Thane Plambeck

From an Interview with Ange Mlinko

Aesthetics dominate in Morocco. As opposed to functional boring America, whose "economical" design & architecture are no more interesting than any Communist-bloc country’s! Here, surfaces are traced with koranic inscription and hypnotic designs — ceilings, floors, walls, fabrics. I find it very amenable. I’ve always preferred poetry to be like this — semantically & rhythmically brimming over. I’m reading Proust right now and finding it complementary to Moorish art; the complex sentences, the endless paragraphs, the precision and mesmerization.

While I adore the music, I haven’t yet been able to incorporate that long droney sound into my work; my mind still thinks in short song structures. But that may come later. Incidentally, all too often restaurants play western pop rather than Arabic music, which makes me mental. Is there any corner of the planet where I can escape "Candle in the Wind"? Can any sane person tolerate this?

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Interesting statistic

This excerpt from an article in today's NYT really brought home for me the changes afoot in the US automobile industry:

Donald Grimes, an economist at the University of Michigan, is forecasting the lowest [US automobile] sales for the driving-age population this year since 1970.

From 1970 to 2001, there were 0.76 vehicles sold per driver in the United States. Now that figure has dropped to 0.4 vehicles per driver, and he does not see much of a rebound in coming years.

The swift decline has spooked the industry. “I don’t think there has ever been a period in our history like this,” Josephine Cooper, Toyota's group vice president for government and industry affairs, said of her company, which lost $7.1 billion in the first three months of the year. “It is very, very sobering.”

From .76 per driver throughout a thirty year period to just .4 per driver now?  I find that hard to believe, but if it's true, it's amazing.

Coming soon: Laser blasting on Mars

The next Mars rover, the somewhat boringly named "Mars Science Laboratory", to be launched in 2011, will be packing a laser that can blast rock as far away as 9 meters.  It will then look at what it blasted and figure out what it shot:

The LIBS instrument uses powerful laser pulses, focused on a small spot on target rock and soil samples within 9 m of the rover, to ablate atoms and ions in electronically excited states from which they decay, producing light-emitting plasma. The power density needed for LIBS is >10 MW/mm2, which is produced on a spot in the range of 100-800 micrometer diameter using focused, ~17 mJ laser pulses of 5 nanoseconds duration at 1067 nm. The plasma light is collected by a 110 mm diameter telescope and focused onto the end of a fiber optic cable. The fiber carries the light to three dispersive spectrometers which record the spectra over a range of 240-800 nm at resolutions from 0.09 to 0.30 nm in 6144 channels. The spectra consist of emission lines of elements present in the samples. Typical rock and soil analyses yield detectable quantities of Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, K, Ti, Mn, Fe, H, C, O, Li, Sr, and Ba. Other elements often seen in soils and rocks on Earth include S, N, P, Be, Ni, Zr, Zn, Cu, Rb, and Cs. It is anticipated that 50-75 laser pulses will be required achieve the desired 10% accuracy for major elements at 9 m distance...

"Mars Attacks" --- hah!  We're going to be the first to bring the weapons.

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Owen & Amalia

IMG_9259, originally uploaded by thane.

This photo is already over three years old

IMG_9261, originally uploaded by thane.

Too sad

This Means Something. This is Important.

This Means Something. This is Important., originally uploaded by spacesick.

Surveying the grim landscape of the Crap Faire

Surveying the grim landscape of the Crap Faire, originally uploaded by thane.

Gloria hates this hat.

Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr

Over 15 years ago, I started a file of newspaper clipping and notes about Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian writer, environmentalist and tribal organizer who was hanged by the Abacha regime in November 1995. 

Saro-Wiwa organized the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni people, a group of 500,000 or so who lived in the oil-rich but poor Ogoni region of Nigeria.

He'd made excellent progress and was starting to bring some real heat on Royal Dutch Shell at the time he was hanged along with other organizers.  Here's some of what he said to the tribunal that was about to sentence him

"I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial and it is as well that it is represented by counsel said to be holding a watching brief. The Company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come and the lessons learnt here may prove useful to it for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the Company has waged in the Delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war be duly punished. The crime of the Company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished."

Anyway, these events really pissed me off at the time, but it all rapidly dropped away in the news, or at least in the news I read.  I had no doubt from my following of the story over several years that Shell Oil was the one that should have been punished, but they seemed to get away with it. I stuck the file in a back drawer.

A couple of months ago, cleaning my office, I found the file folder stuffed with clippings again, and almost threw it away.    I had long ago stopped being interested in Nigeria very much, although I did read a few more books about it, and other African countries, each of which is screwed up in some fashion.  I sort of gave up on it, not that I actually lifted a finger to help, either.  I tend to keep score on these sort of things, since somehow the injustice of it just sticks to me.   I don't do anything, but it's easy for me to nurse a grudge, even for many years. 

Now I read in the NYTimes that Ken Saro-Wiwa JUNIOR, whom I've never heard of, is making some real progress with bring Royal Dutch Shell to account.

Bravo! 

Another clipping to add to the file

Relativity problem, or how time flies when you're walking on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise

[ abridged from problem 3.22 on pg 76 of wolfgang rindler's relativity ]

A rocket moves from in an inertial frame S with constant proper acceleration 9.8 m/s^2 (thus giving maximum comfort to its passengers).  Find its Lorentz factor relative to S when its own clock indicates times tau = 1 day, 1 year, 10 years [...] If the rocket accelerates for 10 years of its own time, then decelerates for 10 years, and then repeats the whole maneuver in the reverse direction, what is the total time elapsed in S during the rocket's absence?

[ answer: 44,052 years]

Villa Capri

Villa Capri, originally uploaded by epmd.

Outside, on average

Outside, on average, originally uploaded by Seb Przd.

Epidemia de Pánico / Panic Epidemic

Epidemia de Pánico / Panic Epidemy, originally uploaded by Eneas.

Conversation over milkshakes

GLORIA:  I watched the new Taylor Swift video today.

COLE: They've played that at diving.

THANE: Who?  Taylor Swift?

GLORIA:  Yes.  She was dating one of the Jonas Brothers.

THANE:  Taylor Swift?  That's a famous person---someone I should know?  I think I've heard of the Jonas Brothers --- they were in the New York Times.

GLORIA: If you knew anything, yes, you'd know who she is.

THANE: I don't.  I mean, if I said --- making up the name of someone --- "Hey, have you heard the new Nick Redwood song,"  would you think, "Hmm---Nick Redwood---what the hell is he talking about?"  Or would you think instead, as I do, "Oh no, another pop star I've never heard of"  ?

GLORIA:  I know all the pop stars.  I'm aware of the environment I live in.

THANE:  That's the issue I guess.