Personal Blogs

I'll keep my hair long

To feel the wind blow through it.

So many lost thoughts.

Some kinds of spider can communicate with others of their species (for threat or courtship) by vibrations, as I've tried to sketch in Fig 1 below.

However they can't, as far as I know, hear sound that is carried through the air, in the way many land dwelling animals do.

But research suggests one spider does use sound indirectly, in a way that reminds me a bit of the "baked bean tin telephone'.

You may know this, but if not, the idea of this improvised communication device is you get two empty tin cans, punch a small hole through the base of each, and then use a string knotted at both ends to connect the cans. The cans are held so the string is tight and then one person holds their can to their mouth, the person at the other end holds their can to their ear. When the first person speaks quietly, the listener can hear them, even over some distance.

This works because sound at one end is converted into vibrations in the string and at the receiving end the tin can resonates, and the vibration becomes audible sound again.

The "purring wolf spider" reverses the baked bean tin trick. One spider stands on a leaf (I think it needs to be dead so it will rustle) and generates vibrations, and vibrating the dry leaf produces sound (which is audible to humans).

The sound causes nearby leaves to resonate in sympathy, and a spider standing on one will feel the vibrations, Fig 2.

Where does Prufrock come in? Well it seems the female spiders on their leaves are the most responsive to the sound and so it may be a courtship song.

Learn more here.

Toward home I paused.

Smelling lilac.

Everyone has a last summer.

Stone tools seem to go back further than we realised. There's a BBC post about it here but personally I think the Nature abstract puts the facts very well.

Now it's Spring

That old cat is out again.

Guarding his lane.

About five years ago, when traveling, I first heard "Spiegel im Spieigel". Perhaps you will know it but I didn't then.

Back home I learned it is by Arvo Pärt, a composer from Estonia. It is a minimalist piece, for solo piano and violin. Its peace and tranquility have made it famous. I listen to it most days.

It was featured in BBC 4 Radio program "Download this audio clip.Audio player: p02qhsdc.mp3

I've lost so many things

But got that scarf back.

Writing that fish can sing reminded me that mice also sing.

Reprised from this blog 2 April 2010 here is a clip of a mouse singing. This is a serenade to a female mouse.

Click hereAudio player: audioS1.mp3

It was at a much higher pitch originally and has been adjusted down to a range suitable for human ears.

Go to bed old man.

Who cares anyway?

All this blah blah blah about winter.

I wrote before about Shakespeare's sonnet 73

is an example. In nine words (and 10 syllables) we are carried from "yellow leaves" (the poet lets us know it's autumn, a time of decay) through "or none" (everything is gone) to "or few" (not quite none, but going).

This economy is extraordinary, as is the whole poem with its metaphor of the seasons, the time of day, and the stages of a human life, all rolled into one, and the final plea to hold on tightly against the flickering light.

So my earlier and inadequate attempt to capture the sonnet in a Haiku needs some more work.

Somewhere Summer crossed into Autumn.

And then I felt Winter's bite.

A tooth fell out.

In the middle ages - it is said - there was such a thing as trial by ordeal.

Simply put (in the law of Athelstan, ruler of England 924 to 927)

1. You are accused of a crime

2. You need to prove you are innocent

3. You plunge one hand in boiling water and retrieve a stone from the bottom of the vessel.

There's a tariff. 1 accuser = up to the wrist. 3 accusers = up to the elbow.

If your burns started to heal after three days then you are judged innocent.

Ironically, Athelstan means "noble stone".

If this was ever really applied then I can't conceal my contempt for such a way of thinking.  How could anyone even begin to believe (or perhaps just cynically suggest to others) that such a process would reveal truth?

In the modern age a physicist reinvented this idea of ordeal, but he was not on trial. The accusation went the other way now. Science and truth were attacking irrationality and fear. The accuser - Jearl Walker - plunged his hand into not just boiling water but molten lead, to support rational thought.

Jearl Walker wrote a column in Scientific American for many years. I always read it eagerly. I remember well, after perhaps 30 years, his description of how he thought the laws of physics would let him plunge a hand into molten lead without injury.

He said something like (from half a life-time's recollection) "I checked my calculations one final time, and they were correct. I felt a little fear, but trusted science, went ahead - and science was right was right, as I thought it would be."

A test of faith.

Jearl Walker is alive and well. You can see his demonstration of faith repeated here. Do watch.

Remember to spit on your finger before you test your iron!

If you travel back in time to 10th century England and are subjected to trial by ordeal, spitting on you hands won't work of course. I'm not sure what would.

I'm not quite prepared.

So Snail you're the one I trust

To carry my cheque up the mountain.