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Batik Iris
Irises are flowers in the genus Iris. They are named after the Greek goddess Iris [ed. So far this seems kind of circular] who traveled on rainbows which were also known as irises. Thus the familiar beautiful garden flowers are known by the Greek word for rainbow because they were available in a whole rainbow of colors.
Other People’s Beautiful German Irises
This is all deeply relevant because four years ago I bought a beautiful iris and planted it in my garden. It started as a little green sprout and then, through the subsequent years grew into a magnificent thicket of sword shaped bright waxy leaves—but it never bloomed. Time worked its indignant wiles on my memory and I forgot what exactly what variety I had bought.
“Freedom Song” Iris
This year, finally, a bud sprouted on the iris! I have been so excited to find out the color of the mytery iris. I scoured the internet trying to figure out what I had bought (the irises pictured above “Batik” and were some of my guesses). There was even a dark moment when I thought about how quixotic my aesthetics can be and I feared I had bought a huge brown hypnotic werewolf iris!
“Spiced Tiger” looks pretty much like a werewolf to me
But it turns out that the me of four years ago, made at least one good choice: here is the beautiful mystery iris as it appears now in my garden (along with my sphinx sculpture):
My Iris! The picture doesn’t do it justice at all. It is so lovely…
It is darkest violet edging into black with furry deep purple beards! I am pretty sure it is called “Night Ruler” which sounds like an evil cleric or a death knight! Yes! Sometimes my past choices come back to haunt me, but for once that guy did something really amazing and nice! I love this iris! Here is another picture of it which I drew.
Iris and Greek Sphinx (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, colored pencil on paper)
“Night Ruler” has awakened my heart to a lust for irises—but any actions I take will require another four years to yield results and by then I will no doubt be living on a tropical beach in Greenland or fighting our robot overlords…or worse I will have again forgotten what I picked out and I will be forced to live beholden to the unfathomable whims of who I used to be.
“Night Ruler” photographed by a professional
Malaysia is a Federated Constitutional Monarchy annealed together out of thirteen states and three federal territories (the system is loosely based on that of the United Kingdom). The monarch is elected every five years by the nine hereditary rulers of the Malay states (the remaining four states have governors who abstain from choosing the monarch and the four Federal territories seemingly also have no say). In today’s Malaysia of parliaments and money this is all largely symbolic (although these sultans and high nobles certainly have influence and may have actual political powers which are not immediately apparent according to the letter of the law).
At any rate I bring this up not to launch into a true explanation of power and politics in Malaysia (which elude me completely), but instead to showcase the four extant crowns which remain among the nine hereditary electors. Five of the sultans of the Malays states seemingly have eschewed crowns in favor of fancy fezzes and keffiyehs. The remaining four crowns all seem based on nineteenth century European examples and are surprisingly ornate and attractive. Sadly I could find out little about them, but here, at least are lovely pictures!
The Crown of Johor
The Crown of Selangor
The Crown of Kelantan
The Crown of Terengganu
I especially like the yellow/gold crown of Terengganu and I was sad that I couldn’t find a larger picture! If anybody knows more about the magnificent traditional crowns of these four states, kindly let me know in the comments! They are certainly regal (even if they are not well documented or described on the internet).
Artist’s Concept of WISE J224607.57-052635.0
Ferrebeekeeper has featured some mind-bogglingly strange astronomic entities before—black holes, ultra-dense stellar remnants, hyper-giant stars with a million times the mass of the sun, colliding neutron stars—but today we move up to a vastly greater order of magnitude! Astronomers have just discovered a new class of galaxy which emits energy at unimaginable levels. Using NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), scientists have discovered what are being tentatively called “extremely luminous infrared galaxies” (ELIRGs).
One of these galaxies (with the not-very-snappy designation “WISE J224607.57-052635.0”) is producing 10,000 times more energy than the Milky Way, despite being much smaller than our familiar home. The newly discovered galaxy is putting out more energy than 10 trillion suns (or, more correctly, I should say it was putting out the energy of ten trillion main-sequence yellow stars). Scientists consider it the brightest known galaxy in the universe.
WISE J224607.57-052635.0 is 12.5 billion light-years away. Since the universe is 13.8 billion years old, what we are now seeing dates to a whole different era of galactic dynamics. Today maybe WISE J224607.57-052635.0 is a burned-out remnant…or a perfectly respectable middle-aged galaxy like the Milky Way. Who knows? But twelve-and-a-half billion years ago it was releasing an inconceivable amount of energy—so much so that astronomers are having trouble adjusting their theories to it. Perhaps some embryonic galaxies have black holes which gobble up stars at a much greater rate than initially thought or, alternately, some unknown set of circumstances has allowed the black hole (or holes?) at the center of WISE J224607.57-052635.0 to somehow surpass the theoretical threshold of black hole feeding.
Clearly astronomers are going to be sorting out what exactly happened out there for quite a while, but in the meantime, when you look up at the night sky remember you are looking at an invisible fountain of energy ten trillion times brighter than the sun. [Ooh, I made myself dizzy]
Today’s post seems like it concerns exceedingly trivial matters from a bygone age, but it is actually of much larger import. When I was five, I had the most delightful birthday! It was a splendid August day with the barest hint of coming autumn in the forget-me-not sky. There was every food I like. My mother made a special unlicensed Star Wars cake and, though chocolate Vader looked a bit blobby and brown he tasted amazing. There were astonishing presents, games with friends, and my splendid loving family telling me how wonderful I was. There was only one stain upon the luminous day and it came at breakfast through the black-and-white TV screen.
I was only allowed to watch limited amounts of TV (it makes me feel like some nineteenth century fogy to talk about having one (1) tiny mono-color viewscreen in a whole house), but even in the innocent (?) world of the seventies there were ads everywhere, fiendishly concocted to sink their razor sharp hooks into desires you did not even know you had. One of these was an ad for a cereal which featured the most miraculous toy—a swimming dolphin which actually dove down into the darkened abyss and then playfully rose back up with an enigmatic dolphin smile.
Through the dark magic of contemporary media saturation, the original ad is available on Youtube. Here it is!
Perhaps the four-year-old me was emotionally moved by the lumbering tragicomic figure of Smeadley the elephant, however I confess I did not remember him until seeing the clip. But the toy dolphins were magical! The only thing which could have been better would have been an ichthyosaur. There was a problem—we were not allowed to have sugared breakfast cereal, which my mother regarded as a dangerous abomination (as an aside: I was raised so well…how did I go so wrong?). The only chances for such a treat were trips to visit grandparents and birthdays—the one day on the calendar where requests for sugared cereal were countenanced in-house.
Maybe don’t trust people who have their eyebrows on their hat…
My poor parents were forced to turn down requests for Cap’n Crunch for weeks until the big day finally arrived. The first thing that went awry was the cereal–I guess Cap’n Crunch is supposed to be artificial peanut butter maybe? But whatever that unearthly bletted corn flavor is supposed to be, I found it vile. The year before I had had Alphabits when I turned four and they were amazing! Cap’n Crunch was a real disappointment. No matter—the important thing was the toy. We were supposed to wait to eat down to the bottom of the box to retrieve toys, but I abused my birthday privilege to stick my arm through the crunch and finally extract the coveted dolphin!
The only picture I could find of an original Cap’n Crunch “Diving Dolphin” toy (I think this might BE the actual size)
Sadly the actual toy was also a disappointing thing, much smaller and more colorless than it was on TV (and, again, the TV was black and white!). The dolphin came horrifyingly bisected in a little plastic bag and had to be assembled and filled up with sodium hydrogen carbonate (not included), an operation which involved my father and much muttering and forcing of poorly molded plastic injection joints.
Pictured: Fun
We did not have a perfectly shaped transparent toy dolphin tank as pictured in the ad (not included) so the dolphin went into an opaque gray plastic mop bucket. It sank to the bottom and fell over on its side. We all stood there for a while as it was gradually wreathed in a milky cloud. Boring, boring time passed—five-year old 1979 time which I will never recover! About an hour later, the dolphin began to imperceptibly rise (according to my eagle-eyed mother) whereupon I raced off, and the dolphin was pushed into a corner. Later we looked at it—and it was floating at the top, on its side like a dead goldfish.
The bad toy was swiftly forgotten…except I have not forgotten it. I remember it more clearly than many of the awesome beautiful thoughtful toys I received later that day. It was a harbinger—and a warning.
…junk you don’t need
Ninety-five percent of consumer products ARE the diving dolphin. They are cheaply made, poorly conceived and useless except for marketing/merchandising purposes. Most of what you are looking at on the web and on the news are diving dolphins. So is most of what politicians say. It was hard for me to recognize so much of human endeavor in a little plastic sack beneath the corn-syrup and artificial flavor, but I assure you it is so. Just put any of that junk in a bucket and watch it sink forlornly to the bottom…
Fake peanut butter Flavor Not included
Of course diving dolphins do not detract from the real things—happiness, friendship, good memories, family, and love. Not unless you let them.
The author and his sister, 1979
Study for “The Voyage of Life: Childhood” (Thomas Cole, ca. 1840, oil on canvas)
I have been thinking a great deal about beautiful & meaningful allegorical paintings (indeed, you can go to this gallery of my own art and look at the strange seething world of symbolic paintings I have been creating under “Allegories”). Here is a very lovely painting from the nineteenth century American master Thomas Cole. This is a study for “The Voyage of Life: Childhood” the first painting of his magnum opus “The Voyage of Life,” a series of four huge paintings which portray a human life as a river running through the four seasons (I have put the relevant detail from the finished painting at the bottom of this post, but, for reasons unknown, I like the study better)
This is the beginning of life—an angel is launching an infant out of celestial darkness into the world. The little child is frolicking in delight among a fulsome bouquet of spring flowers little aware of the waterfalls, rapids, and sluggish poisonous bends which lie along the great river. What the painting lacks in symbolic subtly it makes up for with its boundless energy, personality, and immediate glowing exuberance.
Cole was not a pessimist—he viewed life as a dazzling sojourn of pellucid joy. This is a view which has fallen out of fashion in art (and maybe in larger realms of thought and endeavor), but the jubilant baby in this picture and the tender solicitous angel from suggests that we might want to revisit Cole’s worldview.
Detail from “The Voyage of Life Childhood” (Thomas Cole, 1840, oil on canvas)
Lesser Periwinkle (Vinca Minor)
This little flower is Vinca minor, the lesser periwinkle. It is native to Central Europe spreading down through Southern Europe into Asia Minor (although at this point it has naturalized throughout the temperate world as an invasive garden plant). In the United States they are sometimes confusingly (mis)called “myrtle”.
A magnificent carpet of lesser periwinkles (Vinca minor) near Vienna in Austria (photo: landschaftsfotos.at)
Lesser periwinkles are subshrubs (which would have made for a good insult in grade school). They grow only to 40 centimeters (16 inches) high and do not climb—though they spread rapidly into large clonal colonies. Periwinkles are members of the hardy Aster family (the plant family not the snooty otter-killing magnates from New York). With vigorous evergreen leaves and shapely five-petaled flowers, the plants can be used as perennial ground cover for flower gardens.
The best and most famous feature of lesser periwinkles is the distinctive blue-purple color. In English the flower and its color have become synonymous—the latter surpassing the former in popular recognition! Periwinkle is a very lovely and soothing color which seems purple in some light and blue in others. It makes an ideal color for walls and home furnishings as well as garments.
United Launch Alliance Atlas V launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., June 20, 2012 (containing a National Defense mission)
Start getting excited: tomorrow is a big day in space adventuring! As I write this, last minute preparations are being made on a mighty United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket sitting on a pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Not only does the rocket contain a tiny cubesat with the Planetary Society Solar Sail, it is also launching the not-very-secret Air Force robot space shuttle, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (currently the world’s only known operational space plane program—each robot lander can spend years in space working on classified missions).
Just tailgatin’ in some clean suits with with the Air Force X-37B
All of this amazing stuff, along with 9 other cubesats will be riding into space via the Atlas rocket’s second stage—a next generational launch platform evocatively known as “The Centaur.” According to news sites, the launch window for this mission is Wednesday [May 20th ,2015] from 10:45 a.m. ET and 2:45 p.m. You can watch live on webcam (but remember lots of things can push a mission back).
I would be live-blogging this extravaganza, but I have my own mission tomorrow morning: relaunching my imploded career. I will be putting on my navy suit and heading off to the temp company. Presumably the great masters have some tedious administrative tasks for me to perform and they will not hurl me into the endless black void like little X-37B (although given today’s economy, who can really say?)
Wish everyone luck! Hopefully there will be no Russian-style crashing and burning with either venture…
This is what happens when you do not bring an extra résumé!
Opah?
In all of entertainment, no figure is more beloved than Opah! Her networks make the most money. Her endorsements confer instant fame and wealth. Her personal life is the subject of profound fascination and scrutiny. She is what all Americans aspire to be…a veritable queen who transcends…
Opah!
Wait…Opah? That’s a big orange fish! Also known as moonfish, opahs consist of two species (Lampris guttatus and Lampris immaculates) which are alone in their own small family the Lampridae. Their closest relatives are the magnificent ribbonfishes like the crestfishes and oarfish! They are discoid fish with orange bodies (speckled with white) and with bright vermillion fins. Opahs do not give away cars or support quack psychiatrists and physicians, but, they are much in the news right now anyway. To the immense surprise of ichthyologists and zoologists, a research team from the NOOA has discovered that Opahs are warm-blooded—in a way. They are the only endothermic fish known to science.
Lampris guttatus (NOAA)
Being warm-blooded allows animals in the deep ocean to think and move more swiftly than the more ascetic and staid dwellers of the deep (most creatures of the ocean bottom are usually slow and placid in order to conserve energy–like the tripod fish). Ocean birds and marine mammals have long used this to their advantage. They gulp air from the surface and then dive deep to catch slower moving fish, squid, and invertebrates from the cold depths.
A stamp from French Southern and Antarctic Territories showing Lampris immaculatus
Other high-speed predatory fish (certain species of sharks and sportsfish) can warm key muscle groups using heat exchanging blood vessels in order to gain a burst of super speed, but these fish rapidly lose their heat—and the related speed advantages–as their blood circulates through their gills. This is one of the reasons sharks and marlins lunge and then return to slow measured swimming.
The opah appears to produce the majority of its heat by constantly flapping its pectoral fins. The warmth thus generated is not lost through the opahs’ gills. Critically, these fish possess unique insulated networks of blood vessels between their hearts and gills. The residual heat is removed from blood headed through the gills and then restored as it goes back through the heart. Their weird circular shape and comparatively large size are additional adaptations to help them conserve this warmth.
An opah near San Clemente Island (Jane J. Lee for National Geographic)
Marine biologists know surprisingly little about opahs (especially considering that the fish have long been known to fishermen and diners). Opahs live in the mesopelagic depths 50 to 500 meters (175 to 1650 feet) beneath the surface but it now seems they might make deeper hunting forays into the true depths. They are solitary hunters which live on shrimp, krill, and small fish. Opahs are approximately the size of vehicle tires. The smaller species (Lampris immaculatus) is like a big car tire and reaches a maximum of 1.1 m (3.6 ft). The larger species, Lampris guttatus, can become as large as an industrial lorry tire and can attain a length of 2 m (6.6 ft). the largest opahs weight up to 270 kg (600 lb).
Spotted Opah larva (Lampris guttatus)
Larval opahs resemble the larvae of oarfish (they are long and ribbonlike with strange protuberances. The main predators of Opahs are the great sharks…and humankind. Because of predation from this latter species which is endlessly hungry the survival of the opahs has grown less certain. It is believed that they have a low population resilience, but this…like their numbers and their lifestyle is unknown to science. We only just found they were warm-blooded earlier this month!
An artist’s rendition of a solar sail spacecraft!
The Planetary Society is a club which believes we should spend more resources exploring space. I used to be a member back in the halcyon days when I could afford their annual dues, but alas, I have merely been following their exploits lately. Mostly they are a political action committee: they use their money to hire lobbyists to remind recalcitrant leaders of the many, many benefits of space exploration. Also they showcase celebrity explorers, scientists, and astronomers (or other famous folk) in order to popularize space research to the fickle and forgetful public.
Well, that’s what they do most of the time…Sometimes they spearhead astonishing James Bond schemes of their own. The most recent of these grand plans involved buying a converted Soviet ICBM and using it to launch a solar sail into outer space! Sadly (yet somehow predictably) the Russians sold the Society a dodgy bum missile which failed after a minute and a half of flight and exploded over the Arctic Ocean. This happened ten years ago, and despite the abysmal failure, I felt honored to be part of it! When did you last cooperate on a project which would make Blowfeld jealous? (I exempt mention of my tax dollars which go to NASA—you federal scientists are awesome and I want you to keep it up, but I am talking about a private club right now).
A Delta-class Submarine Firing a SS-N-18 (of the sort that failed)
Anyway I bring all of this up, because the Society has scraped together enough pocket change to try again (even without my annual $37.00 membership fee). In five days they are launching a test flight which will pave the way for a full-fledged solar sail launch in 2016! The Society learned certain things from the failure a decade ago, most notably “do not trust the Russians” (a lesson which is written upon the very landscapes of Eastern Europe and Central Asia to the extent that it is visible from space, but which was still somehow lost on the Planetary Society until they actually purchased an ICBM).
The Planetary Society’s LightSail spacecraft, with its four sails deployed, undergoing tests in Sept. 2014. Credit: Justin Foley/The Planetary Society.
This time they are buying aerospace capacity from more reputable sources—the US Air Force (for the upcoming test flight) and SpaceX for the full mission. I mention all of this in order to direct your attention to the test flight on May 20th (EDT) which Ferrebeekeeper will definitely revisit and to also point you toward the Kickstarter funding project for next year’s full fledge flight! If you have some money burning a hole in your pocket, you could always spend it launching a high tech sail the size of a New York apartment into space (well, maybe the actual spacecraft will be larger than that once it unfurls from its breadbox size cubesat). Aside from buying stunning original artwork, what could be a better use of your petty cash?
Floral bracelets with mix of sapphires, rubies and turquoise (Courtesy of Chinese Cultural Relics)
I was a bit hard on China in yesterday’s post about toxic sludge left over from refining rare earth elements (I was actually angry at myself for not being a natural businessman, not at the Chinese for ruining the Earth with industrial poisons). Today, therefore, let’s cleanse our palettes by looking at some exquisite treasures which were found in a medieval Chinese tomb! The grave was discovered by construction workers in Nanjing in 2008, but is just now being showcased to the world. It belonged to “Lady Mei” a noblewoman who died in 1474—just 18 years before Columbus discovered the new world. Lady Mei was 45 when she died. Her epitaph reveals that she was a concubine who was married off to the Duke of Yunnan when she was an “unwashed and unkempt” maiden of 15. Lady Mei outshone the Duke’s two senior wives by bearing a son, but her biography also indicates she had a lively mind and no small share of strategic and political genius. Reading between the lines, it seems like she ran the Duke’s vast household (and possibly Yunnan) for twenty years (during the strife and court turmoil of the feuding Zhengtong and Jingtai Emperors and the mad incompetence of the Chenghua Emperor no less).
The excavated tomb of Lady Wei (late 15th century AD)
You can read what is known about Lady Mei’s fascinating life here, but for today’s purposes let’s look at some of the otherworldly jewelry found in the tomb.
Gold hairpiece with a mix of sapphires and rubies
Ming dynasty art is my favorite Chinese art! The artists of the Song dynasty were more inventive (and perhaps had greater raw talent). The artists of the Ching dynasty had a more eye-popping palette and crafted designs with more ornate flourishes. The artists of the Tang dynasty were more cosmopolitan and outward looking. The artists of today certainly know how to make ugly wretched junk which celebrates the dark magic of marketing. But the artists and artisans of the Ming era were unsurpassed at finding perfect proportions and color combinations. They blended the diverse regional and international elements from around all of China into a perfect lavish synthesis of styles which is instantly and indelibly Chinese.
A fragrance box with gold chain from the tomb of Lady Mei (“lotus petal” decorations and Sanskrit in gold with sapphires, rubies, and one turquoise. (Courtesy of Chinese Cultural Relics)
Look at how Central Asian decorative motifs mix with Southern Asian religious designs all within a rubric of ancient patterns from the Yangzi heartland! The bold yellow of the jewels is perfectly matched by the equally rich colors of carved rubies, sapphires, cats’ eyes, and turquoises.
Gold flame hairpin from Lady Wei’s Tomb (gold with rubies and sapphires)
Each of the pieces of jewelry looks like something the queen of heaven could be wearing in a Chinese myth. These pieces are hairpins, bracelets, and a perfume box, but they have the splendor and unrivaled workmanship of crowns. Indeed, Lady Mei might as well have been a sovereign. Contemporary Yunnan has approximately the same population as contemporary Spain. The Yunnan of Lady Mei’s day was likewise probably about the same size as Spain just before it unified and took over the Americas.
Two gold hairpins with branches and tendril patterns.
It is astonishing that these treasures have been lying in the earth, waiting for some developer to build a supermarket or condominium. Lady Wei’s opulent grave goods are exquisite—the undying glory of Ming craftsmanship still dazzles like nothing else.
ferrebeekeeper 