Cartoon Time.

Love is: Forgiving the Little Things.

Thinking About: Comfort Zones

As Dr Sheldon Cooper PhD rightly said – they call it a comfort zone for a reason. I like my comfort zone, and when I say I like it I actually mean that I love it, deeply. If my comfort zone was an actual zone then my house would be pretty much right in the middle. Once I find something or somewhere I like I stay with it until it ceases to exist or something fairly momentous happens. I am very much a creature of habit. I tend to wear the same kind of things year in year out (never being a creature of fashion), I eat the same kind of food, read the same kind of book (or at least a small number of common themes) and have lived in my present house for around 20 years. Generally speaking very little changes in my life. I am, to be honest, rather risk averse. Or in other words I’m a coward. I don’t like change or new stuff very much so minimise it wherever I can. Again, in other words, I’m fairly boring. Thankfully though, there is another aspect of my personality that finds this all rather boring too. So when the comfort/boredom gets too much I see what I can do about it.

One thing I look out for are ‘special offers’ in the shops which allows me to try new/different things at ‘low risk’. This could be anything from a new flavour of something (I experiment with ‘odd’ breads this way), a new author (I’m trying more of those and am creeping into what might be called ‘mainstream’ publishing), a new band or genre of music (I tried to like Jazz some time ago but find it very difficult to enjoy, though I have deepened and widened my love of The Blues which I honestly adore), more colourful clothes (I tend to be rather dull in my apparel with dark sombre colours predominating but I am experimenting with red quite a lot lately).

Another thing I’ve discovered recently is joining friends in their comfort zones – which may, or may not, overlap my own. This has found me visiting places I’ve never been before and would never have visited without someone’s invitation, joining clubs and societies – including amateur dramatics (backstage rather than front of house I hasten to add) that added a lot of fun to my life some years back, and even moving completely out of my comfort zone momentarily by attending big sporting events (totally not my thing) including one of last year’s NFL games in Wembley Stadium (Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons) which I’m going to repeat this year (Miami Dolphins and New York Jets) as it’s a bit closer to my comfort zone now.

The NFL thing was pretty much an impulse decision which I have not regretted. Now I’m a firm believer that spontaneity has it’s time and place and struggle to act ‘off the cuff’. I know I think about things too much and struggle to make quick decisions about unfamiliar things, but I’m working on it. Such things probably take me out of my comfort zone more than anything else. Sometimes I really do scare the crap out of myself – although I was aware of my limitations enough some years ago to turn an offered bungee jump down flat. I knew for a fact that I really wouldn’t like it and that it would be a complete waste of money. The ‘carrot’ dangled in front of me, I remember, was the idea that it would make me ‘feel alive’. To which I responded “I already know I’m alive”. No arguing with me on that one! But thinking about it the scariest thing I've probably ever done in my life was to jump off a perfectly serviceable boat in scuba gear never having actually learnt to swim properly - but that was because a very attractive woman talked me into it (ah, the power of sex).

So, although my comfort zone is pretty wide and fairly deep in some ways and despite the fact that I dearly love living there 24/7 I do feel the need to make short sharp forays outside, or at least to the edges, from time to time. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t do something odd, different or bizarre from time to time. It’s just that sometimes I have to think about it for a decade or two before I decide things. But sometimes I’ll dye my hair bright green just to see what it looks like or even read 50 Shades of Grey to see what all the fuss is about(like that’s ever going to happen).      

Cartoon Time.

Not in front of the telly: Warning over 'listening' TV

From The BBC

9 February 2015

Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal information in front of their smart television set. The warning applies to TV viewers who control their Samsung Smart TV using its voice activation feature. Such TV sets "listen" to some of what is said in front of them and may share details they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said. Privacy campaigners said the technology smacked of the telescreens, in George Orwell's 1984, which spied on citizens.

The warning came to light via a story in online news magazine the Daily Beast which published an excerpt of a section of Samsung's privacy policy for its net-connected Smart TV sets. The policy explains that the TV set will be listening to people in the same room to try to spot when commands or queries are issued via the remote. It goes on to say: "If your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party." Corynne McSherry, an intellectual property lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which campaigns on digital rights issues, told the Daily Beast that the third party was probably the company providing speech-to-text conversion for Samsung. She added: "If I were the customer, I might like to know who that third party was, and I'd definitely like to know whether my words were being transmitted in a secure form."

Soon after, an activist for the EFF circulated the policy statement on Twitter comparing it to George Orwell's description of the telescreens in his novel 1984 that listen to what people say in their homes. In response to the widespread sharing of its policy statement, Samsung has issued a statement to clarify how voice activation works. It emphasised that the voice recognition feature is activated using the TV's remote control. It said the privacy policy was an attempt to be transparent with owners in order to help them make informed choices about whether to use some features on its Smart TV sets, adding that it took consumer privacy "very seriously". Samsung said: "If a consumer consents and uses the voice recognition feature, voice data is provided to a third party during a requested voice command search. At that time, the voice data is sent to a server, which searches for the requested content then returns the desired content to the TV."

It added that it did not retain voice data or sell the audio being captured. Smart-TV owners would always know if voice activation was turned on because a microphone icon would be visible on the screen, it said. The third party handling the translation from speech to text is a firm called Nuance, which specialises in voice recognition, Samsung has confirmed to the BBC.

Samsung is not the first maker of a smart, net-connected TV to run into problems with the data the set collects. In late 2013, a UK IT consultant found his LG TV was gathering information about his viewing habits. Publicity about the issue led LG to create a software update which ensured data collection was turned off for those who did not want to share information.

[It looks like the only thing Orwell got wrong was the date. Fortunately the companies involved ‘take customer privacy very seriously’ and therefore we have absolutely nothing to worry about. Phew!]

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope that someone special is making you feel particularly special today.....

Love is: Sharing Interests.

Just Finished Reading: Divergent by Veronica Roth (FP: 2011)

16 year old Beatrice Prior is about to make the most important decision of her life. As Choosing Day approaches she needs to decide on her Faction which will define the rest of her life and her place a future society still struggling with the aftermath of the great world spanning disaster that the Faction system is supposed to address. Troubled by indecision at least her (slightly) older brother will choose to stay in Abnegation – the selfless Faction. Shockingly he decides to break with expectations and joins Erudite dedicated to knowledge and truth. Torn even more by his unexpected act Beatrice makes her choice much to the shock of everyone she knows – Dauntless dedicated to courage and the conquering of all fear. But during the first set of tests Beatrice discovers something about herself that could threaten her very life – she is one of the small percentage of those who do not fit into any neat category. Known as Divergent these individuals are spoken of in hushed tones and seen as a real danger to the existence of everything they have worked for. Forced to hide what she is, and now known as Tris, she must do her very best to master a whole new set of skills, assert herself as never before and hide her true identity from everyone around her. Meanwhile the political landscape is shifting and revolution is in the air with Dauntless at the very heart of things. It’s a bad time to be Divergent.

After enjoying the movie (so much so I bought the DVD) I was looking forward to reading the book. I was not disappointed. Considering that the author was in her early 20’s when she produced this it’s actually quite impressive. Almost word for word and scene for scene from the movie – an impressive feat in itself – the books goes into move detail about the Faction system and actually explains things that the movie glossed over. The portrayal of Tris by Shailene Woodley in the film was, I thought, pretty spot on and inevitably whenever any of the characters appeared in the book I ‘saw’ them as their movie counterparts. I didn’t detect any great jarring between the two. Aspects of the work where different and I actually thought that some parts at least are better in the movie. I thought that the author lost the plot a bit near the end (say, about 80% of the way through) and the film handled it better. The only time I found myself slightly skimming and rolling my eyes and sighing a bit (and not in a good way) was the teen romance aspects which I thought where pretty naff – borderline terrible actually. Fortunately they didn’t happen all that often and, yet again, are handled better in the movie.

Overall though I found this to be surprisingly good (I actually surprised a few of the guys at work who probably though that this sort of thing was ‘above’ me) and, despite it basically being light SF it did manage to feed my need for a while (note to self – read more real SF soon!). Obviously I’m looking forward to the sequel, Insurgent, coming out soon and intend to read the book soon after. The third book Allegiant is coming out over two years so I might end up reading that first – but who knows what my reading habits will be by then. Recommended – especially if you liked the movie.
 
[2015 Reading Challenge: A Book that became a Movie – COMPLETE (6/50)]

Cartoon Time.

Not the only reason I watched Firefly.....

My Favourite Movies: Avatar

I remember being completely blown away by this movie long, long before I picked up on any controversy about it. As an ‘event’ I hardly think it’s been surpassed or even possibly equalled since (actually having just seen Jupiter Ascending I’m starting to think that Hollywood has actually lost the ability to make these kind of movies). When I watched it again over the weekend I was actually surprised how powerful a narrative it still is – even after seeing it multiple times and knowing the story backwards.

For those of you recently returned from another planet or a long stretch in prison the story goes something like this: Jake Sully (played superbly by Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic combat vet who happens to be the twin brother of a PhD scientist scheduled to work on Pandora, an alien world famed for its rich deposits of Unobtainium (great name), who is killed by a mugger. Already large sums of money have been spent building an alien body for his brother so he’s offered the job – the price is getting his legs and his life back. Initially looked down on as a ‘jarhead’ Sully quickly becomes a friend of the native Na’Vi and after much trial and tribulation is adopted as one of their own – that’s a very long story cut very short but it’s late, I’m tired and you probably know all this already. Needless to say things are not all roses and candy. The Na’Vi are living directly over a massive deposit of Unobtainium and have to move. No dice, of course, which means force needs to be applied and what was a low level conflict turns into full scale war – if you can call it a war when helicopter gunships face bows and arrows. Sully joins the natives (as a SME – subject matter expert) and teaches them how to fight back effectively helped by his strangely close association with the planet wide intelligence (Gaia by any other name) and his even closer association with Neytiri the clan chiefs daughter (in CGI – played by Zoe Saldana).

Inevitably that very rough synopsis really doesn’t do the film justice. For one thing it’s visually stunning. The world of Pandora is amazing. It’s no surprise that people have volunteered to go there if only the place really existed. The rendering of the Na’Vi (in both senses of the world) is fascinating to watch. Obviously based on Native Americans and other indigenous peoples across the globe they rang true in just about every sense – both alien and ‘human’ at the same time. I admit that I became very fond of them. Most of the rest of the humans – apart from the scientists and especially the alien ‘anthropology’ team – where the bad guys. None more so than Colonel Quaritch (played brilliantly over the top by Stephen Lang) who thinks nothing about wiping out the locals whilst sipping his coffee.

I suppose thinking about it, rather than just being overawed by the whole thing, the controversy just had to come out. I can certainly see why those on the Right hated it. It shows rapacious Capitalism in stark and brutal contrast to the ‘green’ blue people. The contrast couldn’t have been greater. Then, of course, there’s the ‘problem’ (not that I saw or see it as such) of an indigenous people being aided and ultimately saved by an outsider – a white male no less. There are many reasons why I never saw this as anything more than a standard storytelling device (used countless times down the ages) but the most obvious are that he’s an expert in the people they’re fighting so is really useful to have around, He’s a warrior and will earn the respect of a warrior culture because of that and it’s obvious that he’s deeply disgusted by what his own species has done to their planet – which he dramatically states as ‘killing their Mother (the Gaia thing again). Avatar is one of those movies that you can read a lot into. You can take it as a straight up action SF flick and enjoy it, or you can see the deeper meanings and enjoy it even more. Either way this is a great and ground-breaking movie. It does worry me a little bit that there’s a sequel coming (in 2017 I think) and that it will do for the original what the two Matrix sequels did for that ‘franchise’.

Oh, and I just have to mention one of my favourite actresses Michelle Rodriguez as Marine pilot Trudy Chacon who must have had a lot of fun making this film. It shows in every scene she’s in and she steals nearly every one. I do love that woman!    

Cartoon Time.

Love is: Public Displays of Affection

NASA RESEARCHERS DISCOVER ANCIENT MICROBES IN ANTARCTIC LAKE

From NASA

Nov. 30, 2012


WASHINGTON -- In one of the most remote lakes of Antarctica, nearly 65 feet beneath the icy surface, scientists from NASA, the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, Nev., the University of Illinois at Chicago, and nine other institutions, have uncovered a community of bacteria. This discovery of life existing in one of Earth's darkest, saltiest and coldest habitats is significant because it helps increase our limited knowledge of how life can sustain itself in these extreme environments on our own planet and beyond. Lake Vida, the largest of several unique lakes found in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, contains no oxygen, is mostly frozen and possesses the highest nitrous oxide levels of any natural water body on Earth. A briny liquid, which is approximately six times saltier than seawater, percolates throughout the icy environment where the average temperature is minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit. The international team of scientists published their findings online Nov. 26, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.

"This study provides a window into one of the most unique ecosystems on Earth," said Alison Murray, a molecular microbial ecologist and polar researcher at the DRI and the report's lead author. "Our knowledge of geochemical and microbial processes in lightless icy environments, especially at subzero temperatures, has been mostly unknown up until now. This work expands our understanding of the types of life that can survive in these isolated, cryoecosystems and how different strategies may be used to exist in such challenging environments." Despite the very cold, dark and isolated nature of the habitat, the report finds the brine harbors a surprisingly diverse and abundant variety of bacteria that survive without a current source of energy from the sun. Previous studies of Lake Vida dating back to 1996 indicate the brine and its inhabitants have been isolated from outside influences for more than 3,000 years.

"This system is probably the best analog we have for possible ecosystems in the subsurface waters of Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa," said Chris McKay, a senior scientist and co-author of the paper at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Murray and her co-authors and collaborators, including Peter Doran, the project's principal investigator at the University of Illinois at Chicago, developed stringent protocols and specialized equipment for their 2005 and 2010 field campaigns to sample from the lake brine while avoiding contaminating the pristine ecosystem.

"The microbial ecosystem discovered at Lake Vida expands our knowledge of environmental limits for life and helps define new niches of habitability," said Adrian Ponce, co-author from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who enumerated viable bacterial spore populations extracted from Lake Vida. To sample unique environments such as this, researchers must work under secure, sterile tents on the lake's surface. The tents kept the site and equipment clean as researchers drilled ice cores, collected samples of the salty brine residing in the lake ice and assessed the chemical qualities of the water and its potential for harboring and sustaining life.

Geochemical analyses suggest chemical reactions between the brine and the underlying iron-rich sediments generate nitrous oxide and molecular hydrogen. The latter, in part, may provide the energy needed to support the brine's diverse microbial life. Additional research is under way to analyze the abiotic, chemical interactions between the Lake Vida brine and its sediment, in addition to investigating the microbial community by using different genome sequencing approaches. The results could help explain the potential for life in other salty, cryogenic environments beyond Earth, such as purported subsurface aquifers on Mars.

This study was partially funded by the NASA Astrobiology Program in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Desert Research Institute, a nonprofit research campus of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

[I think it’s looking good for life, maybe even complex life, under the ice on Enceladus and Europa. Life, once it gets going, is pretty tough and highly adaptive. I’m really looking forward to when they can get probes down there to swim under the ice. I wonder if we will watch open mouthed as completely alien fish swim past the cameras. That would be beyond cool.]

...especially the flavoured kind 

[...and my 5,000th post!!!].

Just Finished Reading: Greek and Roman Political Ideas by Melissa Lane (FP: 2014)

Like much else in western culture the Greeks seem to have invented politics which, again with much else, the Romans seem to have adopted, adapted and spread across the known world. With hundreds of individual city states the Greeks could effectively experiment in tiny social laboratories to discover the best types of political form which they categorised into three separate strands – rule by one, by some and by many. From these strands they highlighted both the best and worst versions of each, with the best being Monarchy, Aristocracy (my personal favourite) and Polity, with the worst forms being Tyranny, Oligarchy and (rather oddly to our ears) Democracy. In Roman terms, once they absorbed Greece into their ever expanding sphere of influence, Monarchy became Imperial rule and Democracy became the basis for the Roman Republic.

Of course when we speak of Greek and Roman democracy will are not talking of what passes for democracy in most of the developed world where disengaged ‘citizens’ cast their votes in ever decreasing numbers each 4-5 years. Back in the founding years the electorate had political activity at the heart of their existence – indeed the word idiot derives from the Greek for those who are political disengaged private citizens (so little has changed there I think!). Then of course there are the limits of who gets to vote to take into account. Here and in many other democracies across the world we have universal suffrage – where the only criteria is that you live here and are over 18 (plus a few other caveats). Back in the day not only did you need to be a citizen (with both parents being citizens) but you had to be male, free (not a slave) and to meet the property qualifications. Inevitably many people residing within any particular Greek polis where excluding from the political process.

Both Greece and Rome, no matter their other failings, had some interesting ideas: huge juries (often hundreds strong or even into the thousands for important cases), political office by lottery – at least at the lower levels – with short one year occupancy with reports of how well the incumbent did scrutinised by juries. Some of that might still work today. The high level of commitment however is probably a no-go because, well to be honest, we need to work to earn money to live – so precisely the people prevented from voting back in antiquity! Probably the only way we could have fully participatory democracy is to have slaves (machines no doubt) doing all of our work whilst we politicised our lives away. I suppose that it could be fun if you like that sort of thing.

Anyway, if you think you know where our politics comes from this book might both surprise and delight you. Written in an easily digestible style I learnt a great deal almost without any perceived effort – just the way I like it (sometimes anyway). If you also think that events back at the edge of history have no relevance today this book will certainly disabuse you of that! Recommended.

Cartoon Time.

Difficult to Walk In?

“The many have always been enthralled by the few; and monsters who scarcely have shown any discernment of human excellence, have tyrannized over thousands of their fellow creatures. Why have men of superior endowments submitted to such degradation? For, is it not universally acknowledged that kings, viewed collectively, have ever been inferior, in abilities and virtue, to the same number of men taken from the common mass of mankind – yet have they not, and are they not still treated with a degree of reverence that is an insult to reason?”  

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792.

My Favourite Movies: Twister

This is another one of those films that I’m not sure if I saw it at the cinema or not. But as it came out in 1996 I’m thinking that I did – probably in the city centre flea pit before they built the out of town multiplex.

I probably saw it because of the two stars: Bill Paxton who I like a great deal and his co-star, and love interest here, Helen Hunt who is quite simply marvellous as his soon to be ex-wife. Of course in any adventure, CGI fest, romantic comedy (or whatever multiple genre this film falls into) there are complications piled on complications. Paxton plays Bill ‘the extreme’ Harding an ex-storm chaser now weather man who is about to start a new life with a sex therapist played by Jami Gertz. All he needs to do is get his estranged wife Dr Jo Harding (Hunt) to sign the papers. But she’s in the field trying to learn as much about tornadoes as she can. So as she chases storms Bill chases her and soon discovers what attracted him to storm chasing at to Jo in the first place.

Peppered with excellent co-stars: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lois Smith, Alan Ruck, Cary Elwes and Todd Field, this is a film that just doesn’t stop from the off. It is, in effect, a chase movie – although what they chase are tornadoes rather than other people/cars/objects. These are unpredictable and highly dangerous events rendered (rather crudely to be honest) using CGI but still with the power to add significant drama to the piece. Peppered also with lots of funny moments – the cow scene particularly made me laugh (CGI so no worries) – and some hair raising ones too (crop dusters, tankers full of fuel and complete combined harvesters falling from the sky can certainly get the pulse racing!) the whole movie is a rollercoaster affair. The object we discover about half way in is to launch a probe – or number of small probes – into the funnel of the storm to read data in real-time allowing future scientists and engineers to develop better early warning systems to save lives (if not property) from the tornadoes. If you haven’t seen the film I won’t give away if they succeed or not (but I’m sure you can guess).

The best thing for me in the film was the relationship between Paxton and Hunt which was a lot of fun to watch. I couldn’t help wonder just how much of it was ad libbed as the conversations between them – arguments really - moved at a cracking pace with interrupts, laughs, protests, sarcasm, biting comments and much more coming at a blistering speed that made every moment a delight to watch and which gave the whole thing a sense of realism that a more structured form would have failed to give. Of the two Hunt is my favourite in this. She’s funny, smart, witty, strong, and did I mention really funny? I was honestly really taken with her screen persona even after multiple watching’s. She fizzles with energy that is both exciting and exhausting to watch. Being with her (the character) in real life (up on the screen if that’s not too paradoxical) would’ve been a hell of a ride if you could only keep up with her. It’d be fun to try, and that, I think, is the central thing about this movie. It’s fun. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, it’s not profound and it doesn’t try too hard to win you over and that’s a big part of the charm. Just sit back, strap yourself in and enjoy this highly entertaining mixture of multiple genres.

“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep woman in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a plaything. The sensualist, indeed, has been the most dangerous of tyrants, and women have been duped by their lovers, as princes by their ministers, whilst dreaming that they reigned over them’”

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792.

Cartoon Time.

Welcome to Love and Relationships Month here @ SaLT. 

As usual, now that it is a long established tradition – of at least three years – there will be a mixture of posts, both positive and negative, funny and attempts at the profound regarding the thorny subject of love. With the global celebration of that most mysterious and lucrative emotion just around the corner I hope you enjoy my small contribution to the madness.

Good to Know....

NASA SPACECRAFT FINDS NEW EVIDENCE FOR WATER ICE ON MERCURY

From NASA

Nov. 29, 2012


WASHINGTON -- A NASA spacecraft studying Mercury has provided compelling support for the long-held hypothesis the planet harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials within its permanently shadowed polar craters.

The new information comes from NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft. Its onboard instruments have been studying Mercury in unprecedented detail since its historic arrival there in March 2011. Scientists are seeing clearly for the first time a chapter in the story of how the inner planets, including Earth, acquired their water and some of the chemical building blocks for life.

"The new data indicate the water ice in Mercury's polar regions, if spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., would be more than 2 miles thick," said David Lawrence, a MESSENGER participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., and lead author of one of three papers describing the findings. The papers were published online in Thursday's edition of Science Express. Spacecraft instruments completed the first measurements of excess hydrogen at Mercury's north pole, made the first measurements of the reflectivity of Mercury's polar deposits at near-infrared wavelengths, and enabled the first detailed models of the surface and near-surface temperatures of Mercury's north polar regions.

Given its proximity to the sun, Mercury would seem to be an unlikely place to find ice. However, the tilt of Mercury's rotational axis is less than 1 degree, and as a result, there are pockets at the planet's poles that never see sunlight. Scientists suggested decades ago there might be water ice and other frozen volatiles trapped at Mercury's poles. The idea received a boost in 1991 when the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected radar-bright patches at Mercury's poles. Many of these patches corresponded to the locations of large impact craters mapped by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft in the 1970s. However, because Mariner saw less than 50 percent of the planet, planetary scientists lacked a complete diagram of the poles to compare with the radar images.

Images from the spacecraft taken in 2011 and earlier this year confirmed all radar-bright features at Mercury's north and south poles lie within shadowed regions on the planet's surface. These findings are consistent with the water ice hypothesis. The new observations from MESSENGER support the idea that ice is the major constituent of Mercury's north polar deposits. These measurements also reveal ice is exposed at the surface in the coldest of those deposits, but buried beneath unusually dark material across most of the deposits. In the areas where ice is buried, temperatures at the surface are slightly too warm for ice to be stable.

MESSENGER's neutron spectrometer provides a measure of average hydrogen concentrations within Mercury's radar-bright regions. Water ice concentrations are derived from the hydrogen measurements. "We estimate from our neutron measurements the water ice lies beneath a layer that has much less hydrogen. The surface layer is between 10 and 20 centimeters [4-8 inches] thick," Lawrence said. Additional data from detailed topography maps compiled by the spacecraft corroborate the radar results and neutron measurements of Mercury's polar region. In a second paper by Gregory Neumann of NASA's Goddard Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., measurements of the shadowed north polar regions reveal irregular dark and bright deposits at near-infrared wavelength near Mercury's north pole. "Nobody had seen these dark regions on Mercury before, so they were mysterious at first," Neumann said.

The spacecraft recorded dark patches with diminished reflectance, consistent with the theory that ice in those areas is covered by a thermally insulating layer. Neumann suggests impacts of comets or volatile-rich asteroids could have provided both the dark and bright deposits, a finding corroborated in a third paper led by David Paige of the University of California at Los Angeles. "The dark material is likely a mix of complex organic compounds delivered to Mercury by the impacts of comets and volatile-rich asteroids, the same objects that likely delivered water to the innermost planet," Paige said.

This dark insulating material is a new wrinkle to the story, according to MESSENGER principal investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. "For more than 20 years, the jury has been deliberating whether the planet closest to the sun hosts abundant water ice in its permanently shadowed polar regions," Solomon said. "MESSENGER now has supplied a unanimous affirmative verdict."

[Fascinating. Water on Mercury… whatever next! But I suppose in areas that never, or rarely, get any sunlight the water originally within the crust would never sublimate into space. It does get me thinking though. If there’s ice beneath the surface as well as ‘other frozen volatile materials’ including organic chemicals could there be primate life even on Mercury? Is that completely out of bounds if at least some of the requisites for life exist in this most inhospitable of places? Could microbes inhabit the grey areas between freezing cold and boiling hot? As always it’s an intriguing thought.]

Just Finished Reading: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (FP: 1847)

Orphaned at a tender age Jane Eyre is left in the tender mercies (actually anything but) of her Aunt, the cold hearted Mrs Reed who can barely stand the sight of her. Tortured and bullied by the Reed children Jane is relieved to be sent to school far enough away that any form of meaningful communication is impossible. There, despite the imposed hardships Jane thrives and eventually becomes a valued member of the teaching staff. Ten years have passed and the need to pursue further interests burn in Jane until she advertises for a Governess position. Her letter is answered and she begins her adventure in the employ of the spinster Mrs Fairfax. As fate would have it she meets her real employer quite by accident when his horse throws him and the diminutive Jane comes to his rescue. Despite his fearsome reputation Jane is quite taken with the less than handsome Mr Rochester as he is taken by her down to earth manners and her fearlessness in the face of his verbal assaults. Before long, despite their difference in social station and age, they become firm friends before tragedy strikes. Running to save her emotional sanity and almost dying in the process Jane starts a new life far away and hopes to live out her days in calm solitude. Fate, or God, has other plans however. Her feelings for Rochester have not diminished and he is often in her thoughts. Then, out of a clear dark night, she hears his voice and feels that she must find him again no matter the cost or the social scandal…

This book has been sitting in my TBR pile for a while now so I thought I’d dust it off and see what all the fuss was about. At 545 pages (in this edition) it was quite a challenge considering that classic love stories are not really my ‘thing’ (despite honestly loving P&P which I couldn't help compare this with). Of course this was ultimately a story of girl finds boy, girl loses boy and girl gets boy back. The barriers to true love where well drawn and rather Gothic to be honest but I suppose believable enough for the time. Both Jane and Mr Rochester are well drawn and I did like Jane quite a lot as a person and couldn’t but admire her fortitude. She was no Lizzie Bennett but then again who is? Two of the things I did like about the novel was its very clear criticism of the position of women in Victorian society – especially the relatively poor and powerless woman – and its rather acid criticism of the rich and indolent upper classes who did not come off at all well (again especially the women who seemed particularly useless and intentionally so!) About the only thing I found particularly irritating, though again understandable considering the publication date, was the surprisingly (at least to me) constant references to God and religion. To be honest I almost skim read these parts. The character of St John Rivers, the intended missionary, was particularly repellent I thought. Constantly referred to as a ‘good man’ he is clearly suffering from some kind of religious mania and I had no problem is labelling him as probably psychotic and probably some kind of sociopath. He totally creeped me out!

I suppose because of its subject matter and its age it took me about twice as long to read this as expected. I always seemed to find something more interesting to do after 4-5 pages so tended to read it in micro-bursts. This is not to say that it was a bad novel – it wasn’t – and clearly deserves its classic status. Maybe it’s that I need to hunt out some classic adventure novels rather than classic romances. That might be the way to go.

 [2015 Reading Challenge: A Classic Romance – COMPLETE (5/50)]

Nothing New under the Sun....

Cartoon Time.

Made me laugh as all of my WoW characters are female..... [grin]

Just Finished Reading: How To Live – A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell (FP: 2010)

I had heard of Michel de Montaigne but the only thing I was confident knowing about him before reading this frankly fascinating volume was that he was French. I knew he was much admired and could have probably dragged up from somewhere the title of his most famous (or infamous depending on your viewpoint) publication simply called Essays. Apart from that I had no real idea who he was, what he said or even when he lived – I have thought the 18th century but was way off as he lived between 1533 and 1592. His great achievement was to write a series of articles about common subjects but to infuse them a seemingly ageless wisdom that has appealed to countless people right up to the present. The main thrust of his enquiries – no matter the title of the essay in question – was the fundamental problem of how to live a good and useful life. Using his childhood experiences of a rather unconventional education programme devised by his free thinking father, the running of a large estate and internationally known vineyard, years in the Civil Service and as advisor to royalty, delicately navigating the very dangerous waters of religious warfare and civil strife, marriage and fatherhood, the loss of friends, family and retainers, a near death experience after an accident as a young man and studies of his beloved cat he distilled his observations through his knowledge of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers to create his own unique brand of wisdom.

Using a similar format to the great man himself, the author examines parts of Montaigne’s life by offering twenty answers to the question of how we should live, with each answer derived from his life and his writing bringing out aspects of both. Some of the answers seem at first to be perverse or obvious. Nothing could be further from the truth. But here they are: Don’t worry about death, Pay attention, Be born, Read a lot, forget most of what you read and be slow witted, Survive love and loss, Use little tricks, Question everything, Keep a private room behind the shop, Be convivial and live with others, Wake up from the sleep habit, Live temperately, Guard your humanity, Do something no one has done before, See the world, Do a good job but not too good a job, Philosophise only by accident, Reflect on everything but regret nothing, Give up control, Be ordinary and imperfect and Let life be its own answer.

Banned by the Catholic Church for 130 years (a recommendation in itself I felt to buy and read his work) and much loved by people like Virginia Woolf (ditto) the Essays do appear on the face of things to be truly timeless. Hailed in his own life time and, mostly, every century since then (although not always in his home country) the author certainly sold me on the idea that this man should be read and reread so as to absorb his unique take on life, the universe and just about everything. Needless to say, when I do finally pick up a copy of Essays I shall be reviewing it here. I hope that I will be as impressed as I’m expecting to be after reading this highly recommended book.

[2015 Reading Challenge: A Book by a Female Author – COMPLETE (4/50)]