“Worrying is praying for what you don’t want.”
(Ram Dass)
Tuesday 27 May 2008
Widow's Peak
According to a shocking headline in Der Spiegel the other day, the Energy Watch Group does not think that ‘Peak Oil’ - the legendary point where the global oil supply starts to diminish - is still ahead in 2020, where some have speculated before. They think we passed it already, back in 2006.
[My Translation] “...According to the Energy Watch Group, the worldwide maximum supply of oil was already reached in 2006 at 81 million barrels per day. Since then production has fallen back. By 2020 it will be only 58 million barrel. With this, the experts have revised down earlier prognoses massively...”
While the industry-funded International Energy Agency sees supply merrily going up and up, the Energy Watch experts expect no more increases from now on. That is not to say that oil will run out, but that there will be few significant new finds of oil and that demand will continue to outstrip a gradually falling supply.
“...Traders explain the sudden increase in oil prices as being in the framework of daily fluctuations - or they blame the activities of speculators. But doubts about this scenario are growing. ‘Hopes that the “Speculator Bubble” will burst are futile’, says Werner Zittel, one of the authors of the Energy-Watch-Group-Study. In his view higher oil-prices have a real-world explanation - the dwindling of resources...”
According to a picture graphic in another article in Der Spiegel on the same subject, if all the oil known to exist were added to all the oil believed to exist, it would come to just under two hundred and forty-five billion tonnes. This got me thinking. Although my arithmetic is not the best, I was tempted to do a quick shuffle through Internet sources for scientific measures and conversion tables. This leads me to believe that one barrel of crude oil would weigh about 142.80 kilos. A tonne of crude oil would then be about seven barrels. Let’s assume that the world uses about eighty million barrels of crude oil per day (sources vary on this). If so, then the world uses about eleven million, four hundred thousand tonnes of oil per day. Therefore the world has fifty-eight years and eight months of oil left, in total... including all the reserves not yet considered economic to recover. Therefore, the very last drop will be consumed early in 2067.
[My Translation] “...According to the Energy Watch Group, the worldwide maximum supply of oil was already reached in 2006 at 81 million barrels per day. Since then production has fallen back. By 2020 it will be only 58 million barrel. With this, the experts have revised down earlier prognoses massively...”
While the industry-funded International Energy Agency sees supply merrily going up and up, the Energy Watch experts expect no more increases from now on. That is not to say that oil will run out, but that there will be few significant new finds of oil and that demand will continue to outstrip a gradually falling supply.
“...Traders explain the sudden increase in oil prices as being in the framework of daily fluctuations - or they blame the activities of speculators. But doubts about this scenario are growing. ‘Hopes that the “Speculator Bubble” will burst are futile’, says Werner Zittel, one of the authors of the Energy-Watch-Group-Study. In his view higher oil-prices have a real-world explanation - the dwindling of resources...”
According to a picture graphic in another article in Der Spiegel on the same subject, if all the oil known to exist were added to all the oil believed to exist, it would come to just under two hundred and forty-five billion tonnes. This got me thinking. Although my arithmetic is not the best, I was tempted to do a quick shuffle through Internet sources for scientific measures and conversion tables. This leads me to believe that one barrel of crude oil would weigh about 142.80 kilos. A tonne of crude oil would then be about seven barrels. Let’s assume that the world uses about eighty million barrels of crude oil per day (sources vary on this). If so, then the world uses about eleven million, four hundred thousand tonnes of oil per day. Therefore the world has fifty-eight years and eight months of oil left, in total... including all the reserves not yet considered economic to recover. Therefore, the very last drop will be consumed early in 2067.
Monday 26 May 2008
You've come a long way, baby!
I am delighted to hear that we are back on Mars again, especially after a number of disappointing disasters lately, like Britain's flagship mission Beagle 2. Most of all, I am astounded at the march of science.
Back in 1976, NASA landed two robot probes on Mars, Viking I and Viking II. These were simple devices by modern standards. They had three landing pads; a fixed, unmoving platform; a radioisotope thermoelectric generator; a meteorological boon; a radio mast; a robot arm; a scoop for taking soil samples; two mini-labs to test the soil samples for signs of life and a colour camera.
That was then, this is now. Thirty-two years on, Phoenix has every bell and whistle you could want: three landing pads; a fixed, unmoving platform; solar panels; a meteorological boon; a radio mast; a robot arm; a scoop for taking soil samples; one mini-lab to test the soil samples for signs of life and a black-and-white camera. By Vulcan's Hammer, the technological dawn has reached us indeed!
See how their stats stack up:
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf9-2h.gif
http://pal2pal.com/BLOGEE/images/uploads/phoenix_lander_labels.jpg
Oh I know, I'm being too cynical, but, damnit! where's my hi-tech future gone to? Where's HAL? Why aren't any of these devices on Mars?
Why aren't they walking abroad and talking us through what they see? Don't we have the technology to put Robbie the Robot in space yet? Actually, I think we do... (click here to see an amazing video) so why are we still recycling 1970s designs?
Same Bat Cave, Same Bat Belfry
I had not intended to stay until the Sunday, but when invited to extend my visit another day, I was only too delighted to do so. I had mentioned that I had made tentative plans to hook up with my friend D- that afternoon to visit the Royston Cave, but as this was just a few miles down the road, H- and S- and their young son were inspired to go there themselves.
Thus we drove down to the little Hertfordshire town to see this peculiar local feature. I could not contact D- in the end, but left instructions as to where and when he might find us were he to make the trip himself.
Down we went into the earth. The cave, just north of the church, is accessible through a steep passageway carved into the rock, and which reminded me of the narrow tunnel that leads out onto the observation platforms over the Avon Gorge in Bristol.
The cave is man-made, though it was never intended to have an entrance at the bottom, this having been added after its rediscovery in 1742
It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the light and even to see the carvings at all. Most of them have been defaced by nineteenth century graffiti anyway, which makes them hard to distinguish, but so rough-hewn is the cave itself that it is also hard to tell the carvings from the tool-marks from its construction.
The guide was selling a clear message. The relief carvings were evidence of the Knights Templar. They had used the cave as a secret meeting spot, out of sight, where they could practise their pagan and heretical rituals, sacrifices, mumbo and, indeed, jumbo. This was presented as a concrete fact. The town council, which runs the place, even celebrates this ‘fact’ on its website, and seems committed to the belief that this is one of the major Templar artifacts in Britain. I squinted at the chiseled scribbles but could see nothing to suggest their involvement.
The crucial ‘evidence’ was an image of two men sitting on a horse, a certain Templar and Masonic symbol, apparently.
‘We had a Mason in here and he took one look at that,’ the guide said, ‘and he recognised them.’
‘Recognised them as what?’ I asked.
‘Oh, he wouldn’t say,’ the guide replied. ‘They don’t, those Masons. They keep their secrets. My father was in the Brotherhood of Zion and he didn’t give away anything. They fear the chop if they do. But he knew that’s a Masonic sign all right.’
Well, that’s clear proof, isn’t it? I looked again. Not only could I not see any Masonic symbolism in the image, I couldn’t even see a horse. The carving was incomplete. Was that meant to be a tail or a crack in the wall? Who cares? That’s all the proof the Templar fans needed. Were there any other carvings that contained any Templar imagery? No. Just that one. Isn't that enough?
So, no evidence the Templars were anywhere near the place, no evidence they carved any of the images in the cave, no evidence they did anything with it. It all adds up, eh? That’s right. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, no evidence is all the real evidence you need.
The guide indicated a crude image of two adults and what could have been a child next to them.
‘The Holy Family,’ he announced. ‘Or is it? Mary and Joseph? I don’t think so.’
Indeed not. It was instead clear proof that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalen, raised their daughter and trusted the Knights Templar to keep the secret of the Sacred Bloodline. Of course. Holy Dan Brown! Well, blow me down, what did he do next but hold aloft his chief source of research knowledge, The da Vinci Code!
I could see S- was about to walk out on the spot. Or punch him. I was wondering how long it would be before he brought out Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods as well and demonstrated the carvings proved our Mediaeval ancestors had been probed by aliens.
H- was appalled by what we had heard.
‘Knights Templars!’ she said. ‘What nonsense. I’m convinced it was a hermit’s cave.’
‘That makes the most sense,’ I said. ‘They had lots of them in those days. Anchorites were sealed up in caves and things like that. It’s far more likely to be a anchorite cave.’
Anyway, if the Knights Templar had been using it I would have expected them to have got a decent sculptor in to do them. These all look very amateur. H- made a local connection with it all. Some of the images were certainly related to the Bible and the lives of the saints, but some might just as easily have been inspired by the legend of Tom Hickathrift and the Wisbech Giant. This would account for the images of cartwheels, with which Tom defeated the giant. But who can tell? The carvings look like the work of numerous, untutored hands, with a lot of time on them: in other words, hermits and anchorites.
For more information on hermits and anchorites in the Middle Ages:
http://www.willinghamchurch.org/Lander/Lander.htm
For Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews’ scholarly debunking of the Templars connection in Royston:
http://www.badarchaeology.net/conspiracy/royston_cave.php
For the Templar-obsessed “authorised” version, but with fine images:
http://www.detecting.org.uk/html/Royston_Cave-A_lost_cave_rediscovered.html
UPDATE:
A friend writes that a shell grotto in Margate has remarkably similarities with my cave, "mostly in that during the process of rediscovery a small boy was sent down on a rope. A symbol of fertility??"
http://www.shellgrotto.co.uk
I had a look for some more and turned up this rather interesting page:
"In 1570 the historian William Lambarde wrote in his 'Perambulations of Kent': '...There are to be seen ... near this town ... sundry artificial caves or holes in the earth, whereof some have ten, some fifteen and some twenty fathoms in depth: at the mouth (and thence downward) narrow, like the tunnell of a chimney or passage of a well: but in the bottom large, and of great receipt: insomuch as some of them have sundry rooms (or partitions) one within another, strongly vaulted, and supported with pillars of chalk, and, in the opinion of the inhabitants, these were in former times digged, as well for the use of the chalk towards building, as for to marle their arable lands therewith…'
Lambarde was describing the excavations which have become known as deneholes. The term denehole (or dene-hole, dene hole or danehole) is semi-modern in usage, the earlier writers on the subject describing them as 'pits'. The particular holes mentioned above were in Stankey Wood near Bexley and Crayford..."
The shape of these 'Deneholes' are astonishingly similar to that of the Royston Cave, I have to say.
Tuesday 6 May 2008
Spray Mount
Last night, delightful evening with M- and her new friends H- and P- to the South Bank. I had heard about this Banksy exhibition that was on - there was a line about it on the BBC website - but I probably wouldn’t have bothered going down had she not suggested it. I have been sceptical about Banksy, but more of that later.
The holiday was the first time in a long while that we have seen a real degree of sun in this country, and the chance to walk about in light clothes and enjoy sitting outside. The South Bank is a great place for people watching, and while we were waiting for P- to turn up. Dressing up was happening again. Home-made fashions were out and about.
‘It all looks very 70s tonight,’ I said.
‘It’s a very 70s time in fashion now,’ M- said.
A little girl in brilliant pink shoes won approval, but the contingent of neo-punks with scalp tattoos got the thumbs down.
‘Ill-advised retro,’ I said.
‘That’s not retro,’ M- said, ‘that’s ret-wrong!’
A man strode past in a brown suede baseball jacket, a fixed stare on his face, a brown beard and fuzz of hair, looking a little like Michael Landon in I Was A Teenage Werewolf but more like...
‘Carlos the Jackal,’ I said. ‘He looks like he can’t move his head separate from his body.’
‘He gets the prize for nutter of the day,’ M- said.
Top marks to a girl in a fabulous, layered Kansas Dorothy dress, a green-haired girl carrying a large Garfield doll (all right, that was a majority decision) and another who had every shade of blue atop her stiletto heels, but the walk to make it work.
‘She could wear anything with that walk,’ M- said.
A man dressed almost exactly like Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man did not go down so well with our jury.
‘There is a New York magazine that does this as a feature,’ I said.
‘Vice Dos and Don’ts,’ H- said. ‘I know it.’
‘Did you know you can get Dos and Don’ts action figures now?’ I asked. ‘Only in the States, though.’
By the time P- arrived, the crowd to see the Banksy exhibition had dwindled down a little, but was still amazingly long. The show was in an archway under the old Eurostar terminal, but the queue was corralled into a tight snake. I was unsurprised to find The Retwrongs and Demolition Man in the line with us, but also a startling Pete Doherty look-alike. Fatter than the real one, as H- pointed out at once, but he had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to resemble his idle idol.
I was impressed by the first piece - a row of Campbell’s Tomato Soup cans with aerosol tops on them, although our fellow visitors were perplexed by the significance.
But the art in general? Weeeell. Remember the ‘Tea Break’ cartoons the Daily Mirror used to run next to the Old Codgers column? They always had a man on a desert island, a secretary confused by some new office gizmo, a belligerent mother-in-law or a drink-driving husband. Well, to me a lot of Britart is like those cartoons. Too much of it is like a visual joke. You look at it and you go, “tee hee”, and move on.
Sarah Lucas fits that bill, in my books. See this fried breakfast? See it? Yeah? It’s a breakfast, right? All greasy sausages and eggs? Well look at it upside down and, you know... doesn’t it look a bit like a set of female genitalia! How we laughed! But once you’ve got the joke, what more has it to say?
Now, the thing I have about Banksy is the same kind of thing I have with Britart in general. I get the joke... now what? A great many of the graffiti works were parodies of familiar paintings, copies of iD and Face covers from the 1980s or visual jokes of some description or other. But, in the end, I was impressed with the exhibition. It won me over. I had expected just an archway lockup spray-painted to amuse, but this was an entire street and Banksy and his pals had turned the whole stretch into a vast installation, complete with cars - crashed and submerged into the asphalt - a piano, an artificial beach, and an ice-cream van. They’d put a gigatonne of effort into this and it was an on-going project. There were still people spray-painting the next section as we watched. What will happen to it? Hard to say, but there are images from the exhibition well taken by a visitor and posted on their blog for you to look at until H- gets his up (he had a very professional lens on his camera, so I’m expecting fine things from him).
The holiday was the first time in a long while that we have seen a real degree of sun in this country, and the chance to walk about in light clothes and enjoy sitting outside. The South Bank is a great place for people watching, and while we were waiting for P- to turn up. Dressing up was happening again. Home-made fashions were out and about.
‘It all looks very 70s tonight,’ I said.
‘It’s a very 70s time in fashion now,’ M- said.
A little girl in brilliant pink shoes won approval, but the contingent of neo-punks with scalp tattoos got the thumbs down.
‘Ill-advised retro,’ I said.
‘That’s not retro,’ M- said, ‘that’s ret-wrong!’
A man strode past in a brown suede baseball jacket, a fixed stare on his face, a brown beard and fuzz of hair, looking a little like Michael Landon in I Was A Teenage Werewolf but more like...
‘Carlos the Jackal,’ I said. ‘He looks like he can’t move his head separate from his body.’
‘He gets the prize for nutter of the day,’ M- said.
Top marks to a girl in a fabulous, layered Kansas Dorothy dress, a green-haired girl carrying a large Garfield doll (all right, that was a majority decision) and another who had every shade of blue atop her stiletto heels, but the walk to make it work.
‘She could wear anything with that walk,’ M- said.
A man dressed almost exactly like Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man did not go down so well with our jury.
‘There is a New York magazine that does this as a feature,’ I said.
‘Vice Dos and Don’ts,’ H- said. ‘I know it.’
‘Did you know you can get Dos and Don’ts action figures now?’ I asked. ‘Only in the States, though.’
By the time P- arrived, the crowd to see the Banksy exhibition had dwindled down a little, but was still amazingly long. The show was in an archway under the old Eurostar terminal, but the queue was corralled into a tight snake. I was unsurprised to find The Retwrongs and Demolition Man in the line with us, but also a startling Pete Doherty look-alike. Fatter than the real one, as H- pointed out at once, but he had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to resemble his idle idol.
I was impressed by the first piece - a row of Campbell’s Tomato Soup cans with aerosol tops on them, although our fellow visitors were perplexed by the significance.
But the art in general? Weeeell. Remember the ‘Tea Break’ cartoons the Daily Mirror used to run next to the Old Codgers column? They always had a man on a desert island, a secretary confused by some new office gizmo, a belligerent mother-in-law or a drink-driving husband. Well, to me a lot of Britart is like those cartoons. Too much of it is like a visual joke. You look at it and you go, “tee hee”, and move on.
Sarah Lucas fits that bill, in my books. See this fried breakfast? See it? Yeah? It’s a breakfast, right? All greasy sausages and eggs? Well look at it upside down and, you know... doesn’t it look a bit like a set of female genitalia! How we laughed! But once you’ve got the joke, what more has it to say?
Now, the thing I have about Banksy is the same kind of thing I have with Britart in general. I get the joke... now what? A great many of the graffiti works were parodies of familiar paintings, copies of iD and Face covers from the 1980s or visual jokes of some description or other. But, in the end, I was impressed with the exhibition. It won me over. I had expected just an archway lockup spray-painted to amuse, but this was an entire street and Banksy and his pals had turned the whole stretch into a vast installation, complete with cars - crashed and submerged into the asphalt - a piano, an artificial beach, and an ice-cream van. They’d put a gigatonne of effort into this and it was an on-going project. There were still people spray-painting the next section as we watched. What will happen to it? Hard to say, but there are images from the exhibition well taken by a visitor and posted on their blog for you to look at until H- gets his up (he had a very professional lens on his camera, so I’m expecting fine things from him).
Saturday 3 May 2008
En stor liten dame fra Sandnes
Golly - what a week for celebrated deaths. After Albert Hofmann and Humphrey Lyttleton going, I couldn't leave the passing of Julie Ege without comment. A fixture in saucy British movies of the 1970s, along with Ingrid Pitt one of the foremost Scandinavian Hammer Horror scream queens, it seems almost improper that she should be gone already. Click here to see the Norwegian obituary [Julie Ege døde tirsdag. Hun ble 64 år gammel. = Julie Ege died on Tuesday. She was 64 years old]
The obit makes much of her small town origins. Born in Sandnes, she's much loved there, as their primary (if not only) celebrity. Of course, Sandnes sounds like an English place-name (we'd spell it with two esses of course) and that's a sign of our shared Viking past.
On a brighter note, there is some nicely nutty news from Norway too. Today's papers over there are dominated by an art installation underway across the north.
Campingkvinner på vei (The caravan-women are on the way!)
Kunstner Marit Benthe Norheim har laget fem campingvogner der ulike kvinnefigurer vokser ut av taket. Klokken 09.30 lørdag startet ferden nordover for de fire meter høye rullende installasjonene.
= Artist Marit Benthe Norheim has made five different female figures out of wax and put them on caravans. At 09.30 on Saturday, four meter high rolling installations start their trip northwards [from Hjørring to Stavanger]...
For a detailed picture of the caravan in the studio, click this link here. What's it about? Not really sure. There's little in the way of explanation, save for the information that the five sculptures have separate names («Beskytteren», «Flyktningen», «Bruden», «Camping-Mama» and «Sirene») but what it means is up to the viewers, I would say.
The obit makes much of her small town origins. Born in Sandnes, she's much loved there, as their primary (if not only) celebrity. Of course, Sandnes sounds like an English place-name (we'd spell it with two esses of course) and that's a sign of our shared Viking past.
On a brighter note, there is some nicely nutty news from Norway too. Today's papers over there are dominated by an art installation underway across the north.
Campingkvinner på vei (The caravan-women are on the way!)
Kunstner Marit Benthe Norheim har laget fem campingvogner der ulike kvinnefigurer vokser ut av taket. Klokken 09.30 lørdag startet ferden nordover for de fire meter høye rullende installasjonene.
= Artist Marit Benthe Norheim has made five different female figures out of wax and put them on caravans. At 09.30 on Saturday, four meter high rolling installations start their trip northwards [from Hjørring to Stavanger]...
For a detailed picture of the caravan in the studio, click this link here. What's it about? Not really sure. There's little in the way of explanation, save for the information that the five sculptures have separate names («Beskytteren», «Flyktningen», «Bruden», «Camping-Mama» and «Sirene») but what it means is up to the viewers, I would say.
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