Wandering through a Wonderfully Confusing World

Cloud formation, nucleation and not reading papers properly.

CERN recently published a paper, the first by the CLOUD project, looking at the effects of ammonia, sulphuric acid and galactic cosmic rays on the nucleation of aerosols in the atmosphere.[1]

This has been seized n as evidence that cosmic rays play a mjor role in the climate by effecting cloud formation, rather than the emission of anthropological greenhouse gases.[2] But does the study actually say that?

Well...no. First of all, the study wasn't even about the formation of clouds in the atmosphere. It was about the formation of aerosol compounds in the atmosphere, which is completely different. Although these play a role in cloud formation, they have to grow much large to form the nucleai that allow clouds to form. The paper is not about what people have claimed.[1]

Furthermore, looking over the last sixty years, there hasn't been any major changes in the level of cosmic rays hitting Earth (other than a short cycle imposed by the sun) [3], and even with the small amount of variation there has been, there has been a negligible effect on the rate of cloud formation.[4]

In other words, not only does the study not say what it is said to say, but what is being claimed doesn't fit with the empirically reality of the situation.

That's...not good.

[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v476/n7361/full/nature10343.html

[2] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/breaking-news-cern-experiment-confirms-cosmic-rays-influence-climate-change/

[3] http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009GL041327.shtml

[4] http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009GL041327.shtml

Truth and Fiction.

Truth is stranger than fiction, or so the saying goes. And so it should be.

Fiction is written for a purpose. It been planned by the writer, and, more importantly, it has most likely been edited by the writer after it was finished (unless it was written by me, in which case it was thrown up on fanfiction.net and hastily changed a few months later when I read back over it and realised it made no sense).

Truth, however, is based in the real world. And the real world is a confusing mess of gravity, people, quantum mechanics and the rules of cricket. We have experts in all fields spending years studying it, years and years, and so far our greatest insight is that we're standing on some sort of ball.

There is no purpose to truth. It isn't planned out neatly beforehand, nor, despite the best efforts of Minitruth, we can't really edit it that well either. In fiction, shit happens to show character, or drive the plot, or for some reason. In truth, shit happens because...well...it just does.

(A curious side effect of sitting in airports with a seven hour wait till your flight: you over think things. A lot.)

Matthew 6:5-6

That is my response to The Response.

Evil or stupid.

While I generally hold that things are more complicated than a binary system (and this is actually a tertiary system), in the case of the motivations for the recent riots in England, I can really only think of these two possibilities.

If they are motivated, as I have seen suggested, by either the shooting incident or by economic conditions in their area, then they are stupid. I say this simply because by rioting, they are not bringing attention to these issues at all; instead, they are bringing public attention and sympathy to the victims of the riots. Painting yourself as a villain is a really stupid thing to do, because it means that no matter what point you are trying to make, no one will care. Why? Well, because you've just burnt someones house down, or destroyed someones livelihood. Any point that you were trying to make will be swept away underneath the fact that you are being an asshole.

The other possiblity is simple. If you are going to the riots, delibrately meaning to burn down houses or buisnesses or assult people, then you are evil. It is that simple.

There is of course a third option, where they are stupid and evil, but really those are your choices. If you are acting for a good cause but doing these acts, then you are stupid (and actually evil as well, but predominately stupid). If you are doing these acts to show society you can do whatever you like, then you are evil.

(Note: This is looking at the motivations for the acts, not the acts themselves, which are going to be evil by default.)

Guess where I am.

 

Go on, guess where I'll be for the next two weeks. Bet you can't. :P

Purpose in Buildings

About ten minutes walk away from my house, there is a large abandoned grain factory. The windows are boarded up. Rust hangs from the various pipes around it. I don't know what they use to carry.

The factory is not pretty. It's a great big concrete block with some brick bits poking out of the side. It is covered in graffiti and the grime from being positioned just off the main road in and out of the city. It is just a big lump in the middle of a field.

A couple of miles away, there is a ruined nunnery. I actually find it rather nice to look at. It was destroyed in the reformation by King Henry VIII, then made into a residence of a local noble family, before being badly damaged in the civil war and abandoned. Since then it was used as a source for stone by local villagers. Now it is pretty much just a big stone shell with bits taken out of it, smoothed down by the weather. It is the kind of place you hear ghost stories about, but, having been there at night, it really isn't that scary. Sure, it's eerie, but it isn't anymore so than another place at night, away from people and bright lights. I find it sad actually. A dull sadness, softened like the building by the expanse of time between me and when it had its purpose.

I'm not a believer in divine purpose, or destiny, or that we were put on Earth for an external reason. Buildings are different. Unlike humans, they are delibrately created. They are given a purpose. And I actually like that. Having a purpose simplifys meaning, makes things easier to understand. I sometimes would like for there to be a purpose for our existance. Something to act as an anchor, to say "This is why I am here!"

We don't have that. But the things that we create, buildings and tools, do. We make them for a reason.

Which is why the grain factory freaks me out far more than the nunnery. The nunnery's original purpose has been lost long ago. I have no way of knowing what that purpose was without further research. At first glance, it could just be that someone decided to dump a bunch of stones in that place.

But the grain factory...now that is different. It has structure. It has a clear purpose to its existence. The machinery, the great chimney that sits on the roof, it all points to there being a reason for its existence, its purpose.

The machines are silent. Its purpose has gone, but I can see it, and I can see the parellels to me, and it scares me.

A small collection of links.

Just a couple of things I find are vaguely on topic for my recent posts.

Time in a Bottle.

One of the things that I often find myself doing is that although I can understand accepting the finality of death, I'd much rather live. One song I particularly like for this is below. It was originally performed by Jim Croce, but I prefer the muppet version shown below, just for its very simple demonstration of this point.

 

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Peter Shelley.

Ozymandias is a classic poem, which beautifully sums up the view of a final ending, even for those things we think will last forever. What became of that land? None remains who know. In fact, not even the speaker of the poem can profess to have seen the remains, but instead he hears it secondhand, from a traveler.

An Oxford Elegy

But what - I dream! Two hundred years are flown
    And thou from earth art gone
Long since and in some quiet churchyard laid;
    Some country nook, where o'er thy unknown grave
Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave
    Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree's shade.

Ralph Williams

An Oxford Elegy is basically a poem set to an orchestra and choir. It is a haunting work, musing on a man who has been dead for two hundred years and is now only vaguely remembered, with the reader using this to muse on his own coming death. It is melancholy, but at the end there is a note of acceptance.

The full text can be read here, and it can be listened to below. If you do get a chance to hear this performed live, I highly recommend it.

Part 1

 

Part 2

 

Forever Young.

A personally favourite of mine which I do find hard to listen to, since I associate it with a rather unpleasant time of my life, but still definitely a favourite.

Forever Young is an 80's power ballard by the group Alphaville, which has so many lines I adore I am just going to quote it fully.

Let's dance in style, lets dance for a while
Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you going to drop the bomb or not?

Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music's for the sad men

Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders we're getting in tune
The music's played by the mad men

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever? Forever young

Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
Why don't they stay young

It's so hard to get old without a cause
I don't want to perish like a fading horse
Youth's like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever

So many adventures couldn't happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams swinging out of the blue
We let them come true

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever

I may actually do a full post looking at this, but for now, here is the video.

 

 

There are also plenty of songs by the band Queen that I feel fit the theme of looking at death, but I'd quite like to do a later post just looking at them. Feel free to add any more examples in the comments.

We're all stories in the end.

Warning: Spoilers for series 5 of Dr Who (Matt Smith's first series), risk of pretentiousness.

Staring at graves and commenting on how you have no idea who is buried there is all very well and good, but I must admit that I feel a bit...sad? empty? some other combination of emotions I'm not quite sure how to describe? when I think about the fact that one day someone is going to be standing over my grave and saying this. For every person enshrined in a statue, or in stories, hundreds more are buried, forgotten due to time.

That's my fate, and that's all of our fates. No matter how hard we try to run, how long we extend our lives, someday history will forget us, like we never existed. Far in the distant future, this planet that we live on will be destroyed by the very star that allowed it to produce life, and none of us will be around to see that.

It is actually rather like the cracks in time in Doctor Who. Caused by the TARDIS exploding and breaking the universe itself, the cracks are rips in reality. Anything that is pulled into it does not just no longer exist, but it never existed in the first place; it is wiped from memories, data banks, even cause and effect warps around the sudden disappearance of the one who was never there.

In the finale, of course, this is all sorted out by the Doctor, but in doing so, he find himself on the other side of the cracks, no longer part of the universe. In a flashback through his life, he arrives at the very first night he met Amy, his companion, when she was seven years old, and finds her waiting for him, fast asleep on her suitcase.

The scene that follows is a tremendous piece of acting from Matt Smith, showing an old man who has almost accepted that his time is up, and is desperately trying one last trump card before he decides to seemingly end it all.

 

There is one particular line that stuck with me in this speech. "I'll be a story in your head. That's ok. We're all stories in the end."

I'd be lying if I said I wanted to eventually be only a story, passed down until my name is forgotten, but that is less to with the idea itself, and more to do with the fact I really rather enjoy living. However, I accept that there is going to be an end. To me. To all of us.

And that is fine. That a story will be warped and forgotten over time does not erode the meaning of the story as it is told, and nor does the spectre of death, of finite time, remove all meaning from our lives. While death is the end, we are not quite there yet.

We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?

Would they smile?

There was a grave on my way home.

This wasn't particularly surprising, since I was walking home through the cemetery of a church, nor was it eye-catching or flashy. It was just an old grave, tucked away beneath the branches of some tree. The earth in front of it was bare, other than some small spurts of grass that had grown up, starved on light in the twin shadows of the tree and the church.

I don't know who was buried underneath that tombstone. The names had long since been eroded away, time taking it's slow and steady toil on the rock that made it up. If that was the state of the stone, I thought, then what lies beneath it must be long rotted away to the bones, all signs of the life (or lives, since I don't even know how many are buried there) that once animated them long gone.

I wondered who it was, beneath that tree. Perhaps it was a merchant, rosy cheeked and with jolly eyes for the customers, then tired and worried about rent payments behind closed doors. Or a solider, coming back from a war, or The War as he might have thought of it. Did he live long afterwards? Or was he tragically struck down in a drunk bar brawl?

I do not think it is a child's grave; it is too large, and dominates too large an area for a small body to be buried. Maybe it is two lovers, wrapped together in a scene resembling the love that once sprung between them, now looking like two dolls wrapped around each other, joints stiff and unmoving.

By the time I am home, I have had the images of so many people flash by in my mind; men, women, young and old. A stooped old university professor gives way to a nervous young maid gives way to a priest gives way to a tanner gives way to a student gives way to a blacksmith, each steadily growing (with my grasp of history as poor as it is) less and less rooted in the reality of what the person was like.

I do not know who is buried there, or what they were like. Did they smile a lot? What did they do for a living? What about family, friends? Did they ask to be buried under the tree, or did that grow over them later?

And then I think that, like them, someday I too will be an unknown body under an eroded gravestone, perhaps with a gnarled tree over my head. And that's fine; I won't be in my body to feel my flesh rotting away. That is some small comfort, at least (although I'd rather be alive).

One day we will all be lost beneath tombstones, or scattered to the wind. Our minds will no longer roam the earth, only the hardness of bones and tombstones will remain. And even those, those things that for us seem so ancient, will disappear as time continues onwards, until not even those signs of us remain. Forgotten, but not meaningless.

I wonder if I should bring some flowers to the grave. I wonder,if the person buried there was alive today, would it make them smile?

Identifying yourself.

My apologise for not updating very much this month. I've been having a weird form of writing block, where, although I am capable of writing my thoughts down, writing them coherently is another matter. I'm tempted to say I'm suffering from a jabir penalty, but I have yet to find myself building wonders that break the laws of reality, so I don't think it really applies. This means I have a number of posts floating around in draft form, waiting to  be made understandable. This is not one of them.

Gender is a slightly weird issue for me. I'm not talking about physical sex, which is a whole other can of worms, but rather the self-identification as a man or a woman, or as both, or as neither. Most people gender's are the same as their physical sex.

The thing is, I don't actually know how to identify as either. I know people do, but I can't work out why I would identify as either a man or a woman. The concept is simply meaningless to me. Technically I guess this makes me agender, although I'm not quite sure. And actually, I'm fine that. Self-identifying as neither male or female is fine by me.

The problem is that this is another way that I don't understand other people. Most people identify with something that I don't have any internal understanding of at all. It isn't like how I don't like the taste of alcohol but can understand how people do, since I have things I like the taste of myself and can understand how other people may enjoy different drinks to me. In this case, it is like I do not even have a sense of taste.

The purpose of this post is therefore to ask people who do have this sense what makes you identify with the gender you do?