The fire at Notre Dame cathedral strikes me as cataclysmic. I've never had the honor of a visit to Paris. But I have a family connection. My grandfather Comstock (who passed away in the 1990s) worked for years on a never-completed book that would have told the story of the great Gothic Cathedrals of Europe from the point of view of architecture-as-engineering. The fundamental idea was to be that engineers solve problems, and that the solutions to one set of problems invariably raise new problems, requiring a new round of solutions, etc. So the engineers' history of any subject is a history of this back and forth. Architecture is a form of engineering, and the creation of large sacred light and air-friendly spaces is one example. Sacred though the goal was supposed to be, the path can be understood in secular terms, as problems and solutions and new problems. Further, we can understand the great aesthetic appeal of cathedrals through understanding their history in this...
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Sabine Hossenfelder has a fascinating post in her blog about the role of "heroes" in science writing/popularization. People writing about the sciences want to tell stories, because they presume that the people reading their stuff like learning stories: and they are likely right because the human mind is structured to take information in that way. So ... here's a simple story. Individual A confronted difficult problem B at a certain moment in A's life, and in a specific context got an inspiration. He tested out the inspiration and -- ta da! -- it solved the problem, making him/her a hero. Insert memorable details involving botany or zoology along the way. In this manner a writer/popularizer conveys to his broad not-PhD-holding audience what problem B was, how it was solved, and thus what are the basic scientific ideas involved. Let's leave Newton's apple out of this. There's a much more recent example that involves pigeon shit. What is now called Co...
Lyra McKee, a reporter of some reputation in Northern Ireland, died in the line of duty on April 18, during rioting in Derry, a/k/a Londonderry. Police in that city recently cracked down on the apparent stockpiling of weapons and gasoline bombs by Republican groups. Pursuing this crackdown, they engaged in sweeping searches of homes. The searches catalyzed riots, and McKee died covering that responsive violence. She was killed by bullets apparently intended for police. The leaders of all of Northern Ireland's major political parties, from the Democratic Unionists to Sinn Fein, issued a joint statement calling this shooting a threat to the progress made over the last 20 years; progress, they said, toward peace and democracy. McKee had a book ready for publication, to be called THE LOST BOYS, focusing on the disappearance of two young men in Belfast during 'The Troubles.' Her death comes as debate in London over Brexit becomes ever more intertwined with the matter o...
This is a sad one. Earlier this month, Johnson Publishing, a Chicago institution founded during the Second World War, privately owned by an African-American family, filed for bankruptcy court protection. Johnson is probably best known for Ebony, a monthly general-interest magazine that featured successful black Americans -- doctors, public officials, bankers -- in a glossy magazine format. The company sold Ebony , and Jet , a sister publication, in 2016 in the course of a previous cash crunch. That sale earned it three more years, but this time it is down for the count. This is a chapter 7 liquidation proceeding, not a reorganization. It is worthwhile remembering now what may have been this company's finest hour: the publication in Ebony of an open-coffin photograph of Emmett Till. The image was an example of hard truths that need to be displayed. A human world that is more transparent to itself is likely to prove less beastly to itself than the world where acts such a...
Yes, my vacation went well, thank you. (I'm optimistically assuming it will have gone well and have concluded uneventfully before you read this.) Happy Easter. For the religious Christians among you, some thoughts from Albert Schweitzer for this day. This is from The Mystery of the Kingdom of God . All italics are from the original. "Jesus, however, reached back after the fundamental conception of the prophetic period, and it is only the form in which he conceives of the emergence of the final event which bears the stamp of later Judaism. He no longer conceives of it as an intervention of God in the history of the nations, as did the Prophets; but rather as a final cosmical catastrophe. His eschatology is the apocalyptic of the book of Daniel, since the Kingdom is to be brought about by the Son of Man when he appears upon the clouds of heaven (Mark 8:38 - 9:1) . " The secret of the Kingdom of God is therefore the synthesis effected by a sovereign spirit bet...
I wrote yesterday's discussion of OSVs not for its own sake (it is not likely that I managed to warn off anyone who was genuinely considering an investment in this loser of an asset) -- but to make a point about supply. The supply of X in general is not "the amount of X that is present on the face of the earth at a particular time." It is "the amount of X that will be brought to market and sold to a buyer at any given price along a range of possible prices." This is what is expressed as the Supply line on a S-D graph. You see a supply curve on the graph above. The quantity of such vessels (in terms of hours in use -- because the vessels are generally chartered by the oil companies working the rigs from the ship owners by the hour) that would be made available to a buyer (charterer) is the X axis. The price AT WHICH that quantity would be supplied is the Y axis. The line curves upward to the right -- that is, the higher the price/charter rate oil companie...
I wrote something recently for one of my content customers about the economics of offshore support vessels (OSVs). These are the specialized ships that provide a range of support services to offshore oil and gas drill platforms. The bottom line is that OSVs are a lousy investment idea. If given an opportunity to invest in such a vessel or in any corporate entity whose main line of business involves owning or operation such vessels: run the other way! There are too many of these darned things and (though I wasn't allowed to put it this bluntly for the commercial cite I was writing for), the oil majors take advantage of the fact that there are so many of them. They pocket the savings. Understanding the oversupply problem requires taking into consideration both cold stacked and warm stacked OSVs. To review: a warm stacked vessel is left at port, but continues in operating condition. It can readily be reactivated. Indeed, a warm stacked vessel continues to have a ...
I'm on vacation this week, so this post and the next three are being written (were written) long ago, and are not at all responsive to current events. Just so you know. I'll throw something quite random out there today. One blog that discusses ancient history recently referenced some ancient Greek ruthlessness with the wonderful line, "Just because they invented geometry doesn't mean they wouldn't mess you up at the drop of a hat." [No, my vacation does not involve a trip to Greece -- this is more random than that -- but it's a good line.] Okay, the "drop of a hat" thing might have been an unnecessary cliche. The line might have been even better if the final phrase had had a skewed connection to geometry. The Greeks: Just because they invented geometry doesn't mean they wouldn't mess you up at every curve or right angle in the road.
Hmmm. To review the recent bidding, friends. The Trumpettes of the White House leaked that the administration is considering a policy to bus asylum seekers to designated cities in retaliation for the political views of the people running those cities. Certain news outlets accurately informed us of this idea. The first reaction of the Trumpettes was "Fake news! Nobody here is thinking of anything so horrible!" Until the Orange Dynast said, "Actually, that's a good idea and I am considering it, because using human beings as pawns is what I'm all about." So: the "enemies of the people" had been exactly right and should take a bow. Keep on keeping on with that truth-telling trick, enemies. Trump doesn't care, but it does seem to confuse the Trumpettes now and then.
Some of the readers of this blog may surely be interested in the regime change at the University of Vermont, where campus protests have led to a reconsideration of cutbacks in the humanities. The incoming President of the University is Suresh Garimella, who is leaving a post as the Provost of Purdue. There is a petition drive underway to try to persuade Garimella of the importance of restoring to 2015 staffing level. Here are some more specifics at a blog and a link to the petition. https://classicalstudies.org/scs-blog/university-vermont-classics-department/blog-fighting-future-classics-university-vermont . The petition is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wN1GdE5nKzbTeney7Kp3nZCYkFkblKeur8tu-bHFgig/edit#gid=0
I mentioned in a couple of posts here in early March that Jill Abramson had written a book, Merchants of Truth, about where the news publishing business is headed, that there is valuable material in the book, and that it had become embroiled in a controversy over plagiarism. This post follows up on the third of those points. One of the sources whence came the cribbed passages at issue is Jake Malooley, who wrote a piece years ago about Jason Mojica, a Vice News editor. The plagiarism from that piece was in fact one of the items I cited in my discussion in March. Malooly has since had the opportunity to interview Abramson on this point. He hears her out on her apology to him, but then presses her beyond her comfort zone, in a piece run by Rolling Stone. Here is part of the exchange. Isn’t inadvertent plagiarism still plagiarism? No, it isn’t. I mean, you can consult your own experts. It may be that not all agree with me, but I’ve talked to a number of respected eminent sc...
Apparently because somebody told the truth about him. See my own earlier comments in this blog about Jorjani. https://jamesian58.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-nazis-phd-thesis.html https://jamesian58.blogspot.com/2016/12/more-about-jorjani.html Here is the lawsuit, brought last July. https://images.law.com/contrib/content/uploads/documents/399/13611/jorjani.pdf You'll notice that there are other claims in that document, but the defamation one seemed philosophically extraordinary. The others are claims on contractual matters. Much more recently, the Hon. William Martini granted summary judgment against the defamation claim (thank goodness!) -- the others are still in play. In the summary judgment ruling Martini said it was reasonable for the defendants to accuse Jorjani of having "peddled racial theories equivalent to those underlying slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the Holocaust" because, on Martini's review of the writings in question, he did.