Margaret Cavendish - The Arithmetic of Passions

With Numeration Moralists begin
Upon the Passions, putting Quotients in;
Numbers divide with Figures, and Subtract,
And in their Definitions are exact;
As for Subtracting, take but one from three,
Add it to four, and it makes five to be:
Thus the odd Numbers to the even joyned,
Will make the Passions rise within the mind.

Van der Graaf Generator - Cat's Eye/Yellow Fever (Running)

Photo Hunt - Hard to find

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is Hard to find/ tretching the theme rather, it occurred to me that Egyptian sarcophagi are hard to find except in museums. Here is a detail from a sarcophagus in the World museum in Liverpool

Even harder to find on a sarcophagus is the symbol "If you think I look bad, you should see the other guy" a symbol found mainly on the tombs of Pharaohs who liked a drink and a punch up....


Well that's my story and I am sticking to it!

Testing the atmosphere of an exoplanet

Astronomers have managed for the first time to measure the atmosphere surrounding a "super-Earth" extrasolar planet.

Planet, GJ 1214b, which is 40 light years away, is three times larger than Earth and about seven times heavier, and is the first planet of its kind known to have an atmosphere.

According to the BBC researchers have found that it appears to have either a dense atmosphere of water steam, or is wrapped in thick clouds like Venus.

More experiments measuring more colours of light will bear out which it is.

The method used could be used on many ground-based telescopes to yield atmospheric data on other exoplanets. It works by canceling out the disruptive effects of the Earth's atmosphere while that of far-flung worlds is measured from the ground.

"'Super-Earths' are really interesting, they're at the forefront of what's going on in exoplanet research," said Jacob Bean, the Harvard-Smithsonian University Center for Astrophysics scientist who led the research. "They're an interesting regime because they're defined as being the transition from terrestrial planets like Earth, Venus and Mars, up to the ice giants like Uranus and Neptune."
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From what is known about GJ 1214b, three theories of its composition and atmosphere dominated. It could either be covered in a dense layer of steam, or it could be an icy, rocky world with a hydrogen or helium atmosphere, or perhaps a large rocky planet with a mixture of volcanic gases.


Drake Deming, of Nasa's Planetary Systems Laboratory said the work "opens the door to characterisng these kinds of super-Earth atmospheres".

"We've been seduced by the abundance of exoplanet results into thinking that these are routine measurements, but they're actually extraordinarily difficult," he told BBC News.

"This is certainly the most significant atmospheric exoplanet result in the last year - and a year is a long time in this field."

The next step is to carry out the same measurement using different colours of light, further into the infrared where the distinction can be made; .

I may be an utter ignoramus where physics is concerned but this is truly fascinating stuff. I daresay in a few years time such results will be routine

Henri Again

Another photo of my friend Suzy's kitten

Life but not as we’ve known it

NASA scientists have discovered an alien kind of life but not in space….

According to National Geographic a new species of bacteria found in California's Mono Lake is the first known life-form that uses arsenic to make its DNA.

Dubbed the GFAJ-1 strain, the bacteria can substitute arsenic for phosphorus, one of the six main "building blocks" for most known life. (The others being carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and calcium.)

Arsenic is toxic to most known organisms, in part because it can mimic the chemical properties of phosphorus, allowing the poison to disrupt cellular activity. But the newfound bacteria not only tolerates high concentrations of arsenic, it actually incorporates the chemical into its cells,


Astrobiologists found the arsenic-based bacteria while looking for a possible "second genesis" of life on Earth. The scientists were hoping to find evidence of a "shadow biosphere," sometimes called Life 2.0. Such a discovery would prove that, before life as we know it came to dominate the globe, the world had actually seen a separate, independent origin of life.

Despite their oddity, however, the bacteria are genetically too similar to ordinary life to truly be descendents of a second genesis.

Still, the GFAJ-1 strain might be called the most unusual of the extremophiles,

Extremophiles are no so unusual – No matter how tough the environment there is usually something that will adapt to live there. But substituting a key building block of life for a toxic element? Now that IS bloody remarkable!

Or perhaps it is only remarkable in being the first such organism to be discovered. I doubt that there are too many of its sort to be found on earth but in space? Who knows. It’s a shame we won’t live to see their discovery…

What happens when your government needs a bail out

Today’s Irish Independent carries a report which outlines the conditions placed on the Irish government as part and parcel of its €85bn bail out

The loans will be paid out in tranches only if the Irish government meets some hellish conditions.

The terms of the deal clearly state that if any "shortfall" in savings from the public sector occurs, a fresh reduction in the "public service wage bill" will be considered by the end of next September (ie cut costs or we’ll cut your pay)

Other conditions attached to the deal are:

• Every week, the Government must tell the IMF, the EU and ECB what money it is taking in and spending.
• The banks must reveal what loans they've given out every week.
• The numbers and salaries of all those working in the public sector must be disclosed every three months.
• The banks must give detailed information on deposits every month, including how long deposits will stay in the banks and whether they're from householders, companies or other banks.
• The banks must state how much debt they have falling due over the next 36 months on a monthly basis.
• Sheltered professions, including lawyers, doctors and pharmacists will face radical changes within nine months as part of a plan to drive down costs and increase growth in the services sector.
• The State will have to sell off its stakes in Irish banks "within the shortest timeframe possible".

The document goes on to spell out the need for cutbacks of €6bn in 2011, €3.6bn in 2012, and another €3.1bn in 2013.

The stringent conditions are included in an agreement signed by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan and Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan.
The potential cut in public sector pay that is likely to be most contentious. It has already been cut by an average of 14pc through the pension levy and last budget pay cut.

SIPTU general president Jack O'Connor told the Irish Independent last night the trade unions would cooperate with reforms. He said it was likely that progress would be made by the time of the deadline.

However, he warned if there was a "unilateral departure" from the agreement when staff were compliant, "we'll have to respond".

"I don't think any of it is fair," he said. "How could it be fair that everybody in Ireland who had nothing to do with the cause of the collapse has to spend the next seven years paying for it just in order to rescue the French and German banks?"

Fine Gael and Labour -- the parties likely to form the next government -- claimed the multi-billion bailout deal has "tied their hands".

Ach it is bad news for the people of Ireland who will face years of hardship even though it was the banks that although the banks that were architects of the country’s downfall. I wonder how long it will be before the delinquent banks start paying humungous bonuses again…

Fianna Failure are going to be slaughtered at the next general election. Sadly the successor government will have little room for manoeuvre,

A winter wonderland

With fresh snow on the ground and more falling, the temperature sub zero, considerable delays on the trains from Romford to Liverpool St station and the underground rather dodgy I am damned glad not to have to commute for the moment.

Or I would be if the bloody heating hadn't packed in... BAH!

Sarcophagus II

May you live in uninteresting times

Plenty of things seem to have happened while I was away, particularly the Wikileak exposures – although most of what was said in the cables should come as little surprise.

One thing that has caught my eye (and has absolutely nothing to do with Wikileaks) is a search to find the most boring day in history…. According to the Telegraph the prize goes to 11 April 1954 when the earth learned the shattering news of a general election in Belgium, the birth of a Turkish academic and the death of Oldham Athletic footballer Jack Shufflebotham died. Apart from that nothing much happened.

This is according to William Tunstall-Pedoe who developed a computer programme, True Knowledge. The programme determined the dullness of the day after being fed some 300 million facts about "people, places, business and events" that made the news.

Using complex algorithms, such as how much one piece of information was linked to others, True Knowledge determined that particular 1950s Sunday to be outstanding in its obscurity.

Mr Tunstall-Pedoe said: "Nobody significant died that day, no major events apparently occurred and, although a typical day in the 20th century has many notable people being born, for some reason that day had only one who might make that claim –
Abdullah Atalar, a Turkish academic.

"The irony is, though, that - having done the calculation - the day is interesting for being exceptionally boring. Unless, that is, you are Abdullah Atalar.

That said plans for a coup d'etat in Yanaon, then a small French colony in India, were also believed to have been hatched on the evening of April 11 1954 but nothing actually happened that night.

So there you have it… What is there to say but wish that there were a few more days like that one!


NB - Professor Abdullah Atalar researches atomic force microscopy and digital integrated circuit design at Bilkent University.