Unknown

A striking image arrived in my email this afternoon, an image from a painter previously unknown to me, but who will be the subject of a Tate exhibition next year, Georgia O’Keeffe.

I think I had better go, if only to judge whether this version of the image, much lighter in hue than that offered by the Tate, is nearer the truth or not. It ought to be as it comes from the owner of the picture, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.

'Georgia O'Keeffe, Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/Out Back of Marie's II, 1930, Oil on canvas mounted to board, 24 1/4 x 36 1/4 inches, Gift of the Burnett Foundation, ©Georgia O'Keeffe Museum'. See reference 1.

Reference 1: http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/.

Doherty on Alexander

A hand-me-down, in this case from the Bourne Hall Library. The story of the death of Alexander the Great by a chap who, so the blurb inside the back cover informs me, is an internationally renowned author, educated at Liverpool & Oxford universities and who specialises in books about the deaths of ancient eminences who came to untimely & suspicious ends. See reference 1.

I found his style a bit tiresome and did not manage to get to the end of this one. But I did learn some stuff about the life and times of Alexander.

First, the complicated and murderous goings on in the courts of people like Alexander were a real life match for anything to be found in series one of 'Game of Thrones'.

Second, the ancient Macedonians liked to relax from time to time in serious drinking bouts. It was in the course of one of these that Alexander caught whatever it was that killed him - arsenic according to Doherty.

Third, I was reminded that some ancient generals joined in and fought in the front line, with Alexander being popular with his soldiers on this account. I also remember reading somewhere that once an ancient battle was joined, there was generally little that a general could do to manage it, so he might just as well join in. In which he would probably have had the advantage of better physique, training and equipment than most of his adversaries. A bit like Achilles having fancy equipment specially knocked up for him by the divine Hephaestus.

Fourth, perhaps a corollary of third, Alexander sometimes went in for serious punishments. Crucifying the odd thousands and selling the odd tens of thousands into slavery. Plus the odd torturing to death for especially heinous crimes. Or the odd decimation. And my understanding is that the Romans were into all this as well, several hundred years later. And the Normans played quite rough a thousand or so years after that - it taking us humans quite some time to learn that farming a country for produce & revenue was a better bet than smashing it up - and perhaps a lesson we would have done better to remember when we smashed up Iraq.

PS: part of this morning's cruise around the Ewell Village Clockwise was given over to pondering the pros and cons of massed infantry armed with leaf bladed spears 15 feet in length and weighing the same number of pounds. One might have thought them a bit unwieldy, but I also think that crack infantry formations from Spain were still using something similar as late as the 16th century CE.

Reference 1: http://www.paulcdoherty.com/.

Stop press

Early reports from my spy in Poland are that there are no pies in Poland.

That is to say, no pie shops on every corner, as there used to be in places like Barrow-on-Furness (also known for its submarines). Discussions in pubs about the merits of A's pies as opposed to those of B's pies. How much potato should be allowed? What about roots like carrot and swede? Do decent folk use mutton pies? Odd, considering the fine reputation the Poles have for pork products, a taste for which, in this country at least, is usually associated with a taste for pies, pork or otherwise. An association which is still visible in, for example, Ely or Fort William.

Aryans

Thinking more about the Russian and Finnish of the previous post, I turned up my master plan of Aryan languages (indirectly mentioned at reference 1), which does not include Finnish, one of a small number of alien languages called Uralic from the Urals, rather than Aryan from I have no idea where. Don't recall anywhere called Aryana, Arya, Arianna or anything like that at all.

I was amused at the time by ancient Irish appearing at the top of the chart, while ancient Greek appeared at the bottom, outliers both.

With thanks to Chang and others at the University of California at Berkeley for the illustration, which is taken from their paper called 'Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis'. The things ones gets up to in retirement.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/i-met-lucky-people.html.

Egg timers

On several occasions now, while brushing my teeth to one or other of my egg timers (see, for example, reference 1), I have focused on the grains of sand. Sometimes it is so clear that I want to count the grains, perhaps a throw back to the days when I did maths. I then get to wondering about how one would compute the behaviour of the grains of sand as they went through the neck of the timer. On the one hand there are rather a lot of grains to compute at once, on the other their micro behaviour is going to be dependent on the shapes and positions of the grains just above the neck. Can one do better than just plotting the presumably narrow bell curve one gets if one times lots of eggs? And then there is the question of how do you make the things? Do you have to leave a hole at one end so that you can adjust the sand content or what?

Then yesterday, while browsing in the work of the Fingelkurts twins, Andrew and Alexander, I stumble across the study of self-ordered criticality, something with which I cannot claim any familiarity whatsoever, although it is possible that that may change. In the meantime, it seems that one branch of this study is concerned with avalanches, so concerned for the central example of the intermittent small avalanches that one gets around the cone of the growing pile of sand in the bottom half of an egg timer. I think the idea is that just before the avalanche the sand is in one critical state, and just after, another. Or perhaps an unstable equilibrium. So not quite the problem that caught my attention, but warm enough.

The Fingelkurts twins are an interesting pair, born in Russia, but who have set up shop in Finland. I wonder if they number among what I imagine is the small number of foreigners who bother to learn Finnish? I also wonder about how they get on with the locals, considering the history between the two places. See reference 2, from which I have taken the illustration of their interesting CV, interesting that is for a pair who wound up in neurology. Don't suppose anyone nearer home can match it.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/older-teeth.html.

Reference 2: http://www.bm-science.com/.

Nostalgia

Yesterday to the lido at Jesus Green, my first visit for maybe thirty years. Poor, considering that it was where I learned to swim more than fifty years ago, at which time I was paid 3d a time to cycle down there for a swim before school. Bribery maybe, but a useful adjunct to the modest pocket money of those times.

The place has changed very little over the years. Wooden changing sheds still along one side of the pool, gents. on the top left of the illustration, ladies top right. The smell of damp creosoted wood had not changed. The same sort of wire baskets to hold one's clothes, although not, I think, actually the same baskets. Some concession to the years in the form of penny in the slot lockers, useful perhaps for a long visit when the place is crowded - which it certainly used to be when the sun was out. The diving stands in the middle of the pool were gone, presumably on grounds of health and safety - and I do remember the odd case of people coming down wrong and doing dreadful things to their stomachs. Water cleaner than I remember and not as cold - perhaps because it has not been long since we were in the sea.

I managed four lengths, that is to say 400 yards, nearly all breast stroke, being rather put to shame by the other seniors there at that time in the morning (around 1100) who were clearly clocking up a lot more.

Run by an outfit called 'Better', who seem to run a lot of what used to be local council facilities, certainly in London and at least this one in Cambridge. Something called a charitable social enterprise, a newish variety of charity. Perhaps this is the way forward for this sort of thing, along with the National Trust and English Heritage. Talking of which last, being members, we found it convenient to pull into Audley End for a pit-stop on the way to Cambridge; a much pleasanter place for a picnic & comfort break than the alternative Birchanger Green. And they can even feed you if you forget to pack a picnic. See reference 2.

Rather a scruffy collection of house boats and such drawn up on both sides of the river.  Rather too many for comfort, looking benefit & substance abuse flavoured rather than cuddly. No doubt they attract voluminous correspondance in local media, print & otherwise,

The iron bridge for pedestrians and cyclists by the locks was still there, off the left of the picture, and was little changed apart from having changed from its former green to black. The adjacent weather station in its white slatted wooden box on legs was empty and derelict, which was a pity as the two rotating drums of paper, brass apparatus and needle pens which used to record temperature and pressure used to fascinate me as a child. A large and handsome house for the lock keeper, presumably now sold off cheap to somebody with friends in high places, after the way of such water authority housing in the London area.

Reference 1: http://www.better.org.uk/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/audley-end.html.

Laughing Halibut

Followed the successful visit to 'Oggies' of Newport at reference 1 with a visit to the 'Laughing Halibut' of Strutton Ground, a street once better known to me for its baker, the baker which provided my lunchtime bread - a small white bloomer - through my time at the nearby Home Office.

A bad start with three cheerful and talkative young ladies in the train, one of whom was explaining what rubbish gmaps was. Not for the first time, I was irritated by the casual dismissal of a fine product by someone who had probably never made anything in her life, and probably never would. I dare say it did not do what she wanted or expected it to do, but her dismissal was, nevertheless, irritating. Thinking about it this morning, I suppose that such dismissals are the price anyone must pay for putting themselves or their products - or their art - onto the market place. A price which still has to be paid, albeit at a much reduced rate it, if you are in the happy position that your position in the market place is so strong that you can restrict yourself to private clients and you don't actually need to descend, in person, to the market place at all.

The baker was still there, and still looked as if it sold the odd loaf for old times' sake.

The 'Laughing Halibut' turned out to be very good. A very pleasant & cheerful young waitress and with fish and chips better, if anything, than those at Oggies. With amusement thrown in in the form of a new term 'butterbread', which turned out to be a buttered white roll, rather than the two slices of factory white normal in such places. The roll was very good, although perhaps a little over-buttered, the sort of roll which was once widely available in fast food joints and restaurants. Now quite rare, even in otherwise quite decent restaurants.

Followed up with a visit to the next door Oxfam shop where I could have bought the collected works of Goethe, in a cheap German edition of ten volumes for £30, or the collected works of Schiller in a rather better edition. Who on earth is going to buy such stuff? How many people learn German at school to a standard to read such stuff for pleasure? At my secondary school I should think a dozen or so took it to A-level, out of the year group of around a hundred. A few clicks reveals that there were five takers for German A level in 2014 and that a school party has just come back from the annual exchange visit to Hamburg - but that is not to say that any of them had any interest in antique German poetry. So still no idea whether there are likely to be any takers. And even I, the previous week at St. Helens, had declined a rather battered, if dust jacketed copy of 'Ulysses' from the first reprint of the first unlimited edition, at £65.50.

On to Tooting to make an interesting discovery about the playing of Salieri in the play 'Amadeus', a play, incidentally, with only a very tenuous connection with the truth, with Salieri earning a long and respectful entry in wikipedia. First off the blocks was Paul Scofield with a towering performance, then we had David Suchet with a powerful performance, and then we had Nicolas Le Prevost who turned in a strong performance. But he trumped his two predecessors by reprising the role in a cameo in a much loved episode of 'Midsomer Murders' called 'Death of a Hollow Man'. Leaving one with the question of whether his stage outing paid more or less than his television outing.

Pleased to report that the aeroplanes were back in force at Earlsfield and flying well below the cloud cover. I scored several twos and with a little more time would have made a three. As it was I did not quite manage to track the left most aeroplanes down through the trees.

Home to ponder about whether it was time to retire our long serving copy of Chamber's Encyclopedia. I do still use it occasionally, but is it still worth its two or three feet of shelf space? Bearing in mind the fact that once we have finished with it, it will be waste paper. No-one else is going to want it.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/the-other-villa-2.html.