interested, feel free to look at my "Performance Vitæ", where I try to keep a list of stuff that I've performed since 2000 or so, playing 'cello and singing and doing musical theater.

Yesterday I had a press release from NOAA letting me know that this week, 22-28 June, is "Lightning Safety Awareness Week". Apparently it is the seventh such declared week. The motto of LSAW comes from the mouth of Leon the Lion: "When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!"

The National Weather Service, operated by NOAA, maintains a Lightning Safety Website that is filled with useful information and other interesting lightning-awareness stuff. For instance, there is a nice gallery of photographs of lightning, whence came the dramatic photograph at right, taken by Harald Edens near Socorro, NM, 2003 (used by permission).

On the home page, towards the bottom, there is a near real-time map showing lightning strikes in the continental US (and bits north and south) over a two-hour time period (delayed, they say, about 30 minutes after the data were collected).

We learn that each year in the US an average of 62 people are killed by lightning. Of those,

• 98% were outside
• 89% were male
• 30% were males between the ages of 20-25
• 25% were standing under a tree
• 25% occurred on or near the water

We are told that lightning can strike from storms as far away as ten miles, which is why the NWS advises "When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!" There really are no safe places to be outdoors. Either go inside a "safe building" or get inside a completely enclosed car (with metal roof). A "safe building" has walls with electrical wiring and plumbing, the latter being conductors that can get charge from a lightning strike into the ground instead of into people. Open shelters in parks, for example, are not "safe buildings". Naturally, there's more complete information around the NWS website.

Needless to say, perhaps, but my attention was drawn by two pages: "Lightning Science" and "Statistics and More". Woo hoo!

From "Lightning Science", lots of fun lightning facts:

• At any given moment, there are 1,800 thunderstorms in progress somewhere on the earth.
• There are lightning detection systems in the United States and they monitor an average of 25 million flashes of lightning from the cloud to ground every year!
• Ice crystals in a cloud seem necessary lightning, which may result from charge separation that takes place in collisions of ice crystals.
• Lightning is a rather complicated process for discharging negative charge in the cloud.

"Statistics and More" has several interesting sounding things like interesting lightning events in history, details on lightning deaths, policy statements, factsheets, and guidelines. Links can be so much fun sometimes.

My own awareness was increased this week by the rather dramatic thunderstorms we had last Sunday night, and again on Monday night, when Isaac and I were out and we both saw a brilliant stroke of lightning.