Well maybe that’s overstating things. But I don’t know of another one, and from small acorns do mighty oaks grow; I’m quite proud of my new land investment in Second Life.
The plot, which has great sea views, already hosts a nice cherry blossom and one high resolution gibbon – complete with gibbon song environmental sound.
Be it ever so humble......Sunset with gibbon
This is all part of an effort to explore and get to grips with virtual worlds as a vehicle for science communication. Having bought the land, I now have somewhere to practice building and scripting. Second Life uses a Java type coding language, but as the last coding I did was of a thermodynamic model for energy minimisation in silicate slag systems – in FORTRAN77 – I’m on a learning curve.
UK newspaper ‘The Independent’ today featured this spine tingling story about what is probably the world’s oldest animal, and reminding us that man doesn’t hold all the cards – especially when it comes to longevity.
A Galapogos tortoise (photo WikiCommons)
I gave Nippy, the world’s oldest gibbon, a mention earlier this year when he passed away at almost 60 years of age. Now we find there is actual photographic evidence that a giant tortoise from St.Helena has probably lived to more than 175 years. That would make ‘Jonathan’ the world’s oldest living animal.
Of course there are trees and funghi that have lived much longer, but without resorting to the fantasy of Tolkien’s noble ‘Ents’, its not the same thing.
Ancient sequoia……not the same thing (photo WikiCommons)
The last excitement we had in the same vein was the death of the Galapagos tortoise ‘Harriet’, who reached 175 years spot-on, and the accolade she may have owned the oldest eyeballs to have formed an image of the living Charles Darwin.
And these are the Otaheite Dog and Wolf, or at least 1788 aquatint renditions of them, made with some license if the awkward stance and anthropomorphic gaze are to be believed;Â but let that not distract from their story.
Acquatint of the Otaheite Dog by Charles Catton (Tim Jones's collection)Acquatint of the Otaheite Wolf by Charles Catton (Tim Jones's collection)
Drawn from life, engraved, and published by Charles Catton in his ‘Animals, Drawn From Nature and Engraved in Aqua-tinta‘, in 1788, the prints are technically interesting as representing the first use of aquatint for natural history illustration.
Catton started life as a coach painter, expertly representing animals in heraldry, and achieving the rank of coach painter to George III. Later in his career he helped document animals observed by adventurers like John White, who travelled to the South Seas in 1787, and whose ‘A Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales’ featured Catton’s picture of an Australian kangeroo. Like most artists at this time, Catton didn’t actually travel with the explorers, but worked from live and dead specimens sent home from the New World expeditions.
Catton's Kangeroo for John White
A contemporary advertisement for the journal contains a statement on accuracy that, applied to the Otaheite dog, is indefensibile by modern standards:
“The Public may rely, with the most perfect confidence, on the care and accuracy with which the drawings have been copied from nature, by Miss Stone, Mr. Catton, Mr. Nodder, and other artists; and the Editor flatters himself the Engravings are all executed with equal correctness, by, or under the immediate inspection of Mr. Milton.”
Despite their failings, Catton’s aquatints were an honest attempt to represent reality. What they lack, with the animals drawn dead and out of context, is any essence of the beasts: be that energy, poise, or sloth.
Catton’s Otaheite dog and wolf look similar, which is intriguing given John White made the same observation of their Australian counterparts:
“This animal is a variety of the dog, and, like the shepherd’s dog in most countries, approaches near to the original of the species, which is the wolf, but is not so large, and does not stand so high on its legs.
The ears are short, and erect, the tail rather bushy; the hair, which is of a reddish-dun colour, is long and thick, but strait. It is capable of barking, although not so readily as the European dogs; is very ill-natured and vicious, and snarls, howls, and moans, like dogs in common.
Whether this is the only dog in New South Wales, and whether they have it in a wild state, is not mentioned; but I should be inclined to believe they had no other; in which case it will constitute the wolf of that country; and that which is domesticated is only the wild dog tamed, without having yet produced a variety, as in some parts of America.”
Note the language: “approaches near to the original of the species”. Some concept of evolution clearly existed way before Darwin published his 1859 Origin of Species.
Joseph Banks
The London Natural History Museum’s beautiful ‘Voyages of Discovery’ describes the Pacific crossing made by James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, and Sydney Parkinson on the Endeavour, including their visit to Otaheite. What it fails to mention is the Otaheite dog and, more importantly – how to cook it. For that we must turn to primary sources. In ‘A Journey of a Voyage to the South Seas‘, Sydney Parkinson describes how civilised Englishmen came to share the Otaheite locals’ penchant for tasty roast dog:
“These people also are fond of dog’s-flesh, and reckon it delicious food, which we discovered by their bringing the leg of a dog roasted to sell. Mr. Banks ate a piece of it, and admired it much. He went out immediately and bought one, and gave it to some Indians to kill and dress it in their manner, which they did accordingly. After having held the dog’s mouth down to the pit of his stomach till he was stifled, they made a parcel of stones hot upon the ground, laid him upon them, and singed off the hair, then scraped his skin with a cocoa shell, and rubbed it with coral; after which they took out the entrails, laid them all carefully on the stones, and after they were broiled ate them with great goût; nor did some of our people scruple to partake with them of this indelicate repast. Hav-ing scraped and washed the dog’s body clean, they prepared an oven of hot stones, covered them with bread-fruit leaves, and laid it upon them, with liver, heart and lungs, pouring a cocoa-nut full of blood upon them, covering them too with more leaves and hot stones, and inclosed the whole with earth patted down very close to keep in the heat. It was about four hours in the oven, and at night it was served up for supper: I ate a little of it; it had the taste of coarse beef, and a strong disagreeable smell; but Captain Cook, Mr. Banks, and Dr. Solander, commended it highly, saying it was the sweetest meat they had ever tasted; but the rest of our people could not be prevailed on to ate any of it.”
And that about wraps it up for the Otaheite Dog. Yummy.
Okay – in September I made this little joke about the dumbing down of education standards in the UK; a tension reliever from the continuous and often anecdotal murmur around grade stats going up while exam difficulty goes down.
But the issue is dead serious, as we are reminded today by the Royal Society of Chemistry‘s publication: A wake-up call for science education?
The report describes what happened recently when 1,300 of the nation’s brighter 16 year olds were tested on chemistry exam questions taken from over the last 50 years. The selected questions were of the more mathematical type that test a pupil’s ability to analyse and understand the fundamentals (I think the word ‘hard’ has become politically incorrect), as these are the more useful skills critics say have been fogged out in contemporary tests weighted towards memory.
The report is here, but in a nutshell: the authors say there has been a real and significant reduction in the difficulty of numerical or analytical type questions moving from the 1980’s to the 1990’s, which corresponds to a change in the exam system. UK readers will recognise this transition as the move from a combination of O-Levels (for the ‘brighter’ kids) and CSEs (for the others) to the single GCSE system. Things have stabilised a bit since the transition but, as the authors observe, there are fewer of the analytical type question in the new regime.
What’s more, the average test score on these more analytical questions was only 25%, causing the RSC to call for an urgent increase in this type of question in today’s papers.
Consistent with the authors’ thesis, pupils did least well on multi-step maths oriented problems where there was no prompting of what to do next. Even problems requiring basic maths presented difficulties. Part of the explanation -although its arguably nothing to be proud of – is that some of the more complex content is no longer taught at this level.
In a double whammy that will have the sociologists wetting themselves: the study found that pupils from independent schools (that means private, where typically middle class professional parents pay for their kids’ education ) did significantly better than the state educated pupils; also that boys did better than girls on the hard maths problems. The independent school result is put down in part to the tendency for these schools to teach science as separate subjects – physics, chemistry, biology – and to them having more specialised science teachers (of which there is a chronic national shortage). The authors consider the gender result ‘unusual’.
The final conclusion was that the current system doesn’t recognise the most exceptional students with a wider knowledge of the subject. I think that reflects a tendency to ask only questions the routine solution for which has been taught. Essentially, we have gone from a situation where the teacher gave you a knife with instructions how to carve, to one where the standard tool is a pastry cutter.
What the government will make of this latest grenade lobbed into the mire of UK education policy, we will have to wait and see.
On Monday, I joined an awards evening celebrating the best environmental science and technology productions made for European television. The categories were: drama, general programmng, new media, and an extra jury prize for exceptional content.
The MIDAS awards were hosted by PAWS – as the name suggests, a group promoting the public awareness of science. The evening also included a keynote address by Sir David King – until recently the UK’s Chief Scientific advisor, and a related panel discussion on climate change. I’ll share the messages from that in a future post.
On to the award winners. They won’t mean much outside Europe, but at least you can see the themes that are popular.
Best drama award went to the BBC‘s ‘Burn Up’ – which anticipates the lead up to Kyoto 2 in 2009 with a volatile mix of politics, science and big oil.
BBC’s Trailer to Burn Up
Best General Programming went to an edition of the Belgian VRT series Fata Morgana, about getting local people involved in environmental challenges. For four years I lived a stone’s throw away from the VRT TV tower in Brussels and, watching the clip, found the local flavour of this type of programming ‘very Belgian’ – meant in the most complimentary possible way!
Best New Media award went to Germany’s ZDF Interactive for their ‘Consequences of Climate Change’ – a truly interactive production in which viewers can explore the effect of drought and floods by keying in various parameters. This was an excellent use of new media I’m sure we will see much more of. If I can get a link to a clip or screenshots of this, I’ll post it.
The jury special prize went to The Netherland’s VPRO Television and ‘Waste equals Food’, concerned with cradle to grave understanding of products’ impacts on the environment. Examples included Nike’s design of running shoes for optimised recycling, the soles typically reappearing in sports court surfaces.
There has been a lot of comment in the last few days about statements made in an interview with Lord Paul Drayson, the new UK science minister, concerning his beliefs around faith, god, and particularly his claim to a ‘sixth sense’ for on occasion knowing what was going to happen.
Science Minister Lord Paul Drayson (Photo WikiCommons)
What I find regrettable is the tone of reporting that might lead some to imply Drayson either claims some supernatural power, or recognises the existence of some such power. Maybe that is what he believes, but there is a difference between having a mind open enough to entertain there being elements of nature operating that we don’t understand but whose effects are manifest in the world, and believing that supernaturalism or man-made mythic influences are at work. I can read his comments either way.
It is no mystery that our subconscious is continually chewing things over in the background of our minds, and taking note of things without us knowing. The product of that sub-conscious analysis appears as our intuition; we suddenly know something without knowing why – magically if you like. So is that where Paul Drayson is coming from? Or what?
It also doesn’t help when the press latch on to Drayson’s references to the ‘magic’ of science. Here for me at least he is clearly talking metaphorically, in the same vein that Einstein and Hawking expressed themselves.
The registered user population of the virtual world Second Life has, according to owners Linden Lab, grown in the last five years to over 15 million, about 70,000 of whom are ‘in the world’ at any one time. I’ve been a virtual citizen for about six months and, while I’ve denied myself the latest cyber fashions, angel wings, and other personal embellishments, can drive a car and I do know how to fly.
Me at Imperial College in Second Life
If you haven’t visited, its worth checking out. Entry-level access costs nothing; you just download the free software, give yourself a name, and jump into the training area.
It’s pleasant enough just to tour the virtual landscape, take a lecture, watch a play, or visit a library in Second Life. But I got to thinking on my last visit – always dangerous – of the similarities between this world and another virtual world competing for my time – the Morlock sphere in Stephen Baxter‘s book ‘The Time Ships’.
Stephen Baxter's Timeships
Writing in the style of H.G.Wells, Baxter recounts a trip through time to an earth of the far future. The time traveller is the same one we met in H.G.’s original ‘The Time Machine‘; you know – Rod Taylor played him in the movie.
On arrival, our hero finds a race of evolved humans, the Morlocks, who inhabit not the Earth any longer, but the inner surface of a huge spherical shell built at the orbit of venus. The sphere entirely encompasses the sun, collecting all the energy and matter its inhabitants could ever conceivably need. All our familiar resource problems have vamoosed. There is no want.
It’s the same in Second Life, with its boundless expanses of developable landmass and an effectively bottomless – if virtual – resource of materials and energy. The cherry on the cake in both worlds is the way buildings and other useful objects either appear out of nowhere (Second Life) or pop up ready synthesised from the floor material (Morlock sphere).
It is this possibility of zero constraint, albeit delivered in different ways in the two worlds, that I find intriguing, challenging us to engage with (or reject) revolutionary models of how we might one day define ourselves and our lives.
While there is some real-world negative sentiment towards Second Life, of the “get a first life” variety, experience of virtual worlds can alert us to how limited, cumbersome, and parochial some aspects of our real world lives can be. Baxter’s conception frees us from these aspects, blurring the lines between what we now see as real and virtual, and melding the two into a possible future reality. In a world without limit or want, what would become of our values, drives, motivations and pleasures?
Baxter’s world all sounds like science fiction – which it is. But whether his vision, or something totally different, comes to pass is next to the fact that many people have as much difficulty conceiving of the far, far, future as they do of the distant, distant past. It’s one reason some people never get to grips with evolution; they can’t conceive of the time it’s taken for all those small changes to occur. Material spheres the size of planetary orbits sound ridiculous, but if we don’t kill ourselves off first – granted a very real possibility – who is to say what we might do.
Anyhow, if any of that rambling has whetted your appetite to engage in some really far, far, incredibly far, reach speculation of alternative futures, the sort that make the Morlock sphere look like a walk in the park, I can recommend Damien Broderick’s ‘Year Million – Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge’. There is a comprehensive review of it here by Jon Turney.
Or if you’d rather just go for a lie down, that’s good too.
Just a short note to introduce our latest adoption and to say thank you to S & J for the early Christmas present.
Kartika is a female Sulawesi Black Macaque from Indonesia, presently in the care of the Durrell Conservation Trust in Jersey.
kartika
Macaques are a ‘cheek-pouched’ monkey in the same group as baboons, guenons and vervet monkeys; but are sometimes confused with apes because their tails are so small.
Only found on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, the endangered black crested macaque lives in tropical forest and is a mixed ground and tree dweller.
Animal ‘adoptions’ are nice to receive and even nicer to give. They are also a good way of alerting friends and family to conservation issues.
Kartika joins two sea-turtles from the Mexican Baja California peninsula, and a lemur – so we are really quite diversified!
The secret to becoming an astronaut is that you have to really, really, really want to be one.
Right Stuff
Oh yes – and to be considered for the European Space Agency’s 2008 recruitment round currently in progress (they recruit only every 15 years or so) you also need to be the right age and nationality.
So we were told tonight by French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoys at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre. Three time shuttle astronaut Clervoys, with 675 space-hours under his belt, joined a panel of experts in space history, medicine, and psychology to educate and entertain the forty or so of us volunteering for ‘Space Station Dana’.
But it wasn’t all one way. Split into teams, and clutching our Astronaut Training and Selection Manuals, we set off on a range of psychological, physical, and knowledge tests that were fun – and sufficiently taxing – to get a flavour of what 21st century ‘Right Stuff’ is all about.
Clervoys
One of the exercises involved an imaginary manned trip to Mars. It takes 20 minutes for communications to travel from Earth to Mars, so any issues with the spacecraft once it’s a good distance from Earth will need sorting without the help of real time chit-chat with engineers back home. So our psychological test was based on that scenario, the idea being to get things right first time through good planning and authority, all the time maintaining good relations and respect in the team (they used a Post-it/paper-clip tower building exercise, conducted in total silence after an initial planning session).
Contrary to popular belief, Clervoys said, you don’t have to have super-human qualities to be an astronaut.  So what are the qualifications? Well, you’ll typically be 27 to 37 years of age – more so your sponsors get a sensible return-on-investment in working years than some set-in-stone physiological reason. It also helps if you have a PhD in a relevant discipline and can speak Russian. Then there’s the raft of psychological tests – which are pretty tough. You will need to be physically fit; but again, that’s more about not dropping out of the programme and your career through ill health than an ability to withstand physical extremes.
If you get selected after all that, it’s 18 month basic training in Europe, the USA, and Russia; and you’re on your way to the dream!
And in winding up the evening, a dream is exactly how Jean-Francois relived his adventure for us, describing the effect of dimming the shuttle’s cabin lights with the sun and earth behind the spacecraft, and looking at the “milky way like a highway” in the total blackness of space.
Yesterday evening I spent three hours in one of the 850 theatres in 28 countries that were screening John Adams’s opera Dr Atomic , live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Gerald Finley as J.Robert Oppenheimer (Photo NY Met Opera)
I thoroughly enjoyed this modern opera. Set around the first U.S. atomic bomb tests in 1945, Dr Atomic explores the tensions, dilemmas, and decisions that occupied the minds of J.Robert Oppenheimer, his wife, and his project Trinity associates in the weeks, hours, and seconds leading up to the world’s first nuclear detonation.
Lines taken directly from declassified documents lent authenticity. As did a suitably sinister Atom Bomb, it’s crude complexity resembling a lash-up from a PhD lab, but radiating a pawl of edgy doom as it hung center stage.
Memorable moments along the way included the team’s sweepstake on expected explosive yield; Oppenheimer’s conservative estimate of 3kT (TNT equivalent) perhaps betraying a wishful regret that would later turn into his consuming guilt. And the other scientists, reluctant to put their money where their calculations had taken them – so massive, other, and beyond intuition were the predictions.
We also saw the quintessential moral dilemma that faces most if not all scientists at some point. When to speak up, protest, do-the-right-thing; take and act on the responsibility that knowledge has both blessed and damned you with.
Trinity
Predictably, the finale was charged with tension and poignancy. The begoggled cast stared into the audience/horizon for what seemed an eternity – as the minutes, then seconds, counted down to the detonation itself. In the final seconds, a translucent curtain descended between audience and stage with the typewritten words “give me some water” and we heard the stuttering voice of a Japanese child.
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