You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2018.
I have been feeling a bit burned out by blogging lately, not because my subjects are exhausted (there are always so many more fascinating stories to tell, plus I am truly looking forward to weaving all of these strands together) but because I am exhausted. I have been working a full time job as some sort of crummy small-time insurance clerk during the day and creating a splendid world of astonishing allegorical fish art at night and then blogging on top of that. Obviously I should be more resilient and work harder and plan better, but still it takes a lot of effort. Worst of all I sometimes wonder if any of this is worthwhile. Based on what’s around us, it seems like people want reality TV, plastic junk, Kardashians, and Donald Trump. They care little for elaborate flounder artwork and daily articles about golden moles (although obviously, you, dear reader, are a person of much deeper discernment).
Anyway, the best way to avoid burnout is to take a vacation, and so next week I am heading back to the harvest-time fields and autumn oak forests of the family farm to see my family (and the family geese). This time though, I am not leaving you in the lurch. I am handing the Ferrebeekeeper reigns over to a burgeoning writing superstar, the science fiction author, Daniel Claymore (that is his sword sigil up there at top, in case you were curious about the medieval weaponry in a vacation post…although I am going to West Virginia). Maybe he will share some speculative tales of a dark future that might someday come to be. Or perhaps he will take you on an odyssey deep into the seething heart of modern humankind, or, then again, maybe he will rant about incompetent political leadership or write delicious cupcake recipes. Who knows? I am not an overbearing editor and I am giving him cart-blanche. But I know it will be supremely entertaining. make sure to comment a lot when he is writing: I have been bad about responding, but I know Daniel will give your precious insights the full consideration they deserve.
I’ll post another artwork or something tomorrow and then Daniel will be taking over next week. It is going to be really great to have a guest author so prepare yourselves as Ferrebeekeeper goes to unimagined new places (and Ferrebee goes home to collect acorns and feed corn to pet geese).
As mentioned in my previous post, the Japanese space program’s asteroid probe Hayabusa2 is set to fire an impact probe named “Mascot” into Asteroid Ryugu in October. Before that happens, however, there is exciting/alarming news from the Mascot front here on Earth. The horrifying thing above is “Gritty,” the new mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers (a…hockey team from the rough-and-tumble “City of Brotherly Love”).
According to Gritty’s biography, he loves to eat hot dogs and wash them down with ice shavings from the Zamboni. Apparently his father was also a bully. Gritty’s name exemplifies the plucky attitude of the Flyers. These peculiar details explain a lot, but they still doesn’t fully reveal exactly what Gritty is. He sort of looks like “Animal” from the Muppet show grown to gargantuan size and without the social graces.
During the period I lived outside Philly in the late eighties I seem to recall the Flyers as being dangerous anti-social rejects from a chain gang, but maybe my memory is embellishing this history based on my fear of the kids who played hockey. Those guys were certainly bullies. Is one of them Gritty’s father? Maybe I should look some old eighth grade acquaintances up on Facebook and ask if any of them slept with a psychedelic mop or a space yeti…or maybe we should relax and enjoy some more of this furry orange garbage fire whom the internet is already learning to love!
So Gritty!
Congratulations to the Japanese Space Agency! On Friday morning (EST) the Japanese space probe Hayabusa2 dropped two adorable little hopping rover bots (“hoppers”? “hop-overs”? “hop-bots”? um, we’ll work on it…) onto the surface of Asteroid Ryugu. The spacecraft arrived at the near-Earth asteroid back in June when the sort-of-octahedral space rock was passing near to our home planet. The twin “MinervaII” probes (“Micro Nano Experimental Robot Vehicle for Asteroid”) are 18 centimeter (7 inch) disks which weigh 1.1 kilograms (2.4 pounds) each. Making use of the asteroid’s exceedingly low gravity, the tiny robots will hop to their location and deliver readings about the composition of the ancient icy rock, which will hopefully provide insight into the formation of the solar system. Additionally, more stirring action is on the way in October when Hayabusa II will deliver a larger lander (named Mascot!) and then a third Minerva lander. This flurry of activity is in preparation to collect asteroid material which will be returned to Earth!
Hopefully….the MinervaII probes are (unsurprisingly) the second in a line of Minerva probes. The first Minerva hopping robot met an inglorious fate during the first Hayabusa mission to the asteroid Itokawa in 2005. That (smaller) Minerva rover was deployed a bit early and hopped ignominiously into the void of space. Sadly I don’t have pictures, but imagine a hockey puck falling into infinite blackness.
I will follow up with more news about this mission as it becomes available, but for now let us celebrate!
Today’s post is solely an infographic from the web–but it is a powerful infographic that bears a great deal of attention. Above are the current nations of the Earth represented by population rather than landmass. This population cartogram was created by Max Roser to make people think more clearly about the real nature of the world’s human population. Each little block represents half a million people. Countries which loom large in world attention effectively vanish (like Russia, where mismanagement and grief are causing the population to shrink) yet countries which don’t appear in the shrill daily newscasts–places like Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Indonesia–are revealed as titans. You can find the original in this article (which is fortunate, since WordPress will undoubtedly make reading the version above effectively impossible), along with a number of additional fascinating graphics. We will talk more about the meaning of some of this later on, but for now it is worth just scrutinizing the cartogram and marveling at a world where Madagascar is bigger than Australia.
Today’s post features an excitingly strange intersection between 3 of our favorite topics here at Ferrebeekeeper: crowns, China, and cities. This is the Bund Center in the Huangpu area of Shanghai. The building was finished in 2002 by the architects of John Portman and Associates. It stands 198 meters (650 feet) tall—approximately the same height as the Sony Tower in Manhattan (which is probably now named after some other monolithic company, but which New Yorkers will instantly know as the building that looks like a Queen Anne highboy). Like most skyscrapers, the purpose of this tower is surprisingly banal—it holds a bunch of offices for paper-pushers, financiers, and cell phone makers—however the top is anything but dull! Look at that splendid daisy-style crown in glittering steel and lights. I really thought the Chinese were on to something with their lovable propensity for making amazing novelty buildings during the 90s and the aughts. The central authorities have since cracked down on that trend out of fear that too much imagination and fun would make the Chinese subjects less biddable to the whims of their new emperor erm president-for-life, but frankly we Americans have no moral authority anymore when it comes to subjects like evil autocrats and gaudy/banal towers. All of which is to say, I like the top of the Bund Center! I wish I could go to Shanghai and get a closer look at the new model for an international super-city…
Do you know the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal? It is in the Bible in the First Book of Kings Chapter 18. Israel was then ruled by King Ahab who was unduly influenced by his fancy Phoenician wife, Jezebel, (a Baal worshiper!). Because of the royal couple’s idolatry and persecution of God’s chosen prophets, the land suffered three years of drought and was turning into a desert. The great prophet Elijah had been in hiding during this time, but, as the drought changed the political climate (in addition to the real climate), he revealed himself for a dramatic supernatural face-off with the 450 prophets of Baal atop Mount Carmel.
The terms of the contest were thus: the prophets of Baal and Elijah would each sacrifice a bull and cut it to pieces and lay it on their respective altar (repairing the neglected altar of Yahweh is a big part of this story…but I will leave the altar-repair instructions out). Neither camp would light the burnt offerings themselves: instead they would pray to the respective deities for fire.
The prophets of Baal went first (which sounds optimal, but think of how this always goes in the Olympics). They prayed all day–indeed Elijah mocks them at noon suggesting their god must be busy thinking important stuff, or doing divine things, or maybe just couldn’t hear them. At the end of the day, at sacrifice time, their bull was unconsumed by divine fire.
Elijah then sacrificed his bull and laid it out upon the altar. He then soaked the sacrifice with four barrels of water, which filled up a shallow trench he had dug around the altar. When these preparations were complete, Elijah called upon the God of Israel as described in the Bible
36 And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.
37 Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.38 Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.39 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.40 And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.41 And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain.42 So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees…
So why am I telling this story? Is it a parable about wicked leaders and their foreign consorts? Is this a story about divine wrath concerning a king’s corruption and God’s complete control of the weather? Is this about how even the most revered religious traditions sometimes need to be tested by evidence-based criteria? Am I perhaps somehow suggesting that our own land has been given over metaphorically (or maybe literally) to Baal and his charlatan acolytes?
No! Of course not! Our very own evangelical leaders have assured us from their private jets and mega-churches that our national leadership is exactly as it should be. This post is just an excuse to show some crazy art concerning prophetic contests! Look at these wild pictures! I particularly like the Baal worshipers–it is a shame what happened to them, but, after all, this is only a story. I, for one, certainly don’t believe in Biblical literalism.
(Speaking of pictures, WordPress has made it impossible for me to properly label images without causing them to go off-center such that they are half obscured, but this last picture is by Lucas Cranach, about whom I have written much).
“Hey, wait! What the heck?” This is what you may be saying after yesterday’s post, which featured an unlabeled picture of a mystery sea creature (above).
Well worry no more! The mysterious creature is a “sea mouse”, the colloquial name for a genus of polychaete worms which live in the Atlantic Ocean (and the Mediterranean Sea). The proper genus name for the sea mouses (mice?) is Aphrodita, after the Greek goddess of love (apparently some exceedingly lonely 18th century taxonomists thought the furry oval sea animal with a ventral groove along its bottom resembled the sacred goddess of sexuality in some generative aspect).
Sea mouses (mice?) are scavengers which feed on the decaying bodies of marine animals [probably: a few sources thought they were hunters]. They live close to shore in the intertidal zone where they creep and burrow as they try to find carrion and avoid predators. To my mind, their English name is vastly better than their scientific name since they scurry furtively across the ocean bottom and since they are covered in what superficially looks like scraggly hair. This “hair” is more properly called setae—bristles which protect the worm and or help it to hide or communicate. The setae around the edges of the mice are covered with photonic crystals so they look drab from most angles but sparkle like gorgeous blue/green/gold opals when held a certain way.
Speaking of bristles, sea mice move by means of parapodia—bristly appendages which serve as feet and which also look somewhat like hair. The creatures measure from 7–15 centimeters (3–6 inches) long; however, some giants can grow to a length of 30 centimeters (12 inches).
The febrile imaginings of long dead natural scientists aside, sea mice (mouses?) are all hermaphrodites with both male and female gonads and sexual organs [probably…different sources disagreed upon their gender orientation, and given today’s social mores, it was thought impolite to inquire]. The worms are incapable of fertilizing themselves though.
Of course, some of you might still have some questions about this living technicolor hermaphroditic toupee which crawls around on the ocean bottom eating horrible dead things, but I can help you no further. My limited knowledge of sea mice is all used up. They aren’t even mollusks (they are more closely related to…well to us…than to clams and squid). Based on the many bracketed addenda and the numerous weasel words in this article, our understanding of these things is pretty superficial. If you want to make a name for yourself in marine biology this may be your chance, provided you can spend a lifetime underwater watching polychaete worms eat and make love!
Today I wanted to write more about giant clams and their astonishing ability to “farm” algae within their body (and then live off of the sweet sugars which the algae produce). I still want to write about that, but it proving to be a complicated subject: giant clams mastered living on solar energy a long time ago, and we are still trying to figure out the full nature of their symbiotic systems.
Today, instead we are going to look at the phenomenon which gives the mantles of giant clams their amazingly beautiful iridescent color. It is the same effect which provides the shimmering color of hummingbird feathers and blue morpho wings, or the glistening iridescence of cuttlefish. All of these effects are quite different from pigmentation as generally conceived: if you grind up a lapis lazuli in a pestle, the dust will be brilliant blue (you have made ultramarine!) but if you similarly grind up a peacock feather, the dust will be gray, alas! This is because the glistening reflective aqua-blue of the feather is caused by how microscopic lattices within the various surfaces react with light (or I suppose, I should really go ahead and call these lattices “nanostructure” since they exist at a scale much smaller than micrometers). These lattices are known as “photonic crystals” and they appear in various natural iridescent materials—opals, feathers, and scales. Scientists have long studied these materials because of their amazing optic properties, however it is only since the 1990s that we have begun to truly understand and engineer similar structures on our own.
Physicists from the 19th century onward have understood that these iridescent color-effects are caused by diffraction within the materials themselves, however actually engineering the materials (beyond merely reproducing similar effects with chemistry) was elusive because of the scales involved. To shamelessly quote Wikipedia “The periodicity of the photonic crystal structure must be around half the wavelength of the electromagnetic waves to be diffracted. This is ~350 nm (blue) to ~650 nm (red) for photonic crystals that operate in the visible part of the spectrum.” For comparison, a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers thick.
The actual physics of photonic crystals are beyond my ability to elucidate (here is a link to a somewhat comprehensible lay explanation for you physicists out there), however, this article is more to let me explain at a sub-rudimentary level and to show a bunch of pictures of the lovely instances of photonic crystals in the natural world. Enjoy these pictures which I stole!
But, in the mean time don’t forget about the photonic crystals! When we get back to talking about the symbiosis of the giant clams, we will also return to photonic crystals! I have talked about how ecology is complicated. Even a symbiotic organism made up of two constituent organisms makes use of nanostructures we are only beginning to comprehend (“we” meaning molecular engineers and materials physicists not necessarily we meaning all of us). imagine how complex it becomes when there are more than one sort of organism interacting in complex ways in the real world!
This post is a week overdue, and in our weird funhouse media environment, that might as well be eternity (I suppose I should really be writing about Burt Reynold’s death now…and maybe in a way I am). Yet the larger ramifications of this eulogy are bigger than just one moment, and since none of our leaders said quite the right thing, we have to piece meaning together on our own as the wreaths wither and the pomp dissipates.
Like a lot of American, I have been thinking about John McCain’s funeral and the legacy of one of the most eminent national leaders of our era. My feelings about McCain’ politics are complicated and are undergoing revision (indeed, my feelings about America’s “great era” during the second half of the twentieth century are likewise complex and undergoing change).
But this post isn’t about politics as such. As is traditional for a funeral piece, it is about larger issues of character and value.
During the horrible 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump famously cast aspersions on John McCain by saying “He’s not a war hero…He was a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren’t captured.” The implication was that McCain was some sort of loser–one of the ultimate insults in Trump’s big book of putdowns (which the swindler apparently has held onto since primary school). I stand against Trump and the dangerous poisons he has injected wholesale into our political system, yet his imputations against McCain are worth examining…for McCain’s life was indeed deeply shaped by loss.
McCain was born into the shiny luster of deep brass: his father and his grandfather were both admirals in the U.S. Navy and it was always clear his life too would follow a path of naval service and leadership. But that path often veered into strange and horrible territory of loss and failure, to wit:
He lost his freedom during a disastrous war which we lost.
He lost years of his life to torture, deprivation, and cruel mind games.
He lost the Republican primary in 2000 (possibly due to dirty tricks) and he lost the presidency itself in 2008.
He lost his political party to Trumpism (although whenever Trump’s runaway train finally blows up, whatever Republicans are left, if any, will cravenly say that they always were always McCain style mavericks who were never fully with the Donald).
He lost a battle with cancer and he lost his life.
Yet McCain’s life was not defined by these losses. He kept stepping around them and he kept on swinging to the end. McCain never gave up. He kept on trying even despite mistakes, setbacks, or naked misfortune. If we told young John McCain in the Hanoi Hilton that he would survive and become a wild success–titanically rich, internationally known, and one of the great legislators of his day—he might have doubted us, but, clearly, he kept grasping forward despite pain and despair. The Navy’s (seldom used) motto is “Semper Fortis” which can be alternately translated as “Always Courageous” or “Always Powerful”. These different interpretations can have different…or even opposite meanings, but McCain tended to prefer the former even when it was at the expense of the latter.
One of the most pernicious forces in life is loss aversion which Wikipedia defines as the “tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains.” Loss aversion makes people value things incorrectly. The fear of losing one’s crummy medical care makes one avoid taking steps which would provide better medical coverage. The fear of losing one’s dead-end job makes it hard to conceive us the endless possibilities for meaning and success. The fear of losing national prestige leads us down a paranoid and brutish path which self-evidently forfeits moral leadership.
Undue fear of loss is undue FEAR, or, to be blunt: people who are excessively afraid of losing things become cowards, and cowards do stupid, crazy things.
We have all lost things in life…things which haunt us. Lately we have lost things as a nation too. Most disastrously we have lost our ability to stand up for honor and fairness even if it hurts us in the short term. If we let this haunting fear creep into our hearts we will lose more things: our hard-won social gains, the great scientific discoveries of tomorrow, international prestige and the inestimable (albeit imperfect) boon of Pax Americana. We could even lose our democracy, and end up with a thing that is called a republic but which is not truly a government representative of the people’s wishes.
John McCain is gone. We have lost him (and I suspect even his detractors and opponents are already starting to feel that loss), but we can honor him in the way that he would appreciate best. We can learn from our losses and then put them behind us without letting them change who we really are or make us afraid to do what is right. That would be a true legacy, towering above a name on some building or highway. America claims to be the Home of the Brave. In his best moments, John McCain was indisputably brave. Let us all partake of this inheritance and try to be braver.
Like a lot of people, I have a dayjob which does not necessarily play to my greatest strengths. That is good on normal days: when I get out of the office I am ready to write about Goths in space or technicolor trees and then sculpt representations of meaningful tricolor flatfish. It is less good on days when the sink is hopelessly clogged at home and there are administrative chores related to technical or monetary aspects of life which must be addressed. Then the whole day becomes pointless dirty drudgery with no respite. All of which is to say, i ran out of time to write about science and art, so I am going to show some flounder drawings which i made on the train. Above is a very colorful flounder with a dinosaur, a hotdog, a walking alien machine, and a strange angel. I would have loved it so much as a child. As an adult though, I like the elongated walrus best.
The second small flounder is a more traditional flounder living in the ocean with a dancing prawn and a pale squid (the little mollusk must be frightened). Although this drawing lacks some of the more fantastical and surreal elements which stand out in other works from this series, its high contrast white on black linework does make it pop out. We’ll return to regular programming tomorrow. Wish me luck fixing my sink!
ferrebeekeeper 