Neologism

Having only recently discovered the pleasures of a "nanna nap", I chuckled when a friend suggested we get together for a "nanna dinner", meaning eating out at the civilised hour of 6.30pm.

WTF? That's the time I always eat...

White water

Here's how we celebrated the Dude's 12th birthday. In this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words. Above, left to right: Beche-la-mer, the Dude, the ATM, Ms Take, His Dagginess and Ms Nominative Determinism.

Lost and found orchestra

Last week we went to see the Stomp Company's Lost and Found Orchestra at the Opera House. Having seen Stomp when it first came to Australia many years ago, we were looking forward to a really great, energetic performance. The newspaper reviewer, however, had expressed disappointment, stating that they had lost their edge and tried too hard to reproduce traditional music with instruments that were, although made from found objects, far too "constructed" for the reviewer's liking.
The Dude, Ms Nominative Determinism, His Dagginess and I all came to the conclusion that the reviewer was just trying to reproduce the feeling of the first Stomp experience, when it was raw and new and hadn't been used to advertise everything from office stationery to food. Ten or more years on, the Stomp Company should have moved on from its starting point, and it has. The reviewer in the SMH obviously missed the word "Orchestra" in the show's title. It was a true orchestra, with kettle drums made of metal barrels and a xylophone made of beer bottles. The music was haunting and ethereal and the tunes were recognisable, if slightly twisted by the use of saws and bedsprings instead of violins and harps.
One other interesting thing about the performance was the audience (or "crowd", in His Dagginess' terminology, which might actually have been a more accurate description in some ways) that it brought to the Opera House. Despite the signs in the foyer, at the doors and the warnings on the back of the tickets themselves that "photographic and audiovisual recording equipment are not permitted", while we were waiting for the show to start, a single camera flash went off. It was followed within a few seconds by several more, until the entire auditorium was lit up with what seemed like hundreds of camera flashes -- looking like the Harbour Bridge on New Year's Eve. It was like a chain reaction. The poor ushers, trying to inspect tickets at the door, would occasionally make forays to the nearest camera flash with instructions to desist, but they couldn't keep up.
My first thought was quite snobbish: "This would never happen at the opera"! But it also made me realise that I was almost taking my privileges for granted -- the fact that I do attend performances at the Opera House on a regular basis means that a) I am well aware that taking photographs is not permitted and b) it's such a regular occurrence for me that it's not even something I'd think of wanting to record for posterity in a photograph. Obviously, there were a lot of people in the audience that night for whom a performance at the Opera House was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that needed to be memorialised.
The other thought I had, that always bugs me about people using flash photography in large arenas, is that in this day of instantaneous results through digital photography, people still don't get it that a flash photograph in a dark space is only going to illuminate the back of the heads of the people in the next few rows!
Anyway, fortunately only two or three dimwits tried to take photos after the performers came out on stage, and the ushers, now relieved of their ticket-checking duties, pounced on them quick-smart. And a good time was had by all.

Comet McNaught, of a sort

Tonight there were fewer clouds but unfortunately lots of haze down near the horizon, where the comet was to be found. So, by the time it was dark enough to see the comet well, it dipped down into the haze and disappeared from view.
Many people were gathered on top of the hill at Sydney Park, a few with telescopes. I was the first to spot the comet, as a pale dot when the sky was still quite bright. The Dude was the first to spot Venus which, being higher in the sky, was a lovely sight.
The photograph above was the best I could achieve tonight. I've put a square around the comet (although you can hardly see it at all in this lo-res version of the image) and the inset is the square enlarged and with the contrast increased. You can't see the tail -- I couldn't see it with my naked eyes either, but those with binoculars and telescopes got a better view.
If the clouds stay away tomorrow I hope to get a better view and a better shot, as the comet will be slightly higher in the sky at sunset.

Comet McNaught, Not

7.45pm Drove to Sydney Park to try to spot Comet McNaught
7.55pm Set up camera, despite looming clouds. Why do the clouds always gather on the Western horizon at sunset, when the sky has been clear all day? Is it something to do with Sydney's geography?
8.09pm Sunset. Cloudy. Bummer
8.50pm Gave up. Went home, published pretty sunset photograph on blog.
Try again tomorrow night.

Just kitten around

Those who know me well will understand my fascination with eggcorns -- those strange slips of the tongue that people make when they've heard a phrase many times but never seen it written down. Lately my home town has had the dubious pleasure of hosting the woman who is most famous for being famous, Paris Hilton. She has been passing the time not eating lunch in trendy cafes and not paying for the drinks she consumes in the same nosheries, not paying for fashion items, etc.
A newspaper report said that Ms Hilton's minder explained that, because she'd partied a little too hard on New Year's Eve, she needed to be treated with "kitten gloves". So what I'm wondering is, are those "kid" gloves that are made out of the skins of tiny cats, or are they special protective gear to be used when touching sex kittens?
Or maybe...

Season's greetings

Hope you received everything on your Christmas list. The Dude and his cousin did!

Hair today

December 2005: the Dude had a mohawk. We shaved it off around his birthday in January and he has been growing it ever since. Only once in the past 12 months has a hairdresser been near it, and that was for a quick shape-up in about March or April. The result is below...




December 2006: Pretty, or what?

Funny feet club together

On one of my favourite websites, Mrs Darcy referred to a recent article about the nineteenth century publisher John Murray's legacy of letters. At the end of the article, excerpts from some letters included this quote:

John Murray letter on Scott and Byron meeting for the first time

I can recollect having seen Ld B at Albemarle St. As far as I can remember he appeared rather a short man, hands and countenance remarkable for the fine blue veins which ran on his temples. The deformity in his leg was to me very evident as he walked down stairs, he carried a stick... Mr M first introduced Walter Scott to Lord B - on meeting, they embraced each other in the most affectionate manner and were highly delighted with each other. It was a curious sight to see the two greatest poets of the age (both club footed) stumping down stairs arm in arm...

I knew that Lord Byron had a club foot but didn't realise that Sir Walter Scott* shared the same affliction as the Dude.

* Actually, according to the Wikipedia, Scott's limp was caused by polio, not a club foot.

Freedom of speech

Another example of Christians asserting their right to express their faith symbolically is discussed over at the Bad Astronomer's blog.
To summarise, a church has erected a brightly-lit cross on a hilltop not far from Mount Palomar observatory, breaking several local ordinances in the process. They defend their right to do this using the First Amendment to the US constitution.
Once again, I think that their determination to stand up for their faith on principle is overriding natural logic here: surely they can find a way to display their faith in a positive way, without contributing unecessarily to light pollution in a sensitive area?
As His Dagginess commented to me the other day, atheists are the only really tolerant people in the world, because there's no imperative for evangelism.

Bye-bye Beasley

Why didn't Julia Gillard run for leader of the Labor party, rather than deputy? Surely Australia, one of the first nations in the world to give women the vote, is ready for a female opposition leader? (Note that I don't count any Democrat senators as "opposition" leaders.) More people know who Julia is than who whatsisname is -- you know, the guy who ousted Kim Beasley -- um, Kevin Rudd. I doubt he would have won the leadership without her name on the ticket, so why not give her the job?
Kim Beasley's biggest mistake, the one that perhaps cost him his position as party leader, was of course mixing up his Roves. I mean, what Australian politician would think, on being asked if he had a message for Rove, that he was being asked to console a grieving comedian and not to address the adviser to the President of the United States? Wrong assumption, Kim... you should know that Aussies don't give a fig about international politics when one of our celebrities has recently died in tragic circumstances.
If her husband's well-being was so important that it was essential for our opposition leader to have an opinion on it, I wonder why Belinda wasn't offered a state funeral? Even Brockie had one. Crowds of mourners lined the roads of Mount Panorama to farewell the great Aussie statesman* who did so much for our country. I wonder if these were the same crowds of mourners who, two weeks later, lined the streets to mourn for the four teenagers who were killed in a single-car accident in Byron Bay. In a Commodore, the very brand of car Brockie put his signature on. Yes, he did a lot for our country.

* I suddenly see what they were thinking: somebody got their models mixed up and thought he was advertising a Holden Statesman, not a Commodore. I guess if they'd got the model right, he'd have been buried at sea with full naval honours...

Blame Borat

Last week I saw the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Having just that morning read of the rumours of lawsuits Sacha Baron Cohen faces from supposedly unwilling participants in the movie, I had my sceptical hat on as I watched it.
The whole thing is staged and scripted, surely. There's a scene where Borat chases a guy down a New York street, trying to greet him in the "traditional" Kazakh manner. The chase is shot from at least three different camera angles, meaning that it had to be done in several takes, and wasn't in the least spontaneous.
Even if people were filmed under false pretenses (that is, if they really thought they were going to be appearing on a Kazakhstan documentary) it doesn't excuse their behaviour. Instead of suing Borat for exposing them to ridicule, they ought to take responsibility for themselves and look at how their own attitudes and prejudices made them ridiculous in the first place. And the less said about Pamela Anderson looking ridiculous, the better.
On the subject of another blame game, I really enjoyed reading Hemlock's Diary for Sunday, November 26. The amoral Hong Kong gwailo gives his opinion on the ubiquitous pirate DVD industry in China, in his usual acerbic style. I confess to being a pirate myself (although you already knew I was a Pastafarian, right?) having purchased a copy of the most recent Harry Potter movie in Shanghai last year, for RMB3, or approximately 50 cents, only to get it home and discover that it was dubbed in Mandarin and subtitled in Cantonese. Very strange viewing when you speak neither language -- so I gave it to our neighbour.

In which we discover that a) Red Square is not in Moscow; b) Thursday nights are free again; and c) rats like beer

This week was my last Modern Astronomy class on a Thursday night. I will miss it (although it does mean I may be able to start playing volleyball again), and I will miss all of the great speakers we heard and our discussions in the tea break.
This week we had the young and enthusiastic Peter Tuthill, the latest in a line of young and enthusiastic astronomers. (I didn't get around to reporting on our lecture from the young and enthusastic Laszlo Kiss last week, who was so endearing, bouncing on his toes as he introduced interesting facts about pulsating stars and leaping about at the front of the lecture theatre, speaking in melodic Hungarian-accented English.)
Peter Tuthill's talk was a demonstration of how a $200 aluminium plate, based on telescope technology from the mid-19th century, can actually produce higher resolution images of distant objects than that multi-billion dollar piece of space junk they call the Hubble Space Telescope. (Okay, not being very fair here. He didn't run down the Hubble like that: of course it has its uses.) Check out his web page (linked above) to see some amazing images that his little invention has produced, including the Red Rectangle. He also told us that he had just heard that very morning that a paper on his latest observations had been accepted by Science magazine -- a discussion of a galactic object he calles the Red Square.
In the tea break, our usual gang sat around and my fellow student, the Neuroscientist, told us about a paper he's submitted for publication on his latest experiment: beer-drinking rats. Seriously, it's an experiment designed to see what genetic and/or neurological expressions in the brain are involved in recidivism in alcoholics (or something like that).
First, he set up a little beer garden for the rats, with a "bar" where they had to go and push a lever to get beer. When they were all well and truly sozzled, he put them in a detox centre -- a different environment where they pushed the lever but didn't get any beer. Then, when they were thoroughly dried out and had given up pushing the lever, he put them back in the first beer garden to see how long it would take them to go back to the "bar". Turns out rats like beer so much they headed straight for the lever!
He showed me a bite on his finger, and I said, "Wow, they must really want their beer."
His reply: "This rat was from the cocaine experiment."
"I thought cocaine was supposed to make you happy."
"Not when you don't give it to them."
I couldn't help it. I had this mental image of a whole lot of drunk, stoned and hyped up rats hanging out at Madame Fling Flong's. I had to apologise profusely to the Neuroscientist for seeming to belittle his work by laughing at it.
The things you do in the name of science, eh? Oh, and it turns out that rats like Coopers.

Stereotype threat

About a week ago, I read about a phenomenon called stereotype threat -- a condition which causes human beings to live up, or down, to people's expectations of them. It applies to racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes, among others.
Since then, I've had almost daily conversations with my family and friends that have coincidentally raised examples of stereotype threat. It seems that, now that I know what to call it, I see it everywhere. Having a label to apply to certain events or attitudes in one's life is handy, although there is a risk that applying a label will lead to further stereotyping...
Unfortunately, the knowledge that there is such a thing as stereotype threat probably does not help in overcoming it in one's everyday life. Especially if you don't recognise the stereotype that is threatening you.
And, of course, the "threat" of a stereotype is not always negative: for instance, growing up as the eldest of three girls had, I think, more positive effects on my character than negative (although maybe my sisters would argue against that). The stereotype of being the eldest and therefore the one responsible for the others meant that I had to live up to the expectations that I would be able to take charge and look after my sisters. This probably gave me more confidence to take on responsibility in other areas of my life: I'm not naturally a "leader", but living up to the stereotype of "the eldest" did instil some leadership qualities in my character, I think.
I would be interested to learn of examples of stereotype threat that you think have affected you in either positive or negative ways. Please leave comments or email me privately if you prefer.

Spike suit

How cute!

Sculpture by the Sea

This time last year the Upstaters visited from New York and we went to Sculpture by the Sea. It's hard to believe a full year has passed since then, and now the Upstaters are celebrating the very recent birth of an addition to their family: Spike (born 10th November).
I've posted a selection of my favourite sculptures at flickr, so take a look if you'd like to see some great public art. As one of the sculptures says, "Free Art, before it frees you".

In which we discover that young astronomers can get very excited about their new discoveries about the universe

The last two weeks of my Modern Astronomy classes have been conducted by two young, exciting astronomers talking about their work. One was Ilana Klamer, a specialist in supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with some groundbreaking ideas on how it is possible that quasars (the emissions from the accretion disks of super-supermassive black holes) formed in the early universe. Ilana was so keen to tell us about her SMBHs and her research in particular that I matched her disappointment when she realised that the time alloted for the lecture was at an end.
(The security guy prowling around the doorway to the lecture theatre was the clue -- he wanted to go home and have his dinner, I think.)
The other young astronomer was Bryan Gaensler, who was named Young Australian of the Year in 1999. Back in his home town, he was the ideal lecturer. He impressed me with his ability to deliver a coherent, structured lecture at the same time as he answered questions that caused him to skip around his PowerPoint slideshow in non-consecutive order. He talked about an event that happened on December 28, 2004, when a magnetar on the other side of our galaxy sent out an "insanely powerful" half-second flash that was a thousand times brighter than all the stars in the Milky Way. Fortunately for us, the flash was mostly gamma rays, which don't penetrate the earth's atmosphere and can't be seen by the human eye. Phew!
These youngsters (!) have such a fresh approach to their research and they are very easy to listen to. How inspiring.

What Sydneysiders look like

This fascinating image is a computer-morphed picture of what the average male and female residents of the City of Sydney look like. Do you recognise me? Or His Dagginess? The Dude? Check out the website to see how the image was made. There are also more localised images: not surprisingly, the average resident of Haymarket has slightly Asian features (for non-locals, Haymarket is where Chinatown is located in Sydney); the average resident of the Rocks is slightly older-looking and the average resident of Surry Hills is more youthful.
I think what I love about these images is that it reinforces the idea that, despite our skin, hair or eye colour; no matter what language we speak at home or how much money we have; underneath it all we're pretty much just ordinary human beings.
Wouldn't it be great if someone did a portrait like this for the whole world?

Makes it all worthwhile

Spell-checkers are great, but sometimes they just don't cut the mustard. Here's an example of why you really need to employ a sub:

“The male rufous whistler is quite a handsome bird with distinctive rufous underparts, grey head and white throat, combined with a black mask. The female and immature birds are more subtly coloured, but can be distinguished from most other whistlers by heavy streaking on the underpants.”

[From an actual article I was subbing for the January issue of a magazine I work for.]

I thought it was just 11-year-old boys who could be identified by that means, due to their lax personal hygiene habits.

In which we discover that radio astronomy can cause insanity

Last Thursday's lecture in Modern Astronomy was by Dr Enno Middleberg, whose scientific speciality is radio astronomy, using the 64m telescope at Parkes as well as the Compact Array at Narrabri to look at cool things in the universe. When I say cool things, I mean that he explained that the kinds of things you see in the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum are much cooler and thinner than the hot, dense objects you see in the visual part of the spectrum, using optical telescopes. Some of the recent discoveries in radio astronomy in Australia have included the first double pulsar and a supermassive spiral galaxy about 20 times bigger than the Milky Way.

Dr Middleberg showed us a lovely movie of The Dish, not the one with Sam Neill, but a webcam at the site in Parkes that takes a shot of the telescope every 30 seconds and turns it into a movie every 24 hours. It's fun -- it looks like the telescope is dancing the night away!
He also admitted, when trying to answer questions about some of the technical details of the Compact Array:

"There is an infinity of miraculous steps involved, and if you arrive at a place where you understand it all, you'll go mad!"

That explains a lot.