Where do new things come from?
Foreword.
1. On Genius. Artistic vision, redefined
Is it possible to be born deaf and become a professional composer or a musician?
Is it possible to be born blind and become a professional painter?
There are several examples of composers that became deaf late in their lives and kept on writing music. Beethoven (1770-1827) is known best; he started to lose hearing around 1801. He became completely deaf in 1817. Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884) became deaf in 1874 and insane in 1883 (he was a victim of syphilis). Gabriel Faure (1845-1924) wrote several important pieces after he became deaf in 1910. In all of these cases, the composers were born with good hearing which began to deteriorate 10-15 years before their death. I do not know a single example of a composer who was born deaf. There are several professional musicians with severe hearing loss but they have at least some hearing and most of them had good hearing in their formative childhood years. Perhaps, writing or playing music without awareness of sound is impossible.
And so should be the case with oil painting, right? Could a person born blind draw realistically looking objects? How about portraits? Landscapes? How about colors? Linear perspective? Cast shadows and light effects? How about effects of transparency, such as an object in a bottle? If your answer is negative, look at these paintings
of Esref Armagan. How does he do it in his mind, is a mystery. There are several other blind painters, though none of them were born blind.
Apparently, painting purely in your mind, without any concept of light and vision, is possible, although it happens extremely rarely, maybe once in 5000 years. Perhaps, such is the case with composing music. I do not see why would composing a fugue by a deaf composer would be inherently less likely than aerial perspective landscape oil painting by a blind artist, with striking colors, thoughtful composition, and the play of light. All these "visual" effect are based on the external information, painstaking studies of forms, and understanding of mathematical concepts of art. I think that it might be even easier for the composer because there are so many ways of visualizing musical harmonies. And yet, there are no examples... Why?
To me, it is not idle curiosity. Am also handicapped, from my very birth. I am completely, utterly deficient in what might be the most important asset for a scientist. I am totally lacking in genius. I have neither high intelligence nor a real talent and my intuition is garden variety. What I might have is perseverance, good memory, industry, and inquisitiveness of mind, but I can not generate the sparkling brilliance of thought and the boldness of imagination that distinguish a true scientist. All I know about genius is from books and rare conversations with people that have it, and they do a very bad job of explaining their thought process to people who do not have their mercurial minds. My impression is that they cannot explain it because it is not rational in the first place; you have to be a genius to understand genius. Consequently, my emulation of genius is as synthetic as the oil paintings of a blind painter. Such an effort is unbelievably inefficient, tortuous, unnatural, and requires superhuman effort on my part. The end result may fool someone, but it does not fool me or people who possess genius. A blind painter might be willing to give almost anything for an hour of being able to see the world in all of its mysterious and horrifying splendor, with his own dead eyes. I know that I would be willing to give almost anything for the possibility of seeing it through the mind of a genius, if only for an hour. But Armagan's example hints at another, still more exciting possibility: it might be possible to build in one's mind an intuitive model of genius of such perfection that there is little difference between the end result. The question, though, is: Can anyone who is not a genius achieve this perfection?
Deafness, mathematics, and granite furniture.
This is a companion article to my previous post, where I ask why there are no examples of born deaf composers, whereas there is an example of a born blind painter. Strangely and counter-intuitively, it appears that hearing is more important than vision.
We all know numerous examples of blind mathematicians, from Euler to Pontryagin -- including those who were born blind or almost blind. One would think that lacking the ability to see would be a much greater handicap to a mathematician than the ability to hear and to speak. Yet I know only one example of a deaf mathematician, Oliver Heaviside, who was part deaf after having scarlet fever in his early childhood. The only other famous name that search engines churn out is a fellow victim of the scarlet fever, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian pioneer rocket scientist. However, Tsiolkovsky was a math teacher rather than a mathematician, so he does not really count.
On the other hand, Heaviside counts, and very much so. I am not at all surprised that Britain provides the only known example of a deaf mathematician. Santayana once observed that "England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies." Heaviside scores on all four counts. He was a self-taught polymath of the lowly origins who became a FRS. His contributions to mathematics are great and lasting. We all know of Heaviside function and differential operators. He made essential contributions to the theory of electromagnetism: for example, he discovered the skin effect and telegrapher's equation (he actually worked as a telegraph operator in his youth). He is the one who translated Maxwell equations into their familiar vector form (Maxwell, being another oddball Brit, used quaternions). Heaviside's last great contribution was understanding how [Heaviside] layer in the ionosphere makes the worldwide transmission of short radio waves possible: "There may be a sufficiently conducting layer in the upper air. If so, the waves will, so to speak, catch on to it more or less. Then guidance will be by the sea on one side and the upper layer on the other."(1902). For a deaf person, Heaviside was quite a wordsmith: he invented such terms in physics as conductance, permeability, inductance, impedance, and permittance. In short, he was not only a great mathematician, he was a great Scientist, too. He was also a notorious Victorian eccentric, easily eclipsing Wilde and other dandy decadents:
"The following story is true. There was a little boy, and his father said, "Do try to be like other people. Don't frown." And he tried and tried, but could not. So his father beat him with a strap." Oliver Heaviside, "Electromagnetic Theory" (Volume III, Chapter IX, New York : Dover Publications, 1950.).
...He was a man who often was incapable of conducting himself properly in the most elementary social interactions. His only continuing contacts with women were limited to his mother, nieces, and housekeepers. He was a man who knew the power of money and desired it, but refused to work for it, preferring to live off the sweat of his family and long-suffering friends, whom he often insulted even as they paid his bills. Paul J. Nahin, Oliver Heaviside : The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age (cited from here)
...In later years [Heaviside's] behaviour became quite eccentric. He would sign correspondences with the initials "W.O.R.M." after his name though the letters did not stand for anything. Heaviside also started painting his fingernails [cherry] pink and had granite blocks moved into his house for furniture. (Wikipedia)
...His last years were spent as an embittered recluse at Torquay in Devon where he allowed only a few people to have access to him. He had an impish sense of humour and was considered an oddity. Hampered by deafness, he suffered from gout and recurring jaundice which was to finally prove fatal. Alan Heather
Heaviside was celibate and, like Newton, he was pathologically afraid of the better sex: "he cruelly kept the woman charged with his care a virtual prisoner in her own house, later driving her into catatonia". Clifford Pickover's book on "strange brains and geniuses" claims that Heaviside "sometimes consumed only milk for days (as did Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison)", etc. You get the picture. The deafness was only a minor problem with Oliver Heaviside.
This colorful character provides the only example of a great deaf mathematician known to me. Why does the deafness appear to be a much more formidable handicap to doing mathematics than blindness?
PS: I almost forgot to mention the heretical side of Heaviside. Here we are: "I don't find Einstein's Relativity agrees with me. It is the most unnatural and difficult to understand way of representing facts that could be thought of. . . . And I really think that Einstein is a practical joker, pulling the legs of his enthusiastic followers, more Einsteinisch than he." Oliver Heaviside.
BTW, there is an intersting and well-researched book about Heaviside in Russian, by Bolotovsky, on this site
A is for Amber
What is amber? A lot of people, including those who write textbooks and encyclopedias (see below), think that amber is fossilized resin of pine trees. The amber originates from ancient pine groves in which dinosaurs were feeding mosquitoes in order to provide the plot line for "Jurassic Park" movies, right? My former colleague Ken Anderson and others have conclusively demonstrated that this is not the case. Neither the source of the resin is known nor its exact age; the area in which these unknown conifers lived is also a mystery. Amber is the mineral symbol of our abysmal ignorance of the past.
Here are some references, in the order of growing confusion:
...The Baltic amber was built in the Paleogene about 40-50 Mya in an area in middle Sweden and Finland. The exact borders of this area are unknown, since some events in the history of the earth have destroyed all primary deposits. The source of the resin was Pinus Succinifera.
http://www.fortunecity.com/campus/geography/243/ambdepos.html
...Amber is formed as a result of the fossilization of resin that that takes millions of years and involves a progressive oxidation and polymerization of the original organic compounds...Although a specific time interval has not been established for this process, the majority of amber is 30-90 million years old. (EB)
...The Baltic amber or succinite is found as irregular nodules in a marine glauconitic sand, known as blue earth, occurring in the Lower Oligocene (23-34 Mya) strata of Sambia in Kaliningrad Oblast, where it is now systematically mined. It appears, however, to have been partly derived from yet earlier Tertiary deposits (Eocene, 56-34 Mya); and it occurs also as a derivative mineral in later formations, such as the drift. Relics of an abundant flora occur in association with the amber, suggesting relations with the flora of Eastern Asia and the southern part of North America. Goppert named the common amber-yielding pine of the Baltic forests Pinites succiniter, but as the wood, according to some authorities, does not seem to differ from that of the existing genus it has been also called Pinius succinifera. It is improbable, however, that the production of amber was limited to a single species; and indeed a large number of conifers belonging to different genera are represented in the amber-flora. (Wikipedia)
...Although botanists have described the Baltic amber tree as Pinites succinifer or from the genus Pinus, based on cones and needles found entombed amber, the chemists have isolated compounds in succinite that occur in other sources than ordinary pines. In the 19th century chemists recognized succinic acid and borneol, among other compounds, in amber. Only recently though, has decisive work on resin constituents been accomplished with a combination of mass spectroscopy and pyrolysis gas chromatography. Chemical analysis of succinite has concluded a "labdanoid character" for this fossil resin, based on work by Ken Anderson and others; this analysis eliminates the botanical source of the genus Pinus for Baltic amber (Beck, 1998, p. 57). Beck and Heuber (personal communication, 1998) believe the botanical source for succinite to be araucarian in origin. Although the tree does not exist today, it is related to Agathis australis [the huge kauri pine tree found in New Zealand - S.] http://www.emporia.edu/earthsci/amber/physic.htm
...Studies by Göppert (1836), based on botanical debris entombed in amber, concluded that members of the Pinaceae were the source of Baltic amber...Disregarding botanical evidence and concentrating on chemical evidence, Beck (1999) and Larsson (1978) suggested sources other than Pinaceae for Baltic amber, including Araucariaceae (e.g., Norfolk Pine, Monkey Puzzle, Kauri Pine), Cupressaceae (e.g., cedars, cypresses, junipers), and Taxodiaceae (e.g., yews); they believed that chemically Göppert's Pinites was a closer match to the Araucariaceae than to Pinaceae. http://www.emporia.edu/earthsci/amber/whatis.htm
...The most often encountered inclusions are small fragments of plant tissues and organs, but such remnants are usually impossible to identify. The most common traces of Eocene angiosperms in the Baltic amber are stellate hairs from scales that protect oak buds. Morphological studies made it possible for palaeobotanists to identify over 200 plant species from the amber forest. This Eocene plant community is regarded as a mixed pine-oak forest. Also thujas, cypresses, glyptostrobus, palms, magnolias, maple-trees, cinnamon trees, laurels and tea shrubs grew there. Among the undergrowth and herb layer junipers, evonymus, grasses and ericaceous plants were identified.
http://www.hermuz.hu/engweb/nws/amber2.htm
Which tree gave us the amber?
B is for battle: Why should we eat the greens?
I have already mentioned it twice in this journal that we owe it to green plants and cyanobacteria that we have oxygen in our atmosphere. What I did not mention is that this oxygen is bestowed upon us with the single purpose of killing us. By "us", I mean those who do not make O2 but eat the "greens", directly or indirectly, that is quite a few bacteria and all animals.
The life on earth did not originate under the oxidizing conditions and the machinery of cells cannot function forever under such harsh conditions. We adapted to oxygenated atmosphere around 1.5 Byr ago by the price of becoming mortal. Anaerobic bacteria living deep in the sediment (which account for > 50% of the biomass) can live for millions of years and divide only once in 100 kyr. The bacteria do not die if they have abundant nutrients and stable environment. We do. Battling oxygen and oxygen centered radicals that constantly attack biomolecules consituting eucariotic cells cannot last forever. The damage constantly accumulates and at some point it is prudent to give up. The oxygen allows us to speed up our metabolism but it also speeds up our disintegration. We cannot live without oxygen given to us by the plants but it is both the gift of life and the gift of death. Was such a situation inevitable?
The are many people, including some biochemically-challenged scientists, that believe that photosynthesis REQUIRES oxygen as a byproduct. This is not so. Photosynthetic anoxygenic bacteria (phototrophic procaryotes) do not make oxygen. These bacteria were around for as long as the cyanobacteria, which were first to learn how to split water and make O2 (ca. 2.5 Byr ago, some say even 2.8-3 Byr ago). The chloroplast in the green plants was developed by these cyanobacteria and then somehow ended up in eucaryotic cells, either by symbiosis (endocytosis) or by "horizontal gene transfer". In the chloroplast, there are actually two photosystems, both coupled to a light-gathering antenna of tightly packed chlorophyll molecules. Photosystem I does photosynthesis without the production of O2; only Photosystem II -- through its coupled manganese containing oxygen evolving complex -- does it. The two photosystems are coupled together via a cytochrome b6-f complex and the flow of the electrons from Photosystem I to Photosystem II involves two carriers, plastoquinone and plastocyanin. This tandem system (of breathtaking complexity, economy, and beauty) boosts the overall productivity of the photosynthesis. Both reaction centers are similar in design but coupled to very different protein complexes. Photosystem I cannot properly function without Photosystem II. However, a cell can get by without Photosystem II if it can use a reducing agent from the environment, such as H2S or succinate. This is what anoxygenic phototrophes are doing. Actually, their reaction centers closely resemble Photosystem II; Photosystem I is different.
The salient point of the previous paragraph is that the photosynthesis does not equal oxygen production. Organic acids (the endproducts of fermentation) and H2S were used to fix carbon for hundreds of millions of years before the first cyanobacteria appeared. The evolution of water-splitting photosynthesis is one of the deepest mysteries of molecular biology. The common assumption is that reduced volcanism in the late Archean (i.e., the dearth of sulfurous and fermentable compounds) gave oxygenic phototrophes an advantage. Alternatively, they used oxygen as a defensive weapon against anaerobes and that gave them an advantage. Nobody knows what happened.
Once the cyanobacteria started making oxygen and messing with our atmosphere, there was no stopping of them. The Sun was twice brighter back then, there was plenty of nutrients in the oceans, and the atmosphere had lots of CO2 and methane. The oxygenated seawater and then oxygenated atmosphere soon (in 200-500 Myr) drove the competitors out of business. There were no serious predators to feast on the cyanobacteria and the early algae. They also learned how to use H2O2 and HO2 radicals to kill such predators. The idyll (the Eden, perhaps) did not last forever, though. The phototrophes decimated greenhouse gases to the level when the heat was no longer trapped by the atmosphere, the temperature plummeted down to -50oC, the whole Earth froze solid (2.3 Byr ago), and the entire ecosystem collapsed. Eventually, over millions of years, the volcanoes spewed enough CO2 for the Earth to thaw, but the plants managed to repeat this suicidal feat once more, 750 to 580 Myr ago. The reason for that is that dead algae were trapped by sediment and fossilized; that permanently removed CO2 from the atmosphere and the ocean. There were no worms back then who were able to return the decomposing plants into the cycle. The plants went a long a way to destroy the life on this planet and nearly succeeded -- twice. [One might ask, how did the algae survive this glaciation? A possible answer is here.-S]
However, the plants did not manage to get rid of their enemies entirely. Their own oxygen was their eventual ruin. Once other eucaryots mastered the art of respiration, the domination of plants was breached. Ironically, it is likely that mitochondria (through which our cells respire) were developed in purple photosynthetic bacteria, the arch-enemy of blue-green bacteria. When the first animals appeared and started eating the plants, the decimation of CO2 slowed down and snowballing the Earth became more difficult to accomplish. Thanks to the Providence, the plants cannot stop making oxygen and kill us all, though nothing stands in a way of such treachery in principle, as observed above. Plants do not have collective minds to pull out such a dirty trick on us and, in any case, it would take prohibitively long time to do the job. So instead they tried another devilry: they got out of the water and became trees. The trunk of a tree is mainly cellulose and lignin, both of which are rather difficult to break down. This gives the tree a chance to be buried by the sediment and become coal. Coal traps CO2 better than anything else, reducing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Thanks to this deadly innovation, we were firmly on the path to the next snowball glaciation. It was slow to come only due to the increased volcanism of our good planet and the stubborn resistance of grazing animals. A couple of tens of millions ago, the plants started to get the upper hand in this battle and the ice ages started anew. The concentration of CO2 dropped to the level when the climate became unstable. Of course, that is what the plants wanted all along: the snowball earth will kill all animals and they will inherit this planet once more.
But the animal kingdom had the last card to play: humans. We are doing what no animal has ever been able to do: pump the oil out, excavate the coal, and burn them, putting CO2 back into the atmosphere. Besides, our agriculture promotes cereal grasses that fix much less carbon than the trees. Some scientists (e.g., Ruddiman) believe that we already sabotaged a minor interglacial period ca. 8 kyr ago. That's the way!
The plants have miscalculated again. I wonder what will be their next move. I expect that it will be something clever and evil. Never trust anything that is green and does not move.
What are the trees up to?
PS. An excellent online source on procaryotic phototrophes and molecular biology of bacterial photosynthesis can be found on this site. Current theories of origin and evolution of photosynthesis in Archean procaryotes are also reviewed therein.
PPS (added 5/1/06): http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/32/11131
The Paleoproterozoic snowball Earth: A climate disaster triggered by the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis
R. E. Kopp et al PNAS 102 (2005) 11131-11136
...Geological features suggestive of O2, such as red beds, lateritic paleosols, and the return of sedimentary sulfate deposits after a 900-million year hiatus, occur shortly before the 2.3–2.2 Ga Makganyene "snowball Earth." The massive deposition of Mn, which has a high redox potential, practically requires the presence of environmental O2 after the snowball. New age constraints from the Transvaal Supergroup of South Africa suggest that all three glaciations in the Huronian Supergroup of Canada predate the Snowball event. A simple cyanobacterial growth model...indicates that oxygenic photosynthesis could have destroyed a methane greenhouse and triggered a snowball event on timescales as short as 1 million years.
C is for Carnivores: Hungry Plants and Victorian eccentrics.
Say "Charles Darwin" and most people, including professional biologists, would automatically think about Darwinism. There are people who like Darwin's evolutionary theory, whereas others (including yours truly) find it dogmatic and questionable, but both of these opposing sides are unanimous in their neglect of what is most attractive in Darwin (at least, to me), namely his singular way of forming a concept out of thin air, his amazing power of scientific observation, and his charming Victorian eccentricity. The latter is apparent from the unusual choice of topics pursued at the end of his long and eventful life. Quite a few of these studies had absolutely nothing in connection with his evolution theory, being (apparently) welcome distractions from the tedium of ideological battles. Among these sundry studies (done solely for the heck of it, out of his great love of Nature and its many wonders) are three magnificent books written between 1874 and 1882, on worms, on the motion of climbing plants, and on "insectivores", as Darwin called carnivorous plants. In my opinion, "Insectivorous plants" is by far the best of all Darwin's books and, at mere 260 pages, it is also one of the briefest. Darwin the naturalist is so much more interesting to read than Darwin the ideologue and Darwin the doctrinaire.
It is amazing how hard it was for the Europeans to accept that flowering plants can be carnivores. Even when half-digested insects were found in say, pitcher plants, these insects were believed to be simply accidental victims of drowning. Only in 1700 was it first suggested that the pitchers might be eating the bugs. The suggestion was rejected until 1760 when it was observed for the first time how Venus flytraps hunt grasshoppers (snap-traps only trap large insects: the amount of nutrients extracted from a small insect is not worth the energy wasted on digesting it). Darwin realized (as late as in 1875!) that two familiar plants: sundews and butterworts are also carnivores, but they trap their prey in a very different way from the pitchers and flytraps, by using specialized tentacles. Interestingly, though the pitchers of some pitcher plants look like flowers, these are highly specialized hairy leaves. It is very difficult to make a connection between a nectar-filled flower that is tempting a bee to pollinate it and a strange looking leaf full of digestive juice, with sharp spikes that prevent the insect from getting out.
Why was it so difficult to believe in and to accept the existence of carnivore plants? First, one needed to know more about plant physiology in general to understand why would the plants trap and hunt animals. Most of the carnivorous plants (there are 600 species out of 250,000 species of flowering plants) live on acidic bogs and marshes where there is little supply of nitrogen. The insects are a supplemental source of this nitrogen; no energy is extracted from the digestion; it is actually spent on it. The source of the energy is still photosynthesis. Some carnivores, though, are tropical epiphytes and others live on rocky outcroppings in the semidesert, however, all of these plants have the same nitrogen and phosphorus deficiency problem. There are also aquatic carnivore plants (waterwheels [actually, related to flytraps] and bladderworts) that live in the wetlands and ponds preying on microscopic animals; those plants often have plenty of nitrogen in the environment and they still ensnarl and eat animals. Actually, there are 210 species of such bladderworts.
Quite a few of the carnivores have most beautiful flowers; more interestingly, only flowering plants are carnivorous. There are several types of carnivore plants living in the US, mainly in the Carolinas. I've seen a whole field of most becoming yellow pitcher plants near Houston, Texas. In Chicago, tropical (Nepenthes) pitcher plants can be found at Lincoln Park Conservatory. They have 1 ft long tropical pitchers that contain 1-2 L of digestive liquid that is slowly dripping on the frightened visitors. The largest pitcher on record contained 3.8 L of fluid. This is much more than you have in your stomach (interestingly, just like humans and animals, carnivorous plants are often symbiotic with bacteria that help the digestion). In one of such large pitchers, they found a half-digested rat. That is why the term "insectivore" suggested by Darwin fell out of use: we are talking about some serious predation.
The second reason why the recognition of carnivory in plants was slow to come about is that there are spiders and ants that are symbiotic with these plants, going in and out of the pitcher unharmed. These bugs are cleaning the chitin-reach parts of trapped insects that are hard to digest. It might be indeed difficult to decide what part of the zoo inside the pitcher is doing what. Interestingly, in his book, Darwin claimed that sundews can exhibit motions that are faster than anything he had seen in a living thing. I do not know whether this is true, but it suggests to me that one day weeds might become more than a nuisance.
The relation and co-evolution of flowering plants and, say, pollinating insects are well known, but carnivore plants give this familiar plant-insect relation a strange and scary twist. Somehow, the idea of a plant preying on animals both disgusts and fascinates me. If other angiosperm plants will supplement their mineral diets in the same way, this world would be quite a place to live in. Basically, the flowering plants en masse do not do it because either the soil has enough nitrogen (via recycling of organic matter and/or symbiosis with nitrogen-fixating bacteria) or there are not too many animals around to breakfast upon (say, in a desert). However, if the climate changes and a large swath of the land becomes wetlands, carnivores will have their day. They might be the harbingers of the entirely new way of the coexistence between the plant and animal kingdoms in the distant future.
While the future of the carnivorous plants looks promising, how about their past? Where these pitchers, snap traps, and sundews are from? Darwin himself wisely abstained from the speculations on the evolution of insectivorous plants, though he speculated at length on the origin of the flowering plants in general. For example, he correctly guessed that water lilies were the first such plants. It seems that in the 130 years after Darwin's book little progress was made in explaining the origin of the plant carnivores. No transition forms were found, nor would such finds be likely given the habitat that is not conducive to fossilization. Most sources frankly admit the lack of any insight, while other contain enigmatic statements like "the carnivore adaptations must have emerged at least 11 times independently". All of these recent speculations are traceable to the single source: Albert VA, Williams SE, Chase MW, "Carnivorous plants: phylogeny and structural evolution." Science 257 (1992)1491. Nothing new of any worth has been learned about the subject after that seminal article:
Phylogenetic analysis of nucleotide sequence data from the plastic rbcL gene indicates that both carnivory and stereotyped trap forms have arisen independently in different lineages of angiosperms. Furthermore, these results demonstrate that flypaper traps share close common ancestry with all other trap forms. Recognition of these patterns of diversification may provide ideal, naturally occurring systems for studies of developmental processes underlying macromorphological evolution in angiosperms.
I also believed so and I bet that Darwin hoped for the same, too. It did not work that way. So what is the answer? That's what you'd find in Wikipedia (no explanation is given as to where these hand-waving arguments came from):
...Pitfall traps are clearly derived from rolled leaves (the vascular tissues of Sarracenia show this quite clearly), and flypapers show a simple evolutionary gradient from sticky, non-carnivorous leaves, through passive flypapers to active forms. The snap-traps are thought to be derived from very fast-moving flypapers which became less reliant on glue. It has been suggested that all of the various trap types are modifications of a similar basic structure - the hairy leaf...that has the ability to catch and retain drops of rainwater in which bacteria can breed. Insects that land on the leaf can become mired by the surface tension of the water, and suffocate. The bacteria then begin the process of decay, releasing nutrients from the corpse, which the plant can absorb through its leaves. This foliar feeding can be observed in most non-carnivorous plants [see below-S.]. Plants that were better at retaining insects or water therefore had a selective advantage, because they had access to more nutrients than less efficient plants. Rainwater can be retained by cupping the leaf, leading to pitfall traps. Alternatively, insects can be retained by making the leaf stickier by the production of mucilage, leading to flypaper traps.
...The traps of the bladderworts, are more difficult to explain, but they may be derived from pitchers that specialized in aquatic prey when flooded, like Sarracenia psittacina does today. Flypaper traps include the various true flypapers and the snap traps. The production of sticky mucilage is found in many non-carnivorous genera, so it is not difficult to see how the passive glue traps evolved.
...The active glue traps require a little more explanation. Rapid plant movement can be due to actual rapid growth, or it can be due to rapid changes in cell turgor, which allow cells to expand or contract by quickly altering their water content. Slow-moving flypapers like Pinguicula use growth, but the Venus flytrap uses more rapid turgor changes. In the Venus flytrap, the movement is so rapid that glue has become unnecessary, and hence is no longer produced.
...Recent taxonomic analysis of the relationships within the Caryophyllales indicate that the Droseraceae, Triphyophyllum, Nepenthaceae and Drosophyllum, whilst closely related, are embedded within a larger clade that includes non-carnivorous groups such as the tamarisks, Ancistrocladaceae, Polygonaceae and Plumbaginaceae. Interestingly, the tamarisks possess specialised salt-excreting glands on their leaves, as do several of the Plumbaginaceae (such as the sea lavender, Limonium). Many of the Plumbaginaceae also have stalked, vascularised glands that secrete mucilage on their calyces and aid in seed dispersal and possibly in protecting the flowers from parasitic insects. It is not unlikely that these are homologous with the tentacles of the carnivorous genera. The balsams (such as Impatiens), which are closely related to the Sarraceniaceae and Roridula, similarly possess stalked glands.
In short, the genetic studies have so far been inconclusive and disappointing. "It is not unlikely..." and "it has been suggested..." are not science; it is fiction. We are dealing with a puzzler here. I wish I would know the solution before the advent of carnivorous trees and other missed opportunities of natural selection.
How did it happen that flowers started to dine on animals and what is the likely future of such an adaptation?
PS: A parting thought from http://www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq1040.html (an excellent site on carnivorous plants, with many photographs, movies, and detailed explanations):
...What makes carnivorous plants different from other plants? Really very little. Some plants are not quite carnivorous, but are not quite noncarnivorous, either! For example, there are sticky plants which harbor bugs on them. These bugs crawl freely on the plant and eat the insects trapped by the sticky leaves. The bugs excrete on the leaves, and the plant absorb nutrients from the poop. Other plants rely on bacterial decomposition to break down the captured prey. Are these intermediate cases carnivorous? Or should they be called semi-carnivorous or sub-carnivorous? There are many noncarnivorous plants that do some (but not all) of these things. For example, some plants such as members of the American genera Ibicella and Proboscidea trap and kill insects by their sticky leaves but do not digest the prey. Noncarnivorous plants have flowers to attract and even capture insects, toxic compounds to kill insects feeding on them.
For the record, I would like to be digested if I ever be killed by a carnivorous plant. The idea of being killed and not even digested after that is... unbearable.
D is for Diehards.
Part I. Diatoms, Mammals, and the Triumph of the Reds.
What is the connection between the air that we breathe, the wine that we drink, the toothpaste, the giant insects in the Permian, the catastrophic extinction of dinosaurs, and the rise of mammals afterwards? The answer is, of course, Diatoms. Part of this answer relates to a larger question, what plants are up to, that I already discussed.
And now to the story:
...The level of atmospheric oxygen has varied between 15 and 30% over the past 550 million years. This variation is suggested by modeling of the carbon and sulfur cycles, by the excessive sediment burial of organic matter that accompanied the advent of large vascular land plants, and by recent physiological studies that relate to biological evolution. Oxygen variations
...Theoretical calculations indicate that atmospheric O2 has varied appreciably over Phanerozoic time, with a notable excursion during the Permo-Carboniferous reaching levels as high as 35% O2. The principal cause of the excursion was the rise of large vascular land plants [our trees - S.] and the consequent increased global burial of organic matter. Higher levels of O2 are consistent with the presence of Permo-Carboniferous giant insects, and preliminary experiments indicate that insect body size can increase with elevated O2. Insects and oxygen
...Atmospheric oxygen levels have fluctuated throughout Earth's history, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. A sudden drop in oxygen, from roughly 30% to 10%, may have contributed to the mass extinctions at the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago. Since then, oxygen has been mostly on the rise. Today's level is 21% [30 Myr ago it was 25% - S.], helped along by several big boosts around 200 million and 50 million years ago. The exact causes for those jumps are unclear, but the most recent increase appears to coincide with a large, widespread bloom of tiny, ocean-dwelling plants called diatoms. Science News
...Early in the history of eukaryotic algae, between 1.6 and 1.2 Byr ago, an evolutionary schism gave rise to “green” (chlorophyll b–containing) and “red” (chlorophyll c–containing) plastid groups. Members of the “green” plastid line were important constituents of Neoproterozoic and Paleozoic oceans, and, ultimately,one green clade colonized land [our trees - S.]. By the mid-Mesozoic, the green line had become ecologically less important in the oceans. In its place, three groups of chlorophyll c–containing eukaryotes, the dinoflagellates, coccolithophorids, and diatoms, began evolutionary trajectories that have culminated in ecological dominance in the contemporary oceans. Eukaryotic Phytoplankton
...Diatoms are unicellular organisms that live as individuals or in colonies. Diatoms are extremely abundant in both freshwater and marine ecosystems; it is estimated that 20% to 25% of all organic carbon fixation on the planet is carried out by diatoms. They form shells made out of silica [opal] which they extract from the water. When diatoms die, their opal shells accumulate on the floor of the body of water in which they lived. Diatoms have an extensive fossil record going back to the Cretaceous; some rocks are formed almost entirely of fossil diatoms, and are known as diatomite. Diatoms
...Because of its porosity, diatomite has been used extensively as a filter impurities out of beer, wine, and drinkable (potable) water in public water systems. In this situation, the diatomite removes bacteria and protozoa. The oldest use of diatomite is as a very mild abrasive in toothpaste. Diatomite
... Diatoms survived Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction [ 65 million years ago - that finished off the dinosaurs - S.] far better than other single-celled phytoplankton. Many diatoms had evolved a strategy of dormancy by encystrnent, perhaps to survive through seasonal periods of unfavorable conditions (months of darkness in polar species as otherwise fatal to these photosynthesizing cells; sporadic availability of silica needed to construct their skeletons). Other planktonic cells had not evolved any mechanisms for dormancy. If the terminal Cretaceous impact produced a dust cloud that blocked light for several months or longer (one popular idea for a "killing scenario" in the extinction), then diatoms may have survived as a fortuitous result of dormancy mechanisms evolved for the entirely different function. Stephen Jay Gould
...Diatoms are very efficient photosynthesizers, about 55% of the energy they absorb from the sun is converted into energy of carbohydrate chemical bonds, which is one of the most efficient rates known. Excess oxygen not needed in cellular respiration is released through perforations in its shell into the water, where it is absorbed by other organisms, sediment or diffused into the atmosphere, this includes at least some of the oxygen we breathe.
Diatoms became important in phytoplanktonic production in the Cretaceous period; about 100 million years ago, when they started to increase the proportion of free oxygen in the atmosphere, and they have been the biggest contributors since. Diatom photosynthesis
..."In the fossil record, we see this rise in oxygen content corresponds exactly to a really rapid rise of large, placental mammals. The more oxygen, the bigger the mammals.We argue that the rise in oxygen content allowed mammals to become very large, like 12-foot-tall sloths and huge saber-toothed cats. They paved the way for all subsequent large mammals, including ourselves." Falkowski
...More oxygen should be good for mammalian evolution... Mammals are 4 to 6 times less efficient in turning food to energy than reptiles are, so they need higher oxygen concentrations for muscles to work effectively. Mammals are the Humvees of the animal kingdom. Placental mammals also need more oxygen to nourish their embryos. In addition, larger animals need more oxygen than smaller ones because they have a harder time getting blood to their tissues, so higher levels in the atmosphere would have given them more opportunity to evolve. Mammals
In short, the dominance of the red-line phytoplankton such as Diatoms, around 100 Myr ago was the prime reason for the steady increase in the level of O2 after the great Permian slump; without this oxygen, the mammalian way of life would be impossible. The unique ability (in the plant kingdom) of these Diatoms to encyst made it possible for them to survive the asteroid calamity 65 Myr ago, to bloom like never before, and to keep on making more oxygen for our benefit. We owe them a lot and we rightly celebrate their tiny remains in our morning ritual of teeth cleaning. However, I think that we should not encourage the Diatoms to overwork. At 30-35% O2, the giant bugs will be back.
When I was a kid, there was a popular saying that the only animal that would survive a global nuclear conflict is a cockroach. There are, however, bacteria that far outperform the cockroaches in the survival tests. Their name is Deinococcus radiodurans; these microbes are the ultimate diehards. A dose of radiation of 0.5-1 krads is enough to kill a human or a cell. D. radiodurans thrives after being hit by up to 1.5 Mrads. The radiation may fragment its DNA into 1000 pieces and the bacterium would still repair itself. By contrast, our cells die after 3-5 such breaks and typical bacteria like E. coli die after 10-15 such breaks. D. radiodurans is the toughest of the tough. Interestingly, this bacterium is not a spore-former, like other durable microbes (and the encysting diatoms). None of the bacterial spores can endure radiation nearly as much as D. radiodurans can. Nor does D. radiodurans protect its DNA from double-stranded breaks using a specialized system preventing such breaks in principle, as do some other bacteria. It does suffer from double stranded breaks at high radiation doses: the 3.2 Mb genome fragments into over 1000 pieces resulting from 100-200 breaks. However, in 12-24 hours, the microbe is alive and DNA is fully repaired -- without any deleterious mutations.
Some people have observed that these bacteria would make the perfect candidate for travel through space and living on other planets. For all that we know, it might have come from another planet in the first place, so different it looks from all other microbes but one, Thermus
(an extreme thermophile, naturally). How does it survive 1.5 Mrad of radiation? Where this species is from? How did it evolve? What for? Nobody knows. Recently, its full genome has been sequenced and analyzed. Did that help? Not really: the puzzles remain. Below are some details. Keep in mind that quite a few of the sites dedicated to D. radiodurans present Avi Minsky's hypothesis about the mechanism for the radiation repair as a proven scientific fact. It is not. It is a handwaving hypothesis with little observational support. And now, to the facts:...D. radiodurans was discovered in 1956 by Anderson who isolated the red bacteria from a can of ground meat that had spoiled despite having been sterilized with radiation in the megarad range. D. radiodurans, literally meaning "strange berry that withstands radiation," have since been classified as members of the family Deinococcaceae. Deinococcaceae are aerobic, require complex media for growth and produce pink to reddish colonies. http://web.umr.edu/~microbio/BIO221_2000/Deinococcus_radiodurans.html
...No thorough study has ever been conducted to locate the natural ecology of D. radiodurans. The cultures have been isolated from granite outcrops in Antarctica to elephant trunks. http://www.bioteach.ubc.ca/Journal/V01I01/5762radioduran.pdf
...Within 8-10 hours after exposure to 1.5 Mrad, D. radiodurans genomic fragment lengths are restored to size ranges seen in non-treated cells. During this repair time, cellular replication of D. radiodurans is arrested. After the repair, the cells display 100% survival with no detectable mutagenesis of their completely restored genomes.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/publicat/99santa/154.html
...The most accepted theory [to account for these radiation resistance traits] is that proposed by Mattimore and Battista, who suggested that the radioresistance is a side-effect of a mechanism for dealing with prolonged cellular desiccation. To support this hypothesis, they performed an experiment in which they demonstrated that mutant strains of D. radiodurans which are highly susceptible to damage from ionizing radiation are also highly susceptible to damage from prolonged desiccation, while the wild type strain is resistant to both.Wikipedia
...D. radiodurans also shows extreme resistance to genotoxic chemicals, oxidative damage [e.g., nitric acid - S.], high levels of ionizing and ultraviolet radiation, and dehydration. The ability to survive such extreme environments is attributed to D. radiodurans ability to repair damaged chromosomes. It is known that heat, dehydration and radiation causes double-strand breaks in chromosomal DNA. http://web.umr.edu/~microbio/BIO221_2000/Deinococcus_radiodurans.html
...There are various hypotheses as to how [the repair] occurs:
1) The bacterium has specialized proteins that make it very efficient at DNA repair via a process called homologous recombination.
2) The bacterium has multiple chromosomes that are aligned so that when double strand breaks occur, the bacterium has a template for putting the ends back together properly.
3) D. radiodurans is capable of controlling DNA degradation and exports damaged bases from the nucleus to prevent their re-incorporation into its DNA.
4) The bacteria contain other unique and uncharacterized proteins that promote radiation resistance.
None of these hypotheses for the mechanisms of radiation-resistance have been conclusively proven, and it is possibly a combination of several of them are responsible for the phenotype.
http://www.bioteach.ubc.ca/Journal/V01I01/5762radioduran.pdf
...Initially, D. radiodurans use a process called single-strand annealing to reconnect some chromosome fragments. Next, D. radiodurans uses homologous recombination, where a modified yet efficient RecA protein patches double-strand breaks. RecA protein works by cutting usable DNA from another molecule and inserting it into the damaged strand. However, these repair methods alone are not unique to D. radiodurans, which therefore cannot account for its radiation resistance. The aforementioned statement has led scientists to propose the "Life Saver" hypothesis. The hypothesis states, that in order to speed homologous recombination, D. radiodurans align copies of its genome so that identical DNA sequences are near each other [that's Minsky's hypothesis - S.] This proposal is now entirely possible due to the verification that D. radiodurans genes come packaged in four distinct circular chromosomes, thus giving stacked loops of DNA and resembling a Life Saver. To add to the list of radiation protective traits, D. radiodurans also possess carotenoid pigments, oxygen toxicity defense enzymes, and a distinctive outer membrane. First, carotenoids, which cause red pigmentation, are thought to act as free radical scavengers, thus increasing resistance to DNA damage by hydroxyl radicals. Next, high levels of enzymes such as superoxide dismutase and catalase both play a role in effective defense mechanisms against oxygen toxicity. Finally, a cell wall forming three or more layers with complex outer membrane lipids and a thick peptidoglycan layer containing the amino acid omithine also serves to protect D. radiodurans from lethal doses of radiation.
http://web.umr.edu/~microbio/BIO221_2000/Deinococcus_radiodurans.html
...The key to D. radiodurans' resilience was uncovered in 2002 by Avi Minsky. The microbe's DNA is organized in a unique ring that prevents pieces of DNA broken by radiation from floating away into the cell's liquids. The severed DNA fragments tightly locked in the ring -- by the hundreds, if necessary. The fragments, held close, eventually come back together in the correct, original order, reconstructing the DNA strands. The microbe undergoes two phases of DNA repair. During the first phase the DNA fixes itself within the ring as described. It then performs an even more unusual stunt. The bacterium is composed of four compartments, each containing one copy of DNA. Minsky's group found two small passages between the compartments. After about an hour and a half of repair within the ring, the DNA unfolds and migrates to an adjacent compartment—where it mingles with the copy of DNA residing there. Since the DNA has already been through one phase of repair in which many of the breaks are fixed, this phase can be completed relatively easily. The finding of a tightly-packed ring made the team wonder how the bacterium could live and function under normal conditions. DNA strands must unfurl to perform their job of protein production. How can they do that if they can barely budge? This question led to the uncovering of another of the microbe's survival strategies: out of the four copies of DNA, there are always two or three tightly packed in a ring while the other copies are free to move about. Thus at any given moment there are copies of DNA that drive the production of proteins and others that are inactive but continuously protected. [As of today, nobody can observe these features except for Minsky's group - S.]
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/D/D_radiodurans.html
...The genome consists of three chromosomes and a single extrachromosomal plasmid, with repeats highly abundant on each chromosome. Circularization of chromosomal regions, occurring across repeats distributed at least every 50 kb, may be part of the homologous recombination system that is the major form of repair for DNA double-strand breaks. Researchers have not yet determined if circularization occurs more frequently after irradiation. No evidence, however, exists for a causal link between circularization and radiation resistance; the bacterium E. coli's genome, in fact, also circularizes and yet is radiation sensitive. Plausible explanations for the extraordinary DNA-repair capability of D. radiodurans remain elusive in the early analyses of DNA repair genes. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/publicat/hgn/v10n1/12deino.shtml
...Scientists aren’t entirely clear exactly how and why D. radiodurans is so much more radiation-resistant than other microbes. Other microbes have many of the same tools, although not in as high numbers and variety as D. radiodurans does. And some other bacteria have more than one copy of their genes, although none have quite as many copies as D. radiodurans. Scientists are sifting through the genes of D. radiodurans, trying to figure out if the bacterium has any unique tools or genes that give it extra radiation protection.
...They’re also trying to figure out why D. radiodurans evolved this super radiation-resistance in the first place. After all, there aren’t any places on the planet where the microbe would have been exposed naturally to such incredibly high radiation blasts. It turns out that D. radiodurans is also amazingly able to live through long periods with absolutely no water without turning into a tiny dried-out husk. Some researchers think that the bacterium’s radiation resistance is a lucky side effect of the ability the bug evolved to withstand long periods without water—a common natural occurrence. This is because freezing or desiccating causes the same kinds of breaks in DNA as radiation does and requires the same patching process to fix these breaks. [Curiosly, though, D.r. has never been found in such extremely arid or cold environments, see above - S.]
http://www.microbe.org/microbes/Deinococcus.asp
...Thermus and Deinococcus currently comprise a bacterial group without a clear relationship to other major branches of bacteria. More than half of the genes do not show specific affinity to any major bacterial branch, archaea, or eukaryotes. Some of these genes were unique to Deinococcus, but the majority appear to be more or less equidistant from their homologs from other major taxa. Among the remaining genes, the greatest fraction was most similar to homologs from gram-positive bacteria, but even in this case it is difficult to distinguish a genuine phylogenetic signal from preferential horizontal gene transfer...The sobering conclusion from this study is that the fundamental questions underlying the extreme resistance phenotype of D. radiodurans remain unanswered. It seems most likely that this phenotype is very complex and is determined collectively by... subtle structural peculiarities of proteins and DNA that are not readily inferred from the sequences.Evolutionary origin
...To investigate how the trait might have evolved, Pavlov et al tried to induce [the radiation resistance] in E. coli. They blasted the bugs with enough gamma rays to kill 99.9% of them, let the survivors recover, and then repeated the process. During the first cycle just a hundredth of the lethal human dose was enough to wipe out 99.9% of the bacteria, but after 44 cycles it took 50 times that initial level to kill the same proportion. However, the researchers calculate that it would take thousands of such cycles before the E. coli were as hardy as Deinococcus. And on Earth it would take between a million and a hundred million years to accumulate each dose, during which time the bugs would have to be dormant. Since life originated on Earth about 3.8 Byr ago, Pavlov does not believe that there has been enough time for this resistance to evolve. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2844
Neither do I. What a strange life form... It does not fit into any existing scheme or classification; the mechanism for its amazing radiation resistance is a mystery; the cause for this resistance is, at best, not fully understood; the evolutionary origin of the species is uncertain and its natural habitat unknown; finally, there are no related bacteria except for another oddball microbe that lives in boiling water. D. radiodurans can be put on a comet, sent into the interstellar space for a few million years, plunged into water and it will come out alive and well. No wonder that people start gazing heavenwards after learning about these bacteria. Is that were we came from?
WHAT is Deinococcus radiodurans?
How did Life (specifically, marine plants) survive global glaciations that occurred several times in the Earth history, due to the hyperactivity of plants, the unfortuitous location of the continents near the equator (that resulted in a more efficient geosinking of CO2), and bad luck? This question is of much importance, because Cambrian explosion during which the animals first appeared had occurred on the toes of the worst of these glaciation events and it is this "Snowball Earth" and its hothouse aftermath that are usually credited for the sudden eruption of complexity that pointed towards us. For years, there have been passionate debates, as to whether the glaciations were indeed complete or there was some free water or thin ice at the equators. "Thin" should be understood with some levity: at the poles the ice was more than 1 km thick; we are talking about tens of meters at low latitudes. That would not block the light entirely. The global temperature was -50 C, the ocean was anoxic, and the aliens had all but written us off as an inhabitable planet. How did we pull it through to the D-Day, when the first fishy-looking tetrapod landed on the beach? Yesterday, I heard that the answer was finally given. Alas, it is a false alarm:
..."Snowball Earth" proponents, who say that Earth's oceans were covered by thick ice 700 Mya, explain the survival of life by hypothesizing the existence of small warm spots, or refugia. On the other side, supporters of a "Slushball Earth" say the planet included large areas of thin ice or open ocean around the equator.
...The debate revolves around the same rock samples and analytical techniques, said Alison Olcott (USC). Her team focused on a drill core of little-known black shale deposits from southeastern Brazil and applied lipid biomarker techniques to identify prehistoric organisms based on the fatty remains of their cell membranes.The team identified a complex and productive microbial ecosystem, including photosynthesizing organisms that could not have existed under a thick layer of ice. It had to have been thin enough that organisms could photosynthesize below it or within it.
...The evidence does not prove that large parts of the ocean remained free of sheet ice during the pre-Cambrian glaciation. Indeed, "At what point does an enormous refugium become open ocean?" she asked. Also, the rocks do not necessarily date to a glacial era. The team did find evidence of glacial activity in the samples, such as dropstones (continental rocks dropped by melting glaciers into marine deposits) and glendonites (minerals that only form in near-freezing water).Slushball Earth
How to survive the Snowball Earth for tens of millions of years? What does it take to be a diehard?
E is for Expression. Art sealed and delivered.
What is Art? Art is universal throughout the human race — integral to the human condition. There are no cultures that do not participate in it to some extent. In its broadest meaning, is the expression of creativity and/or imagination. It can arouse aesthetic or moral feelings, and can be understood as a way of communicating these feelings. Artists have to express themselves so that their public is aroused, but they do not have to do so consciously. Art explores both human emotions and ways to arouse them — and good art brings something new and original in either of these two respects. (Wikipedia)
This definition is the reflection of our enlightened age: Art is the medium through which the artist expresses himself to arouse the emotions of the public. It is not too clear, however, why YOUR expression of yourself should be interesting to ME. Plato made exactly this point to the first art critics ca. 2500 years ago, and they still do not get it. His answer is that the art acquires its universal meaning only when your expression of yourself partakes of the ideal of beauty that is eternal and immutable. Furthermore, in its absolute form, the beauty and the truth are the same: the truth is beautiful and the beauty reveals itself as a testament of a deep truth about this world. At this level, there is no difference between the beauty and truth, or between Art and Science. Plato’s theories have been ridiculed and denounced ever since; they were declared old-fashioned, illogical, primitive, incorrect, tautological, and what not. Surprisingly, the civilizations that accept and follow the obsolete Platonic doctrine of truth and beauty move forward, and those that reject it, move into a different direction. I often wondered: how might the endpoint of such a motion look like? -- and then I found out:
…The Italian artist Piero Manzoni (1933-1963) was a member of the European "actionist" movement. The actionists believed that the act of making art is as important as the art itself. Take this idea far enough and you get Manzoni, who rates an art historical footnote for being among the first to use his own body as both medium and end product. Actionist movement
…In May 1961, Manzoni packed and sealed ninety cylindrical cans, each containing thirty grams of his own excrement. Atop each tin are the words PRODUCED BY, followed by the signature Piero Manzoni, and a stenciled number designating its place in the run. A label affixed to the body of each consists of rows of the artist's first and last names strung together and repeated over and over. This PIEROMANZONIPIEROMANZONI functions as a background on which is printed the words: “Artist's Shit. CONTENTS 30 GRAMS NET” Cans
…Manzoni
died, aged just 29, within two years of creating his tinned art. He was a hard drinker and his alcohol consumption led to him to suffer from a liver condition. In a letter to a friend, he explained that his motivation for tinning his faeces was to expose the gullible nature of the art-buying public: I should like all artists to sell their fingerprints, or else stage competitions to see who can draw the longest line or sell their shit in tins. If collectors really want something intimate, really personal to the artist, there's the artist's own shit. That is really his.…The cans were sealed according to industrial standards and then circulated to museums around the world. In addition to the Tate, both the Pompidou Museum in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York have bought cans since. At least 45 of the original 90 cans have exploded, however. This is exactly what Manzoni intended. Soon after he created the cans he told a friend "I hope these cans explode in the vitrines of the collectors." Telegraph
…The cans circulated for many years to different museums around the world, and one of them reached Randers Museum of Art in Denmark in 1994 as part of the John Hunov collection. Unfortunately, the can decided to self destruct right there! Experts have tried several times to repair the corroding can, but have not managed to stop the decomposition process. X-ray has revealed what seems to be an even smaller can inside the can. But what seems the most hillarious part of it all, is the fact that Randers Museum is now confronted with lawyers, claiming the can must have been exposed to direct sunlight. Inside the can
…On July 2, 1998, intrepid collectors had a chance to bid on a container of Piero Manzoni's excrement at Sotheby's London. The august auction house sold "Merda d'artista no. 35," dating from 1961, for £17,250, or about $28,800. The 30 grams of vintage human feces are, assures Sotheby's, "naturally preserved" in a signed, numbered -- and well-sealed -- tin. As it turns out, you would have done better investing in art world crap than in gold. At the height of the booming Eighties art market, Christie's London sold a Manzoni tin for $67,700, roughly $2,257 per gram. More recently, Milan's Finarte sold a tin in 1996 for just under $30,000 -- nearly $1,000 per gram. Today gold sells for a mere $9.45 per gram. Once sanctified by the art world, anything can have value. Value
…[In 2002] the Tate Gallery has paid £22,300 of public money for a work that is, quite literally, a load of excrement. Can 004 is one of an "edition" of 90 tins of merda d'artista created by Manzoni in 1961. The price paid by the Tate for its merda - £745 per gram - exceeds, however, the £550 that the contents of the tin would cost if they were made of 24-carat gold. The gallery yesterday defended its decision to spend taxpayers' money on the work. The money for the purchase came from the Tate's acquisitions budget, which it receives from the Government. "The Manzoni was a very important purchase for an extremely small amount of money: nobody can deny that," said a spokesman for the gallery. "He was an incredibly important international artist. What he was doing with this work was looking at a lot of issues that are pertinent to 20th-century art, like authorship and the production of art. It was a seminal work." Although the tin was bought in the Italian art sale at Sotheby's some time ago, the gallery has kept secret the amount it paid. It put the can on display last year without making any public announcement. Tate gallery
One may ask, how do the premier Museums and the art critics justify their interest in Manzoni’s art? There is no problem for aesthets: Manzoni is a creative genius who further developed avant-garde art along the lines drafted by its great masters:
…Manzoni's cans have some forerunners in the twentieth-century art, like Marcel Duchamp's urinal ("Fontaine", 1917) or the Surrealists' coprolalic wits. Salvador Dalì, Georges Bataille and first of all Alfred Jarry's "Ubu Roi" (1896) had given artistic and literal dignity to the word "merde". The link between anality and art, as the equation of excrements with gold, is a leitmotiv of the psychoanalytic movement (and Carl G. Jung could have been a point of reference for Manzoni). Manzoni's main innovation to this topic is a reflection on the role of the artist's body in contemporary art. http://www.pieromanzoni.org/EN/works_shit.htm
…It would be naive to assume that Merda d'artista was not intended to shock its audience. Merda
…In his "canning" lines (prior to producing Merda d'artista), Manzoni brilliantly mixed art, commodity, and concept. Made between 1959 and 1961, each work consists of a single ink line of varying length drawn on paper, which is rolled up like a scroll and stuffed into cylindrical tubes or drums. Since the line cannot be seen, only imagined, Manzoni catapults this fundamental component of art into the realm of thought and idea. His Linea di lunghezza infinita (Line of Infinite Length), produced in an edition of nineteen in 1960, exemplifies this imaginary and conceptual status, again calling into question his procedures while suggesting his wizardry. Although some Lines have been displayed unfurled ("only for demonstration purposes," said the artist), Manzoni insisted that "the cylinders that contain them remain perfectly closed, because opening them makes them [the lines] disappear. I put the line in a container so that people can buy the idea of the "Line." I sell an idea, an idea closed in a container." http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_n3_v52/ai_14538994/pg_2
It appears that a lot of people have bought into the artistic idea of canned, exploding shit. Is it possible to define “Art” in such a way that, say, Dali, Picasso, and Ernst are artists, but Manzoni is not – in a way that is not resembling Plato’s doctrine?
Post Scriptum: Learning from the Masters:
LONDON. The Belgian artist Wim Delvoye is issuing 100 bonds that can be exchanged in three years time for vacuum-packed artificial shit created by his Cloaca machine, exhibited at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York in 2002. The machine mimics the human digestive system and produced convincingly realistic human excrement. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=18
F is for flags.
Almost any book on the mathematics of art opens with a lengthy discussion of the golden ratio, Fibonacci numbers and how ubiquitous these numbers are in nature, paintings, architecture, etc. The golden ratio is claimed to be the most pleasing to the eye in an angular object; the fly-to-hoist ratio for an ideal rectangle is (1+sqrt(5)/2 ), which is ca. 1.618. As I do not find this ratio more pleasing than any other ratio, the doubt crept in.
It occurred to me to put this theory to a rigorous test. For some reason (that is hidden from mere mortals like me), all national flags are either square or rectangular, with a single exception of the flag of Nepal. I predict that the first thing that will happen when Nepal becomes a democracy would be the introduction of a rectangular flag. The two square flags are those of Vatican City and Switzerland.
The look of these numerous national flags is appalling in its uniformity. It is always the stars, the stripes, the crescent, or the constellation of Crux. In the letter, Epsilon (when it is not missing, as in New Zealand's flag) is situated in whichever way relative to Acrux and Gacrux. The star near the crescent is also arbitrary juxtaposed, from a realistic position (Turkey) to a totally ridiculous one (Algeria). A few daredevil countries have a heraldic symbol or two on their flags (Kenya, Lesotho, Albania, Croatia), but even those feel like an afterthought. In the originality of design nothing beats Brazil (a celestial map as seen on their Independence day in 1889 and a motto) and Kyrgyzstan (a radioactive tennis ball). 74% of these flags have red in them, 71% - white. These flags are "faulty faultless, icily regular, splendidly null".
This monotony is in a sharp contrast to lovely medieval flags that came in all shapes and colors, with plenty of original designs and insignia, exotic animals and scary monsters, imaginative herbal ornaments and inspiring mottoes, etc. By the time when the national statehood emerges, all this ingenuity vanishes and suffocating conformity sets in. However, there still remains an arbitrary choice to make: the ratio of the short and the long sides of the rectangle. We are seldom aware of this variation because the standard "international" flag size is fixed to 2:3. Nevertheless, each country has its own national standard (that in practice is rarely used). This gives one a unique chance to test the golden ratio theory. The table of flag sizes may be found on http://flagspot.net/flags/xf-size.html, along with other vexillological trivia.
It turns out that a lot of these ratios are unique: 7:11 for Estonia, 11:18 for Finland, 22:41 for Guam, 11:20 for Qatar, 7:10 for Brazil, 5:7 for Albania, 18:25 for Iceland, 28:37 for Denmark, for 4:5 Monaco, 6:7 for Niger, and 13:15 for Belgium. I have no idea how these odd ratios were arrived at. Most countries are 2:3 (e.g., the whole ex-Soviet block) and 1:2. Israel is 8:11 (with Norway), USA is the incomprehensible 10:19. The fly-to-hoist ratio that approximates the golden ratio most closely is that of Finland (1.636), the second place belongs to a small group of 3:5 (1.667) countries (the Union Jack with its constituents). Other countries are not even close. The theory utterly failed the test. Why?
PS: Some speculations: No. 1: The flags are not objects of beauty in this respect as in any other. No. 2: The flags that differ most in their proportions are those of neighboring countries that frequently fought each other. There could be some military reason (it is easier to recognize enemy's flag from afar if yours is 1:2 and theirs is 2:3). No. 3. The golden ratio theory is incorrect.
G is for goose bumps.
I begin this post with much trepidation because it concerns the most controversial and incendiary issue thus far discussed in this journal. Goose bumps (less affectionately known as goose pimples in the British isles) are exhibit No. 1 in a bitter feud between the so-called "evolutionists" (by which I mean various neo- and classical Darwinists and their co-travelers) and the "Intelligent Design" zealots. To me this feud looks both wasteful and pointless as the argument is between those who pretend to know the solution where none exists and those who are hopeful but clueless. One crowd peddles a doubtful doctrine on a par with Marxism and psychoanalysis (“natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” as the driving force behind the observed evolutionary change). Another side boldly claims the knowledge of the ways of the Anonymous, which is even more preposterous. As I belong to neither one of these tribes, I might be in a better position to tackle the goose bumps mystery.
The heart of the matter is the following: The "evolutionists" view the goose bumps as an atavism. Goose bumps are a protective reaction in furry animals to certain stress situations, such as fear and cold. Humans (hairless apes) do not need the goose bumps; the goose bumps indicate that people were not put together by the Intelligent Designer(s) but evolved, by “natural selection” or some other accident of fate, from the apes; hence we inherited all kinds of useless things such as appendices, nipples in males, etc. The "Intelligent Design" proponents counter this argument with a thesis that if you do not know what the goose bumps are for it does not mean that they are not useful. However, they do not suggest in what way the goose bumps might be useful, so their argument is weak. From that point on, the debate becomes more and more abstract and the initial question about the goose bumps is quickly forgotten. Indeed, why should one argue about something so pedestrian as goose bumps when the aim of the game is to fight over vague philosophical concepts?
I would rather stick to the goose bumps themselves. I find this common reaction very strange indeed. But first, the physiology. Each hair follicle is connected to the tissue via a small muscle called erector. When we feel cold, the erector pulls the hair up; simultaneously a sebaceous gland at the base of the hair secretes oil that spreads over the skin around the hair. The usual explanation of the erector action is that vertically standing fur traps heat better. The fear reflex is explained by the apparent increase in the size of a furry animal that fools a predator (observe that this rationale only works for very small furry animals [comparable in size with the thickness of their own fur coat] which are not predators). A variation of the story is that the erector contraction has no other aim but the erector contraction itself which diverts the blood flow to the skin. I cannot find any proof in the literature that such a diversion has a measurable effect on the heat balance of the body; I think it is stuff and nonsense.
What is seldom observed is that we do not have goose bumps on our faces or on the parts of our body that are densely covered by hair (the scalp, armpits, etc.) This does not bode well with the atavism theory. Humans were fully able to abandon the supposed “atavistic” reaction on some parts of their bodies; it is a very selective loss. We get most of our goose bumps on the extremities. Our first reaction to cold is to rub these parts of the body, both to improve the blood circulation and to spread the oil secreted by the skin. A possible function of the goose bumps might be in directing this rubbing reflex, both visually and tangibly. It is especially important for protecting the young who cannot indicate otherwise that they feel cold: the goose bumps show where they feel cold and to which parts of the body the rubbing should be applied. Every parent knows that!
Another important observation is that we also get goose bumps in situations when we feel neither cold nor fear, e.g., when we listen to music. This effect is called "eargasm"; it is the ultimate climax of musical stimulation. I have repeatedly experienced such a sensation myself, and it occurs to me only in two instances: when I hear organ music and when I hear a live performance of an operatic singer. My guess is that I get the goose bumps when my body resonates with low-frequency sound filling a room. It is well known that infrasound often induces panic in people and higher animals. This reaction is unconscious; a possible explanation of this reflex is that the infrasound often precedes earthquakes and other disasters.
I speculate that the goose bumps may serve another useful purpose: the attachment of vertically standing, stiff hair to the skin makes it more sensitive to air currents around the moving parts of the body and a better organ to detect the infrasound and vibrations around the body. In a situation when your life is in danger, increasing the sensory input might be important. I think that declaring the goose bumps an atavism is, at the very least, a premature statement. My search of the literature suggests that in the last 15 years there were only 6 (sic!) studies on the goose bumps physiology. We should give the researchers a chance to study the subject first and debate the issue later.
What do we have the goose bumps for?
H is for High-rise. Howard Roark vs. Fazlur Khan.
This summer I re-read Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead", her celebrated 1943 "novel" in which Rand popularizes her objectivist, libertarian philosophy. In this novel, a genius architect Howard Roark ("a noble spirit par excellence") exemplifies Rand's central tenet that the Ego is supreme, and individualism and selfishness are virtues to be treasured. The Ego is the true fountainhead of innovation and invention. The book is dedicated to "the noble profession of architecture."
Roark is Rand's image of the perfect man who lives for himself and his own creative power, indifferent to the opinions of others. He has a unique, uncompromising creative vision, which contrasts sharply with the staid and uninspired conventions of the architectural establishment. Roark takes pleasure in the act of creation, but is constantly opposed by "the hostility of second-hand souls" and those unwilling or afraid to recognize his creative ability. Roark rejects history, searches for truth and honesty, and tries to express these in his works. He takes an uncompromising stand when changes are suggested in his buildings. [Including the use of TNT-S.] This mirrors the trajectory of Modern architecture with its origins from dissatisfaction with earlier trends and its emphasis on individual creativity. The celebration of Roark's individuality can be seen in parallel with the eulogizing of modern architects as uncompromising and heroic "masters." (Wikipedia)
According to Rand, Roark is the man who was 'as man should be.' Naturally, his antagonists are (i) 'the man who couldn't be, and doesn't know it,' (ii) 'the man who couldn't be, and knows it,' and (iii) 'the man who could have been' (there is also a hysterical female in the background). The plot is as schematic as these wooden descriptions; as a piece of literature, the "philosophical novel" is beyond criticism. It is unadulterated ideology.
In the end, Roark triumphs over his numerous enemies (all those lesser ones who couldn't do this and that) and builds the tallest skyscraper in New York City that proudly bears a plaque reading "Howard Roark, Architect". Everyone in NYC knows Howard Roark, either hating him or loving him passionately. The happy ending of the novel is surprising. The novel was written in the 1940s, when the construction of tall buildings all but ceased in the US. And then it resumed, in the late 1960s, thanks to a man who was in the least like Howard Roark. This real life revolutionary is the perfect antithesis to Rand's novel. However, let us first finish with Mr. Roark. It is hardly a secret that Roark's protagonist was Frank Lloyd Wright:
...Is Howard Roark based on Wright? Miss Rand explicitly stated that Roark was not: There is no similarity between Roark and Mr. Wright as far as personal life, character and basic philosophy are concerned. The only parallel which may be drawn between them is purely architectural—that is, in regard to their stand on modern architecture. Rand Institute's FAQ
...It is likely that the character of Roark is based on Wright. His main opponent is a composite of Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson. They first lauded Wright as a precursor to what they dubbed the International Style. A few years later, they revised their view of Wright, seeing him as a "Romantic individualist". (Wikipedia)
...The Roark character, a thinly disguised version of Wright, was a mouthpiece for Rand's belief that arrogance and egocentrism are integral components of genius. My personal favorite story about Wright involves an enraged client who called him to complain that the roof was leaking onto her dinner guest. Wright's response: "Tell him to move his chair." Old age did not mellow Wright's acerbic wit, much less his high opinion of himself. In the 1940s, he declared: "There are two kinds of architects in the world. There is every other architect, and there is me." http://doityourself.com/nonresarc/howardroark.htm
I have the misfortune of living a block away from one of Wright's "masterpieces", his Robie house at U Chicago campus, which is a tastelessly terraced, ugly looking, uninhabitable brick & concrete building whose only functional use is hosting the hordes of mesmerized Wright's admirers gathering to celebrate their idol. The same goes for his other Romantic creations: nobody wants to live in his gloomy buildings. It is tough to live in someone's expression of the Ego with a leaking roof and tomb-like rooms.
For all of his big talk, Wright did not build skyscrapers, preferring instead to litter our suburbs with puny "prairie houses". Indeed, "the skyscraper has been abused. Though at least partially emancipated as to form, it is self-defeating as to function. It has grown out of drawing with the human beings who have to use it and forced human life to accommodate itself to growth as of potato. It has produced a dull craze for verticality and vertigo that concentrates the citizen in an exaggerated super-concentration that would have shocked Babylon.” (F.L. Wright). The only skyscraper that anti-Babylonian Wright ever built is Price Tower , on the Oklahoma prairie (in Barlesville, pop. 35,000). He called it "the tree that escaped the crowded forest". There was (and still is) nothing there to escape from; the nearest forest is hundreds of miles away. In any case, this unimpressive "skyscraper" is only 20 story high; it is hardly "a monument to the soaring spirit of Man", as Rand puts it. Wright also sketched a "mile high" monstrosity that had no chance of ever being built (certainly, for the best). Despite his total inability to design anything practical or worthy of his 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright remains the best known American architect. He is literally worshiped by the public, and I see it every day of every week.
If the best known architect did not design the tall buildings dominating our skylines, who did? It is easy to see that the best post-WWII designs do have a lot of things in common: one finds everywhere the framed, trussed, or bundled tubes. All of these were invented by one man, Fazlur Rahman Khan (1929 — 1982) who alone is responsible for a renaissance in skyscraper construction after it was largely abandoned in the 1950s. He is the man who designed 100-story John Hancock Center and 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago (the tallest building in the US since 1974). Hancock Center is still the tallest residential building in the world. To erect something like that, you have to build very high, very cheap. Khan's is an even more amazing achievement, if one takes into account that he was born in Bangladesh, educated in Calcutta, and had never seen a skyscraper before his emigration to the US. He succeeded without using the twin vehicles of scandal and arrogance on which Wright and Roark relied so heavily, by inventing something quite new. These innovations were so breath-takingly clever, mechanically sound, and visually striking that these were immediately and universally accepted without any opposition or animosity from "those who couldn't":
...In the 1960s, super-tall building construction faced a critical deterrent: expense. Skyscrapers were simply too costly. A tower reaching as high as the Empire State Building could not be justified in economic terms. A rapid run-up in structure costs resulted from increased wind forces: in order to withstand greater wind effects, a tower's structural framework had to be strengthened and stiffened considerably with increasing building height.
...Fazlur Khan was undeterred by the mindset and technological difficulties that hindered tall building design. He recognized that the structural systems utilized for high-rise construction were not on a par with the modern scale of architecture, and he took on the challenge of advancing state-of-the-art structural engineering. His earliest contributions to the field — developing the shear wall frame interaction system, the framed-tube structure, and the tube-in-tube structure — led to significant improvement in structural efficiency: they made the construction of tall buildings economically feasible. The framed-tube structure has its columns closely spaced around the perimeter of the building, rather than scattered throughout the footprint, while stiff spandrel beams connect these columns at every floor level. Later on, he united an exceptionally efficient "trussed-tube" structural system with an articulate, graceful form for Chicago's 100-story John Hancock Center.
...Another groundbreaking structural system was the "bundled tube." This design for Chicago's 110-story Sears Tower was structurally efficient and economic: at 1,450 feet, it provided more space and rose higher than the Empire State Building, yet cost much less per unit area. Equally important, the new structure type was innovative in its potential for versatile formulation of architectural space. Efficient towers no longer had to be box-like; the tube-units could take on various shapes and could be bundled together in different sorts of groupings. http://www.fazlurrkhan.com
Take any book on the modern skyscrapers, and it will begin with an exposition of Khan's ideas; he is the genius behind the form, he is (in Rand's parlance) the Fountainhead. He achieved what Roarks of this world have achieved only in their propaganda books and hazy sketches: he built the tallest high-rise in America. Was it the expression of his Ego? Of course. Was it the expression of individualism and selfishness? It was not. Khan was clear about his purpose (cited from a plaque in Onterie Center, 446 E. Ontario, Chicago): The technical man must not be lost in his own technology. He must be able to appreciate life; and life is art, drama, music, and most importantly, people. Fazlur Khan
There is another way in which Khan is different from Mr. Roark and Mr. Wright. Khan has never been and will never be famous, as he was not a kinky "creative genius" raving in the public. In 1998, Khan's relief was put in the lobby of Sears Tower; an intersection nearby is called "Fazlur R. Khan's Way". Otherwise, he is obscure. Unlike Wright, the true revolutionary and "noble spirit par excellence" -- Fazlur Khan -- is known only to architects and structural engineers.
What is the fountainhead of innovation and invention?
I is for Ice: Picks, Flakes, and the Cosmic Lottery
A well-known Caltech physicist, Kenneth G. Libbrecht, has a fascinating website that is entirely devoted to the physics and fragile beauty of snowflakes (and some other ice formations). No previous knowledge of the physics of ice is needed to appreciate his site (though some grounding in the subject would help; I'd recommend "Physics of Ice" by V. F. Petrenko and R. W. Whitworth, University Press: Oxford, 1999). Among sundry natural and artificial snowflakes shown therein are triangular and 12-sided stars (discovered by none other than Descartes). However, the most unusual fact given there is about ice picks. I've seen these "picks" in my own freezer but never gave the matter a serious thought that it deserves. The photos, movies, descriptions, etc. of ice picks can be found here and here. Below is a brief summary of Bally-Dorsey (1921) mechanism for this phenomenon:
...Ice spikes are odd ice structures that occasionally grow out of [plastic] ice cube trays...To see your own ice spikes, make ice cubes in an ordinary ice cube tray, in an ordinary household freezer, but using distilled water. Ice spikes grow as the water freezes on the top surface, around the edges of what will become the ice cube. The ice slowly freezes in from the edges, until just a small hole is left unfrozen in the surface. As the surface is freezing, more ice starts to form around the sides of the cube. Since ice expands as it freezes, the ice freezing below the surface starts to push water up through the hole in the surface ice. If the conditions are just right, then water will be forced out of the hole in the ice and it will freeze into an ice spike. The water freezes around the rim of the tube, and thus adds to its length. The spike can continue growing taller until all the water freezes, cutting off the supply, or until the tube freezes shut. The tallest spike we've seen growing in an ordinary ice cube tray was 56 mm long.
...Why distilled Water? Most ice cube trays produce a few spikes, but usually only if distilled water is used. I have some ideas about why distilled water might make ice spikes more readily than tap water, but so far I cannot explain why some tap waters make copious ice spikes. We measured the probability of ice spike formation as a function of salt concentration in distilled water, at a fixed temperature of -7C, which is shown in the graph at right. Very little salt is needed to kill the ice spikes [1e-5 mol/L !!! - S.]. All tap waters contain relatively high concentrations of various mineral salts, [typically, 1e-3 mol/L - S.] so apparently different impurities have different effects on ice spike formation.
Addendum: It is the pressure from the plastic tray that forces the water to rise up out of the a small hole as the cube freezes. Metal trays will not produce the spikes. The spikes you see in your freezer typically have a triangular cross-section, with an occasional rectangular cross-section, unless they have become rounded after melting.
Libbrecht wrote a full length paper about these experiments where he formulated a hypothesis that the extreme sensitivity to salinity was due to the fact that the salts concentrated in the liquid phase as the water froze (only NH4F and a few other salts can be incorporated into hexagonal ice). He suggests that plastic tray works best simply because it is a better insulator (its springiness is unimportant) and that very few spikes can grow below -15 C and above -5 C in still air. Perhaps.
I find the whole business very mysterious. One needs a lot of salt in the solution to change the rate of water freezing, as Libbrecht speculates. My intuition suggests that his other idea (that the increased salinity in unfrozen water pockets causes convective flows that interfere with ice growth) makes more sense. No model of ice pick growth has been given and I am not sure that such models exist even for snow flakes, except for Wolfram's unphysical mumbo jumbo. So here is my first question: How do the ice picks grow?
Another thought that occurred to me as I was reading about the snowflakes is, how fortunate are we in having the snowflakes on this planet. The snowflakes are hexagonal because ice Ih is hexagonal (space group P63/mmc, Laue symmetry 6/mmm). Most of simple molecules that are present in the planetary atmospheres yield cubic crystals (e.g., H2S, CO2, and CH4). Such crystals give cubes, cuboctahera, or octahedra -- no snowflakes. Look at these "Martian snowflakes" made of carbon dioxide and rejoice that we do not have them around. It is no better for NH3 and CO (P213 space group). Oxygen is monoclinic (C12/m1 space group). I am afraid that our only other real chance to see a snowflake is that on a frigid planet covered by liquid nitrogen (that crystallizes into a hexagonal P63/mmc space group). Come to think of it, having water is not enough either. Below -80 C water vapor often freezes into cubic ice Ic (m-3m symmetry) which would not grow into hexagonal snowflakes. Actually, most of the ice in the Universe is either amorphous or Ic, so our "common" snowflakes are extremely rare anywhere but on this warm, planet covered by liquid water, with relatively thin atmosphere, where the conditions are conducive to Life. There is a popular theory that we like snowflakes because of their exquisite symmetry. I do not think so; cubes are also symmetrical, they actually have more symmetries than hexagons. Perhaps, we treasure the snowflakes because those are only possible where Life is possible; their beauty and Life's beauty stem from the same source. Am I correct?
PS. A crystallographer friend of mine (Urs Geiser) observed that in principle, one can get pretty close to a hexagon with a triclinic crystal that exhibits merohedral twinning which is the case for alpha-quartz, or -- with a monoclinic crystal, if the angle happens to be close to 120 deg. Still, there seems to be no chance of a hexagonal flake: none of the common atmospheric gases solidifies into a triclinic crystal and the only one which is monoclinic (O2) has the angle of 132.5 deg. It has to be either H2O or N2.
Update 2/7/06
A team of physicists has created the first artificial versions of spiky ice formations [pemitents] that naturally appear on high-altitude glaciers. Read more on http://focus.aps.org/story/v17/st7
J is for Jew-Lee-Ett. The story of J.
JEW-LEE-ETT is the official pronunciation of 'Juliett' (or 'Juliet') that stands for letter 'J' in the military phonic alphabet. Before the adoption of this alphabet in 1956, another such alphabet was widely used since 1927, in which 'Jerusalem' was used for 'J'. Badges with letter 'J' inside a yellow star were put on the Jews by the Nazis. Many biblical words and names are transliterated into English (and other European languages that rely on Latin alphabet) using letter 'J' (for the Hebrew letter YUD). I feel that 'J' is deeply connected with the Judaism, the Jews, and -- Jesus.
How did letter J get into Latin alphabet? I have tried my hardest to find the answer, but I do not think that it exists. The sources tend to be vague, and the stories are truncated and brief. One gets the impression that most of these stories are untrue. Few things are certain: Small letter j originated in a Gothic script called textualis in the 14th century. In the 16th century the capital J first appears; around the same time it acquires a sound that was different in different languages. The letters J and j were still seldom used. In England J and j became widely used only after a large-volume printed edition of the King James Bible in 1629 (or 1630) that sported a new, trendy letter. What prompted all of these changes is a complete mystery. The only name that is mentioned in connection with these momentous developments is that of Petrus Ramus, an obscure French logician who spent most of his life begging to be burned at the stake. Naturally, there is a good deal of inconsistency and confusion:
...The letter J has a history that is linked with the history of the letter I. The Romans and their European successors used I both for the vocalic i and for the consonantal y (as in the English word 'yet'). The English letter J did not come into existence until the end of medieval times, when scribes began to use a tailed form of i, with or without the dot, next to the short form of i. When printing was invented, the tailed form of i was often used for an initial i, which is usually consonantal. Not until the 17th century, however, was the distinction between J or j as a consonant and I or i as a vowel fully established. (Britannica)
...The Hebrew letter "I" (Iod) underwent a change in pronunciation with German Yiddish influence. It is now known as the "yod or yud." There is no letter "y" in the ancient Hebrew language. The "Y" sound attributed to this letter was borrowed by Jews from the German language. The shape of the letter "I" or "yod" was derived from the Egyptian cobra which stood for the soft "g" and our letter "j" sound as in "jelly." Obviously if the letter J descends in Hebrew as the Iod and its sound in the form of the cobra was the soft "g" sound, the pronunciation of the name Jesus cannot be claimed to be a modern corruption. In recent years it has been claimed the letter "J" together with its "g" sound was invented in the 16th century. This is only partially true, the letter form was created for an existing sound associated with the letter I. Petrus Ramus (d. 1572) was the first to separate the I and J sounds of the letter I. The sound of the letter "J" goes back to ancient times. To distinguish the sound of J from that of I a hook was placed at the bottom of the letter I. It is not true that letter J and its sound came from the romance languages, the sound passed through these from ancient sources. It can be proven the letter J sound has been associated with the letter I all the way back to ancient Egypt. J is from Egypt
...Textualis, also known as textura or Gothic bookhand, was the most calligraphic form of blackletter, and today is the form most associated with "Gothic". The height of blackletter was the 14th and 15th centuries. For Lieftinck, the highest form of textualis was littera textualis formata, used for de luxe manuscripts. In the later period of the script, minims do not connect with each other. This makes it very difficult to distinguish i, u, m, and n. A 14th century example of the difficulty minims produced is mimi numinum niuium minimi munium nimium uini muniminum imminui uiui minimum uolunt ("the smallest mimes of the gods of snow do not wish at all in their life that the great duty of the defenses of the wine be diminished") In blackletter this would look like a series of single strokes. Dotted i and the letter j developed because of this. Minims
...Letter J was not an addition, but a differentiation from an existing letter, I, which in Latin, besides being a vowel, had also the consonantal value of "Y". At a later stage, the symbol "J" was used for distinctive purposes, particularly when the "I" had to be written initially (or in conjunction with another "I"). Either symbol used initially generally had the consonantal sound of "Y" (as in year) so that the Latin pronunciation of either Ianuarius or Januarius was though the spelling was "Yanuarius." While in some words of Hebrew and other origin (such as Hallelujah or Junker), "J" has the phonetic value of "Y." (Encyclopedia Americana)
...Does the Letter "J" exist in Hebrew, Latin or Greek? The answer to this question is NO. In fact, there was no letter ‘J’ in any language prior to the 14th century in England [now it is England - S.] The form of ‘J’ was unknown in any alphabet until the 14th century. Either symbol (J,I) used initially generally had the consonantal sound of Y as in year. Gradually, the two symbols (J,l) were differentiated, the J usually acquiring consonantal force and thus becoming regarded as a consonant, and the I becoming a vowel. It was not until 1630 that the differentiation became general in England. In the original 1611 version of the King James Version of the Bible there was no "J" letter in this Bible for because it did not exist. James was spelled Iames. Jesus was spelled Iesous. King James Bible
[In the original King James Bible the letter "j" occurs only after "i" or as the final letter in a Roman numeral; the Bible was in blackletter typeface - S.]
...Some of the early English forms of the word Jews were: "Iues, "Ioues", "Iuus", "Iuwis", and "Iewes". These were all pronounced with the sound of "you" in the prefix. http://www.iahushua.com/BeWise/lion.html#sec7
... As the newly invented printing press churned out bibles, Iesus gradually became written as "Jesus" and the distorted English pronunciation as we know it today was adopted. Although the spelling "Iesus" or "Iesvs" was used in the King James version of the New Testament from 1611 to 1628, by the year 1629 the King James version began to adopt the spelling "Jesus". Gradually, during the 17th century, the name shifted from "Iesus" to the pronunciation "Jesus" that we are still using today.
...The separation of 'j' and 'i' is of comparatively recent date, being brought about through the influence of the Dutch printers. Webster's Universal Dictionary (1936)
...Petrus Ramus (d. 1572) was the first to make a distinction between I and J. Originally, both I and J were pronounced as [i], [i:], and [j]; but Romance languages developed new sounds (from former [j] and [g]) that came to be represented as I and J; therefore, English J (from French J) has a sound quite different from I. In modern standard Italian only foreign or Latin words have J. Hebrew also influenced the English J, which in a few cases is used for [j] in place of the more normal Y. The classic example is Hallelujah which is pronounced the same as Halleluyah. (Wikipedia)
The man who is claimed to invent the modern use of letter J [the actual text is never specified] was a professional pest who consistently and with great mastery did everything possible to irk people around him:
...Ramus outdid everyone in the impetuosity of his revolt. On the occasion of taking his degree (1536) he allegedly took as his thesis Quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta essent, commentitia esse, which Walter J. Ong paraphrases as follows: "All the things that Aristotle has said are inconsistent because they are poorly systematized and can be called to mind only by the use of arbitrary mnemonic devices" He was accused of undermining the foundations of philosophy and religion, and the matter was brought before the parlement of Paris, and finally before Francis I. Ramus was found guilty of having "acted rashly, arrogantly and impudently." He withdrew from Paris, but soon returned, the decree against him being cancelled through the influence of the cardinal of Lorraine. In 1551 Henry II appointed him professor of philosophy and eloquence at the Collège de France. In 1561, the enmity against him was fanned into flame by his adoption of Protestantism. He had to flee from Paris. He resumed his chair after this for a time, but in 1568 the position of affairs was again so threatening that he found it advisable to ask permission to travel. Returning to France he fell a victim to his opponents in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572). (1911 Britannica)
What a life... Ramus' logical studies are completely forgotten by now. In the words of the scholar of his work (Walter Ong), his "are the amateurish works of a desperate man who is not a thinker but merely an erudite pedagogue." It is this desperate, talent-less man who appears to be the inventor of letter "J" as it is used now. His motive is unknown. I have little doubt that he did it to annoy someone in a position of authority.
What made letter J suddenly popular in England in the 1620s? Here is a possible answer:
...Traske was a radical Puritan who believed he was Jewish. Traske and his followers kept kosher, obeyed Jewish law and even practiced circumcision. Eventually, they were viewed by the state as a threat. Traske was sentenced on 19 June 1618 to be kept a prisoner in the Fleet for the rest of his life, so as to prevent him from infecting others. He was also fined a thousand pounds, and expelled from the ministry. He was to be whipped from the prison, with a paper announcing his crimes on his head. There he was to be set on the Pillory and have one of his ears nailed to it. After he had stood there some time, he was to be burned in the forehead with the letter 'J' because he had "broached Jewish opinions". Soon after, he recanted. On December 1, 1619, Bacon wrote: "This day Traske in open court made retraction of his wicked opinions in writing." Traske published the substance of his recantation in 1620, entitled A Treatise of Liberty from Judaism. [with a 'J' - S.] The publication was presumably a condition of his release. Traske
I suspect that 'J' became used in English (in its modern soft 'g' form) to single out words of Jewish (Hebrew) origin and that the first use of 'J' words was deragotary. I cannot prove my point, though.
What is the true story of letter J?
K is for Killer. The Taste of Blood.
Big fleas have little fleas
upon their backs to bite 'em;
little fleas have smaller fleas,
and so ad infinitum.
(Jonathan Swift)
As of this moment, the worldwide human killer No. 1 is a protozoan parasite Plasmodium falciparum that causes malaria. It infects 300-500 million people and kills 2-3 million people a year. Based on the mortality figures, it has been estimated that P. falciparum has killed half the people who ever lived on this planet. No other pathogen, including bubonic plague, Spanish flu, or HIV comes even close. Where is this scourge of the mankind from?
P. falciparum infected Red Blood Cells (x 10,500)
P. falciparum feeds on the haeme in the red blood cells. While everyone knows about malaria, Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, quinine, etc. very few people are aware that Plasmodium belongs to the plant kingdom. Feeding on blood was likely a solution to the problem of iron deficiency in the environment (in the same way that carnivorous flowering plants solve the nitrogen and phosphorus deficiency problem in their environments). Plasmodium have evolved from dinoflagellate algae (that are its closest relative, together with another parasite, Toxoplasma gondii) and they still retain a vestigial chloroplast.
...Most malariologists had overlooked the chloroplast in malarial plasmodium because it is extremely small and does not resemble plant chloroplasts any more, especially because it is no longer green. Nevertheless, DNA data prove beyond any doubt that it is a chloroplast with the same evolutionary origin as chloroplasts of plants and algae. http://homepage.mac.com/fad1/GFP.html
This [apicomplexan] plastid (which is called apicoplast) is lacking chlorophyll; the parasite had lost its ability to photosynthesize. The function of this plastid is not fully known, but it is essential - the organisms cannot survive without it. Like all plastids, it contains its own genome, a circular molecule of DNA (35,000 base pairs) which encodes 57 proteins and a set of tRNAs. Only a few functions of the apicoplast are recognized, which include the synthesis of fatty acids, repair, replication, transcription, and translation of its genes. The 57 encoded genes are not sufficient to accomplish these many functions, so the apicoplast has to import 500 nuclear-encoded proteins from the outside. The apicoplast is crucial for the organism since P. falciparum has only 733 enzymes (with 5279 genes, this is the lowest fraction of enzymes in any known genome). Around 10% of the proteins encoded by the nucleus are destined for the plastid.
...The parasite lacks many key biosynthetic pathways. For example, it has little capability for making or interconverting amino acids, and no capability at all of making purines – the As and Gs in DNA. (These pathways would be unnecessary: being a parasite, P. falciparum can steal the amino acids and purines it needs from the host.) Most of the biosynthetic pathways it does have (building fatty acids, isoprenoids and haem) appear to be localized in the apicoplast. Apicoplast
...By analogy with plants, it was hypothesized that the chloroplast in malaria and Toxoplasma could function to produce haem (non-Shemin pathway), essential amino acids (shikimate pathway), isoprenoids, and fatty acids (type II fatty acid biosynthesis). Several of the chloroplast-targeted proteins identified from malaria and Toxoplasma are part of the type II fatty acid biosynthesis complex that has been well characterized in plant chloroplasts. This suggests that a previously overlooked pathway may be present in the vestigial chloroplasts. When we first identified the chloroplast in these parasites, we proposed that it might be feasible to use herbicides in chemotherapy. It was therefore very exciting to learn that glyphosate (the herbicide known as RoundUp or Zero) blocks the growth of malaria and Toxoplasma (Nature 1998 393: 801-806). Inhibition of growth is apparently due to these parasites having a previously unrecognized shikimate pathway, which, like the chloroplast-based shikimate pathway of plants, is sensitive to glyphosate (Nature 1998 393: 801-806). http://homepage.mac.com/fad1/malaria.html
What better proof of being a plant can you furnish than being killed by a herbicide? The apicoplast is believed to be the product of an ancient endosymbiosis in which the eukaryotic ancestor engulfed a unicellular alga with a solitary chloroplast. Over time, the nucleus was lost as well as many features of the chloroplast. That would be secondary endosymbiosis:
...Once both heterotrophic and photosynthetic eukaryotes had evolved, the former repeatedly engulfed the latter to exploit their autotrophic way of life. Many animals living today engulf algae for this purpose. A growing body of evidence indicates that the chloroplasts of some algae have not been derived by engulfing cyanobacteria in a primary endosymbiosis like those discussed above, but by engulfing photosynthetic eukaryotes. This is called secondary endosymbiosis. It occurred so long ago that these endosymbionts cannot be cultured away from their host.
Malarial plasmodium [Apicomplexa] is a very interesting symbiont: it is a plant that developed taste for animal blood, became one of the most efficient and lethal parasites, gradually lost most of its biochemical machinery by hijacking that of the host -- all the time never fully parting with its degraded chloroplast, on which it still relies for metabolism. The details of this peculiar transformation from photosynthesis to parasitism are not understood, and there is a lively debate as to whether Apicomplexa relate to red or green algae (in the latter case, it is not related to Dinoflagellates). Here is as good a guess as any:
...Dinoflagellates and Apicomplexa diverged at least 400 million years ago, but despite outward appearances they are not so fundamentally different. Both have the ability to associate closely with animals, dinoflagellates as endosymbionts of corals and other invertebrates and Apicomplexa as intracellular parasites. An attractive scenario is that this ability to associate with animals goes back in time to their common ancestor and that one lineage (dinoflagellates) persisted with photosynthesis and commensal interactions, whereas another (Apicomplexa) abandoned photosynthesis, instead converting to parasitism to exploit the host. This presumably happened quite early in animal evolution but the parasites are still with us. Why they keep a vestige of their plastid is the next burning question. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=138874
The answer is lacking. About 35 million years ago, Plasmodium developed the taste for mammalian blood, and it has preyed on Homo as far back as the human race's evolutionary split with the apes 6 to 10 million years ago. Molecular geneticists, however, are finding evidence that malaria's devastating impact is a relatively recent phenomenon.
...People have evolved a variety of defenses in response to malaria's threat, and the pace of that evolution gives researchers insight into when the threat arose. Most of these malaria-protective mutations also have a downside, causing blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia and thalassemia. Natural selection would be expected to filter out these mutations or at least keep them at very low frequencies unless their effects in opposing malaria balanced out losses from genetic disease. Scientists call this process "balancing selection." At least one such disease (glucose-6-phosphate-dehydrogenase [G6PD] deficiency) have cropped up in the past few millennia, which implies that malaria earlier on wasn't a sufficiently serious cause of mortality to maintain the mutation through balancing selection. Since natural selection would maintain the G6PD deficiency mutations only under conditions of severe malaria, the timing of the alleles appearance presumably corresponds to the rise in human mortality from the disease. That could have been within the past 12,000 years in Africa and even more recently in Europe. Earlier, the disease must have been significantly less common, less lethal, or both.
...Clues in the genome of the P. falciparum suggest a recent, dramatic population expansion. All living P. falciparum have descended from a single ancestral strain — a "malarial Eve" — dating back between 5,750 and 57,500 years. Such a scenario, called a bottleneck, usually occurs when a subpopulation of a species branches off and evolves in a new direction. If the new subspecies is more successful than all other populations, it may completely replace them over several generations. This triumph would establish an almost complete genetic homogeneity across the species and thereby reset the species' molecular clock to zero. Indeed, there is almost no variability in 25 noncoding DNA segments of P. falciparum; there is also little variation in mitochondrial DNA among different strains of the parasite. That uniformity suggests that although distributed from Honduras to Papua New Guinea today, the parasites diverged from a common ancestor at some time within the past 23,000 years, probably less. Something happened perhaps 6,000 to 10,000 years ago that cleansed the variation that existed in the ancestral population. http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20011110/bob9.asp
What happened? There are two general ideas: a climate change at the end of the Ice age and the spread of agriculture in Africa. Under proper conditions, a "super-vector" mosquito could have replaced all others while carrying its particular strain of P. falciparum along for the ride. An extended period of climatic warming around 8,000 years ago might have altered the environment in a way the benefited the super-vector strain. Alternatively,
...Ecological changes accompanying the human transition to farming fostered the spread of malaria. Early West African cultivators about 3,000 years ago began clearing forest to grow crops. The change produced two factors favoring Anopheles gambiae mosquito: more sunlit pools of water in which the insects could breed and a concentrated population of people on which they could feed. As cultivators slashed, burned, and planted swathes through the forest, A. gambiae mosquitoes could have adapted to feed exclusively on people.
...P. falciparum's bottleneck required simultaneous evolution in the mosquito that spreads it. A. gambiae draws blood from human skin. The species spreads a deadly malaria and is well adapted to feed on people. By living in close association with people in Africa, A. gambiae offers the parasite it carries the most reliable promise of rapid transmission to new human hosts. Such a continual, rapid cycle of transmission is essential to P. falciparum's self-perpetuation. The parasite is so destructive that it can't linger long in any one host. The accelerated transmission unleashed the highly destructive strain of P. falciparum that causes the modern scourge. At one time, conditions were much less favorable to the rapid circulation of A. gambiae among people. These insects need shallow, sunlit pools of water to lay their eggs in, and the dense forest that covered most of Africa wouldn't have provided such pools. A. gambiae is highly adaptable, and the mosquito could have fed on other mammals when forest-dwelling people were less accessible. http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20011110/bob9.asp
And so the malaria is all about the plant kingdom and its complex relation with humans. The devastation of malaria is a heavy price paid by the humanity for our unique, super efficient way of herbivory known as agriculture. The decease itself is caused by a plant that developed taste for human blood. The Empire does strike back. In comparison to P. falciparum, carnivorous plants look like a bunch of relatively benign delinquents. The most efficient plastid-sporting killer kills from within.
L is for Les feuilles mortes. The Color of Honesty.
It is late October, and the Indian summer is in full gear. As I was driving today, I saw the most spectacular eruption of color, with scarlet, crimson, brown, gold, orange, and yellow all contrasting each other in every conceivable permutation. On the radio, Edit Piaf was singing one of her greatest and most melancholic songs, "Autumn Leaves":
The falling leaves drift by the window,
The autumn leaves of red and gold.
I see your lips, the summer kisses,
The sun-burned hands I used to hold.
Since you went away the days go long
And soon I hear old winter song,
But I miss you most of all, my darling,
When autumn leaves start to fall...
The bittersweet melody of this song and the magnificent display of slumbering woods sublimely blended into a message of dying love and coming winter, of the certainty of the loss and the uncertainty and dubious promise of the future. In my mind, this song is as strongly associated with the fall as the autumn leaves themselves; I would not be able to explain why. "Autumn leaves" is an unusual song: the English "translation", by Johnny Mercer, glides on its score even better than its original lyrics, by a remarkable French poet, artist, and writer, Jacque Prévert, who is best known for his script for another classic, Les enfants du paradis. Les feuilles mortes was written a year after the release of the film (in 1946) and it conveys some of its bitter sentiment. Prévert's poem does not specifically mention the color: the exuberance of red and gold that is so typical for our autumns is infrequent in France. A few years ago, about the same time of the year, I took my mother on a driving trip through upstate NY, and we were both stunned by the indescribable splendor of it. My mother's words are still ringing in my ears: "I cannot understand why people kill themselves when there is so much beauty in this world." Neither can I.
The autumn forests are the epitome of beauty. But WHY are they beautiful? Do the woods dress up for our sakes or for themselves? Is their beauty an accidental byproduct of their physiology? Not too many plants display the red hues in the fall; it is a relatively recent adaptation, which is not wide spread yet. The experience of this seasonal color change by civilized people is also recent: the first recorded observation was by Theophrastus in 285 B.C. Many flowers and fruits are red; this color is to attract animals. Is that the case with the autumn leaves? In such a case, who are these animals? Could it be us?
Before going any further, let me briefly dwell on what is going on during the senescence, as the leaf wilting is called by plant biologists. The leaves are green because of the chlorophyll that is used in photosynthesis. Chlorophyll is not photostable and plants have to synthesize it all the time. During summer chlorophyll is continuously broken down and regenerated; during autumn it is broken down and stored in stems and roots. Other pigments found in the leaves are carotenes (xanthophylls - lutein, violaxanthin and neoxanthin). When these carotenoids and chlorophyll occur in the same leaf, together they remove red, blue-green, and blue light from sunlight that falls on the leaf. The light reflected by the leaf appears green. The carotene functions as an accessory photoabsorber: the energy of the light absorbed by several xantophylls is transferred to the chlorophylls in the photosynthetic antenna. These carotenes persist even when chlorophyll has disappeared:
...The shortening days and cool nights of autumn trigger changes in the tree. One of these changes is the growth of a corky membrane between the branch and the leaf stem. This membrane interferes with the flow of nutrients - water and essential chemicals such as phosphorus and magnesium - into the leaf [this is called abscission-S.] Because the nutrient flow is interrupted, the production of chlorophyll in the leaf declines, and the green color of the leaf fades. Lack of magnesium - the metal at the center of the porphyrin pigment - is mainly to blame. Along with other nutrients, this is withdrawn from the leaves and stored in the trunk and roots of the tree in autumn. If the leaf contains carotene, as do the leaves of birch and hickory, it will change from green to bright yellow as the chlorophyll disappears. In some trees, as the concentration of sugar in the leaf increases, the sugar reacts to form anthocyanins [specifically, anthocyanin cyanidin-3-glycoside-S.] These pigments cause the yellowing leaves to turn red. Red maples, red oaks, and sumac produce anthocyanins in abundance and display the brightest reds and purples.
... During the summer, the leaf contains plenty of phosphate, which is needed to break down the sugars produced by chlorophyll. In autumn, phosphate levels in the leaf fall as they are removed to the trunk. This changes the way that the sugars are broken down, so they become available to produce anthocyanins. Anthocyanin synthesis is accelerated by bright sunlight - sunny days and cool nights are the best conditions for the brightest colors. Abscission
...Anthocyanins [flavonoid pigments that showed prominently in my essay on 'why roses are red' -S.] absorb blue, blue-green, and green light. Therefore, the light reflected by leaves containing anthocyanins appears red. Unlike chlorophyll and carotene, anthocyanins are not attached to cell membranes, but are dissolved in the cell sap. The color produced by these pigments is sensitive to the pH of the cell sap. If the sap is strongly acidic (pH<3), the pigments impart a bright red color; if the sap is less acidic, its color is more purple. Anthocyanins are formed by a reaction between sugars and certain proteins in cell sap. This reaction does not occur until the concentration of sugar in the sap is high. The basics
...The last color change, just before the leaves fall from the trees, is when they turn brown. This is because of the presence of brown phlobaphenes, which are formed by polymerization of oxidized tannins. Tannins are sometimes present in the leaf, or can form as degradation products of anthocyanins. Oak trees, in particular, contain a lot of tannin in their leaves, which explains why their leaves are mainly brown or golden brown throughout autumn. Brown
Beyond this brief outline, the mystery begins: why does the dying leaf divert its last drop of energy to synthesize loads of anthocyanins? The tree cannot reclaim that energy because the pigments stay in a leaf when it dies. Anthocyanins are rich in nitrogen, which is a precious commodity for the tree that is also lost when the leaf falls. If the pigments do not help the tree survive, they would be a waste. On the other hand, there seems to be almost no value in reddening a dying leaf. There exist seven (!) explanations of autumn color. The survey of the literature reveals considerable confusion as to the actual cause. I sorted it out below, as briefly as possible:
...Unlike yellow and orange autumn leaves where chlorophyll breakdown unmasks the already present carotenoid pigments, most red leaves result from de novo synthesis of anthocyanins. It has been unclear why anthocyanins are synthesized in autumn leaves just before they are shed. A problem
"People sometimes say that science makes the world less interesting and awesome by just explaining things away. But with autumn leaves, the more you know about them, the more amazed you are." Wilkinson
1. Recycling accident or garbage disposal?
...The prevailing view among plant physiologists is that anthocyanins are a nonfunctional by-product of leaf senescence. Anthocyanins are end products of the flavonoid pathway and the induction of anthocyanin synthesis has been suggested to result from carbohydrate "overflow" during the active recycling of photosynthetic proteins. However, the induction of anthocyanin synthesis by high light in tissues that are unlikely to have an excess of carbon reserves, such as germinating seedlings, is inconsistent with the carbon overflow hypothesis.
..Ford hypothesized that accumulation of anthocyanins may represent an excretion process to load toxins into the soon-to-be-discarded leaves. Byproducts
2. Sunscreen?
...Red leaves absorb green light in the immediate vicinity of anthocyanin-containing cells. By reducing the amount of light available to chloroplasts, the presence of anthocyanin cells reduces overall photosynthesis. Anthocyanin light absorption serves two useful functions in leaves. First it prevents chloroplast damage typical of exposures to high light intensities and secondly it reduces production of potentially damaging free radical and reactive oxygen species. Protection
...One explanation is that the color is protection against the activation of chlorophyll breakdown products during senescence. Protection from excess irradiance by anthocyanins may play a role in limiting oxidative damage that may interfere with the retrieval of inorganic nutrients from senescing autumn leaves. During senescence, photoreactive molecules could produce free radicals on exposure to bright light, possibly inactivating steps in the orderly breakdown of chlorophyll. The maximum photosynthesis efficiency declines gradually during senescence and then rapidly towards the end of senescence in all tree species. This slow decline suggests that the integrity of the light reaction complexes is maintained until near the end of senescence. If anthocyanins protect senescing leaves and allow a more efficient or complete resorption of nutrients, then these leaves should have lower nutrient contents compared with the yellow senescing species. [We found, however, that] anthocyanin content of senescent leaves significantly negatively correlated to nitrogen in both mature and senescent leaves. The hypothesis of photoprotection fails to explain the greater leaf mass/area in both mature and senescent leaves, and the lower nitrogen contents of these leaves. http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/research/leaves/pdf/Le_%20et_al_EcolRes_2003.pdf
3. Temperature increase?
...An alternative hypothesis is that anthocyanins influence leaf senescence by elevating leaf temperature [via more efficient light absorption]. We did not find that anthocyanic leaves had increased temperatures in two species, Quercus rubra and Vaccinium corymbosum. These results are inconsistent with classical evidence for such a correlation. Heat retention
4. Osmosis?
...Another role for anthocyanins has been suggested by Linda Chalker-Scott of the University of Washington, Seattle. She suggests that anthocyanins decrease the osmotic potential of leaves. Osmosis explains how leaf cells take up water from the xylem in tree branches, when water moves from a relatively dilute to a more concentrated solution. Anthocyanins reduce the osmotic potential of leaves because they are water soluble: there is less water per unit area with increasing solute levels. A lower osmotic potential means that water in leaf tissues is less likely to freeze because of the increased level of solutes. 'This theoretically makes a lot of sense', she explains 'If the leaves are injured as they are senescing, they are unable to continue transporting substances to storage areas'. Osmosis
5. Birds?
...Stiles argued that red leaves could attract frugivorous birds as seed disperses, and mentioned species in Rhus as examples. Two species with the brightest red leaves (Euonymus atropurpureus and Parthenocissus quinquefolia) might also be candidates for such a mechanism, but almost all of the species senesce in the absence of dispersible fruits. Birds
6. Insects?
The most extravagant is the "leaf signal hypothesis" of William Hamilton:
...The late Bill Hamilton, one of the most important evolutionary theorists of the 20th century, suggested shortly before his death in 2000 a strikingly novel theory to explain the leaf colors of autumn trees as a defense against insect attack. Coevolution
...Hamilton's "leaf signal" hypothesis grew out of earlier work he had done on the extravagant plumage of birds. He proposed that the visual message was sent to insects. In the fall, aphids and other insects choose trees where they will lay their eggs. When the eggs hatch the next spring, the larvae feed on the tree, often with devastating results. A tree can ward off these pests with poisons. Hamilton speculated that trees with strong defenses might be able to protect themselves even further by letting egg-laying insects know what was in store for their eggs. By producing brilliant autumn colors, the trees advertised their lethality. As insects evolved to avoid the brightest leaves, natural selection favored trees that could become even brighter. Leaf signal hypothesis
...Leaf signalling theory posits that bright leaf colouration reveals the defensive commitment of the individual plant. Signalling defensive strength enables well defended individuals to reduce their herbivore load and, at the same time, insects to locate suitable hosts more efficiently. The basic prediction of the theory is that bright colours are honest signals that enable insects to select less well-defended trees; therefore, trees with bright leaves will suffer a lower level of insect attack than will those that are dull coloured. In this proposed signalling system, less-protected plants are the losers. Such a signalling system requires costs either in the production of the signal or increasing marginal costs to prevent cheating by low-quality individuals. Such a relationship between secondary compounds acting as feeding deterrents to insects and colouration has been documented in some leaves and fruits. Honesty-enforcing costs are further found (i) in the timing of the signal (i.e., plants that change colour early lose primary production owing to an early cessation of photosynthesis); or (ii) in the intensity of the signal (i.e. it is the colouration itself that costly). In support of leaf signalling theory, the species with brighter autumn colouration harboured more species of specialist aphids than did duller-coloured species, suggesting that potentially vulnerable plant species evolved brighter leaf colouration. Theory
... Hamilton did not argue that the evolution of leaf signals would make all trees brilliantly colored. Instead, he said, only species that were under heavy attack experienced this evolutionary pressure. The leaf-signal hypothesis was so provocative that other biologists began to test it. Snorre Hagen of the University of Oslo and colleagues studied a dozen mountain birch trees over three years, observing factors like brightness of leaves each fall and the level of insect damage the next spring. They found that birches with strong colors in the fall tended to suffer less damage from insects the next spring. Pro
...Although red-light sensitive receptors have evolved independently in some species of four insect orders (Odonata, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera and Coleoptera) most insects are not particularly sensitive to red light. The leaf signalling theory has focussed on aphids, in which the red-light sensitive receptors have not yet been found [!!!-S.] There is a clear need for more comparative data on the colour vision of herbivorous insects before refuting this hypothesis.Red Herring
...Hamilton and Brown (2001) argued that color production could reduce herbivory from aphids by reducing egg-laying. Their evidence, based on literature surveys, was most significant for yellow coloration and only marginally so for anthocyanic [red] coloration. As all species appear to retain xanthophylls to the same extent, and anthocyanins and residual chlorophyll mask yellow color production, we would thus expect strong selection pressure against anthocyanin production for protection against aphid damage, the opposite to their argument.Contra
7. The feud
...Archetti and Leather observed aphids laying eggs on bird cherry trees in the fall. They found that aphids prefer leaves that are still green, rather than yellow or red leaves. "This is the first basic prediction of the hypothesis, that aphids are more abundant on dull leaves," Archetti said. By contrast, Schaefer and Wilkinson argue that autumn colors are not sending messages to insects. "It's wrong, but compelling," Wilkinson said. "A much more plausible explanation for fall colors can be found in the research of Hoch and other plant physiologists." Their recent work suggests that fall colors serve mainly as a sunscreen. "You may have a few instances where insects have some sort of relationship to color changes," Hoch said, "but it's almost certainly not a broad-based explanation. It doesn't hold any water." These arguments have not swayed Hamilton's former students. Brown believes that leaves might be able to protect leaves both from sunlight and from insects. Brown and Archetti also argue that supporters of the sunscreen hypothesis have yet to explain why some trees have bright colors and some do not. "This is a basic question in evolution that they seem to ignore," Archetti said. "You go to a forest, you see one tree is red and another is green. Why? They cannot explain this point." "I don't think it's a huge concern," Hoch replied. "There's natural variation for every characteristic." Feud
Epilogue.
As can be seen from this heated debate, it cannot be presently excluded that Hamilton's hypothesis is correct and the majestic display of color that we see in the fall is for bugs. The honest trees conspicuously advertise that they are very serious about killing whatever insects they do not like. They warn not only aphids but every one who has a red photoreceptor in their eyes, including us, as to their true intent. The trees are up to no good, as usual.
To all of these clever hypotheses and suggestions I would like to add one more. It is totally unrelated to the physiology of plants and the evolutionary biology. I suggest that the leaves have been turning gold and red every autumn for a single purpose: that one day a poet would walk through the technicolor woods and compose a little poem about the vagaries and brevity of life and love:
Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle,
Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi
Mais mon amour silencieux et fidèle
Sourit toujours et remercie la vie.
Je t'aimais tant, tu étais si jolie.
Comment veux-tu que je t'oublie ?
En ce temps-là, la vie était plus belle
Et le soleil plus brûlant qu'aujourd'hui.
Tu étais ma plus douce amie
Mais je n'ai que faire des regrets
Et la chanson que tu chantais,
Toujours, toujours je l'entendrai !
The strange thing is that my bizarre rationale may well be correct.
Post Scriptum:
This essay celebrates Jacque Prévert's memory in more than one way: Prévert was a self-proclaimed Satrap of Pataphysics and one of its major champions. Pataphysics is a philosophy of "imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments. It rests on the truth of contradictions and exceptions.It is a parody of the theory and methods of modern science and is often expressed in nonsensical language. Pataphysics
M is for Mammoth. Four knives in the woolly back.
I confess that I do not regret the extinction of dinosaurs, sabertooth cats, cave bears, titanodonts, and giant ground sloths. However, there is an extinct animal that I would like to see roaming around, and it is the woolly mammoth. How did it happen that the mammoth became extinct? Why do the elephants abound whereas the mammoths do not? Approximately 11 Kya, 76% of North American megafauna (animals weighing > 100 lbs) became extinct. The cause of this extinction is unknown. The mammoth exemplifies the classical problem with the "survival of the fittest" theory. They were fit and yet they did not survive:
...Mammoths should have NOT have gone down. They had no natural predators other than people. There was nothing that could have had any substantial impact on mammoths any more than there are predators today that can have a substantial impact on Asian or African elephants. Another reason that mammoths shouldn't have gone extinct is their broad range. Mammoths were practically everywhere in the Holarctic. They were all the way from Western Europe to northern Asia into North America -- deeply down into North America [e.g., LA, California - S.]. They inhabited almost every conceivable kind of environmental setting, including highlands and lowlands, and frigid places and hot places. They were clearly a very successful entity. They were built like tanks and able to eat practically anything." Superanimal
One popular theory holds that the Clovis people, Stone Age immigrants from Asia who appeared in North America about 11 Kya, overhunted the mammoths to extinction. Another theory suggests a climate change as a cause. Yet another one suggests that the cause was infectious disease carried by the Paleoindians. None of these theories have much empirical support. For example, the ranges of mammoth were steadily shrinking for thousands of years before they became extinct (the Pleistocene epoch was the age of considerable climatic instability). The relevant archaeological record contains barely a dozen examples of stone points embedded in mammoth bones (and none, it should be noted, are known from other megafaunal remains) -- hardly what one might expect if hunting drove these animals to extinction. On the other hand, if climate change was severe enough to cause a wave of extinctions in the Americas, it should have caused the same phenomenon in Africa. It did not. MacPhee's hyperdisease hypothesis
(the Ebola- or smallpox- like epidemics killing off all mammoths) is pure speculation: ...MacPhee believes that the hyperdisease theory can explain extinctions, starting at least 40 Kya in Australia and continuing to extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene in the Americas. Except for one important difference, the disease theory is the same as the overkill hypothesis put forth by Paul Martin. "Overkill, except for the final agency, is exactly what I'm talking about. This is evidence of people coming, interacting with the animals, and the animals disappearing soon after the people arrived. This is overkill. It's just that Paul Martin's explanation of the pattern puts people at the center with a direct impact, and mine puts people at the periphery. But they brought something that then took over to create the pattern we perceive."
Paleopathology
In spite of much DNA testing since 1999, no pathogens have been found. There is no evidence of the infection in frozen tissue from mammoths and other beasts that died out at the end of the last Ice Age. The antibody tests are all negative. Thus, this theory has the same currency as the one suggested in the recent movie "Day after tomorrow" (2004)
: a freak weather event in which the ground temperature suddenly drops below -100 C and all animals are flash frozen. Yeah, sure.Naturally, when one cannot find a terrestrial rationale and the science fiction fails, the heavenly interference must be invoked. Just such an explanation was cooked up by a nuclear scientist Richard Firestone from LBNL:
...A distant supernova that exploded 41 Kya led to the extinction of the mammoth. The debris from a supernova explosion coalesced into low-density, comet-like objects that wreaked havoc on the solar system. One such comet (ca. 10 km in diameter) may have hit North America 13 Kya unleashing a cataclysmic event that killed off the vast majority of mammoths and many other large North American mammals. Firestone and West found evidence of this impact layer at several archaeological sites throughout North America where Clovis hunting artifacts and human-butchered mammoths have been unearthed. It has long been established that human activity ceased at these sites about 13 Kya, which is roughly the same time that mammoths disappeared.
...They also found evidence of the supernova explosion's initial shockwave: 34 Kya mammoth tusks that are peppered with tiny impact craters apparently produced by slightly radioactive,iron-rich grains traveling at an estimated 10,000 kilometers per second. These grains may have been emitted from a supernova that exploded roughly 7,000 years earlier and about 250 light years from Earth. They also found magnetic metal spherules in the sediment of nine 13,000-year-old Clovis sites in Michigan, Canada, Arizona, New Mexico and the Carolinas. Low-density carbon spherules, charcoal, and excess radioactivity were also found at these sites.These spherules are rich in titanium, iron, manganese, vanadium, rare earth elements, thorium, and uranium. This composition is very similar to lunar igneous rocks and have also been found in lunar meteorites that fell to Earth an estimated 10 Kya. "This suggests that the Earth, moon, and the entire solar system were bombarded by similar materials. The potassium-40 in the Clovis layer is much more abundant than potassium-40 in the solar system. This isotope is formed in considerable excess in an exploding supernova, and has mostly decayed since the Earth was formed," says Firestone. "We therefore believe that whatever hit the Earth 13 Kya originated from a recently exploded supernova."
...Radiocarbon peaks in Icelandic marine sediment samples, indicated by the black line, coincide with three supernova-caused events that Firestone and Wells believe led to the extinction of the mammoth."The 150 percent increase of radiocarbon found in 41 Kya marine sediment is consistent with a supernova exploding 250 light years away, when compared to observations of a radiocarbon increase in tree rings from the time of the nearby historical supernova SN 1006
. It would take 7,000 years for the supernova's iron-rich grains to travel 250 light years to the Earth....It's surprising that it works out so well,"says Firestone
Yes, it is indeed very surprising, because there is no supernova remnant within the specified radius that fits this fancy theory. Incidentally, since the velocity of the iron grains is not known, any period of time between the supernova and the extinction of the megafauna can be explained with the same ease. North America has been peopled between 15,000 and 12,000 radiocarbon years ago; nobody knows exactly when. These people were hunting mammoths. One needs all the flexibility one can get.
And so the woolly mammoth was doomed. It was killed in four different ways, just like the wealthy old gentleman in a detective story: it was killed by a hunter using a Clovis point, it contracted smallpox from an Amerindian, it did not make it through the climatic upheaval and, to make sure that it is truly and completely dead, it was hit by high-velocity iron spherules from an exploding supernova. That should have been sufficient for anyone, right? It was not enough for the mammoth, though:
...Wrangel Island is for mammoth lovers. It was on this remote outpost, nearly 50 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle between the Chukchi and East Siberian seas, that the woolly Pleistocene elephants lived more than 6,000 years into the Holocene. Wrangel Island
What killed the woolly mammoth?
Post Scriptum Why should we worry about it? Here is the answer:
...Not only do we not understand Quaternary extinctions in prehistoric times, we don't even understand extinctions that are going on right now. Conservation biologists, in their concern for species like the black rhinoceros and orangutan, have created the impression that people are readily driving large mammals to extinction. What is striking about the evidence of mammal extinction in the last few hundred years--and I'm talking about the last 500 years instead of the last 50,000--is that the pattern of loss does not accord with anything the conservation community tends to dwell on. Groups like rhinos and great apes have suffered no extinctions at the species level in the last 500 years. Rodents, insectivores, bats, and marsupials are the mammals that have really suffered; accounting for close to 75% of all loses in the past 500 years. By contrast, there have been very few extinctions among large mammals: one seal, one sirenian, and one canid in the past five centuries. In the same time bracket there have hardly been any extinctions among groups like Artiodactyls (pigs, camels, deer, cattle, antelope, sheep and buffalo) and Perissodactyls (horses and rhinos).
...The astounding thing about mammal extinctions in the continental parts of the New World is that, after 10,000 or 11,000 years ago, there were none. I mean NONE that has been documented, right up to the present. After all these species disappearances in North America--all the mammals that Paul Martin and others have documented the losses of--there were no more extinctions at the species level. The only such losses in the New World after 10,000 years B.P. have occurred on islands. How that can be, if it is true that the Paleoindians, when they came over, were so touched by blood lust that they had to kill everything in sight? How is it that they managed to do such a wonderfully destructive job on something like 45 or 50 genera of North American mammals in the space of maybe only a few hundred years, whereas after 11,000 years ago--no matter what their practices--there were no more extinctions?" Good question
Update 5/15/06 Overkill hypothesis revisited.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/510/2?etoc
...Guthrie collected 600 new dates on bones of mammoths, horses, bison, wapiti, and moose that had lived 9 to 18 kya in Alaska and the Yukon. The better resolution of new radiocarbon techniques showed that the animals did not go extinct at the same time, as would be expected if they were killed off in a human Blitzkrieg. Furthermore, the animals that humans hunted most--bison and elk--survived and even appeared to migrate with humans across the Bering land bridge into Alaska...changes in the world climate at the end of the Ice Age 13 kya altered the frigid landscape of the far north into a steppe covered with grasses, where mammoths, horses, and other grazers flourished for 1000 years. Just as humans first appear in the archaeological fossil record 12,000 years ago, the climate began to shift, turning the steppe grasses into plants toxic to grazers. Horses went extinct about 1 kyr before the mammoths, which disappeared well after humans appeared on the scene in the far north.
N is for Noodles. Who invented pasta?
We went to an Italian restaurant today and my wife asked me, who had introduced pasta in Italy? I always thought that it was Marco Polo. He returned from China with the description of, inter alia, noodles and ways of making them. The Chinese have been eating a "noodle-like food" as early as 3000 BC. When we got back home I decided to check it up. This is what I found:
...The romantic myth that Marco Polo brought pasta on his return from China has long been debunked. Marco Polo returned in 1295. In 1279, however, a Genoese soldier listed in the inventory of his estate a basket of dried pasta ('una bariscella plena de macaronis'). Marco Polo describes a starchy product made from breadfruit - hardly durum wheat.
…The first mention of a recipe [for pasta] is in the book "De arte Coquinaria per vermicelli e maccaroni siciliani" (The Art of Cooking Sicilian macaroni and Vermicelli), around 1000 AD. This was recorded by the chef to the Patriarch of Acquileia, Martino Corno. The first historical references to dried pasta made in proportions large enough to be offered for sale are found in the city of Palermo.
…Dried pasta became popular through the 14th and 15th Centuries, as it could be easily stored on ships, among them ones setting out to explore the New World. Various types of pasta, including long hollow tubes, are mentioned in the 15th Century records of Italian and Dominican monasteries. By the 17th Century, pasta had become part of the daily diet throughout Italy because it was economical, readily available and versatile. History of Pasta
...The first "official" mention of pasta: a notary's inventory of an inheritance speaks of "a bariscela (basket) full of macaronis." A document from 1244 testifies to the production of dried pasta in Liguria. Source 1
...There is no definite mention until the 12th Century when Guglielmo di Malavalle describes a banquet he attended, at which a dish was served that was called 'macarrones sen logana' consisting of pasta mashed in sauce.A century later pasta was mentioned by Jacopore da Todi, and then in the next century in Boccaccio's famous story in which the painter Bruno describes the land of Cockaigne where 'there was a whole mountain of gated Parmesan cheese and on top were standing people who did nothing but make macaroni and ravioli and cook them in capon broth' Source 4
XLII. Making Pasta. Tacuinum of Vienna
, late 14th or early 15th century[Observe the contradictions in these stories; we will ignore these for now]
OK, if Marco Polo did not introduce pasta in Italy, then who did? There seems to be four general theories: Etruscan, Greeko-Roman, Jewish, and Arab.
The Etruscans
...This theory is based on archeological findings in Etruscan tombs. Carvings on some of the stucco reliefs in the tombs depict a knife, a board, a flour sack, all of which may have had other uses. There is, however, an iron pin that enthusiasts of the Etruscan theory would convince us was used to shape tubular pasta. Some scholars scoff at this interpretation, as the pin could have been used for other purposes. There is no other hard evidence to support the claim that pasta history began with the Etruscans. History of Pasta
...Pasta actually goes back to the Etruscans (400 B.C.). It is believed that they used to prepare the first lasagna made of spelt which is a cereal like wheat, but far more resistant against bad weather and diseases. (An Etruscan tomb, found 48 kilometers north of Rome, showed a group of natives making what appears to be pasta). Source 2
The Greeks & the Romans
...There is validity, however, in the belief that the Ancient Greeks and Romans had discovered some form of flattened dough - this a broad noodle called in Greek 'laganon.' It is significant, however, that this was not boiled as we boil lasagna noodles, but roasted on hot stones or in ovens. Apicius, a Roman writer of the first century AD describes a pasta made "to enclose timballi and pies..." These were called "lagana.' The recipe for the dough is not given, however there are suggestions for layering and seasoning with meat and fish.History of Pasta
...Poet Oratio used to appreciate some sort of lagana (lasagna) with chickpea in Rome, first century BC; Apicius' De Re coquinaria, first century AD, tells about one tracta (tightened, stretched), sort of flat bread made out of spelt which was rolled out and fried or cooked with legume soup, and this habit can still be found in some parts of Italy.By the time Enea reached the Latium coasts, roasted meat was served on an unusual dish, which could be literally eaten up; distant ancestor of Italian pizza. Source 3
The Arabs
...Pasta was certainly well known in Arab countries. From these countries it spread to Greece and Sicily (then an Arab colony). In fact, Palermo was the first historical capital of pasta, because it is here that we have the first historical sources referring to the production of dried pasta in what seems like a small-scale industrial enterprise. In 1150, Arab geographer Al-Idrisi reports that at Trabia, about 30 km. from Palermo, "they produce an abundance of pasta in the shape of strings ("tria" in Arabic) which are exported everywhere, in Calabria and in many Muslim and Christian countries, even by ship." Source 1
...The Sicilian word "maccaruni" which translates as "made into a dough by force" is the origin of our word, macaroni.In the ancient methods of making pasta, force meant kneading the dough with the feet, often a process that took a full day. Ancient Sicilian lasagna dishes, some still eaten in Sicily today, included raisins and spices brought by the Arab invaders, another indication that the Arabs introduced pasta. History of Pasta
The Jews
...The first certain record of noodles cooked by boiling is in the Jerusalem Talmud, written in Aramaic in the 5th century AD. The word used for the noodles was itriyah. In Arabic references this word stands for the dried noodles purchased from a vendor, rather than homemade noodles which would have been fresh. Other Arabic sources of the time refer to fresh noodles as lakhsha, a Persian word that was the basis for words in Russian and Yiddish.href="http://www.inmamaskitchen.com/FOOD_IS_ART/pasta/historypasta.html
">History of Pasta</a>[Observe that a large community of Jews lived in Persia at that time; their rabbis wrote the Babylonian Talmud. This is to say that the Persian origin of "lakhsha" is debatable. - S.]
...The first clear Western reference to boiled noodles is in the Jerusalem Talmud. The authors debated whether or not noodles violated Jewish dietary laws. (Today only noodles made of matzoh meal are kosher for Passover.) They used the word itriyah, thought by some scholars to derive from the Greek itrion which referred to a kind of flatbread used in religious ceremonies. http://www.mrsleeperspasta.com/pasta_101.html
...The first written reference to noodles as we know them is in the Talmud Yesrushalmi, where the Gemora discusses the Halachos of drying Itriyos (noodles) on Yom Tov (Maseches Beiza) and the rules of Challah involved in their preparation (Maseches Challah). In all probability, these Itriyos traveled with the Saracens in their invasion of Sicily, and thence spread throughout Italy...Fresh pasta may be made at home, or sold as a refrigerated product. This is the type of Itriyos that the Talmud Yerushalmi (Beitza I:9) states may be made on Yom Tov. Fresh pasta, however, has a very limited shelf life, since it tends to ferment and spoil after a short time. Pasta makers quickly learned that their product may be dried, in which form it may be kept for years before being boiled and eaten. According to the Yerushalmi, one may not produce this type of pasta on Yom Tov, since it involves preparing foods for use after the Yom Tov. Rabbi Zushe Yosef Blech
Who introduced pasta in Italy? It is more or less clear that the Italians got it from the Sicilians, the Sicilians got it from the Arabs, and the Arabs got it from the Jews. The question is, where did the Jews get the noodles? The word might be of Greek origin, but the Greeks did not boil their pasta and theirs was not really pasta. It is less clear with the Romans, but in any case they used pasta either for pies or soups rather than a standalone dish. I believe that the Jews invented pasta as we presently understand it, although I can not prove it. Think about that the next time you go to an Italian restaurant.
Update (October 14, 2005): Oldest noodles unearthed in China: The 50cm-long, yellow strands were found in a pot that had probably been buried during a catastrophic flood.Radiocarbon dating of the material taken from the Lajia archaeological site on the Yellow River indicates the food was about 4,000 years old.The noodles were made using grains from millet grass. Prior to the discovery of noodles at Lajia, the earliest written record of noodles is traced to a book written during the East Han Dynasty sometime between AD 25 and 220, although it remained a subject of debate whether the Chinese, the Italians, or the Arabs invented it first. Nature
Update 2. A sakh zmires un veynik lokshn ("Lots of hymns and just a little pasta") is a Yiddish expression meaning great effort expended for a disappointing result. Yiddish Pasta
O is for octothorp (# sign).
On a cue from a friend, I have immersed myself into the tangled history of # (numeral sign, also known as octothorp, pound sign (in the US), hash mark (in the UK), scratch, gate (cancelletto), etc.) and No. (numero sign). Why do we use these particular symbols? I made absolutely no progress with the numero sign and very limited progress with the pound sign. I doubt that spending more time to research the problem would help. Here is what I found about the # sign.
The use of this symbol for numerals is very recent (early 1960s). It started to be used for that shortly after its first appearance on touch tone (DTMF) phones. Before that, the # sign was included in many US typesets (shift-3) where the British ones had the £ symbol on typewriter keyboards. It was used to indicate the weight in pounds (lb.) Two signs, * and # were selected by Bell labs electronics engineers after talking to potential customers (the signs were planned to be used for modem connections only). Perhaps, the choice was dictated primarily by the fact that the signs were already present on the typewriters. The details of the story may be found here. The best understood is the origin for “octothorp”, though there is still some uncertainty as to its etymology:
… In cartography, O. is a symbol for village: eight fields around a central square, and this is the source of its name. O. means eight fields. Robert Bringhurst, "The Elements of Typographic Style", p. 224.
... In a failed attempt to avoid the naming problem by creating a new name, the term "octothorp" (dates from 1971) was invented for #, allegedly by Bell Labs engineers when touch-tone telephones were introduced in the mid-1960s. "Octo-" means eight, and "thorp" was an Old English word for village: apparently the sign was playfully construed as eight fields surrounding a village. Another story has it that a Bell Labs supervisor named Don MacPherson coined the word from the number of endpoints and from the surname of U.S. athlete James Francis Thorpe. Merriam-Webster Editorial Department told me: "All of the stories you record are known to us, but the evidence does not line up nicely behind any one of them." http://pages.zoom.co.uk/leveridge/dictionary.html#Octothorpe
The British seldom miss a chance to lecture us on how wrong it is to call # a pound sign; their £ (for pound sterling) and “lb.” (for weight) are the only correct usages. In fact, the # sign for lb had been widely used in Britain before the 18th century; later on, this symbol fell into disrepute everywhere except for the US. How did the # symbol originate? The only explanation I found so far (that made its way into all of the encyclopedias) rests on this undocumented statement by Keith Gordon Irwin in “The Romance of Writing”, p. 125:
…The Italian libbra (from the old Latin word libra, "balance") represented a weight almost exactly equal to the avoirdupois pound of England. The Italian abbreviation of lb with a line drawn across the letters was ... used for both weights. The business clerk's hurried way of writing the abbreviation appears to have been responsible for the # sign used for pound.
I am quite used to such frivolous explanations (an unnamed “business clerk” did it at some unspecified time) and I refuse to believe any of it. My experience suggests that such explanations are always incorrect. Crossed-out lb does not look at all like the # sign. It is pure imagination. In its sheer untrustworthiness, it reminds me the tall story that Ayn Rand concocted in “Atlas Shrugged” to account for the $ sign (that it is stylized US in which the U is contracted and placed onto the S). The real story is much more interesting and much less certain.
If it all comes down to whose unsubstantiated account is better, then I prefer my own:
I suggest that the pound sign originates in music notation, namely in the familiar “sharp” accidental. The first use of £ for pound is from the early 16th century. The “sharp” sign is from the late 15th century. Back then the sign was not tilted, it looked exactly like our # sign. The sharp sign is derived from the lower case Gothic letter known as "B quadratum". The flat sign is derived from its round-bottom twin ("B rotundum"). Historically, the first accidental derived from the square b was “natural” (“be carre”) and it looked much like this letter. Later on, the Germans started using H instead of B-natural and used a combination of lower-case Gothic square b and h for the natural sign in their notation; this fused version is our presently used sign for the natural accidental. The sharp sign is a further transformation of the natural sign and it is also derived from letter b (called barred or “canceled” b). There were plenty of educated people at the turn of the 16th century who knew that.
I suggest that the person who invented the £ symbol for pound sterling was the same person who invented # sign for pound weight. The first one is stylized capital L from Lb, the second is stylized b from the same diglyph. The way in which L is stylized is similar to the way in which the treble (G)-clef is stylized from Gothic G. I believe that both of these symbols are derived from Lb and inspired by (then, the recent and fashionable) music notation. The # symbol is quite ingenious: unlike many other glyphs, it is very simple to draw using a nib; even an illiterate person could easily make a passable sign.
I cannot prove this theory. However, it makes much more sense than the tall story of a corner-cutting clerk given above. It takes a lot of imagination and visual dexterity to come up with a powerful yet economic symbol that lasts for centuries. Clerks do not do that.
Feral parrots (monk parakeets) have been known to live in Hyde Park, Chicago from 1912. These parrots were once pets; then they were released (or escaped) into the wild. There are several other isolated parrot communities in North America, e.g., in Queens and Toronto. In Hyde Park they live in a restricted area, ca 10 x 10 blocks. This area is limited on one side by the lake and, on the other three sides, by black ghetto. Two explanations have been suggested for that. Number one is that the habitation pattern follows the area of a particular kind of hawthorn; in the fall, the birds primarily feed on the seeds of this thorn. I do not think it is correct because this thorn grows in all of lake shore parks and also in Washington park. The second theory (based on the autopsies of fallen birds) posits that the parrots depend entirely on human charity in the three winter months. Apparently, you cannot expect charity in certain places. This theory implies that Hyde Park residents are more charitable than other Chicagoans. While it is very gratifying, this explanation is probably untrue. The parrots will be loved just as much on the North side. I do not know what keeps the birds in Hyde Park. They can fly, after all.
The parrots thrive in Chicago because they found a unique adaptation to cold. They build large compound nests 1-2 yards in diameter around electrical transformers on tall wooden light posts. The nest traps the heat of the transformer which is used for warmth in winter and for incubation in spring. In summer, the birds migrate to smaller nests built high up the trees or on cross bars of metal lamp posts along the lake.These are their summer bungalows. There are no natural predators: felis vulgaris cannot reach these nests; other birds are clearly afraid of these parrots (see below). The only predator of any worth is Commonwealth Edison. In the dog days of summer some overheated transformers burst into flames blacking out several blocks. Every year the company destroys some of the nests; every year parrots build new, ever larger, nests. Because of the public support for the birds, this epic battle usually ends in a draw.There are more than 300 nests around Hyde Park, and the area is slowly growing, as the ghetto becomes gentrified.
Unlike pigeons, sparrows, and other unwanted city dwellers, the parrots are cooperative and industrious. To build a large nest they use long, heavy twigs. The twigs are lifted by 2-3 birds in an impressive display of pre-planning and coordination. Building a nest is always a communal project; the basic construction may take only 1-2 weeks. Each nest is shared by several families; there is always a vigilant parent guarding it. The parrots gang up to chase large birds competing with them for food, such as pigeons and gulls. They are aggressive and stand no nonsense.They are becoming the predominant avian species in our neighborhood.
I believe that our parrots have a great future ahead of them. Their adaptations, stamina, and ingenuity are such that a large swath of metropolitan North America and Canada can already be readily colonized. The main remaining obstacle must be "the 3-month" winter problem when the birds cannot find the seeds to subsist upon. Once they learn how to stomach garbage, there will be no stopping of them. The evolution is on its most creative in Hyde Park, Chicago. Something great and extremely rare is afoot there. What is your grand design for these birds?
Q is for QWERTY.
hy does the upper row of our keyboards and type writers read QWERTY? Whose design was that? Below I compiled the most frequent answers to these two questions given in the literature. The common feature of these answers is that they typically include a bold statement to the effect that all other explanations are pure myth unsupported by the history of typewriting. The more you study the question, the more elusive becomes the answer. Judge for yourself:
…In 1867, Christopher Latham Sholes, a Milwaukee printer, filed a patent application for a mechanical writing machine. His machine had its typebars on the bottom, striking upward to leave an impression on the paper. Because the printing point was underneath the paper carriage, it was invisible to the typist. If a typebar became jammed, it too, remained invisible to the operator. Sholes worked for the next six years to try to eliminate this problem, trying mechanical changes and different keyboard arrangements. http://www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/features/qwerty/qwerty.shtml
… To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. This became today’s standard "QWERTY" keyboard. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltypewriter.htm
…The keyboard arrangement was considered important enough to be included on Sholes' patent granted in 1878, some years after the machine was into production. QWERTY's effect, by reducing those annoying clashes, was to speed up typing rather than slow it down. Sholes and Densmore went to Remington, the arms manufacturer, to have their machines mass-produced. In 1874, the first Type-Writer appeared on the market. No contemporary account complains about the illogical keyboard. http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html
…Sholes asked his brother-in-law, a mathematician, to rearrange the keyboard so that the commonest letters were not so close together and the type bars would come from opposite directions. Thus they would not clash together and jam the machine. The new arrangement was the "QWERTY" arrangement that typists use today. Of course, Sholes claimed that the new arrangement was scientific and would add speed and efficiency. The only efficiency it added was to slow the typist down, since almost any word in the English language required the typist's fingers to cover more distance on the keyboard. http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/story098.htm
…For over 100 years, Sholes has suffered a bad rap. According to myth his original machine was so clumsy that it tended to jam when operated by typists working at high speed. Biologist Stephen Jay Gould used the keyboard to compare technological evolution, to biological evolution, both of which depend on what you start with. In the keyboard's case, by starting with QWERTY, we became stuck with it, because it was just too difficult to replace. However, in "The Panda's Thumb," Gould attributes this reason to the creation of QWERTY: "In other words--and here comes the epitome of the tale in a phrase--QWERTY arose in order to slow down the maximal speed of typing and prevent jamming of keys. Common letters were either alloted to weak fingers or dispersed to positions requiring a long stretch from the home row." Actually, Sholes artfully arranged the inside of his machine to lower the frequency of jams. The effect was to help fast typists go FASTER. http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html
…The original Sholes & Glidden used the QWERTY keyboard, but typed in capitals only. It was a sluggish, finicky, inefficient machine. In five years, only 5,000 were sold. In 1878, the No. 2 machine was introduced. It typed both upper and lower case, using a shift key. It took another decade, but the "Remington No. 2" became a huge success, and the Typewriter Industry was on its way. http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/firsttw.html
…In 1873, E. Remington & Sons licensed the design from Scholes, and set their engineers to work to on the design. One of their keyboard layout changes was driven by a clever marketing idea. The Remington brand name, TYPE WRITER, could be most speedily typed if all of its letters were on the same row. Remington's salesmen used this slight bit of subterfuge to impress potential customers. http://www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/features/qwerty/qwerty.shtml
…"Typewriter" is the longest word that can be typed on only one row, which might be no coincidence as some believe that Christopher Sholes deliberately placed all its letters in the top row when designing the layout in order to ease demonstrations. Proprietory, protereotype and rupturewort are sometimes conjectured as the longest words but these are not available in most dictionaries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty
… From the inventor's trial-and-error rearrangements of the original model's alphabetical key ordering, in an effort to reduce the frequency of typebar clashes, there emerged a four ¬row, upper case keyboard approaching the modern QWERTY standard. In March 1873, Densmore succeeded in placing the manufacturing rights for the substantially transformed Sholes-Glidden "Type Writer" with E. Remington & Sons, the famous arms makers. Within the next few months QWERTY's evolution was virtually completed by Remington's mechanics. Their many modifications included some finetuning of the keyboard design in the course of which the "R" wound up in the place previously allotted to the period mark "." Thus were assembled into one row all the letters which a salesman would need to impress customers, by rapidly pecking out the brand name: TYPE WRITER. http://f.staff.umkc.edu/fkfc8/QUERTY.html
...[another myth is that] the QWERTY keyboard was invented so that a salesman could quickly type the word "Typewriter" by placing his fingers on the top row of letter keys. Check it out... all the letters are there. The salesmen COULD have done that trick... but that's not what the inventor had in mind. http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/myths.html
… [QWERTY] made its first appearance on a rickety, clumsy device marketed as the "Type-Writer" in 1872. For years, popular writers have accused Sholes of deliberately arranging his keyboard to slow down fast typists who would otherwise jam up his sluggish machine. In fact, his motives were just the opposite. When Sholes built his first model in 1868, the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows. Yes, the first typewriter was sluggish. Yes, it did clash and jam when someone tried to type with it. But Sholes was able to figure out a way around the problem simply by rearranging the letters. Looking inside his early machine, we can see how he did it. The first typewriter had its letters on the end of rods called "typebars." The typebars hung in a circle. The roller which held the paper sat over this circle, and when a key was pressed, a typebar would swing up to hit the paper from underneath. If two typebars were near each other in the circle, they would tend to clash into each other when typed in succession. So, Sholes figured he had to take the most common letter pairs such as "TH" and make sure their typebars hung at safe distances. He did this using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by educator Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who was Sholes' chief financial backer. The QWERTY keyboard itself was determined by the existing mechanical linkages of the typebars inside the machine to the keys on the outside. Sholes' solution did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced. http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html
…there is a long-lived rumor is that typewriter inventor Christopher Sholes arranged the letters in the QWERTY layout to slow down the typist. If this were true, he would have located popular letters such as "A" and "S" at the far corners of the keyboard and located unpopular letters like "Q", "Z", and "X" under your fingertips, right where you don't need them. Looking at the QWERTY keyboard shows us that, in fact, the opposite is true. What really happened was Mr. Sholes varied from his original alphabetic layout when he placed commonly used pairs of letters such as "sh", "ck", "th", "pr", etc. on alternating sides of the keyboard to reduce jamming of the typewriter's swing-arms. This design change actually had the bonus effect of speeding up typing by letting the user alternate hands more often - think drum roll. You can see remnants of Mr. Sholes original alphabetic layout in the QWERTY layout, namely the keys "FGHJKL". http://www.chicagologic.com/QWERTY%20rumor/
Remington typewriter ad featuring Mark Twain and his daughter.
…Since Qwerty was designed to accomplish this now obsolete mechanical requirement, maximizing speed was not an explicit objective. Some authors even claim that the keyboard is actually configured to minimize speed since decreasing speed would have been one way to avoid the jamming of the typewriter. At the time, however, a two-finger hunt-and-peck method was contemplated, so the keyboard speed envisioned was quite different from touch-typing speeds. A watershed event was a typing contest held in Cincinnati on July 25, 1888. Frank McGurrin, a court stenographer from Salt Lake City, who was apparently the first to memorize the keyboard and use touch-typing, won a decisive victory over Louis Taub. Taub used the hunt-and-peck method on a Caligraph, a machine that used seventy-two keys to provide upper- and lower-case letters. According to popular history, the event established once and for all that the Remington typewriter, with its Qwerty keyboard, was technically superior. More important, the contest created an interest in touch-typing, an interest directed at the Qwerty arrangement. Reportedly, no one else at that time had skills that could even approach McGurrin's, so there was no possibility of countering the claim that the Remington keyboard arrangement was efficient. McGurrin participated in typing contests and demonstrations throughout the country and became something of a celebrity. His choice of the Remington keyboard which may well have been arbitrary contributed to the establishment of the standard. So it was. A keyboard designed to solve a short-lived mechanical problem became the standard used daily by millions of typists. http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
…In the late 1880's, the practice of "touch typing" (where you don't cheat and look at your fingers) was developed. And it was developed for the Remington keyboard. So while competing typewriter designers were heralding their advantages to potential typewriter purchasers, the typists were learning how to use the Remington QWERTY keyboard. http://www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/features/qwerty/qwerty.shtml
The idea of QWERTY is attributed, alternatively, to Sholes’ brother-in-law (a mathematician? - whose name is never given), to James Densmore, to his brother Amos Densmore, and to Sholes himself – always with the utmost certainty. In some accounts QWERTY had been fully laid out by the time the invention was sold to Remington. In other accounts, it was finalized and rearranged by Remington’s engineers. Sometimes the rearrangement is claimed to slow typing down, sometimes to speed it up. The fact that one can use the upper row letters to type “Type writer” is listed as the reason for this arrangement or, alternatively, this reasoning is claimed to be but a popular myth. The reason for choosing QWERTY over many other possible arrangements of the same type is never given; one wonders if it was more or less random.
Who came up with QWERTY, how, and why?
R is for Revolutionary headgear, Budenovka.
he most memorable image of the Red Army in the Russian Civil War is a curiously looking, red star sporting felt helmet called budenovka. To many Russians, this instantly recognizable helmet is the very symbol of the Russian Revolution. It is named so, because it was used in the 1st Konarmia (Cavalry) of Semyon Budenny, the celebrated hero of the Russo-Japanese, Imperial, and Civil Wars (in 1970, he was buried at the Red Square next to Marshal Zhukov). You can take a good look at this helmet here; the story given therein made it into all of the on line encyclopedias. However, it is not a complete story; it is not even a true story. What is the complete story? That I do not know, but I can fill in some details. Learn the official story first; I do not want to repeat the known facts. Here are some missing details:
[This one is actually from 1927; I cannot find an image of a revolutionary one in the public domain - S.]
Budenovka is not the first name for the helmet; prior to that it was used in the peasant army of Frunze and was called frunzenka, and before that it was called "bogatyrka". It was called that well before the Revolution; the helmets were made shortly before WWI. The design is indeed mainly by V. Vasnetsov, though another Russian painter, B. Kustodiev, contributed almost as much. It is also true that they based their design on the medieval helmet of bogatyrs (the folk Russian warriors). The helmet was intended for the cavalry. The characteristical spike at the top was functional; many pre-WWI and WWI helmets had such a feature, e.g., Uhlan Tschapkas and spike helmets (Pickelhaube) in Germany. To replicate the traditional headgear of the bogatyrs was not Vasnetsov's idea, it was suggested to the famous painter by Nicholas II. The Tzar liked it very much and ordered hundreds of thousands of "bogatyrka" helmets on the eve of the war. Only when the new helmets were sent to the troops, the field commanders recognized that, viewed from a distance, the "bogatyrka" helmets looked exactly like Ersatz (felt) Pickelhaube of German infantrymen. The German helmet was usually camouflaged by a cloth cover in the field; the cloth also protected the felt from the elements. Judge it for yourself: here is the Pickelhaube with cloth cover
; here is another image, and 
you can see the overall effect here
(two B/W photographs in the middle). The Army generals immediately demanded total recall of the new helmets and the Tzar yielded to their demands (against his most vociferous protestations). In 1919, the Bolsheviks accidentally discovered the stock of these recalled "bogatyrka" helmets. By that time, there was already a truce with the Germans, so the confusing similarity did not matter. Besides, the Germans replaced their Pickelhaube by a more protective steel helmet (Stahlhelm) that did not have a spike. Given the war shortages and the paralyzed state of the economy in Russia, the Bolsheviks decided to use these discarded helmets on their troops, after patching the helmet with an over-sized red star. The stars were hiding squadron numbers painted on the "bogatyrkas" when the helmets were first delivered to the cavalry before WWI (the numbers looked just like those on the cover cloth of Pickelhaube in the photographs above). Such is the story of budenovka. If the Germans had sense (like the British and the French) to change to the Stahlhelm earlier than in mid 1917 (actually, they did - on the Western Front), it would be the Whites who were wearing them. The symbol of the Russian Revolution, as much as its course and its ideology, were informed by the Germans. The budenovkas remained in the Red Army until 1943. I saw quite a few of them when I was a little kid back in Russia. The squadron numbers painted before WWI were still tangible under the tattered red material.
What was it all for?
S is for Sunspots, or One lucky scientist.
t is common knowledge that Galileo's "discovery" of sunspots was one of the pivotal events that caused the sudden appearance of modern science. The sunspots suggested that the Sun and the heavens are corruptible, a tenet contrary to Aristotle (although accepted by many Stoics, patristic writers, and even theologians, e.g., by Cardinal Bellarmine). The discovery of the sunspots predates Galilean Copernicanism and it had the immediate and huge impact on the public opinion. The sunspots and irregularities on the surface of the Moon contradicted Aristotle's tenet that the moon and the heavens are permanent, perfect, and made of aether (also called quinta essentia, the stuff of the philosopher's stone). [For "chymistry" it was a decisive, mortal blow: if even the Sun is not made of the quintessence, then what is?] The body made of the perfect element was perfect, and the circle is perfect. The Sun is perfect and thus it moves around the Earth in a circle. It was a pretty clever theory that lasted for hundreds of years; and then came Galileo with his stupid sunspots and ruined everything. Few people realize, however, how unbelievably fortunate Galileo was. If the telescope were invented just 30 years later, he would not make his amazing "discovery" that dealt such a decisive blow to the peripatetic school. The mountains on the Moon were not as damning, because even Aristotle assumed that the part of the Moon that permanently faces the Earth might be corruptible (that's where the meteorites are from). It had to be the Sun. Here are some details, taken from this site.
...Sunspots are dark areas of irregular shape on the surface of the Sun...Records of naked-eye sunspot observations in China go back to at least 28 BCE. In the West, the record is much more problematical. It is possible that the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras observed a spot in 467 BCE, and it appears that there are a few scattered mentions in the ancient literature as well. However, in the dominant Aristotelian cosmology, the heavens were thought to be perfect and unchanging. A spot that comes and goes on the Sun would mean that there is change in the heavens. A very large spot seen for no less than eight days in 807 was simply interpreted as a passage of Mercury in front of the Sun. Other mentions of spots seen on the Sun were ignored.
...In 1607 Johannes Kepler wished to observe a predicted transit of Mercury across the Sun's disk, and on the appointed day he projected the Sun's image through a small hole in the roof of his house (a camera obscura) and did indeed observe a black spot that he interpreted to be Mercury.
...The scientific study of sunspots in the West began after the telescope had been brought into astronomy in 1609...Galileo and Thomas Harriot were the first, around the end of 1610; that Johannes and David Fabricius and Christoph Scheiner first observed them in March 1611, and that Johannes Fabricius was the first to publish on them.
...Galileo had shown sunspots to a number of people in Rome during his triumphant visit there in the spring of 1611...[He] did not undertake a study of sunspots until April 1612. Scheiner began his serious study of spots in October 1611 and his first tract on the subject appeared in January 1612...Scheiner argued that sunspots were satellites of the Sun. They appeared as black spots when they passed in front of the Sun but were invisible at other points in their orbits. Their orbits had to be very close to the Sun for their shapes were foreshortened as they approached its edge. Scheiner observed sunspots through a telescope equipped with colored glasses.
...In April 1612, Galileo turned his attention to sunspots with the help of his protégé Benedetto Castelli, who was in Florence at the time. It was Castelli who developed the method of projecting the Sun's image through the telescope, a technique that made it possible to study the Sun in detail even when it was high in the sky. Galileo wrote his first letter to Welser on sunspots, in which he argued that spots were, in fact, on the surface of the Sun or in its atmosphere, and although he could not say for certain what they were, they appeared to him most like clouds...[Galileo observed how the spots rotated with the Sun - S.] Scheiner commented that his observations agreed precisely with those of Galileo and defended his judgment that sunspots were solar satellites. He showed a large number of sunspot observations, made at roughly the same time of the day, so that the Sun's orientation was the same and the motion of the spots across its disk could be easily followed.
...Galileo noticed that, while a spot took about 14 days to cross from one side of the Sun to the other, its rate of motion was by no means uniform. That is, the spot's motion always appeared much slower when near the edge of the Sun than when near the center. This Galileo recognized as an effect of foreshortening. That is, a spot coming around the limb is actually traveling towards you. But your eyes can't see the 3-D effect, and the spot likes as if it were moving slowing across the disk. However, when the spot is in the middle 1/3 or so of the Sun, all its motion is across the disk. So it appears to be moving quickly. Foreshortening
would result if, and only if, the spot were on or very near the surface of the Sun. A planet orbiting the Sun would not appear to change its speed when moving across the Sun's disk. ...His definitive sunspot studies were followed up by others. In France Pierre Gassendi made numerous observations (not published until 1658); in Gdansk Johannes Hevelius (1647) and in Bologna Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1651) did the same. There is, therefore, a reasonably good sunspot record for the years 1610-1645...After this time, however, sunspot activity was drastically reduced. When, in 1671, a sunspot was observed, it was treated as a rare event. Sunspot activity increased again after about 1710.
...The Maunder Minimum is the name given to the period roughly from 1645 to 1715 A.D., when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time...During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, for example, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000–50,000 spots...The Maunder Minimum coincided with the middle — and coldest part — of the so-called Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America, and perhaps much of the rest of the world, were subjected to bitterly cold winters...Whether there is a causal connection between low sunspot activity and cold winters is the subject of ongoing debate...The lower solar activity during the Maunder Minimum also affected the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the Earth. The resulting change in the production of carbon-14 during that period caused an inaccuracy in radiocarbon dating until this effect was discovered. Other historical sunspot minima have been detected either directly or by the analysis of carbon-14 in ice cores or tree rings; these include the Sporer Minimum (1450–1540), and less markedly the Dalton Minimum (1790–1820). In total there seem to have been 18 periods of sunspot minima in the last 8,000 years, and studies indicate that the sun currently spends up to a quarter of its time in these minima. Wikipedia
Scheiner never conceded his theory, but he, unlike Galileo, was very systematic and made many contributions to the studies of solar physics. Scheiner's method of illustrating the motion of individual spots across the face of the Sun became the standard way of rendering this motion and the changing shapes of the spots. Observe that if the planet is in a VERY low orbit, then foreshortening would also occur; that was Scheiner's point exactly. Extrasolar planets known as "hot Jupiters"
discovered over the last 10 years are in very tight orbits around their suns (8-10 times closer than Mercury); the situation envisaged by Schreiner is possible. However, having hundreds of such planets, constantly appearing and disappearing, was an absurd idea. Galileo had a point there. However, if there were very few sunspots, such an argument would not have much currency. And this number was indeed very low after 1645.What does it all mean? Galileo and Scheiner were very, very lucky. The telescope was invented when the solar activity was maximum (it cycles every 11 years) and if it were invented 30 years later, no sunspots would be found. What course would the events take in such a case? Would the teachings of Aristotle be taught for another 50 years or more?
PS: Maundler Minima occur roughly every 440 years on an irregular pattern and we may have the next one in 10-20 years, for all we know. Then another Little Ice Age
could be upon us: ...Experts disagree on the duration of the Little Ice Age. Some mark its inception as early as the 1200s, others view the Little Ice Age "proper" as beginning around 1450 or even later. Low activity from 1645 to 1715, called the Maunder Minimum, matched perfectly one of the coldest spells of the Little Ice Age. Disagreements arise because the phenomenon was not simply a giant cold snap. The cooling trend began at different times in different parts of the world and often was interrupted by periods of relative warmth. All agree, however, that it lasted for centuries, and that the world began emerging from its grip between 1850 and 1900.
May be it was not only Galileo who was lucky?
T is for Tetrapack
Do you remember the tetrapack? - a tetrahedrally shaped milk carton that was so popular when we were kids. It is an unbelievably clever and neat invention: the milk continually fills a cylindrical pipe made of laminated carton that is sealed and cut by two perpendicular jaws, through the milk. The first tetrapack machine was built in 1952 in Sweden; by 1959 the machine made it to snowy Moscow, Russia. I still remember 18-unit hexagonal crate in which the tetrapacks were delivered to the state stores, how these tetrapacks smelled, how the milk tasted. The tetrapack is the emblem of my Russian childhood.
For some time I've been interested in the history of this invention, but most sources do not give much detail how it came about. Finally, I hit gold.
The Swedes started to work on this invention in 1944, when other people were fighting the Nazis and making A-bombs. Packing milk was not high on the agenda. Most people were concerned with getting it. Surprisingly, the first thing invented was the tetrahedral shape. The 6-sided crate was second to come. The pivotal idea of the pipe that is continually filled by milk and sealed by the jaws was, actually, an accidental suggestion of inventor's wife that she made over a breakfast. The first prototype of the machine did not work; they were not able to master this continuous filling. It took 8 years of constant development to make it possible. Only in 1956 a good way of laminating the carton was found. The speed with which tetrapacks took the world is astonishing.
The events unfolded in exactly the opposite way I imagined it. I thought that the technology came first,the shape came second, and the crate came last. Boy, I was wrong.
U is for Umbrella. Call it Macaroni.
It is hard to picture a rainy day in London without solemn looking black umbrellas held by solemn looking City gentlemen, but, obviously, that was not always the case. Surely, parasols are known from the great antiquity. Even Defoe's Robinson Crusoe made himself one. However, someone had to start using umbrellas (from Latin umbra, shade) against rain showers, and it was a colorful Londoner named Jonas Hanway, whose image (with an umbrella) can be found here
.
This great and courageous deed (for which he was mercilessly teased and socially ostracized) was not his only claim to fame (Wikipedia has a whole article on him); it was not even the most controversial subject to which he was drawn, like many other eccentric British bachelors of his age. Hanway (1712-1786) was chiefly known for his vitriolic attacks on tea drinking, advocacy of solitary confinement for prisoners, and dead set opposition to Jewish naturalization (the latter is traceable to the years that he spent in St. Petersburg, Russia, as a junior partner in a merchant company). I've got most of what follows from R. L. Chambers: Book of Days, Vol. 1 (1864) p. 241.
To understand what Hanway had accomplished, one needs to understand the social context. In the reign of Queen Anne, the oil cloth umbrellas were already used as a screen from the pouring English rain, but only by ladies, to protect their fancy hairdos and dresses. Swift wrote in "The City Shower" (1710): The tuck'd up seamstress walks with hasty strides/While streams run down her oiled umbrella's sides. There is another poetic account of an umbrella, by Gay (in his "Trivia"). Later on, Frenchmen started to use the umbrellas to protect their powdered wigs. In 1752, General Wolfe wrote from Paris: The people here use umbrellas in hot weather to defend them from the sun, and something of the same kind to save them from the snow and rain. I wonder a practice so useful is not introduced in England. The brief answer to Wolfe's question is that to be the first male user of what was universally viewed as a ladies' fashion article, one had to show more guts than was endowed to the bravest of generals:
...Just about that time, a gentleman did exercise the moral [sic!] courage to use an umbrella in the streets of London. He was the noted Jonas Hanway, newly returned from Persia, and in delicate health, by which, of course, his using such a convenience was justified both to himself and the considerate part of the public. "A parapluie," we are told "defended Mr. Hanway's face and wig." For a time no others than the dainty beings then called Macaronies ventured to carry an umbrella.
I have to interrupt this passage to remind about the Macaroni club and why any association with this club was socially risky:
...A ‘macaroni’ [possibly, from Italian maccherone - S.], was a dandy with an extravagant hairstyle and affected mannerisms. Literally, a ‘macaroni’ was a small tricorn hat placed on top of a high wig. When Yankee Doodle ‘stuck a feather in his cap, and called it macaroni’, it was the entire cap, not just the feather, that constituted a ‘macaroni’, and which symbolized him as a Dandy and a bit of a buffoon. The first homosexual scandal in the UK, 1772
...By the 1750s it had become de rigeur for rich young men to tour Europe (especially Italy) in a 'Grand Tour'. Here they absorbed different cultures, ate different foods, studied art, and drank heavily. When these men returned to London, they brought the pasta dish 'macaroni' with them. To set themselves apart from the establishment, they began to wear outrageous costumes. The wig was worn with large side curls, and very high in front (up to 9" high), with almost a vestigial three-cornered hat perched on top. The Macaronis carried or wore nosegays of flowers (attached to the right lapel), wore tightly-fitting coats and short waistcoats with enormous buttons, and exquisitely thin shoes, with huge buckles of gold or pinchbeck. They also affected a mincing gait, which actually might have been necessary with their delicate shoes, tight garments and top-heavy wigs. The presence of these 'exquisite young fops' did not please the older gentlemen… to say the least. Because they were associated with 'foreign food', these dandies became known as 'The Macaronis'. The term may have been applied to them, or they may have adopted it themselves. At any rate, the first mention of them as such comes from 1764. Graeme Marsden
...Macaronies
: From the beginning there was ambivalence among the English about extravagant fashion, and the extreme style adopted by the young gentlemen back from their European travels, dubbed “Macaronies,” was usually portrayed as ridiculous and sometimes even as unnatural. In 1764 Horace Walpole mentioned “The Maccaroni Club (which is composed of all the travelled young men who wear long curls and spying-glasses),” and a writer in the Oxford Magazine had this to say in 1770: “There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately started up amongst us. It is called Macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion.”...Suspicion gives birth to watchful observation; and, from a strict observance of the Maccaroni Tribe, we very naturally conclude, that to them we are indebted for the frequency of a crime which Modesty forbids me to name. However secret you may be in your amours, yet in the end you cannot escape detection; nor are we as yet so wholly degenerated by your practices, as not to shudder at the thoughts of Beastiality.(Public Ledger, 5 Aug. 1772)
Now that we know who "Macaronies" were and why Yankee Doodle was claimed by the British to be one of them, we may proceed further:
...Any one [with an umbrella] was sure to be hailed by the mob as "a mincing Frenchman." Once John Macdonald, a footman, who has favoured the public with his memoirs, found as late as 1770, that, on appearing with a fine silk umbrella which he had brought from Spain, he was saluted with the cry of "Frenchman, why don't you get a coach?" It appears, however, as if there had previously been a kind of transition period, during which an umbrella was kept at a coffee-house, liable to be used by gentlemen on special occasions by night, though still regarded as the recourse of effeminancy.
...Much of the clamour which was raised against the general use of the umbrella originated with the chairmen and hackney-coachmen, who, of course, regarded rainy weather as a thing especially designed for their advantage and from which the public were entitled to no other protection than what their vehicles could afford.
...In all the large towns of the empire, a memory is preserved of the courageous citizen who first carried an umbrella. In Edinburgh, it was a popular physician named Spens. In Glasgow, about the year 1781 or 1782 the late Mr. John Jameson, surgeon, brought with him an umbrella on his return from Paris, which was the first seen in the city and attracted universal attention. This umbrella was made of heavy wax-cloth, with cane ribs and was a ponderous article.
Observe that the use of the first umbrellas was hardly rewarding:
...The early specimens of the English umbrella made of oiled silk, were, when wet, exceedingly difficult to open or close; the stick and furniture were heavy and inconvenient, and the article generally very expensive. The umbrella was originally formed and carried in a fashion the reverse of what now obtains. It had a ring at the top, by which it was usually carried on the finger when furled (and by which also it could be hung up within doors), the wooden handle terminating in a rounded point to rest on the ground.
It is pretty obvious that carrying an umbrella was a social statement rather than a matter of convenience. It is difficult to say whether it was a statement of one's association with the Continental decadence or with the Macaronies. To the public, it was pretty much the same. They knew quite well what the umbrellas were about:
...In July 1772 Captain Robert Jones of the Macaroni Club was convicted at the Old Bailey for sodomizing a thirteen-year-old boy, and sentenced to death. In October, Jones was granted a Royal Pardon on condition he leave the country. Reports appeared in many newspapers, and the government was attacked for the pardon. No other homosexual case was so widely reported and discussed until the case of Oscar Wilde more than a hundred years later. Jones
.An umbrella carried on a rainy English day in the mid-18th century was the analog of a green carnation sported by Wilde in the late 1890s. And then an anti-Semitic, tea hating eccentric changed all that.
What would the City types do to their brollies if they'd know their symbolism?
V is for Vanillin, the Flavor of a Miracle.
Suppose you witness a miracle. What would you do about it? Some people would believe in what is or was before their eyes without questioning. Some people would deny it without inquiry. Some people would do everything possible to demonstrate that it was not a miracle. Some people would do the same to prove that it was indeed a miracle. In the process they will probably destroy our only chance to solve the mystery.
I do not want to dwell on explaining what the Shroud of Turin is, because almost everyone heard about this famous relic. It has been alleged that the linen cloth is the very shroud in which Jesus Christ was buried. The shroud has an image of a crucified man imprinted on it, in full anatomical detail and perfect rendering, by a method that is not understood.
... the cloth bears the image of a crucified man with various wounds that correspond to those the Gospels relate that Jesus suffered. It first became public around 1350 and exhibited as the shroud that Jesus had been wrapped in after the crucifixion. The Shroud is one of best known and most remarkable of relics that still continues to fascinate people today. As a result, the Shroud has been subjected to more technical and scientific scrutiny, analysis, and speculation than perhaps any other holy relic, but among a lot of experts the controversy seemed to die down after the 1988 radiocarbon dating that determined that the Shroud dates to somewhere between 1260 and 1390. The excellent congruence between the earliest historical records for the Shroud (i.e., its provenance) and the scientific evidence have, in the minds of many, definitively established that the Shroud was one of many fake relics produced in the Middle Ages.
It was believed at some point that Jesus' blood was present on the Shroud (of the AB group), but the latest hemoglobin tests were negative, as were attempts to speciate, type, or otherwise identify the "blood" as such. Both the chromatography and neutron activation analysis were also negative for blood. Some experts found that the image is chemically or physically burnt into the upper 600 nm of the cloth fibers. Others assert that it was simply painted:
...The entire image was rendered in collagen-tempera paint, its presence positively established by Walter McCrone, one of the world's foremost microanalysts. The details--complete with photomicrographs of pigment/medium agglomerates and the results of confirmatory analyses--are reported in his book, Judgment Day for the Turin Shroud (Prometheus, 1999). The presence of vermilion (mercuric sulfide) was confirmed also by scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, electron-microprobe analysis, and both X-ray and electron diffraction; mercury was further confirmed by a highly sensitive microchemical test. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER
In either case, it is not clear who or how produced such an image. Other medieval paintings do not come close in the naturalism to the image on the Shroud. Furthermore, it is a negative image. How did this "photographic" image get imprinted on the linen is a mystery, whether it is a fake or not. Radiocarbon dating of a fragment of the Shroud by several labs in 1988 came as a surprise in view of the technology used to produce the cloth and its chemical composition. [Observe that the cloth can be very old yet the Shroud might still be a fake] The results prompted questions about the validity of the sample. In particular, it is likely that the Shroud of Turin is the same as Edessa Shroud that is documented from 944 A. D.; then the radiocarbon dating would be incorrect, possibly, due to the contamination of the sample (a common problem in dating "recent" objects). Various arguments pro and contra are examined here and here, although it is clear from occasional remarks that "scientific facts" were carefully screened for being in line with the miraculous nature of the Shroud. I have no settled opinion as to the matter; my interest lies elsewhere:
A few months ago the decades old controversy erupted with a new force, thanks to a Los Alamos chemist Raymond Rogers and... vanillin, the same chemical that flavors ice cream. Roger's paper in Thermochimica Acta 425 (2005) 189 can be found in its entirety here. I do not understand what caused this controversial paper to be accepted by this journal. There is no thermochemistry in the paper to speak of.
Vanillin (4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde) is what gives vanilla pods their flavor. It was isolated by a French chemist Nicolas-Theodore Gobley in 1858. The vanillin is by far the nicest thing that came out of his research. Gobley was a co-discoverer of cholesterol and a pioneer of phospholipid chemistry; I have no idea why or how he got interested in the vanillin. In any case, by 1874, the vanillin was obtained from glycosides of pine resin and it is still being produced out of wood lignin. The vanillin is one of the terminal products of (hydrolysis-oxidation) decomposition of lignin, a phenolic polymer found in plant cell walls, that is responsible, with cellulose, for the stiffness and rigidity of plant stems. In woody plants, up to 30% of organic matter consists of lignins. The decomposition of lignin resulting in the release of vanillin occurs naturally over time, and so the vanillin can be used to date the cloth.
Rogers observed that lignin deposits are to be see all over the Shroud, and that this lignin can be tested for the presence of vanillin. During repairs of the cloth in 1532, after the cloth was rescued from a fire, the Shroud was stitched on to another cloth known to researchers as the "Holland Cloth". This cloth now provided another source of reference for Rogers' tests. He noticed that the Holland Cloth and other medieval cloths gave a clear positive result for the presence of vanillin, whereas the fibres from other areas of the shroud did not give this result. Madder root dyes (Alizarin and Purpurin), gum, a hydrous oxide mordant, cotton fibers [clearly, of medieval origin] and significant levels of vanillin have been found in the carbon-14 sample area and not anywhere else on the Shroud. The startling conclusion is that what was radiocarbon dated was chemically unlike the rest of the cloth. Thus it was an invalid sample. http://www.shroudstory.com/faq
Preliminary estimates of the kinetics constants for the loss of vanillin from lignin indicate a much older age for the cloth than the radiocarbon analyses. The radiocarbon sampling area is uniquely coated with a yellow–brown plant gum containing dye lakes. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud. (from the Abstract of Roger's paper)
Rogers gave a simple kinetic model for dating. The rates of vanillin loss from lignin at a variety of temperatures for over 2 years were obtained.
...Microchemical tests reveal vanillin in an area of the cloth from which the carbon 14 sample were cut. But the rest of the cloth does not test positive for it. [Vanillin is] found in medieval materials but not in much older cloths, as it diminishes and disappears with time. For instance, the linen wrappings of the Dead Sea scrolls do not test positive for vanillin. The Shroud's lignin is very old compared with the radiocarbon sampling area.
...The major problem in estimating the age of the shroud [using the vanillin method] is the fact that the rate law is exponential; i.e., the maximum diurnal temperature is much more important than is the lowest storage temperature. However, some reasonable storage temperatures can be considered to give a range of predicted ages. If the shroud had been stored at a constant 25 °C, it would have taken about 1319 years to lose a conservative 95% of its vanillin. At 23 °C, it would have taken about 1845 years. At 20 °C, it would take about 3095 years. If the shroud had been produced between A.D. 1260 and 1390, as indicated by the radiocarbon analyses, lignin should be easy to detect. A linen produced in A.D. 1260 would have retained about 37% of its vanillin in 1978. The Raes threads, the Holland cloth, and all other medieval linens gave the test for vanillin wherever lignin could be observed on growth nodes. The disappearance of all traces of vanillin from the lignin in the shroud indicates a much older age than the radiocarbon laboratories reported. (from Roger's paper)
What should we make of it? Here is what skeptics have to say:
Small differences in storage temperature lead to very divergent results, which is the reason why Rogers could only give a huge range of 1700 years for his dating. If the temperature of the Shroud were raised to 150C (300F), it would only take about six hours to lose 95% of all the vanillin. This is not an unreasonable possibility since the Shroud nearly perished in a 1532 fire... Criticism
Fire could be a lesser problem than the zeal of believers bent on convincing non-believers (doubt crept in from the very beginning; the Vatican itself keeps an open mind as to the relic's authenticity): on April 14, 1503 the Shroud was exposed at Bourg-en-Bresse for Archduke Philip the Handsome, grand-master of Flanders, on his return from a journey to Spain. The Shroud, which has been specially brought from Chambéry, with great ceremony, by Duke Philibert of Savoy and Duchess Marguerite, was exposed on an altar in one of the great halls of the Duke's palace. The Shroud's authenticity has been confirmed by its having been tried by fire, boiled in oil, laundered many times but it was not possible to efface or remove the imprint and image. The trial.
Thanks to these early authentication experiments done with the best of intentions, we may now never date the Shroud properly. Perhaps, the scientists of the future would be equally mad at us for our own clumsy "experiments" with the Shroud, as well as the recent botched attempt to "save" it (by spraying it with thymol, the active ingredient of Listerin, in 2002).
Perhaps the vanillin was simply washed out in the boiling oil, but how did it show up at the periphery of the cloth, where the radiocarbon sample was taken from? Did Philip I the Handsome, the founder of Habsburg dynasty in Spain like vanilla gelato? Did he touch the cloth with his royal hand after helping himself to his favorite treat? Did the vanillin come from the Holland cloth to which the Shroud was stitched 30 years later? BTW, Philip's experiment had a strange effect: in 1504 his wife became insane and in 1506 he died.
Now we have the mystery of vanillin which is any bit as mysterious as the mystery of the Shroud of Turin...
W is for Wealth. The invention of weekend.
et us be frank about it: rich people are not liked. The public grudgingly tolerates the rich that have been born into a lowly station in life, climbed up the ladder on the strength of their daring, talent, and enterprise, and work hard to stay at the pinnacle of their success. Their good-for-nothing children, who are born into the world of luxury and opulence are the subject of universal scorn and animosity. A wealthy man who is hard on his kids and requires them to do degrading domestic chores wins the widest public acclaim. Again, it may be admitted that some of these children are socially beneficial individuals; that, however, is in the defiance rather than due to their inherited wealth. Where wealth and opulence rule, shallow minds and greedy depravity prevail, and the ingenuity and innovation cease.
This deeply entrenched sentiment is not only unjust; it is misguided. The filthy rich lead the mankind in the invention of luxury that the subsequent generations take for granted. This point has rarely been made, and nobody put it better than C. Northcote Parkinson (of the Parkinson's Law fame) in his shrewd and clever book, "Left Luggage":
…[The material progress] consists in demanding that what rich had yesterday the poor shall have tomorrow. Whether this process is invariably beneficial might often seem dubious, but even the most innocent pleasure must be invented before it can be shared. People do not discover this sort of luxury for themselves and many a populace has failed to discover it at all. Beds have evolved from straw to feathers and from feathers to box springs via horsehair, all by the process of the poor following the rich. That the rest of us are indebted to the wealthy for our ideas of comfort is proved, incidentally, by the fashion or caprice which ends as a by-law. The Victorian bathroom is bequeathed to the council house, which would have had shower instead had that been what the Victorian gentry preferred.
…All pleasures, even the most elemental, are thus pioneered by the wealthy. They perform this service for normally selfish reasons but the philanthropic among them, seeking to benefit the mankind, follow what is essentially the same path. On the one hand the bicycle - the toy, to begin with, of the well-to-do - ends as a convenience for the errand boy. On the other hand, the benevolent Vicar's wife teaches the parishioners to play the aristocratic game of Whist. Progress in education consists of making the elementary school look like the grammar school which is trying to look like a public school. Progress in amenity leaves each city with parks inherited from the country house, complete with lake, tennis courts and the Edwardian sandpit. Progress in housing gives the council house the garden-fronted semi-detachment which was once the symbol of middle-class seclusion. As seen from above, all [material] progress means "more people like ourselves". As seen from below, all progress means "more of what we were previously denied." (C. Northon Parkinson, "Left Luggage: A Caustic History of British Socialism from Marx to Wilson", Ch. 12, p. 192; Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1967)
As is the case with Parkinson's satires in general, the truth of his casual observation is striking. I am writing this essay on a weekend, and nothing supports Parkinson's idea better than the history of the "weekend" itself. My etymological dictionary tells that though the word existed in north English dialects from 1638, its widespread use is amazingly recent: the noun made it into the standard English around 1878 and the adjective had not been seen before 1935. In most other languages, "weekend" is not translated; it is a borrowed term. "Weekends" did not appear across the world sporadically; these were adopted in imitation of the established British pattern. That one has to have two days of rest (Saturday and Sunday) in a row with a Friday evening as an addition is far from obvious. The weekend, unlike the Sabbath, is not rooted in the Scriptures or Western tradition. It could not have been invented by peasant or working class societies, whose natural rhythm of work and rest is dictated by farming or industry. There are many countries in which "weekends" are unknown. In Russia, for example, the weekend was introduced only after Stalin's death. Even if one assumes that 5-day working week is a natural development in an industrial society (which it is not), it is not clear that the best way in which the rest days should be distributed over the week is "weekend". These observations naturally lead me to ponder, who and how introduced the weekends which we all seem to enjoy and take for granted.
To my great astonishment, I cannot find a single authoritative book or a scholarly paper dealing with this burning issue. Apparently, it has been overlooked by professional historians and sociologists. Since I am neither, the answer that I provide should be viewed with a grain of salt. These are speculations of an incompetent, semieducated man.
The Victorian weekend originated in the country tradition of the British landed gentry. The landed gentry itself did not need "weekends" because it lived more or less idle on their land. However, the middle classes that imitated the country squires and wanted to marry into their exclusive society were not able to leave their cities and live on their land. By the mid-1800s the extensive railroad system made it possible to live in the city (and work in the City) and retreat to the country -- on weekends. The rhythm of the weekend is the rhythm of the City of London, the banking capital of the Victorian world. This, however, is only a partial answer.
The whole idea of a retreat to the country on, specifically, weekends had to be invented, and it was not invented by the bankers, solicitors, and "all sorts and conditions of famous physicians." They imitated the city-dwelling Crown-serving gentry that was burdened by the necessity of living in foggy, acrid-smelling London and longed for the freshness, openness, and loveliness of the countryside which was the center of aristocratic life. Given that the lord of the manor was supposed to lead the parishioners in their Sunday prayer and had many other social obligations and duties, a retreat for a single day was inconvenient. One should also remember that some estates were located relatively far from London, and travel took long time. Weekend was a compromise found by the aristocratic civil servants to maintain their standards of social life living in the accursed London. This answer is truer but it is also only partial, because even the landed gentry needed an example. My best guess is that it was the example of Prince Regent, the future George IV. Interestingly, the same etymological dictionary informs us that notable instances of [regency] were: France 1715-23 (under Philip, Duke of Orleans), Britain 1810-20 (under George, Prince of Wales, Prince Regent), "in each case with suggestion of debauchery" [Weekley] It was more than a suggestion. Prince Regent was so hated that when he divorced his wife, Queen Caroline, Londoners actually unleashed the horses from her carriage and pulled it themselves to show her their support. The British cared more about George IV's ill treatment of his wife than about George III's loss of America. "Prince Regent" was a byword for wine, women and song. Worse, he was known for routine cheating at dice and cards.
...He had few public virtues to compensate for the offensiveness of his private example. His duties to the State - the mere routine of the Kingly office - were invariably performed with tardiness and reluctance. Without any strength of character but that which proceeded from his irresistible craving for ease and indulgence, his best qualities were distorted into effeminate vices. The constitutional bravery of his house forsook him, and he became a moral coward, whom his official servants had to govern as a petted child. [Harriet Martineau, A History of the Thirty Years Peace, 1816-46, Vol 1 (1858)
When Prince Regent was burdened by the duties of the Empire, due to the sudden and final incapacitation of his long-reigning mad father, George III (who succumbed to a hereditary blood disorder, porphyria, and was depressed by the loss of his beloved daughter), the future George IV discovered that the unclouded days of joyous debauchery that he enjoyed as Prince of Wales were over, and he liked it not. The time was that of a momentous importance. Napoleon's armies were marching triumphantly over the continental Europe. The British might was put into question. The British were acting accordingly. William Pitt the Younger and Spencer Perceval were scheming. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was preparing for his greatest battles. Admiral Nelson was dreaming of Lady Hamilton and seaman's glory in his watery grave. A lesser man would be concerned with the fate of his realm and the entire civilized world, but Prince Regent was working on a more important subject: the invention of a weekend as the means of pursuing his extravagant life style away from the prying eyes of his royal subjects. The formula that he found to work best to satisfy his uncommon needs was a compromise between the duty and the pleasure that has been used ever since and became our by-law. Our cherished weekend tradition originates in the depravity and vanity of an idle monarch, who could have easily found some other labor/repose formula, would he be so disposed.
What peculiar habits and ridiculous pleasures of our idle rich will make it into the next generation's standard of living?
X is for Xena. Feminism in the Solar System.
There is something very disturbing about the fact that only two planets - Earth and Venus - are female; the rest are male. The situation is much better with the moons, where there is an approximate gender parity. It is still better with asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Still, the planetary situation is scandalous and it is high time to fix it by adding a new female planet. Such an opportunity has finally arrived: there are, actually, two possibilities: Sedna (named after the Inuit goddess of the sea who is said to have created life in the Arctic Ocean) and Xena. There are also Quaoar and Orcus, but they are males.
Xena is between 2700 km and 3000 km across, and it is three times as far from the Sun as Pluto. Like Pluto's, its orbit is highly eccentric, and brings it to within 35 AU of the Sun at its perihelion (Pluto's distance from the Sun varies between 29 and 49.5 AU, while Neptune orbits at 30 AU). The orbit is very inclined: it is tilted at an angle of 44 degrees to the ecliptic. A single orbit takes the world 560 years. Xena is covered by methane ice (no snowflakes to expect). Xena and Pluto were both scattered from the Kuiper belt into more distant and unusual orbits following gravitational interactions with Neptune, as the solar system was forming.
Xena is the strongest contender of the two female "objects" as it is 20% larger than Pluto and, like Pluto (that has Charon), Xena has a moon (Gabrielle) that was discovered this month. Once you find a moon, the mass can be inferred, and that may seal Xena's planetary status. The discoveries of Xena and Sedna reignited old and barren arguments as to what a "planet" is. Predictably, there are astronomers so hell bent on having their masculine collection of planets that they would rather exclude Pluto than admit Xena, the warrior princess:
...No official name for the object has yet been approved, although its discoverers have submitted a potential name to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), who oversee astronomical naming conventions. Claims that 2003 UB313 has been named 'Xena' or 'Lila' are incorrect; both have been used informally by its discoverers but neither is the name submitted to the IAU. A ruling on what to name 2003 UB313 is currently being delayed pending decisions on whether to promulgate a formal definition of the term 'planet' and the status of this object under such a definition.
...Should 2003 UB313 be treated as any other minor planet, its discoverers will then have the exclusive right to propose a name, subject to the approval of the Committee on Small Bodies Nomenclature of the IAU's Division. According to the IAU rules, TNOs must be named after deities of creation. The IAU has released a short statement regarding the naming of 2003 UB313, indicating the object will not be named until it has been decided if it is a planet or not.
...The discoverers have already submitted their name proposal for 2003 UB313, which under IAU rules cannot be publicly disclosed. Brown's team had violated this rule in 2003 when they announced the name "Sedna" for that planetoid before it had officially been approved, prompting some criticism within the astronomical community; the IAU later relaxed its rules and permitted an expedited process for major new discoveries. The discovery web page uses the name "Planet Lila" (named after the discoverer's daughter, Lilah), and the team have also been informally referring to the object by the codename Xena, after the television series Xena: Warrior Princess, but neither is the name put forward to the IAU.
..."If the object falls under the rules for other Kuiper belt objects, it must be named after some figure in a creation mythology. We have decided to attempt to follow that ruling scheme. One such particularly apt name would have been Persephone. Sadly, it was used as a name for an asteroid. The same can be told for almost any other Greek or Roman god of any consequence. Luckily, the world is full of mythological and spiritual traditions. In the past we have named Kuiper belt objects after native American, Inuit, and minor Roman gods. Our new proposed name expands to different traditions, still."
...Observations taken on 10 September revealed a moon in orbit around 2003 UB313. The moon was nicknamed Gabrielle by its discoverers, after the television warrior princess' sidekick.
Yes, the names Xena and Gabrielle do expand to different traditions yet uncharted in observational astronomy. I like the idea of a new female planet and I like the names Lila, Gabrielle, and Xena (I do not like Sedna). Xena (a variant of Xenia) means a guest or a stranger in Greek. That would be an apt name for a TNO originating in the Kuiper belt. And yet, what Xena has to do with a creation mythology? Does it make good sense to name the planet and its moon after a couple of militant feminists inexplicably living in the time of Hercules? How should we describe the interaction of these two heavenly bodies?
...XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS has been creating a subversive feminist consciousness on its own since its premiere in 1995. A woman who does not need a man simply cannot exist in the American consciousness. The show has been challenging that notion. The character of Xena is a woman without male signifiers. The text of the show does not revolve in any way around Xena's interpersonal interactions with men. On the contrary, the show most directly revolves around Xena's interpersonal interaction with her traveling companion, Gabrielle. It is Xena and Gabrielle who have become each others signifiers. They have come to define each other through their experience together. XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS is one of the few shows in the history of television that has gone an entire episode without having any starring or supporting male actors.
...Xena taught Hippocrates more about medicine than Galen ever did in episode #24 and Gabrielle gave Homer a few pointers on how to write in episode #13. The creators of XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS have managed to equalize the political and social institution of male-domination both in the form of the production of a feminist television show and in the creation of characters who are in no way the submissives of any man. http://www.whoosh.org/issue10/meister2.html
Xena and Gabrielle: Friend-Kiss
...Even though both Xena and Gabrielle have both had male love interests, Xena: Warrior Princess has a strong lesbian following. There has been frequent discussion regarding the characters' sexual orientation on the various forums and mailing lists. The suggestions of a lesbian relationship are not unintended. In a November 1996 interview in the Denver Post, Lucy Lawless [who plays Xena] addressed the issue thus: "We are aware and we're not afraid of [the lesbian element]. This is a love story between two people. What they do in their own time is none of our business." Bolstering this view, producer Rob Tapert has said coyly that the relationship was "Whatever you want it to be." http://whoosh.org/faq
Now we will be watching this intimate relationship 24/7...
Update 11/4/05: A new chance for effemination:
...Astronomers have discovered two new moons around Pluto, raising the planet's known number of satellites to three. Measuring some 50 to 150 km across, the new moons are much smaller than 1192-km Charon. The small moons, temporarily designated S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2, may be rubble from the same primordial collision that gave birth to Charon.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/1101/1
Y is for Yo-yo. Inventing the obvious.
On the absolute scale of imagination, the invention of an entirely new toy might be more difficult to accomplish than the invention of, say, differential calculus or general relativity. A scientific theory appeals to a developed, logical mind seeking to understand the world, whereas a toy appeals to a developing brain yet incapable of rationality. It is usually futile to captivate child's attention using a work of art or a piece of literature; poetry, music, and animation fare marginally better. Very few children would prefer going to a matinee or watching toons to visiting a toy store. To captivate a child, the toy must challenge, enthrall, seduce, instill curiosity and possessive desire, it should enthuse and provoke; it appeals to something in child's psyche for which we do not even have the proper name. Children hate educational toys for being educational and they quickly get bored by precisely those toys and games that are supposed to be entertaining. The inventors of new toys are the most unlikely people driven by the most unlikely motives, such as, for example, Sir David Brewster, the inventor of kaleidoscope or Richard James, the inventor of Slinky. It is in the invention of kid's toys where the human creativity is at its most bizarre and extreme. It is suffice to observe that the two inventions that influenced the world history in the most profound way -- the wheel and the fireworks (gunpowder) -- both originated as the means to amuse kids.
Archaeologically, the oldest known toys are dolls, which are probably the most obvious choice for a toy, but the presumable second oldest toy, a "yo-yo", is far from obvious, no matter how you look at it. The doll is a sketch of a human being; a yo-yo does not look like anything you would find in Nature.The movement of a wheel on a string is counterintuitive; furthermore, one has to have the general idea of a wheel or a spinning top and carefully observe what it can do to invent it. The invention of the yo-yo could have only originated through a long contemplation of spinning wheels, just like the invention of Slinky originated through the contemplation of strange, lifelike motions of large tension springs or the invention of kaleidoscope originated through the contemplation of refractive optics and multiple reflections. What did happen first? Was it some sort of a "useful" wheel (a spool? a spinning wheel? a potter's wheel? a bow drill?) or the yo-yo? Could it be that the yo-yo was the precursor of the wheel? Another possible reference object for the yo-yo is a slingshot. Was the yo-yo originally a weapon that was later adapted as a toy? Below I put together what little I found about the history of yo-yo, but the answers are evasive. Everything about the yo-yo seems to be up in the air. The conflicting takes on the history of yo-yo are as amusing as the toy itself.
The curious name
…The word yo-yo is a Tagalog word, the native language of the Philippines, and means "come back." http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa120297.htm
…The name yo-yo is believed to have derived from Tagalog and translates as "come-come." In reality, however, yo-yo is not a Tagalog word (the word for "come" is dumating). It is possible that the term came from another Philippine language. The term was first published in a dictionary of Filipino words printed in 1860. (Wikipedia)
…Linguistics experts have indicated that the name "yo-yo", although used in the Philippines for hundreds of years to describe the toy, is Oriental in origin. http://www.yo-yos.net/Yo-yo%20history.htm
…The yo-yo arrived in Paris in 1791 as it spread through France and was called the "jou-jou de Normandie." Some believe that this term may reflect possible roots for the modern American name of "yo-yo." http://www.spintastics.com/HistoryOfYoYo.asp
… As yo-yo traveled across the world it acquired various names: a "quiz" in England, "émigrétte" or "bandalore" in France, "coblenz" and other names elsewhere in Europe. Aristocrats fleeing France (émigres) during the Revolution brought the toy to Coblenz -- hence the names "émigrétte" and "coblenz." http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/myo-yo.html
Yo-yo, the deadly weapon
…The principal distinction between the Filipino design and previous, more primitive "back-and-forth" models is in the way the yo-yo is strung. One continuous piece of string, double the desired length, is twisted around itself to produce a loop at one end which is fitted around the axle. Also termed a looped slip-string, this seemingly minor modification allows for a far greater variety and sophistication of motion, thanks to increased stability and suspension of movement during free spin. It is, without a doubt, the most important development in the evolution of the yo-yo. Looping the string around the axle, allowed the yo-yo to "rest" or "sleep" at the end of the string before the disk returned upward. The yo-yo became a national pastime in the Philippines, with the disks hand-carved from a single piece of animal horn or lignum wood. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/myo-yo.html
…In the Philippines, the yo-yo was a weapon for over 400 years. Their version was large with sharp edges and studs and attached to thick ropes for flinging at enemies or prey. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa120297.htm
…The weapon consisted of a four pound stone attached to a rope about 20 feet long. Tribesmen used it in two ways. When hunting, they stood off to one side, held one end of the rope and threw the rock towards the legs of an animal. The rope became tangled around the animals legs, and with a tug, the hunter brought the animal down. Against enemies, the stones would be dropped on their heads. The tribesmen would quickly recover the stones, ready for a second blow if necessary. http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/yoyo.asp
… The hunters hid up in trees and used a rock tied to a long cord to throw at wild animals beneath them. The weapon was able to be pulled up and thrown back down for multiple attempts at the prey. This gave rise to the widespread idea that the practice was the true forerunner of the yo-yo, but this is a stretch of imagination and has no real basis in fact. It is extremely likely, however, that the yo-yo did travel from China to the Philippines, where the yo-yo is known to have been a popular toy for children over a very long period of time. http://www.spintastics.com/HistoryOfYoYo.asp
…Contrary to popular myth, there is no evidence that the yo-yo is derived from, nor even existed in any form intended for use as a weapon. While the impact generated by a yo-yo could indeed be rendered deadly with the addition of sharpened edges, the difficulty of safely retrieving it would render such a device somewhat impractical. This rumor likely originated in the Philippines, where hunters in the 16th century used sharp rocks with strings attached to kill prey from trees. The development of the modern yo-yo began in the Philippines at around this time, which is probably the source of the confusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-yo
…Another popular but fabricated story of the yo-yo is that of a centuries old Filipino weapon. Physics of the yo-yo make the story improbable. Although there is no question that the toy existed in the Philippines for centuries, as a popular toy, there is no documented evidence that it was ever used as a jungle weapon. The story was popularized by Duncan's yo-yo demonstrators in the 1930s, many of whom were from the Philippines. http://www.yo-yos.net/Yo-yo%20history.htm
…Philippine Battle Tree Yo-Yo (has been in use for 500+ years). Comes with History & Cord. Note: It is a Deadly Weapon. Photo I.D. Required. $26.00. http://www.primitiveweapons.com/products/misc.html
Total confusion
…The true origin of the yo-yo will in all probability never be known. http://www.yo-yos.net/Yo-yo%20history.htm
…There is no evidence though to support the often sited claim that the yo-yo is the second oldest toy. This statement has been repeated so often that it has been accepted as fact but there is no proof to support this assertion. http://www.yo-yos.net/Yo-yo%20history.htm
…One of the oldest known toys, it is likely that the yo-yo was created independently in several different areas. Stone yo-yos more than three thousand years old have been found in Greece and evidence indicates that yo-yos may also have been present in ancient Chinese culture. http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/toys/yoyo.html
…The yo-yo may have been a Chinese, or Greek, or Filipino invention. It's not clear if the toy arose independently in different locations, or spread from one spot to another. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/myo-yo.html
Everything from China
…The most accepted theory is that the toy originated in China around 1000 BC. Although there are no records of the yo-yo in China, the Diabolo has been documented in China which is a very similar toy. http://www.yo-yos.net/Yo-yo%20history.htm
…Yo-yo-like toys originated in China, in the form of two disks sculpted from ivory, connected by a central peg with a silk cord. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/myo-yo.html
…The Chinese Yo-Yo also known as Diabolo, has a history spanning back 2 to 3 thousand years. No one really knows who and where it was invented. The only history available of the Chinese Yo-Yo is the evidence found in ancient Chinese literature describing people playing Diabolo. Traditional Chinese yo-yos were made with two round pieces of wood held together by a horizontal stick. Two separate sticks held together with adjoining string made up the rest of the unique and exciting toy. The major difference [from the modern yo-yo] is that the string is not attached to the disk, so you are free to whip your yo-yo ten, twenty, or thirty feet into the air and catch it on the string while its still spinning. http://chineseyoyo.com/chinese_yoyo.html
…The toy is likely to have spread throughout Asia and Europe via trade routes. (Wikipedia)
Greek/Egyptian connection.
…The first indisputable evidence is from Greece, around 450 to 500 BC -- a bowl depicts a boy playing with a disk dangling on the end of a string. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/myo-yo.html
…In ancient Greece, the toy was made of wood, metal, or terra cotta. The Greeks decorated the two halves of the yo-yo with pictures of their gods. As a right of passage into adulthood Greek children often gave up their toys and placed them on the family altar to pay homage. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa120297.htm
…These ancient yo-yo toys were called "duh," a disc. Due to the fragile nature of the material, it is presumed that the disks made of terra cotta (clay) were used for ritual purpose only rather than for actual play. A vase painting from this time period shows a Greek youth playing with a yo-yo. Such vases, as well as an actual terra cotta disk can be found in the National Museum of Athens, Greece. Even in ancient Egyptian temples, drawings of objects have been seen in the shape of yo-yos. http://www.spintastics.com/HistoryOfYoYo.asp
...Greek disks do exist that have a similar design to a modern yo-yo. Archeologists argue whether these were true yo-yos or perhaps used for spools for thread or ornamental supports from which drapery cords were tied. The fact that these discs were ceramic and fragile would lead one to believe that they were not used as toys. Proponents of the yo-yo theory of these discs site a Greek bowl with a decoration of a young boy playing with what appears to be a yo-yo. http://www.yo-yos.net/Yo-yo%20history.htm
…From Greece the yo-yo has been found in Aztec and Mayan civilizations [???-S.], throughout Europe and well, lets just say, ALL OVER THE WORLD! http://www.thewoodenyoyo.com/history.html
From the Orient to Europe
…The first [modern] mention of the yo-yo is a box from India made in 1765. This miniature box was hand-painted with the picture of a girl in a red dress playing with her yo-yo. Within the next 25 years, the yo-yo traveled from the Orient to Europe. http://www.spintastics.com/HistoryOfYoYo.asp
…The surge of popularity of the yo-yo in the late 18th century lead many historians to believe that the yo-yo was introduced to Europe, from the Far East possibly by missionaries, around that same time period. A recent discovery of a Dutch tile with an image of a boy playing a yo-yo from approximately 1630-1650, predates the French references by approximately 150 years. This tile also predates an early 1765 reference from India where the toy was known as a Chucki (pronounced Choo key). The appearance of the toy in Europe a century and a half before previously thought opens up the question, Has the yo-yo been a ubiquitous toy throughout time but just poorly documented? Clearly childhood pastimes were not subjects that many authors or artists chose to document in the middle ages, so this may be a strong likelihood. http://www.yo-yos.net/Yo-yo%20history.htm
Liberté, Fraternité ... et Jou-jou
…Mentions of the yo-yo are common from the 1760s on as the toy traveled to Europe, becoming especially popular among the upper classes in England and France. Yo-yos were often richly decorated, carved of ivory or even glass with polished brass axles, and painted with geometric designs that produced mesmerizing patterns while spinning. Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro (1792) has Figaro show nervousness by playing with his émigrétte and commenting, "It is a noble toy, that dispels the fatigue of thinking." Napoleon's armies played with yo-yos. The Duke of Wellington is reputed to have been an enthusiast. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/myo-yo.html
…It is interesting that most of the references to yo-yo are to adults playing with the toy as opposed to children. One can only assume that children also enjoyed the toy but this was not felt to be worthy of noting because it was commonplace. The one notable exception was that of a portrait of Louis XVII, at age four, painted by Madame Viznee LeBrun (1789). This is considered the most famous illustration of a child with a yo-yo from the 18th century. Satirical cartoons such as General Lafayette leading a procession of soldiers playing with yo-yos and Mirabeau with troops and yo-yos were of this period. It is unclear whether the yo-yo came to England from France due to the turmoil of the revolution but yo-yos called "quizzes" were described as being sold at the Pecham fair in England in 1789. http://www.yo-yos.net/Yo-yo%20history.htm
… The emigrette gained particular notoriety during the French revolution; it was seen as a welcome source of relief from stress, likely epidemic during that period of French history. (Wikipedia)
…The yo-yo craze traveled throughout Europe to England by way of Scotland and France. In 1791, a print was circulated of the Prince of Wales, future George IV, whirling his bandalore. Because of the toy's popularity as well as the prince's power to sell, the toy also became known as the Prince of Wales' toy and soon became a toy that any person of fashion had to own. http://www.spintastics.com/HistoryOfYoYo.asp
Crossing the Atlantic
…D.F. Duncan, Sr. was the co-patent holder of the first successful parking meter. He was also the genius behind the first premium incentive where you sent in two cereal box tops and received a toy rocket ship. He is best known for being responsible for promoting the yo-yo fad in the US. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa120297.htm
…The first US patent on the toy was issued in 1866 under the name "whirligig," however, the yo-yo would remain in relative anonymity until 1928 when a Filipino American named Pedro Flores opened the Yo-Yo Manufacturing Company in Santa Barbara, California. The business started with a dozen handmade toys; by 1929, Flores was operating two additional factories in Los Angeles and Hollywood, which altogether employed 600 workers and produced 300,000 units daily. In 1930, an entrepreneur named Donald Duncan recognized the potential of this new fad and purchased the Flores Yo-yo Corporation and all its assets, including the Flores name, which was transferred to the new company in 1932. He is reputed to have paid more than $250,000, a fortune by depression era standards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-yo
…Duncan hired numerous Filipino men to demonstrate their skill with the yo-yo. These young men performed like a vaudeville act, traveling the world performing yo-yo tricks. Living like celebrities, the demonstrators traveled in new cars, wore tailor made suits, ate in the finest restaurants and lived in the best hotels during the depression years. The yo-yo had become an international craze. Duncan sent these young men all over the United States, Europe, South and Central America. At one time in his life, Joseph T. Radovan [the best known demonstrator - S.] spoke 11 languages. He performed for Royalty while in Europe. http://www.royalyo-yo.com/royalpages/royalhist.html
Conclusion
It seems that the toy (as we presently know it) was not invented at once, despite of its deceptively simple appearance and the unity of the design. This basic design was not the result of someone's Protean vision or one man's ingenuity. The concept of a spinning flywheel toy had originated in China around 1000 BC, well after the invention of potter's wheel, the spool, and other spun household objects. Initially, the toy had nothing to do with weaponry (just like the Chinese fireworks). The Chinese, for all of their ingenuity, never thought of attaching a permanent cord to their Diabolos. That crucial step was taken by the Greeks who learned from the Chinese.The Greeks also gave their toys (?) a spool-like shape. The precursor of the yo-yo subsequently made it back to South Asia. The Filipinos were first to explore the offensive potential of the resulting toy and their interest stimulated further improvement of the yo-yo design. Perhaps the yo-yos were played by Filipino children as part of their hunter/warrior training. At some point, a loop was introduced; it might be that it improved the performance of the yo-yo as a weapon, as it made the motion of the spinning projectile less predictable. Alternatively, it was added simply to make the toy more interesting to kids, so they would spend more time practicing their hunting skills. That improved toy got back to the Asian mainland and from there it spread to Europe and then to the US, with the French revolution as the main vehicle behind the popularization of the new toy. Very late in its history, already in the US, the toy was further modernized and perfected by a Filipino man familiar with the toy as it was played in his home village. After that final modernization, the toy has conquered the world as if by storm. The tinkering with the yo-yo have preoccupied the mankind for 3000 years, and I do not think that we are done yet.
What is the next installation in the unending story of the yo-yo?
PS The history of the top is every bit as exciting and mysterious as that of the yo-yo. An excellent account can be found on http://www.spintastics.com/HistoryofTop.asp
Z is for Zoom.
I have already discussed the important question of Art vs. Science in this series. Are Art and Science fundamentally different? Is the nature of the innovation in Art and Science fundamentally different? The majority of people would answer "yes" to both of these questions. They would be fools to answer otherwise. The common view is that artists express themselves to arouse our emotions, whereas scientists semi-mechanically apply their unerring scientific method in order to make our lives easier and healthier and to nourish our brains. Both of these modern concepts are utterly ridiculous, but it is futile to argue with the prevailing wisdom of your age. No matter how many times the sages have proclaimed that Art is the pursuit of Beauty and Science is the pursuit of Truth and that these two, in the final count, are the same, nobody believes such a preposterous proposition. I am not going to succeed where Pythagoras and Plato have failed, so I am not going to argue. Rather I would like to give an example of perfect blending of science and art. You are invited to make your own conclusion.
The scientific revolution began with the invention of clear glass and telescope. The more one sees of the Universe, the more one finds about oneself. The amount of light that is gathered by the detector and the resolution of the telescope rapidly increase with the diameter of the refractive lens or the reflector. At some point, however, further increase becomes problematic: one cannot make a perfect curved piece of glass 100 m in diameter. Even if someone were able to make it, it would start to deform by its own weight. Astronomers want to see distant bodies, such as galactic nuclei and Earth-like extra-solar planets. That requires telescopes with apertures in the 25- to 100-m range. How to do that?
One solution is to base a large, multi-reflector telescope here on Earth and correct for the deformations, aberrations, and atmospheric distortions using advanced adaptive optics, or AO (computer-controlled actuators constantly flexing the mirror surface to counter balance the detrimental effects). The best resolved astronomical images are already taken from the AO-equipped ground telescopes rather than from our beloved 2.4 m diameter Hubble Space Telescope. The ground based "extremely large telescope" is the path of OWL of European Southern Observatory and Californian 30-m CELT. The total estimated cost of OWL alone is 1.2 b Euros. It would be hard to extract this kind of money from our cash starved governments. The money is only part of the problem. The current generation of AO systems are limited to observations in the near-infrared, with a small field of view and constraints on target selection. The primary and secondary mirrors of OWL will be made of hexagonal 1.6 m segments; the primary mirror is spherical, made of 3042 all-identical segments. The secondary mirror is flat, with 216 segments. The segments will be made of low-expansion glass or glass-ceramic. The required production rate is about 1.5 segments per day, each one is the size of a high-end telescope! The field and optical quality require correction of aberrations in the 10 arc minutes field of view. Since large deflections under gravity and wind load are inevitable, those have to be dealt with too. Galileo would be impressed with this proposed design:
The production of the segments would be reminiscent of an assembly line, with mirror segments continually in the process of being poured, cooled, ceramitized, inspected, cut to size and shaped, then shipped out. To complete production of 2000 segments in 10 years, 1.3 segments must be produced each day, based on a 250 working day year OWL assembly
Another, even more radical idea is to put the 100 m telescope in space, where atmospheric absorption and refraction as well as weight- and wind- induced deformations are lacking. However, how would you send such a telescope into space? The space inside a rocket is small (typically, about 4 meters diameter and about 10 meters long) and the cost of sending a lot of rockets with separate glass panels and joining them together would be astronomical, no pun intended. The answer is in the art of origami which is as ancient as paper itself (China, AD 105). I remind that all origami paper designs are flat-foldable:
...Origami has traditionally been appreciated as an art form and a recreation. Increasingly over the course of the 20th century, however, attention has been drawn to the scientific and mathematical properties of paperfolding, with the majority of this work occurring in the past 20 years or so. Even today, many of the most basic and intuitive problems raised by origami still lack definitive solutions. Origami is unlike most forms of sculpture in that its medium—a sheet of paper, usually square in shape—undergoes almost no physical change during the creation process. The paper is never cut nor chemically manipulated; its size, shape, and flatness are never altered; nothing is ever added or taken away. Only its position in space is affected. Origami has been described as an “art of constraints.” The art lies in exploring and expanding the realm of what can be achieved within the constraints naturally imposed by the paper. Designing an origami model of a particular subject requires considerable ingenuity. Many origami models are so cleverly designed that their final forms bear almost no resemblance to the sheets of paper from which they are made. However, there exists a substantial class of origami forms which share one basic characteristic of the original paper: flatness. http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/05/jschnei3/origami.pdf
I have learned about the space origami from Robert Lang who exhibits his art at Fermilab near Chicago. Lang is one of the best origami artist in the world and he is also a well-known scientist. He perfectly blends Art and Science in his work; e.g., he is the author of origami-design program that makes "flaps" for artists (see his site for more detail). He is not the first origami artist who made crucial contributions to satellite design. This honor belongs to Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura (JAXA) who in 1985 developed Miura map fold for solar panels that is used ever since to deploy large solar panels. Interestingly, there is great demand for origami artists by people who design safety bags for our cars. Your safety bag is folded and packed as an origami piece and someone spent years designing it. Origami can be used to improve deployable antennas, to pack solar sails, etc.
The 100 m telescope will have profound social ramifications. As one may guess, there are two groups of people who are interested in powerful space based telescopes: those who want to point them up and those who want to point them down. I can only hope that the first group would prevail, as otherwise the last vestiges of our "privacy" will disappear. The giant origami in space will become the Big Brother. There is nothing new about that. The first telescope was used for spying rather than watching sunspots and Jupiter moons. Astronomy is not really a harmless science.
...Picture the solar system’s largest telescope, a telescope as long as the island of Manhattan, incorporating a lens the size of a football field. It would be about 25,000 miles out of the box, in geostationary Earth orbit. The size & the place
...The Hubble is a “reflective” telescope. Its main optical element is a curved mirror. Most people’s conception of a telescope is a long tube with lenses, not mirrors, at each end [that's Galileo's telescope- S.] This old-fashioned type of telescope is called “transmissive.” Transmissive telescopes are by their nature quite long, with a distance between the two lenses that is many times larger than the diameter of the main lens. A transmissive telescope with a 100 m diameter lens would need to be thousands of meters long. This does not seem, upon first consideration, like a good thing. But if you’re putting a telescope in space, there’s a lot of space in space. Even better, you don’t actually need to build a tube between the two lenses; you simply put your main lens into one orbit, and then put the other lens (and the camera and associated electronics) into another orbit a few kilometers away. Another nice thing about long transmissive telescopes is that the mechanical tolerances required on the optics are much less than the requirements on a reflective telescope, permitting a thinner, lighter optical structure.
...Origami's most alluring application to space science is the folded version of a giant telescope, a 100-meter monster that would be 40 times more powerful than Hubble and could spot specs of light in the far corners of the universe or image Earth-like planets around nearby stars. Hyde and Sham Dixit, both of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, are designing a big flat telescope out of a thin membrane which, if deployed and unfurled, would make Hubble look like a Radio Shack starter scope. They call it the Eyeglass. Eyeglass
...Eyeglass is a new type of space telescope containing two cooperating spacecraft separated by a few kilometers. It consists of a large aperture primary lens (magnifying glass) for collecting the light and a secondary lens (eyepiece) moving along the focal surface for imaging. Diffractive telescopes using Fresnel lenses fabricated on thin membranes offer several advantages over telescopes using mirrors; thin membrane lenses are lightweight, packageable and space deployable. Transmissive diffractive lenses are much less sensitive to surface deformations compared to mirrors, and the chromatic effects due to the diffractive primary can be completely compensated for. In 2002 we constructed a 5-meter, f/50 Fresnel lens made of 72 individual segments patterned with binary Fresnel arcs in photoresist onto 750 micron-thick sheet glass cut to size and assembled using uv-curable cement and metal tabs. http://www.llnl.gov/nif/lst/diffractive-optics/newtecheye.html
...The lens spins in space so that centrifugal force keeps it flat. It is made of a series of concentric grooves. Each groove acts as a separate bit of lens, focusing light on the eyepiece. Such a telescope would have enough light-gathering power to spot footballs on Earth from thousands of miles up or, if pointed the other direction, take pictures of Earth-like planets around other stars. One key challenge facing all large space telescope designs is that they must be packed into fairly small payload compartments for launch into space. Origami can be very useful for an Eyeglass telescope by providing a compact way to fold it up for launch. You have this 100-meter sheet of plastic that you need to get into orbit, and the only thing we have for launching objects into orbits are rockets that are at most 3 to 5 meters in diameter," Lang says. "So you have to fold up, or otherwise scrunch up this giant sheet to stuff it into the rocket. The problem is, if you just stuff it any old way into the rocket, you'll form permanent marks in the plastic, which will destroy the optical quality of the lens. The key, Lang says, is a precise folding pattern that avoids sharp creases. The present Eyeglass design resembles the action of a collapsible umbrella. Origami is simpler to develop and a lot easier to apply. http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/origami_design_020220-1.ht
ml
...Any undesired fold, wrinkle, or buckle in the surface of the Eyeglass diffractive lens would irreparably damage the optical performance. The only way such a surface was going to go into a rocket would be if it were collapsed into a smaller shape along a precise, controlled set of creases, whose locations and structure could be chosen in such a way as not to degrade the optical performance. [This] sounds like origami. Yhe research led to my own work in computational origami. Over the next few months, I met with the Eyeglass team several times and adapted several different structures from origami usage to telescope application. We needed a structure that was radially symmetric (so that it could be spin-stabilized), that collapsed on a finite number of creases, that ultimately fit within a cylindrical form factor (i.e., a rocket). After considering several different configurations, the team settled on an origami structure, which we called the “Umbrella” structure after its resemblance (in the furled state) to a collapsible umbrella, that was scalable, had mass-producible parts, and folded from a large flat disk down to a much smaller flanged cylinder. The first 5-m prototype worked and performed as predicted. Current and ongoing work at LLNL is doing further analysis and evaluating alternate segmenting strategies, as well as looking at scaling to even larger sizes. Anyone for a kilometer? http://www.langorigami.com/science/eyeglass/eyeglass.php4
I am. Every time we zoom in, we find something new and unexpected. This applies both to Art and to Science.
Post scriptum: Mathematics of origami
The axiomatic definition of origami has been given by Roger Alperin
http://nyjm.albany.edu:8000/j/2000/6-8.pdf
A large collection on the mathematics of origami is given here (with the emphasis on geometrical construction using origami, a fascinating subject) http://www.merrimack.edu/~thull/oribib.html
A striking fact about origami: Take a piece of paper, fold it into any flat origami, and make one complete straight cut (i.e., a cut along a line). Now unfold the pieces, and see what you get. Are all shapes possible? Refering back to the original sheet of paper, what patterns of cuts can be achieved by this process? The answer is that every pattern (plane graph) can be made by folding and one complete straight cut. This includes single (possibly nonconvex) polygons, multiple disjoint polygons, nested polygons, adjoining polygons, and even floating line segments and points. http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~edemaine/foldcut
(The mathematician who proved this theorem got MacArthur genius prize for that and other hard folding problems).Update 11/28/05 A computer program that makes origami that assumes the shape of any chemical molecule ("molecular origami") is now available freely on http://www.stolaf.edu/people/hansonr/mo
Afterword.
The previous post completes the "alphabetical series" of essays that propelled this narrative over the last three months. What started as a joke became a demanding project requiring persistence and commitment:
…Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public. (Winston Churchill)
Writing this afterword is such a climax. The alphabetical series (and a few closely related essays) addresses innovation in nature, science, technology, and art. To make it more challenging and educational, I specifically avoided any connection between the topics addressed and my professional interests. Little distinction was made between the sundry fields covered because the author doubts that the essence of innovation is fundamentally different in these diverse fields or that "evolution" in Nature occurs in a fashion that is entirely dissimilar to the development of human endeavors. The source of innovation is the same and it operates in the same fashion; the distinctions are artificial and only make it more difficult to recognize the common pattern. Rationalizing the abrupt, revolutionary change or innovation always results in pretty much the same result: zilch. The more you learn about a specific example, the greater is one's confusion and despair of ever getting the answer straight. The innovation does not have to be arcane or profound to be a puzzler: all of these innovations are mysterious and inexplicable.
What is the ultimate source of creativity? I have examined various common answers to this question, and none of these answers is entirely satisfactory. The only answer left unexamined is given in the American Heritage dictionary:
In-spi-ra-tion: Divine guidance or influence exerted directly on the mind and soul of humankind.
Not being a genius, an inventor, or an innovator myself, I have no knowledge of the true nature of innovation, invention, or genius as seen from within the mind of an inspired person. I fare no better than a born blind artist or a born deaf composer that are trying to imitate, rationalize, and dissect something that forever eludes them. I honestly do not know the answer to the question that I posed. All that I have is an inkling of the answer; it may well be entirely incorrect. The alphabetical series attempts to illustrate what makes answering this simple question so bewilderingly hard. The birthing of the new occurs in a myriad different ways following no rules in particular. The only rule seems to be that it never occurs in a fashion commonly assumed. The questions about the motivation, the means, the who, the when, and the how lead nowhere. And yet I am convinced that the Anonymous knows the answer. What is it?
Where do the new things come from?