Proceedings of the Royal Society

Free data broadcaster & gauge kit.

2009-06-29T15:58:00.006-04:00

After much procrastination, I am getting around to publicising my latest development, a data broadcaster and receiving device, to be used for whatever projects it may benefit.

I am making these implements free -- both free-of-charge, and freely-modifiable -- in the hopes that they may further the progress of science and industry in Caledon and like-minded communities.

A link to the kit is found at the end of this posting.

INTRODUCTION.

This kit contains two items: a prim scripted to transmit an integer (in degrees, 0-360) on a certain channel, and a receiver contained in a circular gauge. The gauge prim has its texture offset changed such that it indicates the value received (normalised to percentage, in this case).

The scripts and texture are released free of charge, and as open-source. Please improve and extend upon it.

Figure 1. Data transmitter in the path of a mushroom-eating juvenile plesiosaur (Cryptoclidus sp.).

APPLICATION.

Users will wish to replace the data transmitter script with something appropriate to their own work. Out of the box, the transmitter when touched generates a random number representing degrees, converts the floating point result into a string, and broadcasts that string (via llSay) on a channel defined in the script. The script in the receiver (the dial itself, actually) listens on the defined channel for a string. The string is then converted to a floating point value, and the texture offset is changed by value/360 (again, representing degrees).

Must one use degrees? Of course not. The texture offset parameter is a 0.0 to 1.0 range, so a decimal approach is actually simpler than the degree business. (Actually, the texture offset is -1.0 to +1.0; that is, 0 to 1 in both 'forward' and 'backward' directions.)

Why, then, degrees? A reasonable question. The project included the notion of not just changing the texture offset, but actually rotating the dial prim around its Z axis, as an actual dial would do in Real Life. In that case, the state of the dial in degrees (think compass on a ship's binnacle) would be the ideal currency for transmitting. Unfortunately, as your writer did not read maths or physics at university, all that work involving rotations and Euler representations of quaternions had to give way to the more expedient -- and graceful -- method of simply shifting the texture around.

Figure 2. Scientist at leisure outside a public house, viewing transmitted data on the receiving device.

POSSIBLE USES.

The list here is fairly large, limited only by imagination (and the whims of LSL). In short, any programmed system involving multiple objects can use this system to transmit and display numeric data in an analogue fashion. The initially-intended audience consists of steampunk builders, mad scientists, tinkerers, and anyone wishing to dabble in an old-fashioned method of data display.

The current broadcasting method, llSay, has its own caveats. The LSL wiki page on the function is recommended reading. (http://www.lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=llSay)

IMPROVEMENTS.

The author will be happy to hear any suggestions, critiques, and constructive criticism related to this system. Users are asked not to keep their derivative creations hidden under their hats, but rather, to share them with the community. These scripts were not created by an expert, so any formative feedback will be taken in the manner in which it was given.

Figure 3. The location of the items in the offices of the Royal Society.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Tamrannoch/133/23/23

Movement of objects between virtual worlds.

2009-06-22T20:50:00.005-04:00

In another forum I recently commented upon my success in moving objects from SecondLife into an OpenSim environment, namely, the one on a second machine in my home. For those readers who wish to experience some of this excitement themselves, I offer this recipe.

1. Build something in SL. Go in to 'edit mode', select all the prims in the object, right-click 'take'. Give the resulting inventory item a name.

2. Log out of SL.

3. Download an alternate viewer which allows for object import and export. I used the Meerkat Viewer. Install the new viewer.

4. Log back in to SL. Go to 'edit mode' again, and then rez the object from step no.1 above. Right-click, 'more', 'more', and then select 'export'. Save to your desktop or whereever; an .XML file will be created.

5. Be patient; the viewer will now download the object's description, and each of the textures associated with the object. A progress message will appear; "23 textures remaining..." or somesuch.

6. Once completed, log out of SL.

7. Now, restart the Meerkat viewer, and log in to the alternate grid of your choice. Or, as I did, log in to your very own OpenSim enviroment at home. N.b.: the installation and configuration of one's own OpenSim system is well-beyond the scope of this writing. I encourage interested parties to read the OpenSim documentation at least twice, possibly with a cuppa to aid in concentration.

8. Now that you are logged in to the alternative grid, simply choose 'import' from the 'file' menu, et voilà! You have imported the build from SL to OpenSim.

Caveats:
1. Meerkat only transfers prims and their textures. No scripts are copied over! Those must be copied-and-pasted by hand.
2. The viewer respects permissions, and will only allow the export of items for which you have 'transfer' permission. This is not copybot!
3. Be patient with the import speed. Despite the horrid performance of the LL servers of late, OpenSim does not yet boast any speed records for asset server function, even on a dedicated single machine.

Here is the result, seen in a snapshot from my local OpenSim recreation of Winterfell Eventide, before I had to give it up in the Great Void Sim Debacle of 2008. The entire structure was imported in a single maneuvre. Still in edit mode, I moved the collection of objects to the appropriate coordinates, then left edit mode. I will need to find trees to replace the wonderful Heart Garden Centre birch trees in SL, and bring over my Tunguska stumps &c. to finish the look. But the proof of concept is sound.

Here are some views of Eventide before my exile:

Anyone wishing additional details may contact me at their convenience.

Regards,

Katya.

From the real Proceedings: Dangers of Being a Female Spider.

2009-04-30T14:03:00.004-04:00

Occasionally, one finds an article outside of one's field of interest, yet requiring attention. This is one of those articles:

Řezáč M. The spider Harpactea sadistica: co-evolution of traumatic insemination and complex female genital morphology in spiders. Proc. R. Soc. B. Published online before print. April 29, 2009, doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.0104

Abstract available here.

This comes via Proceedings "B", the biological sciences journal of the Royal Society in London. (Not to be confused with the Caledonian institution of a similar name.)

Readers with reasonable short-term memory may recall a similar story regarding the mating practices of giant squids, referred to in a prior posting ("Rough sex at 40,000 leagues under the sea.")

Once again, allow me to state my great joy in being a mammal.

--

More available from the BBC: "Spider sex violent but effective."

Good news for catgirls and evil tiny kitties alike.

2009-04-04T11:49:00.002-04:00

In a recently-published article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison show that cats' central nervous system can repair itself, restoring function lost to neurological disease.

Duncan ID, Brower A, Kondo Y, Curlee JF Jr, Schultz RD.
Extensive remyelination of the CNS leads to functional recovery.
Proc Nat Acad Sci 2009; published online before print April 2, 2009.
doi:10.1073/pnas.0812500106. (link goes to the abstract; full text available to subscribers)

A less-weighty discussion of the paper is found at Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090330200722.htm

This, to me, is brilliant news, especially for the felines among us.

Catgirls: have you noted a decrease in your mental faculties after long sessions of dancing and catnip exposure?

Evil Tiny Kitties: have you longed for a way to reverse the effects of all those neurotoxin experiments gone terribly wrong?

I'm happy to post any anecdotal results to add to the literature.

The Hapmouche Event: Unexplained phenomena in Caledon-on-Sea.

2009-03-26T22:08:00.006-04:00

(Editor's note: a particular confluence of second- and first-life projects and deadlines have left me a bit behind on keeping up with scientific goings-on. My apologies to readers who have been left adrift without new reading material from the Proceedings. Fortunately, the event described below forced me to again pay proper attention to current happenings.)

Mr Ray Hapmouche forwarded me a curious note earlier this week:

Dear Dr. Nicholas,

I am writing you on the advice of Sir Edward Pearce. It was his opinion the the Royal Society would be best suited to investigate what has occured at my home in Caledon on Sea. Sometime on the 21st of March a flying vehicle of some sort crashed into my beloved home "Portobello". There is very little left of my home or belongings, but there is quite a lot left of the mysterious craft.
Sir Edward, Christine McAllister, and myself were unable to identify the origins of the craft. I am asking the Society to investigate in the name of science and also to ascertain if this vehicle is a threat to Caledon's security.
My home is located in Caledon-on-Sea, 216, 73, 23.

Thank You for Your Time,

MrRay Hapmouche

A most disturbing event, to be sure. No time to waste, then, in investigating the scene of destruction. Unfortunately, Lady Eva seems to be preternaturally preoccupied with decorating her new castle, and Prof. Krogstad obliquely mentioned being deep in preparation for the World Beard and Moustache Championships.

Therefore, I can only present some initial findings; a fuller investigation will have to wait for the return of my sous-scientists.

1 Synoptic view of the destruction.

Clearly a goodly amount of energy expended in the craft's crash - enough to destroy most of Mr Hapmouche's beloved home.

2 The bisected craft. Note lack of charring around crater site.

An interesting find, this: no evidence of thermal (or similar) destruction around the crater. Definite displacement of the soil from the impact, though. Odd red glow from inside the craft.

3 Aft view of the craft. Derby in foreground for scale.

The craft split amidships; unclear if this was the intended opening method (if the craft should open at all), or the result of the excess structural loading at impact.

4 Closest photo attempted. Unusual plaque on hull.

And here is the most interesting bit: an engraved plaque on the hull. Clearly sturdy enough to survive what appears to be an impromptu landing. Symbol-based message; heiroglyphs, or an attempt at meta-language communication?

5 Obvious combustion now visible from Mt Caledon vantage.

Another interesting development. My initial approach to the site was tentative, as there was nothing aflame... yet. Perhaps a non-combustion propulsion system (and with what side-effects to the human body?). But upon my heading back towards Tamrannoch, a wash of heat behind me, and the craft was on fire. This view was from Mt Caledon, with a large safety margin between myself and the conflagration.

Once my wayward comrades return from their own pass-times, we shall be able to put in honest efforts with what I have labeled as the Hapmouche Event.

200+ years ago in the real Proceedings

2009-02-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

The Royal Society (the scientific academy of the UK, not the Second Life organisation of a similar name) have been publishing scientific findings since 1665. That its journals have hosted an astounding array of seminal discoveries is praise enough, but there is new reason to laud on the Society.

The publishing section (curiously named "Royal Society Publishing") announced that until the end of March 2009, all content (even back to 1665) is open to the public, to celebrate their move to a new content-delivery system.

All content free for another month: I shall pause for a moment to allow my readership to catch its collective breath.

Their understated list "Featured Articles" has a few entries from Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley, Alexander Volta, Edward Jenner, and J. Clerk Maxwell.

Naturally, I dove in to catch up on some back-reading.

In doing so, I came across several entries that seemed apropos given the recent increase in interest in minerals and metallurgy across the Commonwealth associated with the East Avaria Company goings-on.

John Hawkins
Account of the Discovery of Silver in Herland Copper Mine.
Proc. R. Soc. Lond. January 1, 1800 1:42-43.

Of a Peculiar Lead-Ore of Germany, and the Use Thereof.
Phil. Trans. January 1, 1665 1:10-11.

Charles Hatchett
An Analysis of a Mineral Substance from North America,
Containing a Metal Hitherto Unknown.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. January 1, 1802 92:49-66.
(open the image for a better view, or follow this link to the full-text PDF)

I suspect now I must comb all the back issues for information on what one can do with mushrooms, as well.

Neanderthal music, heard 30,000 years too late.

2009-02-10T18:00:00.000-05:00

As part of the exhibition 'Origins of Early Wales', the National Museum Wales (Amgueddfa Cymru) commissioned an extraordinary composition: music of the Neanderthals. Musician Simon Thorne produced a 75-minute work of what he reckoned Neanderthal vocal and instrumental music sounded like.

Granted, we shall never truly know exactly what the Neanderthals sounded like*, but Mr Thorne has given us an intriguing reconstruction. His work is bolstered by findings in a couple of recent books concerning the topic (admittedly, a niche topic).

The Singing Neanderthals
The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body
Steven Mithen, Harvard University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-674-02192-1

The Mind in The Cave
Consciousness and the Origins of Art
David Lewis-Williams, Thames & Hudson, 2004. ISBN 0-500-28465-2

Results from the ongoing sequencing of the Neanderthal genome suggest that they share a conserved version of the FOXP2 gene, first speculated to spread through the Homo genus before the divergence of the species. The FOXP2 gene is thought to be closely associated with speech, and interested readers should read the linked references for further information. In short, FOXP2 confers some part of the vocal phenotype we humans enjoy.

As an amateur linguist, I found it thrilling to imagine the story of Beowulf being told around Anglo-Saxon hearths circa 500 A.D., and am even further intrigued by the concept of reconstructions of a Proto-Indo-European language, the language spoken 5 to 10 thousand years ago which gave birth to a majority of extant world languages today.

Imagine, then, my excitement at the possibility of hearing -- even just for 'show' -- singing from 30,000 years ago. The mind boggles, and I shall require a moment to recuperate afterwards.

--
* I have often accused my dear sister Sophie of sounding like a cavewoman when she would sing in the shower, but I suspect that's just a bit of sibling rivalry at work.
--
Neanderthal picture attribution is here.

The Avarian Expedition: initial notes

2009-02-01T21:14:00.004-05:00

I have received this via notecard from Prof Krogstad, who has travelled to Avaria and begun to examine the flora and fauna, looking for connexions to emerging Caledonian specimens.

This is all I have so far: the notecard, and a photograph. When pressed for more information, he cited some important sporting event as the reason he was out-of-world, and could not be bothered for additional discussion.

Avaria Sav
local night; 1445 - 1515 SLT
occasional rain showers
sickle tool

130, 122
large branch, branch, dandelion

151, 51
wild onion

167, 178
garlic, large branch

154, 190
grass sheaf, chevril

112, 190
basil, wild beet

101, 152
sorrel

121, 150
bark chunk, sorrel, wild turnip

204, 154
branch, grass sheaf, large branch

225, 142
wild carrots, branch

228, 142
large branch, wild turnip

235, 168
bark chunk, garlic

241, 223
branch, bark chunk, grass sheaf

notes:
(1) HUD "locator" button turns from green to "?" when each harvest site empty
(2) all of these are labelled as one use only
(3) need to check sites out during local daylight

By my reckoning, Prof Krogstad found the basis for an interesting rustic stew, or the ex-Deutsche Demokratische Republik flag with the sickle and wheat sheath.

Ms Tanarian Davies has taken the lead in organising information on the Avarian discoveries, and I recommend her journal to you for additional reading.

By the look of things, a wealth of discoveries are poised for the, well, discovery. Knowledge of the Avarian biome will advance our understanding of the natural resources of Our Fair Caledon.

Advertisement: New Snow-Making Equipment

2009-01-18T22:39:00.006-05:00

If you are one of the many (dozens?) of persons who love the beauty of snow -- and who doesn't down deep inside, really? -- the Royal Society for the Advancement of Knowledge in the Natural Sciences is proud to offer you new SNOW-MAKING EQUIPMENT.

Derived from the still-secret technology behind the Loch Avie Cryogenic Seasonal Support System, this personal-sized snow-making device is IDEAL for use around your home, office, or lair.
This kit offers one water pump, copyable copper piping, and as many copies of the REVOLUTIONARY small-sized snow blower as you care to have.

To complete the effect, which numerous persons have called EXTRAORDINARY, your are provided, gratis, with a pile of manufactured snow, with full mod- and copy- permissions.
In no time at all, the discerning snow enthusiast can push back the forces of nature, and re-claim the charm of winter the whole year 'round!

A demonstration model has been set up in Caledon Tamrannoch where one can MARVEL at this new technological wonder.
This apparatus is offered for the reasonable price of L$ 100, which is roughly $US 0.41, or € 0,31, or £ 0.26.

Why not make this small investment in your PEACE OF MIND, knowing that winter (or some semblance of it) will always be at your fingertips?

Regards,

Kate Nicholas, FRS

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Tamrannoch/121/16/22

Have Gunbunnies Met Their Match? Zoology Update.

2009-01-09T09:21:00.008-05:00

The BBC are reporting today on a particularly rare creature, the Hispaniolan solenodon, which has as its main distinguishing characteristic that it is a venomous mammal.

The astute readership of this journal has likely already noted the lack of solenodon Tiny or Anthropomorphic avatars available. Most likely this is due to the obscurity of these animals, and not their unique rat-vs-shrew looks, or certainly, their ability (rare in Mammalia) to inject venom during a biting attack.
Another peculiar (and one might rightly say, disturbing) feature of the solenodon is that the young stay close to their mother by "hanging on to her elongated teats", as one article states. Of note, these teats are located near the buttocks of the creature, an arrangement that may make one glad not to be a juvenile solenodon.

They also have odoriferous glands in the groin and armpits which are reported to give off a goat-like smell. These particular traits may explain the lack of widespread interest in solenodon anthropomorphic roleplay, at least in most social circles.

Normally solitary, solenodons only seek out their own for mating, after which they retreat from one another.

They are said to be easily-provoked, biting and squealing upon the slightest stimulus. However, when they sense they are being pursued as prey, their behaviour tends towards remaining motionless, and hiding the head -- not a particularly advantageous adaptation, which perhaps explains their endangered status.

So, perhaps, the initial thought that this venomous mammal would be a reasonable match against the Caledonian gunbunny was off-base. Granted, the solenodons have the advantage in the venom category, and they are ferocious in their own right. However, L. caledoniensis takes the lead in indefatigability, panache, derring-do, and loyalty.

Salinity Data for Caledonian Waterways.

2009-01-04T16:05:00.007-05:00

A conversation on Caledon state chat yesterday raised the question of whether a certain body of water in Caledon was fresh, brackish, or seawater.

Fortunately, a prior field expedition which surveyed waterways around the Independent State had also collected surface salinity data. These results had been unpublished (and not updated after recent cataclysmic tectonic activity), but seeing as how at least one of our citizens would find the information useful, I exercised my editorial powers to publish the data without their as-yet-unfinished analysis.

This illustration shows the surface salinity in parts-per-thousand, mapped on a spectrum from green (fresh water) to blue (sea water). Brackish water is defined as having a salt concentration of 0.5 to 30 parts per thousand.*

A cursory view shows that the Independent State is fresh-water replete in areas with higher elevation. The Firth tends toward mild brackishness towards the east, and more pronounced to the west and the open sea. Lower-lying areas show a more-rapid increase in salinity as a function of distance from shore.

Limitations of these results include a lack of sampling at depth, no correction for water temperature, and a lack of readings across time (meaning that any diurnal or seasonal variations are unknown. The Winterfallen waters north of Caledon remain unstudied.

Readers wishing some advice on which fish ought to be introduced to a nearby stream, which plants may flourish at a given location, or simply where to refill one's canteen may find this map useful.

Regrettably, a lack of grant funding current prevents further data collection or analysis, at least at present.

* The actual phenomenon being measured is not salinity but rather halinity, a measure of the halide content of water. This should not be confused with conductivity (measuring the ionic content of water), or turbidity (measuring the particulate matter content), though each of these measurements overlap to some degree.

Oceanography update: Rough Sex at 40k Leagues Under the Sea

2008-12-29T13:20:00.003-05:00

From Scientific American, an article regarding the mating habits of squid that makes one glad to be a mammal:

http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=rough-sex-at-40000-leagues-under-th-2008-12-24

"What do you do to pass on your genes to the next generation if you are really hard up, it’s too dark to see clearly and you are literally under enormous pressure? The short answer: play rough and weird."

To cross over into anthropology for a moment, I would venture to say that "rough and wierd" may describe a fair amount of activity in SL. Just an educated guess, that is.

Public Health update: Papal mortality and Welsh rugby

2008-12-18T16:43:00.008-05:00

The most recent issue of the British Medical Journal, the Christmas edition, continues the tradition of prior years in reporting on the truth (or lack thereof) in popular medical knowledge.

Here is a sample of one of the medical myths put to the test:

Payne GC, Payne RE, Farewell DM. Rugby (the religion of Wales) and its influence on the Catholic church: should Pope Benedict XVI be worried? BMJ 2008;337:a2768. doi:10.1136/bmj.a2768

Objective: To explore the perceived wisdom that papal mortality is related to the success of the Welsh rugby union team.

Design: Retrospective observational study of historical Vatican and sporting data.

Main outcome measure: Papal deaths between 1883 and the present day.

Results: There is no evidence of a link between papal deaths and any home nation grand slams (when one nation succeeds in beating all other competing teams in every match). There was, however, weak statistical evidence to support an association between Welsh performance and the number of papal deaths.

Conclusion: Given the dominant Welsh performances of 2008, the Vatican medical team should take special care of the pontiff this Christmas.

A link to the editorial covering all the myth-busting articles can be found here:

Delamothe T. Editor's Choice: Everything you know is wrong. BMJ 2008;337:a3027. doi:10.1136/bmj.a3027

Archæology: top ten discoveries of 2008.

2008-12-14T21:24:00.002-05:00

Archaeology Magazine has again given us their list of the top ten archaeologic discoveries of the year.

The year is not quite exhausted, however, leaving enough hope that one may still yet unearth something truly wonderful in the waning days of December.

However, I am certain that this one find (mentioned tangentially in the above top 10 list), will be hard to top:

Gilbert TP et al. DNA from Pre-Clovis Human Coprolites in Oregon, North America. Science 2008; 320 (5877): 786-789. DOI: 10.1126/science.1154116
http://www.scienceonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/320/5877/786

The interested reader may search for the images of the artefacts via the usual routes; I have a strict no-fæces-images rule for this site.

And if one of my readers does come upon something to challenge the abovementioned top ten discoveries, or even the coprolites, please forward the details straightaway. You may use your judgement in forwarding actual samples.

A great day, comrades: we sim into history.

2008-11-23T22:11:00.007-05:00

As I was subject to a fair amount of unclaimed time this weekend, I took on a new project: running an OpenSimulator environment at home.

Using a somewhat-recent personal computer running Windows (a choice of necessity, not preference, I assure you), I successfully installed and configured diverse and arcane files.

Then, using the better parts of my talents (the creative ones, as opposed to technical), I designed and placed 4 sims on my grid.

Photographic proof is as follows:

Fig. 1: in which I tolerate the Windows interface.

Fig. 2: in which I claim these sims in the name of Caledon, ex patria.

The fact that I can log in to my grid from my laptop and play with 4 sims, each with 45000 available prims, is awesome, as in full-of-awe. (Compare the Russian word грозныи, grozny.)

The area is desolate, though, and bereft of state channel chatter, or any friends visiting -- a definite shortcoming.

A full discussion of materials and methods for this experiment will be available upon request.

A Summary of Effects of Recent Changes by Linden Lab.

2008-11-09T18:24:00.002-05:00

Linden Lab, unaware that they are actually an entertainment provider, successfully decreased the entertainment value of their product, simultaneously increasing customer ill-will towards them.

To prove this, I have the statistics and p-values and references &c. laying around here somewhere ... but suddenly, I just don't feel like writing.

Editorial: Instability of Saint Kitt Islands.

2008-08-13T22:07:00.007-04:00

Recently, I began a review of the Tunguska Event, a cataclysmic explosion which leveled thousands of square kilometres of Siberian forest. The initial lack of attention paid by the scientific community, due to the remoteness of the disaster and relatively low loss of life, belied the severity of the event.

More recently, I have been informed that certain parties have deemed Saint Kitt Islands to be safe for general public activity. I am afraid that the available data do not support such a conclusion, and that over-confident reliance on such advice may result in terrible loss.

I would refer the reader to another August, just a few years back, in 1883, when the island of Krakatoa between Sumatra and Java detonated with world-wide effects. Tsunamis were observed throughout the neighbouring coasts, as far away as South Africa. Wave height monitors recorded fluctuations from the event in the Thames. Noctilucent clouds were observed from the ejecta, as with Tunguska.

The data that Professor Krogstad and I gathered predict that significant seismic activity is not only possible, but is imminent.

Saint Kitt Islands were formed from volcanic activity resulting in an island and atoll. The weathering patterns on the volcano itself suggest a young age, perhaps under 50 years. Seismic activity predicts potential surrounding activity, consistent with known patterns of island-building volcanic activity. Seawater temperatures surrounding the island (unpublished data) point towards other submarine volcanic activity in the area. Further geophysical studies will be required to determine the amount and extent of landmass building that has occurred in the region.

Krogstad A, Nicholas K. A biologic and geologic survey of Saint Kitt Islands. Proc Royal Soc 1898 ; 5.

At the time of the initial survey, the cauldron was quiet, and no evidence of volcanic activity was apparent. Even the casual lay-observer on St Kitt now can see the evidence of accelerated instability from the volcano and surrounding sea bed.

Based on the available evidence, allow me to illustrate my prediction for the very near future of our beloved crown colony:

I shall be in contact with the Guvnah straightaway, and I will urge the public not to congregate on or near Saint Kitt Islands, for fear of a disaster of eschatologic proportions.

If any reader wishes to see the raw data upon which these recommendations are based, please contact me at your leisure.

In assistance to Caledon, I remain,
your humble servant,

Kate Nicholas, FRS

Tunguska, part 2.

2008-07-05T20:26:00.008-04:00

The Tunguska event occurred at a remote time in a remote place. This fact has served both to add mystery to the story, and to frustrate those interested in knowing what happened.

The explosion was centered in the middle of Siberia, some 1000 km northwest of Lake Baikal (the largest freshwater lake in the world).

To reach the site, one could start from the Imperial capital of St Petersburg, taking the overnight train to Moscow.

From Moscow, one would board the still-new Trans-Siberian Railroad, leaving again in the evening, heading east towards the Urals, through Ekaterinaburg (where the Tsar and his family would be killed by the Bolsheviks), then skirting the edge of Kazakhstan, through Novosibirsk, then Krasnoyarsk, then to the town of Tayshet.

This town is at the 'shoulder' of the curve where the railroad turns to the southeast, to Irkustk and Lake Baikal.

From Tayshet, then, one must hire teamsters: horse-drawn sledges would provide the best transport over still-primitive roads.

Head north-east, passing well-west of Bratsk, and after 500 km or so, one would reach the town (although that would be a generous description) of Vanavara.

Vanavara lies about 70 km to the southeast of the Tunguska site. This is a small settlement with a trading post, and really the closest developed area to the site.

From here, one would need to speak with the indigenous people, the Tungus (now known as the Evenks), for guidance on reaching the blast centre.

This area of Siberia is still unpopulated and undeveloped in 1908. The Tungus people live as reindeer herders, maintaining a semi-nomadic culture in the forest. The western settlers are here as hunters and trappers and such, or here to escape the reach of the Tsar's empire.

After the "reforms" of the church in 1652 by Patriarch Nikon, the so-called Old Believers who did not support the changes were exiled to Siberia. A number of these staroobryadtsy ("old ritualists") lived in the area. (Due to a difference in how times of the day were called by the Old Believers -- compare our uses of "dinner" and "supper" in English -- their testimonies about the disaster would be called inconsistent with those of the other population.)

The wilderness around the Tunguska site is made up of taiga forest, a sub-arctic type of biome consisting of coniferous trees, and only the hardiest of deciduous trees, e.g. spruce, larch. The forest is dense, and the ground cover is moss and lichen. A forest fire, started by lightning, had destroyed a considerable area about one hundred years prior, and most of the trees that would be claimed in the blast would be only 100 years old.

The Tungus tribe gave its name to two rivers in the area, tributaries of the great Yenisei which flows north into the Arctic Ocean: the Nizhnyaya ("Lower") Tunguska and Podkamennaya ("Stony") Tunguska rivers. "Stony" is the usual English translation, but it literally means "under-stone", as the river flows under pebbles for part of its course. The Stony Tunguska is the closest to the blast site.

What would become the epicentre is a swamp; the first expedition to the site in 1927 would label them the Northern and Southern Swamps. Flies and mosquitoes form large clouds over the swamps during the short-but-hot summers. Other wildlife in the region are reindeer (a herd of 700 or so kept by the tribesmen), bears, turkeys, and smaller forest mammals.

The Tungus practice a animistic/naturalistic polytheistic religion. The loan-word "shaman" comes from their language, and coincidentally, a shaman of one of the local tribes would be blamed (or lauded, depending on which tribe was doing the talking) for the blast, having called down the wrath of Agdy, the god of thunder.

By all accounts, the morning of June 30 was clear, hot, and dry. There were no clouds in the skies over most of the region. It was a Tuesday; by the old-style Julian calendar, it was the 17th of June, one week before the feast of the nativity of St John the Forerunner for the Orthodox, and close to the summer solstice for the Tungus' native religion.

What happened next was otherworldly: at 7:14 AM local time, an explosion occurred near 60 degrees north latitude and 101 degrees east longitude, destroying some 10,000 square kilometres of forest.

The Tunguska Event at 100.

2008-06-29T20:49:00.006-04:00

On June 30, 1908 (NS) *, at 7:14 A.M., a massive explosion occurred in the taiga forest deep in Siberia, near the Tunguksa river, leveling trees up to 30 km away from the centre of the blast, and causing global climatic and geophysical sequelae.

This event has captured the enduring interests of scientists, both professional and laymen, and has intertwined itself in popular culture, science fiction, and conspiracy theories.

The devastation, as recorded by Leonid Kulik during expeditions beginning in 1921, would remain unparalleled until the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

While the immediate effects of the explosion were confined to the swamps and forest within 40-50 km of the centre, the blast caused a number of global atmospheric phenomena, e.g., noctilucent clouds which made it possible to read the newspaper, or take photographs at night, in London. Seismometers read tremors that would register in the 5s on the modern Richter scale, and microbarometers recorded a shock wave that traveled around the globe at least twice before dissipating.

The local tribesmen thought that the wrath of the thunder god Agdy had been brought down by a neighbouring tribe's shaman. Peasant villagers sent a delegation to the local archpriest to ask how the preparations for the end of the world were coming along. Scientists in the European capitals tried to connect the phenomena of the atmospheric and geologic activities.

In this modern day of instant access to all manner of information (I am currently watching lightning-strike data superimposed on a Doppler radar loop, as storms approach from the west), it is hard to imagine that an event of the magnitude of Tunguska could occur without some knowledge of just what happened.

Over the next few days I will be presenting some further discussion regarding the event, which connects to several points of our collective Victorian/steampunk experience.

--
* The local date was June 17 using the so-called "Old Style" Julian calendar. The majority of the west had already adopted the Gregorian (or "New Style") calendar, but the Russians, being, well, Russian and Orthodox, did not take well to innovation, especially innovation coming from the Bishop of Rome. But that is clearly a story for another day.

'The World is Just Awesome'. Plus, Kate's sister.

2008-06-25T20:42:00.007-04:00

In the event that you, dear reader, have not yet seen this, I pass along a link to the Discovery Channel's infectious 'The World is Just Awesome' promotion.

I cannot take full credit for finding it; that goes to Mr J J Drinkwater.

If you find yourself humming it all day long, well, don't say that I didn't warn you. Infectious!

The good people at Discovery.com have provided a method by which one may download the MP3 file, the video, and ring tones for one's portable telephone.

Now, here is the surprising part: at about 30 seconds in to the film, I do believe I spotted my dear sister Sophie*:

She "loves Egyptian kings", as the lyrics go. As I am the (slightly) more squeamish of the two of us, I'm more than happy to allow her to do all the up-close corpse work.

Now in case you cannot see the obvious family resemblance, I offer this crude figure which may clear things up a bit:

Not only is she the smarter one, her eyesight is better, leaving me the only one in the family requiring spectacles. Oh, and she's a soprano, too. None of this alto-register business for her.

I do think the glasses look grand on her, though, and I'm glad she is aging gracefully, since this is what I suspect I will look like in another *cough*-mumble years. Did I mention that she's the older sister?

In any event: do yourself a favour, and, next time you need re-affirmation of just how awesome the world is, listen to the song. Even helps put one's mind off sibling rivalry, mostly.

Regards,

Katya.

--
* N.b.: Naturally, she isn't really my sister; I haven't the foggiest idea who they found to play Sophie's part in this advert. Incredible likeness, though, and the voice is spot-on.

Photograph of the day: mainland advertising.

2008-06-13T21:22:00.002-04:00

This is what I believe the mainlanders term an "ad farm" :

The effect of such surroundings on the prevalent real-estate values is substantial, I fear.

Additional notes from the field.

2008-06-01T09:58:00.003-04:00

Okeanos Magic, Tanarian Davies, Audrey Fotherington, Bryndal Ellison, Jayleden Miles and Galactic Baroque have contributed further notes from their outings, again advancing our understanding of Nature here in the Realm.

The wiki (http://www.caledonwiki.com/index.php?title=Shrooms) continues to be updated by divers mycophiles as well.

G. Baroque has provided some interesting data regarding the timing of the appearance of species, and thereby has raised an interesting point: with enough data, could one construct an algorithm for predicting the appearance of a particular species in a particular period of time?

--

26 May.

Lovelace (Rezzer L - A-D)
B. camelopardis, leopardis 13:10 local/22:20 SLT
B. dalmatia 15:46/22:56, 17:22/23:20, 18:24/23:31, 18:36/23:32, 19:46/23:38, 00:42/00:02
? 01:30/00:06

Glengarry
Bellambia, 05:26 lcl/00:26 SLT (2nd one of that night)
Davanicus, 06:00 lcl/00:29 SLT, 06:36 lcl/00:31 SLT

Absinthe
Elf Ear, 01:52 ( ), 09:33, 09:50
[Previous nights' Winterfell observations courtesy, in part, of Audrey Fotherington and Bryndal Ellison]

Laudanum
Cutie, 08:32, 08:57 and 09:05 (Bryndal Ellison), 10:09

27 May.

B. tigris, 20:45? lcl / 15:39 SLT
Eyre, RCT, 02:20 lcl/23:22 SLT

29 May.

Eyre, Davanicus: no specific local times, all between 18:00 and 02:00/11:55, 12:00, 12:07 SLT

Lovelace, B. tigris: 02:00lcl/20:09 (Fawkes Allen)
Eyre, Davanicus: 03:45lcl/20:15; 05:04/23:23

One Night in Lovelace
Okeanos Magic, 2008-05-30 10:04:22
In the interest of scientificalism , I passed an entire night cycle in Lovelace, and scooped up EVERY SINGLE mushroom that rezzed. This was the local night session that begins around 7:30 AM SLT. I arrived at the Lovelace ring at 5:52 PM and my computer crashed just after 7 AM local time (roughly 8:45 AM SLT)

My tally for the evening is as follows:
B. camelopardis: 22
B. dalmatia: 11 (exactly half as many as the camelopardis - interesting)
B. leopardis: 19
B. tigris: (and pardon me for getting unscientific for a moment) a big fat stinking ZERO!!!!!!

Yours in service to the society,
Okeanos Magic

--

Galactic Baroque shroom notes 1
Monday, May 26, 2008

Caledon Eyre (rezzer 1)

Eyre species appear on a day/night rotation. Dr. Bob in Glengarry (rezzer 2) also confirmed a shift in species at sunset.

I took timemarked notes for 379 consecutive minutes. Because of the day/night roation, I conjecture that probability per cycle is more significant than the time interval since last appearance. However, I can send you the time marks if you are tracking those.

Also significant is an apparent "clock" with a one minute interval. The second hand on my watch was nearly always in the same position when a shroom appeared, lag could account for the very very few exceptions. So, one may also count a 25th outcome, "none," when calculating probabilities.

Partial Day cycle: 140 minutes, 103 shrooms
(species/shroom count count/percentage by shrooms count/percentage by clock count)
Caledonus 65 63.11% 46.43%
Xenobiologus Horgidae 14 13.59% 10.00%
Darkle's Bane 14 13.59% 10.00%
Devil's Minion 5 4.85% 3.57%
RC Toadstool 4 3.88% 2.86%
RC Death Cap 1 0.97% 0.71%
none 37 n/a 26.43%

Full night cycle: 65 minutes, 50 shrooms
Booomslang's Toadstool 20 40.00% 31.25%
Caledons Ordinalis 16 32.00% 25.00%
Morte Velox 7 14.00% 10.94%
Nicholas Shroom 5 10.00% 7.81%
Fungus Davanicus 1 2.00% 1.56%
Bellambia 1 2.00% 1.56%
none 14 n/a 21.88%

Full day cycle: 175 minutes, 125 shrooms
Shrooms Caledonus 72 57.60% 41.14%
Xenobiologus Horgidae 26 20.80% 14.86%
Darkle's Bane 13 10.40% 7.43%
Devil's Minion 9 7.20% 5.14%
RC Toadstool 4 3.20% 2.29%
RC Death Cap 1 0.80% 0.57%
none 50 n/a 28.57%

Random sightings
2 Elf Ears about 9:06pm , Absinthe
Death Cap for Cutie, 9:55p, Laudanum

Galactic Baroque shroon notes 2
2008-05-27 04:31:31
The night brought much excitement as a new patch with 4 new species was discovered in Lovelace.

partial day cycle count:

Byronium camelopardis 18
Byronium leopardis 13
Byronium dalmatia 5
Byronium tigris 0

full night cycle count:

Byronium camelopardis 17
Byronium leopardis 15
Byronium dalmatia 17
Byronium tigris 1 (12:04 am)

Update in Mycology.

2008-05-26T17:40:00.002-04:00

Here I have the privilege of publishing some reports from the field of mycology, passed along to me by Tanarian Davies, a mycophile of the first order.

First, a lovely array of the mushrooms from the Caledon Botanical Society:

Photographic collection courtesy Dame Lapin Paris

"As beautiful and terrible as an army arrayed for battle." -- Ed.

I will again pass the request for further information, data, supposition, intrigue, or startling conclusions. Please send them via notecard, and I shall endeavour to disseminate them.

Mycological note, for your commentary and feedback
Tanarian Davies, 2008-05-23 16:19:53

A proposal for the classification of mushrooms by shape and structure:

Type 1: Bulbous, near-round cap; has annulus; short stem

Bellambia
Darkle's
Cutie (stretched)
Dusty
Theobroma
Xeno

Type 2: Concave, peaked cap; no annulus; short stem

Bardhaven's
Boomslang's
Devil's
Amongus
Royal Toadstool
Story Morel (stretched)
Tasty Nonesuch (stretched)

Type 3: Bell-shaped cap; no annulus; moderate stem

Ordinalus
Monk
Morte
Royal Deathcap

Type 4: "Classic" flattened-dome cap; no annulus; long stem

Glowgill (stretched)
Davanicus
Nicholas
Shroomus
Tears
Truffle (stretched)

Audrey Fotherington identifies another ring
Tanarian Davies, 2008-05-24 09:15:11

Caledon Downs: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Downs/167/115/44
(it's right across from that new Hatpins shop and next to the tracks)

Notes on picking up extremely rare species
Bryndal Ellison, 2008-05-25 19:11:28

Bellambia - picked up 4:08 pm SLT, Eyre (Local Night)
Elf Ear - picked up 11:23 am SLT, Absinthe (Day)
DeathCap for Cutie - picked up approx 2:14 pm SLT, Laudanum (Day)

Mycological observerations, 25 May
Tanarian Davies, 2008-05-25

Laudanum: Cutie @ 09:26, 10:19, 19:20, 20:30
Absinthe: Elf Ears @ 01:29, 10:28, 19:00, 19:51

(all Winterfell times SLT only)
----------------------------------
Glengarry: Deathcap @ 11:49 local/17:56 SLT, 2:25?local/18:33 STL (approx)
RCT 14:50 lcl/18:42 SLT
Bellambia 03:04 lcl/00:13 SLT (26th)
Eyre: RCT 09:06 lcl/21:14 SLT

Latest mushroom info/rumors
Tanarian Davies, 2008-05-26

Guvnah Shang wandered into Glengarry while I was holding watch yesterday, and stirred up a whole lot of Xenos, but also =confirmed= as far as he was going to that 24 IS the number of currently available mushrooms.

He implied that at one of the three other previously-referenced locations -- Lovelace, Brythony, Saint Kitt Islands - would be getting mushrooms soon, but would not confirm which ONE. He said I was "partially right".

I also got the impression we're getting much closer to cooking time.

Tanarian
Yes, I'm still a mushroom

Field Guide v.1.0
Otenth Paderborn, 2008-05-26 00:40:25
Adapted from http://www.caledonwiki.com/index.php?title=Shrooms
25 May 2008

Known locations (courtesy of Miss Tanarian Davies)

Laudanum 145,97
Absinthe 114,131
Winterfell 61.227
Tanglewood 130,119
Moors 106,44
Kittiwickshire 113,191
Glengarry 168,163
Eyre 172,96
Downs 166,114
Brigadoon 115,141

BardHaven's Bane (Advocatus diaboli)
Location - Absinthe (South), Laudanum (South), Winterfell (North)
Frequency - Uncommon
Type: Thaumalate Cap: Glowing; violet-pink with lighter pink spots Upper stem: Pink with black spots Lower stem: Pink

Bellambia
Location - Eyre (Central)[1], Glengarry (Central)
Frequency - Rare
Type: Oblate Cap: Vivid red with large white spots and small black dots Upper stem: Yellow and brown tiger pattern Lower stem: Yellow

Bilious Glowgill
Location - Absinthe (South), Laudanum (South), Winterfell (North)
Frequency - Common
Type: Patellate (extremely vertical extended) Cap: Glowing; pale green with brown spots, darker green gills Upper stem: Dark blue annulus, fading to medium blue then back to dark blue Lower stem: Green band fading into grey

Boomslang's Toadstool
Location - Brigadoon (Central), Downs (Central), Eyre (Central, night only), Glengarry (Central), Kittiwickshire (North), Tanglewood (Central), Victoria City (Central)
Frequency - Common
Type: Thaumalate Cap: Medium brown Upper stem: Dark brown Lower stem: White

Caledon Ordinalus
Location - Brigadoon (Central), Downs (Central), Eyre (Central, night only), Glengarry (Central), Kittiwickshire (North), Tanglewood (Central), Victoria City (Central)
Frequency - Common
Type: Campanulate Cap: Cream with yellow-brown splodges Upper stem: Light green Lower stem: Grey

Darkle's Bane
Location - Downs (Central), Eyre (Central), Glengarry (Central), Tanglewood (Central)
Frequency - Uncommon
Type: Oblate Cap: Deep red with black, pink and white spots Upper stem: Pink with white mottling Lower stem: White

Death Cap for Cutie
Location - Laudanum (South)[1]
Frequency - Extremely rare
Type: Oblate (extremely radially extended) Cap: Glowing; pink with dark pink and white spots Upper stem: Pink with dark pink mottling Lower stem: Black

Devil's Minion
Location - Downs (Central), Eyre (Central), Victoria City (Central)
Frequency - Uncommon
Type: Thaumalate Cap: Orange with two "eye"-like black spots Upper stem: Brown Lower stem: White

Dusty Stinker (Proditoris crepusculis)
Location - Absinthe (South), Laudanum (South)
Frequency - Common
Type: Oblate Cap: Glowing; blue-grey with sky-blue and pale yellow spots Upper stem: Yellow with blue veins Lower stem: Pale blue

Elf Ear
Location - Absinthe (Central) [1],
Frequency - Extremely rare
Type: Thaumalate (vertically extended) Cap: Glowing; white with black and grey spots Upper stem: White with black spots fading into green Lower stem: Greenish-black

Fungus Amongus
Location - Absinthe (South), Laudanum (South), Moors (Central, night)
Frequency - Common
Type: Thaumalate Cap: Glowing; yellow with green-black spots and a tan point Upper stem: Chartreuse with black spots Lower stem: Greenish-black

Fungus Davanicus
Location - Eyre (Central)
Frequency - Rare
Type: Patellate Cap: Green with darker green spots Upper stem: Bright red Lower stem: Cream

Malevolent Monk
Location - Eyre (Central, night), Winterfell (Central)
Frequency - Rare
Type: Campanulate Cap: Glowing; dark red with pink spots, lighter red band around cap Upper stem: Pink Lower stem: Light green, mottled

Morte Velox
Location - Downs (Central), Eyre (Central, night), Glengarry (Central, night), Tanglewood (Central)
Frequency - Uncommon
Type: Campanulate Cap: Coral-orange with green and grey spots Upper stem: Tan Lower stem: Grey, mottled

Nicholas Shroom
Location - Eyre (Central), Glengarry (Central, night), Tanglewood (Central)
Frequency - Uncommon
Type: Patellate Cap: Grey with green and dark grey spots Upper stem: Dull red Lower stem: White

Royal Caledon Deathcap
Location - Eyre (Central), Glengarry (Central)
Frequency - Rare
Type: Campanulate Cap: Black with vivid red spots Upper stem: Paler red Lower stem: Dark grey, mottled

Royal Caledon Toadstool
Location - Eyre (Central), Glengarry (Central)
Frequency - Sporadic
Type: Thaumalate Cap: Bright red with two "eye"-like black spots Upper stem: Brown Lower stem: White

Shroomus Caledonus
Location - Brigadoon (Central), Downs (Central), Eyre (Central), Glengarry (Central), Kittiwickshire (North), Tanglewood (Central), Victoria City (Central)
Frequency - Common
Type: Patellate Cap: Grey-green Upper stem: Tan Lower stem: White

Story Morel
Location - Absinthe (South), Laudanum (South), Moors (Central, night)
Frequency - Sporadic
Type: Campanulate Cap: Glowing; yellow with a green band, olive mottling and olive & blue spots Upper stem: Darker yellow-green with continuation of mottling Lower stem: Screaming purple

Tasty Nonesuch (Boletus edulis incomparabilis)
Location - Absinthe (South), Laudanum (South), Moors (Central, night), Winterfell (North)
Frequency - Common
Type: Campanulate Cap: Glowing; multicoloured (green-black top, red/coral/yellow/green, blue/purple edge) Upper stem: Green/blue-violet Lower stem: Blue-violet

Tremella Theobroma (the Common Chocolate Shake)
Location - Winterfell (North)
Frequency - Uncommon
Type: Oblate Cap: Glowing, light cocoa-brown with lighter and darker spots Upper stem: Green, black spots Lower stem: Black

Winterfell Tears
Location - Laudanum (South), Moors (Central, night)
Frequency - Uncommon
Type: Patellate Cap: Glowing; vivid purple with blue-violet and pink spots Upper stem: Hot pink with blue-violet veining Lower stem: Electric blue fading to pink

Winterfell Truffle
Location - Winterfell (North)
Frequency - Uncommon
Type: Patellate (extremely radially extended) Cap: Glowing; mottled brown with darker spots Upper stem: Green Lower stem: Blue-grey

Xenobiologus Horgidae
Location - Brigadoon (Central), Downs (Central), Eyre (Central), Glengarry (Central), Kittiwickshire (North), Tanglewood (Central), Victoria City (Central)
Frequency - Common
Type: Oblate Cap: Yellow-green with yellow spots Upper stem: Light blue veined with yellow Lower stem: White

In Search of ... Fungus!

2008-05-22T21:28:00.002-04:00

On behalf of myself and Mr JJ Drinkwater, I would like to announce the collaboration of the Caledon Library and the Royal Society for the Advancement of Knowledge in the Natural Sciences in the matter of cataloguing our surroundings.

A recent article reported by the BBC, "Rare lichen find a European first" shows that the Real World still holds some secrets of nature waiting to be discovered. Our Second World is no exception, as new reports of Caledonian flora and fauna have been surfacing in recent days.

Please join us in our efforts; consider yourselves deputised to the office of Field Scientist, ready to relay your observations from the wild.

If you come across any novel plant or animal life in the Independent State of Caledon, or in the surrounding regions of Winterfell, Brythony, or Lovelace, please collect the following data:

location
time and time-of-day (e.g., dusk, mid-day, &c)
description of surroundings
effects on self or others (including physiologic effects of ingestion)

as well as some visual representation of your find (tintype, daguerreotype, cinematograph, Kirlian photogram, transmission electron photomicrograph, or what-have-you).

Please forward your findings to the Royal Society, via note-card addressed to yours truly. Discoveries will be posted (with due credit to the submitter) on the ætheric edition of the Proceedings of The Royal Society (http://ProcRoyalSoc.blogspot.com).
Please see the Caledon wiki for a collection of descriptions: http://www.caledonwiki.com/index.php?title=Shrooms .

Mr Drinkwater and I, and our learned colleagues, are greatly excited about this new era of promotion of the natural sciences – and equally excited to share the thrill of discovery with every Caledonian. Just think of it: might yours be the next discovery to make headlines?

With best wishes in your endeavours,
I remain,
Yours sincerely,

Kate Nicholas, FRS

A biologic and geologic survey of Saint Kitt Islands.

2008-05-12T22:32:00.007-04:00

Krogstad A, Nicholas K.
A biologic and geologic survey of Saint Kitt Islands.
Proc Royal Soc 1898 ; 5.
The Royal Society for the Advancement of Knowledge in the Natural Sciences, Tamrannoch, Caledon.

Introduction
Saint Kitt Islands is a newly-discovered crown colony of the Independent State of Caledon. The area is composed of a volcanic crater and surrounding atoll, and comprises approximately 65,000 square metres (16 acres, or 0.025 square miles) of land and surrounding sea. Despite its relatively close geographic proximity to Caledon proper, its climate and indigenous plant life is quite distinct from that of the Independent State. In this paper we present the initial descriptions of the island and its biology.

Methods
The islands were surveyed by the authors on 11 and 12 May, 1898, funded by an unrestricted grant from the Royal Society for the Advancement of Knowledge in the Natural Sciences. One of the authors (AK) obtained oceanographic information to include sea bed depth, water temperature, currents, and a biologic survey. The other author (KN) was responsible for the geophysical data collection (AK performed the volcanic crater survey). Both authors participated in cataloguing the land-based biodiversity

Geography
The atoll itself is 146 metres in maximum north-south dimension, and 100m east-west. The topology is irregular, however, and gives a maximum contiguous straight-line distance (“widest point”) of 142m north-south and 56m east-west. The mean elevation is 2m above sea level at the beachfront. The mountain range running north-south in the atoll is at 11m for the southern-most plateau. Three peaks make up the mountain range proper: 30m at the southern peak, 28m at the centre, and 30m at the northern peak. The peaks are of igneous rock, with lower elevations (i.e. within 5m of sea level) covered in sandy soil and vegetation.

The volcano lies across the atoll to the east, and measures approximately 65 metres in diameter. Maximum elevations are as follows: 32m north rim, 31m southern rim, and 47-50m eastern rim. The rim measures approximately 55m in diameter north-south, and 36m east-west. The crater floor is 20m below sea level, and the cauldron is flooded to sea level. The crater itself is devoid of contents. No lava tunnels or other structures were identified.

The sea depth is -11m in the atoll, near the boat mooring, and -13m elsewhere. The sea bed appears to be uniformly sand, with little ejecta field, lava flows, or other evidence of recent volcanic activity.

In general, the surface conditions are those expected for a volcanic island. The exposed rock is igneous, and the soil is sandy, though rich enough to support vegetation. Sand is the typical pumice-based variety, and is uniformly fine, without larger elements of lava fragments.
Despite the relatively close geographic proximity to Caledon, the climate is an oceanic climate in the Köppen climate classification scheme. Winds appear to move west-to-east, though there is considerable surface-level variability. The day-night cycle is the same as in Caledon. Seismic activity was monitored; those data will be published at a later date.

Biology
For a young island, plant biodiversity is greatly important in establishing the biome. On Saint Kitt, two species of palm trees (Arecaceae spp.) and plumeria (Plumeria rubra) are found on the flat coastal regions, facing the atoll. No grasses or flowers were found. The usual ground cover was evident up to 5m or so above sea level, then giving way to igneous rock.

No terrestrial or aquatic animal species were noted despite extensive observations. No bird life was sighted.

Conclusions
Saint Kitt Islands were formed from volcanic activity resulting in an island and atoll. The weathering patterns on the volcano itself suggest a young age, perhaps under 50 years. Seismic activity predicts potential surrounding activity, consistent with known patterns of island-building volcanic activity. Seawater temperatures surrounding the island (unpublished data) point towards other submarine volcanic activity in the area. Further geophysical studies will be required to determine the amount and extent of landmass building that has occurred in the region.

Despite a tropical climate and the amount of plant biodiversity, there is a lack of animal species. This corroborates the geologic weathering-based age of the island, favouring a young landmass. Care must be taken not to introduce foreign plant or animal species if the original species are to be conserved. Caution is also advised regarding wide-scale tourist activity, as the native biome has a potential for serious disruption if faced with unchecked human intervention.

Saint Kitt Islands represent a major find for biologists, geophysicists, vulcanologists, and conservationists. Ongoing investigations would be expected to provide a wealth of information in those fields.

Enough levity for a fortnight: The Bard on Fark

2008-04-21T20:53:00.003-04:00

Today I stumbled across a pearl in the midst of swine. No offense to other Fark regulars, but iambic pentameter is not among the average Farker's skills (and don't get me started on those knaves over on 4chan).

But some well-above-average Farkers stepped up to wax eloquent on a particular theme: what if the Bard himself wrote the screenplay for Pulp Fiction?

So, I had the great fortune to combine several of my favourite things over coffee this morning: fun with language, Shakespeare, and Pulp Fiction.

Here are the links: first, the Fark thread itself
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3552350
then the sources for the epic banter:
http://community.livejournal.com/metaquotes/6644038.html
http://www.metafilter.com/70997/Pulp-Shakespeare

Here I will reproduce a few of the better verses ... and as a treat for those who read the whole post, a rendition of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire" done in early Norman-English on a faux Bayeux Tapestry.

Honestly, this, dear readers, is the pinnacle of internet culture!

First: Jules addresses Ringo in the coffee shop.

I have for years recited thus. If thou didst but hear,
It was as clear a sign of your demise
As found in any witches' scry.
Yet never had I ponder'd its intent;
T'was simply fiendish sounds I could thus speak
Before I dealt my foes the final stroke
That sent them on to God's Own Realm.
But just this morrow hence, I saw such things
That lead me to reflect upon my words
And divine what the meaning was therein.
Perchance, I guessed, you are the evil man,
And I the righteous man. As for the shepherd,
Methought it could have then stood for my blade.
Anon, perhaps the righteous man is you;
I then may be the shepherd, and the evil and the selfish
Is all that stands about us in this world.
Such is a pleasing thought. But such is also false.
In truth, you are the weak.
And I, the tyranny of evil men.
Yet, henceforth, I assure you, I shall try
In all my ways to now become the shepherd.

Next, Jules and Brett have an erudite discussion on language and semiotics over a Big Kahuna burger.

J: My pardon; did I break thy concentration?
Continue! Ah, but now thy tongue is still.
Allow me then to offer a response.
Describe Marsellus Wallace to me, pray.
B: What?
J: What country dost thou hail from?
B: What?
J: How passing strange, for I have traveled far,
And never have I heard tell of this What.
What language speak they in the land of What?
B: What?
J: The Queen's own English, base knave, dost thou speak it?
B: Aye!
J: Then hearken to my words and answer them!
Describe to me Marsellus Wallace!
B: What?
JULES presses his knife to BRETT's throat
J: Speak 'What' again! Thou cur, cry 'What' again!
I dare thee utter 'What' again but once!
I dare thee twice and spit upon thy name!
Now, paint for me a portraiture in words,
If thou hast any in thy head but 'What',
Of Marsellus Wallace!
B: He is dark.
J: Aye, and what more?
B: His head is shaven bald.
J: Has he the semblance of a harlot?
B: What?
JULES strikes and BRETT cries out
J: Has he the semblance of a harlot?
B: Nay!
J: Then why didst thou attempt to bed him thus?
B: I did not!
J: Aye, thou didst! O, aye, thou didst!
Thou hoped to rape him like a chattel whore,
And sooth, Lord Wallace is displeased to bed
With anyone but she to whom he wed.

And finally, as promised, the Fresh Prince's own story told anew. (N.b.: I haven't gone through and checked the text for accuracy. Get back to me, say, oh, next week.)

The Earliest Audio Recording (at least as far as we know).

2008-03-29T13:57:00.008-04:00

Two of my favourite news sources today referenced a particularly interesting bit of Victorian-era technology. Both the BBC and Edward Pearse are reporting on a device which, I must confess, I really had never learned of before: the phonautograph.

While I encourage the reader to browse the links above, I shall give a condensed version of the story here.

In 1857, Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville patented the phonautograph. The device used a stylus, connected to a receiving horn or bell, to inscribe a visual representation of the sound on to a recording medium (originally, a lamp-blackened glass plate; later, blackened paper). The purpose was to create a visual representation of sound -- not to provide for reproduction of that sound. And that is the key point to this story.

In April of 1860, a 10-second recording was made of "Au Claire de la Lune". This recording was recently found in the archives of the Académie des Sciences of the Institut de France.

Scientists working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California created a method to reproduce the originally-recorded sounds from their sooty spectra. In short, an optical scan of the recording paper was made, and then computer software decoded the transcription to reproduce the sounds which originally drove the recording stylus.

The scientists are part of a collaborative, First Sounds. According to their web site:

First Sounds is an informal collaborative of audio historians, recording engineers, sound archivists, scientists, other individuals, and organizations who aim to make mankind's earliest sound recordings available to all people for all time.

David Giovannoni examines one of Scott's 1860 phonautograms in the archives of the Académie des Sciences of the Institut de France, where it was deposited in 1861.

Photos by Isabelle Trocheris

(courtesy firstsounds.org)

So: these scientists took a visual representation of sound, which was never meant to be played back, and turned it back into sound.

Go back, and re-read that last sentence, considering the technology involved, and I think you would agree that this work is remarkable.

Are there more inadvertently-saved sounds waiting to be re-discovered? All that is needed, in theory, to record a sound is (1) a moving medium, and (2) a stylus which reacts to sound waves.

As is often the case, I am not the first to have such a fanciful notion. An episode of a popular American television science-fiction television series from the 1990s pondered what would happen if, say, sounds from 2000 years ago were recorded into a wet clay pot as a stick was being used to carve decorative grooves in it.

A little more research reveals that the concept was also the heart of an April Fools Day prank by a certain Bilge Sehir a few years ago, as nicely described on the Language Log blog. I mean, really: a 6500-year-old recording? Too good to be true.

Still, it does make for a nice gedanken experiment.

For quality sound reproduction, stick with Mr Edison's cylinders ... and beware of pseudoarchaeologists and/or April Fools pranksters.

A non-scientific announcement.

2008-03-21T22:36:00.005-04:00

Some of my readership have learned of my recent inheritance of a bit of land in Winterfell. While the details of the matter do not require discussion here, suffice it to say that dear old Uncle Alexii will be greatly missed (sniff).

Before I get down to the necessary business on the estate (archæological excavations, mineral deposit analyses, and such like that), it would please me greatly to open up the area to let my dear friends, neighbours, and colleagues have a go at it.

So, it is with great pleasure that I am opening up Winterfell Eventide as a sandbox, at least for a week (Friday, March 28*), and I reserve the right to extend that offer if, say, really good builds appear. Feel free to use the land as well as the water; Viking longboats, anyone?

The caveats? Mediæval-style external themes. No floppy dongs. You have 3000-some-odd prims to play with.

The proclamation above is based on a charter from 1790 in which Catherine the Great promotes a certain Alexsandr Murkhanov to Secund-Rotmistr (Lieutenant-Captain) in the Horse-Mounted Guards.

And, if anyone has an interest in Alexander Nevsky-era uniforms, weaponry, or such accoutrements, please send me a notecard!

Regards,

Катя

--
* That is Friday, March 28, New Style, that is, using the Gregorian calendar, as opposed to Old Style Julian calendar dates. When one is dealing with mediæval dates, and Slavic matters in general, the Old vs New Style distinction is important.

Failure analysis of the Loch Avie Cryogenic Seasonal Support Engine

2008-03-14T22:31:00.005-04:00

Nicholas K, Bellambi E. Failure analysis of the Loch Avie Cryogenic Seasonal Support Engine (CSSE). Proc Royal Soc 1898;3.

Abstract.
The Loch Avie Cryogenic Seasonal Support Engine (CSSE) unexpectedly failed in February 1898, with resultant thermal destabilisation of the terrain. This analysis was conducted to determine the cause of failure, as well as to identify other potential failure modes of the engine. The root cause appears to be geothermal anomalous events triggered by plate tectonic movements. Various preventative strategies are discussed.

Background.
The CSSE was implemented during the current winter season in Caledon to support and enhance the ground and air temperature cooling needed to ensure persistent snow cover (maximum -3.5 degrees Centigrade) and precipitation occurring as snow (maximum -2.2 degrees C.) The system exhibited a meta-effect of allowing shallow-water ice to form to depths of up to 1 metre. (Fig. 1.)

The system was controlled from a certain location within Loch Avie. Electromagnetic relays were used to control various aspects of the system. Coolant temperature, flows, and hydraulic pressure were measured at the control panel. (Fig. 2.)

At various locations around the Loch, coolant pipes were exposed to the water and atmosphere to enable convective heat exchange to occur. Figure 3 demonstrates one such submerged pipe.

Note that the combination of the amount of dissolved solutes and particulate matter in the Loch water have dropped the freezing point to below the coolant temperature, as no ice build-up is seen. (Fig. 3a.)

Figure 4 demonstrates one of the above-ground heat-exchange mechanisms, which were used in tandem with the exposed pipe apparatus used for submersible cooling.

The details of the design of the cryogenic plant itself, and the method for dissipating heat from the system remain classified, as they were commissioned originally for The Security Service (Box 500, Loch Avie, Caledon).

System failure.
During the week of February 21, ambient air temperatures and soil temperatures began climbing by an average of 0.17 degrees C. per day, from their prior stable baselines of -3.5 and -2.2 degrees C. respectively. Snow cover began to dissipate immediately due to solar heating, and new precipitation fell as rain and freezing rain by February 26. By the first week in March, existing snow cover had vanished, and there was no contiguous ice remaining on the Loch.

During the warming event, the cryogenic fluid production remained constant, with nominal temperatures. (Fig. 5.) Readings from the heat dissipation system showed increasingly-warmer effluent.

Flow and pressure monitors recorded no pressure drops or coolant leaks. (Fig. 6.)

Analysis.
The data support that the system encountered increased ambient heat which could not be effectively dissipated, resulting in increasingly less-efficient cooling. While available readings from surrounding areas are scant, the data suggest increased energy deposition into the air, water, and soil. Electromagnetic (EM) sensors did not indicate any change in background EM or radio-frequency energies. Seismic readings, though, showed low-level activity beginning and increasing in a temporally-associated fashion with the warming event. One hydrothermal vent which is routinely monitored indicated increased output of geothermal energy.

Conclusions.
The CSSE failure was a result of its heat-exchanging system being overwhelmed by an unusual increase in hydrothermal energy. The increase in seismic activity in the area is the most likely etiology. The CSSE operated as designed, without any loss of system integrity . Based on the system design, and the observed mode of failure, the CSSE failed safely. The design could not have been modified on-line to accomodate the increased need for heat dissipation. The authors recommend that the system, now off-line, be re-engineered to increase heat transfer and dissipation, and that seismic monitoring be instituted to allow for better prediction of the need for increased efficiency. Finally, a further study of the unusual seismic events should be undertaken, as the increased geothermal activity provides demonstrable evidence of a change in tectonic interactions.

Shameless advertisement: Mainland expedition site.

2008-03-09T21:28:00.003-04:00

On behalf of my colleague, Prof. Krogstad (who appears to be blogless), I would like to announce* that he is divesting himself of a mainland expedition site, way up in the mountains of Livigno, one of the snow sims.

He cites a clear lack of Yeti, Sasquatch, and Abominable Creatures Other Than Mainlanders as reasons for abandoning the site in question. There was also something about using up all his grant funding buying questionable trinkets, but I didn't get that part of the conversation.

So if anyone is interested in a Yeti-free mountain parcel, please contact Adso Krogstad in-world.

--
* Disclaimer: I report that I have no conflict of interest in the sale of this property, nor am on the payroll of the Yeti, Sasquatch, and Abominable Snowman Council of SL.

Victorian LEGOpunk Adventurers Meet Cthulhu.

2008-01-28T19:47:00.001-05:00

I introduce today's missive with five words that, I am sure, have never appeared together before. My very own hapax legomenon, if you will.

And with that subtle pun, I segue into a most fascinating picture in honour of the fiftieth birthday of LEGO bricks.

Using today's vernacular, I ask you: could that scene be any more full of win? I argue that it could not.

The original picture is from here.

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm off to see if I can find a surplus LEGO set that contains a TARDIS, a dirigible, and skeletons.

Regards,

Kate Nicholas, FRS

British Medical Journal: Origins of Magic

2007-12-21T10:51:00.001-05:00

BMJ 2007;335:1299-1301 (22 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39414.582639.BE

Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects.

Sreeram V Ramagopalan, DPhil candidate(1,2),
Marian Knight, senior clinical research fellow(3),
George C Ebers, professor of clinical neurology(1,2),
Julian C Knight, senior research fellow(1)

1 Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7BN,
2 Department of Clinical Neurology, University of Oxford,
3 National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford

Correspondence to: J C Knight julian@well.ox.ac.uk

Objective: To assess the evidence for a genetic basis to magic.

Design: Literature review.

Setting: Harry Potter novels of J K Rowling.

Participants: Muggles, witches, wizards, and squibs.

Interventions: Limited.

Main outcome measures: Family and twin studies, magical ability, and specific magical skills.

Results: Magic shows strong evidence of heritability, with familial aggregation and concordance in twins. Evidence suggests magical ability to be a quantitative trait. Specific magical skills, notably being able to speak to snakes, predict the future, and change hair colour, all seem heritable.

Conclusions: A multilocus model with a dominant gene for magic might exist, controlled epistatically by one or more loci, possibly recessive in nature. Magical enhancers regulating gene expressionmay be involved, combined with mutations at specific genes implicated in speech and hair colour such as FOXP2 and MCR1.

In which Mme Nicholas offers Addt'l Random Facts.

2007-12-09T20:32:00.000-05:00

I will admit that I have a hard time saying "no" to friends. Thus, when recently presented with the "tag" meme from Duchess Loch Avie, I stepped forward and laid forth eight tidbits from Real Life. And when even more recently Miss Hypatia tagged me yet again, I felt honour-bound to offer up an additional series of potentially-entertaining facts about my human.

I. I have never been able to answer the small-talk question, "what is your favourite movie?" Perhaps it is because any favourite is subject to change over time, and labelling a single film as the top of the list chances adding more gravity to that work than is intended, or deserving.

II. However, my current favourite book is Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (or rather, the English translation by William Weaver). That has been at that position for, what, ten years or so.

III. Among other detritus, on my desk at work is a vintage glass pen (something like these) and inkwell; these sit next to my modern drafting pens, fountain pens, and an absolutely huge Staedtler plastic eraser that has been a companion since 1988. It gets the special erasing jobs.

IV. I have co-authored a chapter in a book.

V. I am not a coder or programmer by any stretch, but at one point I was made to write code in this language called "IDL", a bastard child of FORTRAN with COBOL-like verbosity. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, playing with SGI computers for one purpose (using Photoshop version 3!) and ended up doing mathematical visualisation.

VI. Were I the Imperatrix Mundi, I would make Edward Tufte's book "The
Visual Display of Quantitative Information" required reading, under penalty of flogging. Unless, of course, the accused liked flogging, in which case the penalty would be suitably disagreeable.

VII. My Myers-Briggs type is INFJ.

VIII. On my nightstand currently, in no particular order:
Vania Zouravliov, Marie Findley: The Mediæval Bæbes: Songs of the Flesh ISBN 1898998248
John Plummer: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves ISBN 0807614920
John McWhorter: The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language ISBN 006052085X
Denise Tyler: Practical Poser 7 ISBN 1584504781

With that, I will conclude my last 8-point exposition, and will look forward to a new passtime amongst the gentry, beyond the current tagging craze.

Ite, missa est. Go; this is the dismissal.

Anthropology Update: A Visage of Saint Nicholas

2007-12-05T21:27:00.002-05:00

(with apologies to Clement Moore)

Today, 6 December, is Saint Nicholas' Day, and in honor of that occasion, I shall pass on a bit of research regarding Old Saint Nick himself.

As my readership may know, Nicholas was born about 270 AD in Myra, Anatolia (now Turkey), and died on 6 December in 343, in Myra. He was known to be a bishop of the province, and came to be known for charity, intervention for the falsely-accused, and staunch defender of the orthodox (little-o) faith. Born into a relatively well-to-do patrician household, he likely had access to the funds which fuel much of his charitable exploits.

Perhaps his most famous act was to secretly give gold coins to a man whose three daughters did not have a proper dowry. This, along with other stories of anonymous gift-giving to the poor of Myra, led to the associations between Nicholas and the giving of presents.

Also, he is said to have discovered a butcher that had abducted three children, killed them, and pickled them for later sale as ham. Foiling the plot, he exposed the crime, and also resurrected the children. A thousand years hence, this story having traveled to England may have been the basis for none other than Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

In time, Nicholas' patronage was claimed by sailors, travelers, children, the poor, the falsely-accused, and any number of cities, from Myra to New Amsterdam, and countries, most familiarly, Russia. His gift-giving was probably responsible, at least in part, for the modern celebration of Christmas, though some cultures separate the two. (For completeness, I should also mention the parallel gift-giving theme from the Magi.)

Enough history; on with the science.

In May 1087 (21 years after the Norman Conquest of England, and 33 years after the schism between Constantinople and Rome), Italian mercenaries and sailors entered Myra on the South coast of Turkey to retrieve the relics of Saint Nicholas. The stolen remains were then taken to the Basilica di San Nicola, Bari, Italy, where they remain to this day. (N.b.: please see the references below for the resting places of other parts of Nicholas. Also please note that the Royal Society does not have any portion of Old St Nick in its attic.)

A certain Professor Francesco Introna (coincidentally from Bari, Italy) has studied the relics in the modern day, and comissioned Dr Caroline Wilkinson of Manchester University to reconstruct the face of the bishop, using tools now familiar through forensic police work, which have also shed light on the faces of Tutankhamun and Copernicus through similar reconstruction.

Essentially, the skull was subjected to a number of measurements based on both photographic and Roentgenographic images. With these data, Dr Wilkinson was able to infer the size, shape, and thickness of some 26 facial muscles. With the musculature laid over the skull, a layer of (digital) skin may be applied over the muscles, thus completing the facial features. Hair, skin, and eye colour would be chosen based on ethnologic traits of the population in IV century Myra, producing perhaps the closest facsimile possible of a person dead some 1600-odd years.

Interestingly, analysis of the skull pointed towards a broken nose, which would have likely caused a visible (though perhaps not distracting) deformity, one that the modern world may associate more with a rugby player, or boxer.

From the Guardian (UK):

Certain features of the skull can say a lot about a face. Long teeth suggest full lips, while small protrusions called mastoid processes on each side of the head point one way if the person has earlobes, and the other if not.

Taking tangents from different parts of the nasal cavity reveals how long the nose was. In Santa's case, this was particularly tough because his nose was badly broken. "It must have been a very hefty blow because it's the nasal bones between the eyes that are broken," says Wilkinson.

Quite how St Nicholas got his injury is a mystery, but Wilkinson says tales abound of Santa being something of a rebel. "I heard he once punched a bishop," she says.

The reconstructed St Nicholas is olive-skinned and white-haired, with a beard shaped in a style popular in the fourth century. "It's only really the broken nose people are surprised about, but the more I hear about his character, the more it all fits."

A possible source for the broken nose may have been the altercation between him and Arius at the First Council of Nicaea, over what later was deemed the heresy of Arianism.

Fair enough. Can I see St Nick now?

Here is the reconstructed face of Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra.

And for comparison, I present an eerily-similar icon of St Nicholas from ca. 1000 AD, from the Byzantine empire, perhaps Constantinople.

References:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/dec/16/thisweekssciencequestions1
http://www.thewalters.org/works_of_art/itemdetails.aspx?aid=143
http://www.inquiringminds.org/newsletter/0503/calendar-lore.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas

Balise et contre-balise.

2007-12-04T21:42:00.000-05:00

Tag and counter-tag.

In keeping with the jeu du jour, I shall respond to Duchess Loch Avie's notice that I have been selected to provide eight random facts about my typist. Here are those facts, in no particular order:

1. Like Loch Avie, I have a Bacon number, but I can claim one less degree of separation: I was filmed during the U2 tour during which Rattle and Hum was created (one of many in the crowd, to be blunt). Bono in turn was in some nearly-unknown project called 'Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten' with Matt Dillon. Matt Dillon was in Loverboy with Mr Bacon himself. Thus, my Bacon number is 3. If one were to count non-film connexions, then I have a Bob Hope number of 1, a Gillian Anderson number of 2 ... and an Eva Bellambi number of 5 (via Bono, Hector Elizondo, Julie Andrews, and then the opera star in Eva's post).

2. My avatar's name is based on those of Saint Nicholas, and my daughter. For a brief time early on, I tried to model Kate after my other favourite Kate, Ms Winslet, but the effect was not ideal.

3. My secret vice is vanilla ice cream. Don't tell a soul.

4. Quite unintentionally, I have seen a walrus with an erect member.

5. I am fascinated by language. I studied French in college (not as a major, just a sideline). French, however, is not terribly useful in day-to-day life in the Colonies, and my skills have waned. I have taught myself some roughly-useful Spanish, can make sense of some Italian, and forgot quite a bit of German. I have studied Latin (mainly mediæval/ecclesiastical, versus classical) and have read "The Cat in the Hat" in that august tongue. I belong to an on-line group of Anglo-Saxon scholars (professional and amateur). I can read Russian, Greek, and at one point, Hebrew ... though by read I mean make the noises, without knowing terribly much of what I'm saying. I have several historical linguistic texts on my bookshelf which have been read for fun and not necessity, or grades.

6. I was in high-school band, and went to band camp ... but did not have any un-natural congress with any instrument.

7. Confessio: While I understand that a particular web-based comic, Girl Genius, is nearly required reading for us steampunk Caledonian types, I have not been able to enjoy it. It had so much potential, I thought, but the anime-style visuals and faux German accents are distracting, there are more non-sequiturs per unit time than Douglas Adams (RIP) could have written, and then my top complaint: the protagonist, a Mad Scientist (again, with so much fantasy role-model potential) is drawn as quite the Amazon, with a preternaturally-small waist against an improbably-sized bosom, with androgenised musculature to boot.

8. While being given to methods of Logic, Science, and Reason, I have experienced one ... event ... which can not be properly explained by those disciplines, and must remain in the mystical or spiritual realm. I shan't go into further detail.

Now then: I have discovered that nearly anyone that I could name to bring into this game has already received a tag, I shall stop here, and hope that the reader has garnered some enjoyment from this exercise.

Be reassured that with the next issue of the Proceedings we will move out of this area of 'soft' social-science discussion, and back to Actual Scientific Content, not that there is anything wrong with the former.

I remain, &c,

Kate Nicholas, FRS

Beowulf wæs bealu: Editorial comments upon the new film.

2007-11-24T11:38:00.000-05:00

Bealu

(strong neuter noun)
Bale, harm, injury, destruction, ruin, evil, mischief, wickedness, malice, a noxious thing.

(strong adjective)
Baleful, deadly, dangerous, wicked, evil.

Beowulf in name only.

This author supposes that, were the film to be titled

"Thanes and Heroes",
"Beo the Arm-Ripper",
"The Curse of Hroðgar", or
"Beware the Watery Tart",

the film would have seemed more appropriate. The screenplay is like looking at the original poem through a glass darkly -- very darkly.

The screenwriters have added several features arguably to increase appeal to (apparently) young male audiences:

-- bosoms; some heaving
-- shapely water-demons
-- love interests for Beowulf
-- unnecessary character flaws in major characters which add to the drama

Features added for (apparently) young females in the audiences include:
-- computer-generated abs, glutes, &c
-- love interests for Beowulf.

And while any or all of these additions would be fine in their own right, putting them in to the venerable story is akin to, say, putting up a Picasso on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: the original was fine the way it was.

The Uncanny Valley.

As the reader has likely heard, the film was "shot" with motion-capture techniques, using actors against a green screen, and all visuals rendered via software. This film likely represents the state of the art in computer-generated film-making. However, even the best this age has to offer comes up short.

A psychological phenomenon called the "uncanny valley"
describes how the human mind perceives representations of our own kind. As the realism of the human figure and motion increases, from stick-figures on a cave wall, though XVIII century realism, to the CGI cartoon era, the viewer's acceptance of the images increases. However, viewer reactions change when the rendering is nearly-but-not-quite perfect. Words such as "creepy", "eerie", and "repulsive" are used to describe that which is almost human, but with something not quite right.

Progress has been made since the recent film adaptation of "The Polar Express", which required a fair amount of suspension of disbelief to view, as it appeared to be not quite live action, but not animated either. "The eyes," one critic noted, "were the giveaway. The eyes weren't natural."

In Beowulf, the lack of realism in the extras is most apparent. One reviewer noted that the extras were on-par with "Shrek" characters. To this author's eyes, the extras look like stock Poser characters. The main characters naturally received more fine-tuning attention, but there are times when motions, faces, and, yes, the eyes, provide clues that something is rotten in Denmark, literally.

Rewriting the Motives of Grendel.

The screenwriters used the film to advance their ideas of Grendel's motivation for attacking Hereot. Based on (1) the thesis that Beowulf is an unreliable narrator, self-aggrandising, and (2) that the poet does not provide any explanation for Grendel's singling-out of Hroðgar's people and hall, they concocted the following:

-- Grendel is the son of Hroðgar by a water-demon; the king had no sons by Queen Wealhþeow
-- the illicit coupling of man and demon cursed Hroðgar
-- Grendel acted out of scorn, against the father who in his mind abandonded the son

In the poem, the only motive Grendel has is his own curse; he bore the 'mark of Cain' as the descendant of the Biblical character. The reader is left to supply any further subtext, though this author does not see any reason to look into the motives of the beast. Grendel serves as a manifestation of evil and the unknown, against which (even in the relatively 'civilised' VI century) still persist. Things still walk outside the circle of the campfires at night, and the civilised world looks for heroes to rid that dark of demons.

The concept of a king cursed by his own weakess for the flesh, and a hero who also has congress with the same succubus, makes for a good story. The hero who interally is haunted by the flaws no one else sees, also good. Likewise with the propogation of the Curse of Cain via mankind's flaws. They are just not meet and right to paste into the epic poem. (One may also say the same about the probable insertion of the well-known Christianised portions of the poem into an earlier pagan Germanic story. But that's a whole other topic, best left for scholars other than your writer today.)

The Victories of the "styrigendlica onlícnessa of Beowulf".

"Tonight, we dine with ... Beowulf!"

The Beowulf film (moving pictures of Beowulf, poorly translated above) does have some valuable content and redeeming qualities. Some actual Anglo-Saxon dialogue appears, mainly between Grendel and his mother. The words are accessable to the modern listener: "min cild" (meen child) my child; "modor" (modther) mother; and so forth. The reader may be aware that there is a core of words that have remained little-changed in Modern English from Old English. This author was able to pick up that dialogue fairly well; more so than, say, English via a strong Welsh or Scots accent.

What appears to be a snippet of the original poem in Old English is heard during a celebration of the older King Beowulf's earlier exploits with Grendel. Your author was not immediately able to tell which lines were used, but it sounded authentic enough. A scop was narrarating a staged demonstration of Beowulf (played by a midget) attacking a Grendel complete with break-away arm.

While the digital actors were unsatisfying, other visual effects were top-notch. The glint of torch-light from snow, rapid flight through a winter forest, the blue glamour of an cavernous pool -- all very well-done.

This viewer was able to screen the film in digital 3D, with RayBan-esque glasses. While probably not as good as IMAX 3D, the effects were nonetheless acceptable, and only briefly descended to cliche (Oh no! Look at the spear's tip at my nose!). Fortunately (for this commentor anyway; the reader's opinion may vary) Ms Jolie's anatomy was not rendered in 3D, lest it drive the Average Woman to fits of dispair and inadequacy.

Hwæt: se endestæf.

So, in conclusion: This adaptation of Beowulf is an effective demonstration of the state of the art in motion-capture filmmaking. Despite all the advances, though, the images still ring un-true in distracting ways. It is unfortunate that the filmmakers chose to play with these new cinematic toys whilst trampling over the most important epic in the English language. Had they divorced the story from any connections with the poem, the movie might have gained this Anglo-Saxon-enthusiast's admiration. But as it stands, the experience sullies the good name of Beowulf, and its anonymous scribe. To remove the aftertaste, yours truly will re-visit the original tale this afternooon.

Be well; Beoð ge gesunde, mine hlafordas ond hlæfdigan!

Mediæval performance: An Updated Beowulf

2007-11-19T21:29:00.000-05:00

There has been much talk in the popular press of late regarding the venerable Beowulf, the thousand-some-year-old epic that underpins all English poetry and literature. In particular, I am told there is a new dramatic adaptation of the story for the cinema.

Not having yet seen this new production, I can say that I have been told that there have been some liberties taken with the plot, characters, and the relationship between Beowulf, Grendel, and Grendel's Mother (interestingly, played by the ubiquitous and bi-accessible Angelina Jolie).

For the scholars of mediæval performance, Anglo-Saxon, oral tradition, and folk instruments, I offer this report of a modern performance of the ancient poem.

The original manuscript is un-named, but known for its protagonist. One manuscript is extant (Cotton Vitellus A. XV, British library). It is dated to somewhere between the VIII and XI centuries, and written in Anglo-Saxon ("Old English", not to be confused with the faux ren-faire stylings properly belonging to Early Modern English). While written in England, the content covers a period of Danish and Swedish history, somewhere in the VI century. In what is thought to be a common feature of epics of the era, truth and fable are inexorably intertwined.

The scop, a minstrel, would have performed the poem, likely set to some accompaniment. At 3183 lines long, a performance of Beowulf would have been epic just for the effort needed. Anglo-Saxon poetry relied not on rhyme, but on alliteration:

Hƿæt! ƿē Gār‐Dena / in geār‐dagum
þēod‐cyninga / þrym gefrūnon,
hū þā æðelingas / ellen fremedon.

ƿ = "w"; þ = "th" as in thick; ð = "th" as in the

Note the repetition of sounds across the caesura: Gār‐Dena, geār‐dagum, and so on.

So, while Beowulf is a staple of the student of English, the poem doesn't see much of the light of the modern day. One recent exception to that was in Professor Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, where Anglo-Saxon is used as the language of the Rohirrim. The Peter Jackson film version contains a dirge sung by Éowyn:

Bealocwealm hafað fréone frecan forth onsended
giedd sculon singan gléomenn sorgiende
on Meduselde þæt he ma no wære
his dryhtne dyrest and mæga deorost.
Bealo...

'An evil death has sent forth the noble warrior
Sorrowing minstrels shall sing a song
in Meduseld that he is no more,
to his dearest lord and kinsmen most beloved.
An evil death...'

The beginning of this newly-written piece recalls line 2265 in Beowulf:

Bealocwelm hafað fela feorhcynna forð onsended...
'Baleful death has many of my living kin sent forth...'

Whilst catching up on my reading today, a particular conversation in an Anglo-Saxon scholar's forum on the æthernet caught my attention. Added to a lively discussion of the film adaptation, was a link to a video performance of one man performing the poem with a reconstructed period harp.

This modern-day scop has memorised(!) the entire poem, and set it to appropriate period music on a harp. The six-stringed instrument was built by a German firm, based on artefacts found in a 7th century Alemannic nobleman's grave in Oberflacht (south of Stuttgart), and corroborated by Sutton Hoo findings.

The instrument is tuned to six tones across an octave which make up three perfect fifths, and two perfect fourths, which gives the scop a useful modal palette with which to work. The sound is rustic, pentatonic, ancient, and haunting.

The effect is astounding, and I am given to imagine that this was what one would have heard a thousand years ago, around a campfire in West Saxony.

References, other than noted above:

(my current favourite translation) Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition) W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. ISBN 0393320979.

History of the English Language at Virginia Tech: http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/hel/hel.html

Old English at the University of Virginia: http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/

Beowulf Translations: http://www.beowulftranslations.net/

Soundtrack analysis of languages used in the Lord of the Rings film: http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/movie_soundtrack_ttt.htm#e_dirge

Peter S Baker, Introduction to Old English. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. ISBN 0631234543. Electronic edition at http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/index.html

Englisc composition listserv: http://www.rochester.edu/englisc/

Beoð ge gesunde!

St Crispin, St George, and Harry the King

2007-10-25T20:44:00.000-04:00

Apropos of a recent story told at the Anvil regarding St George's defence of Englishmen during the Great War, we should pause to recall St Crispin's Day.

It was on 25 October 1415 when Henry V met the Constable of France, Charles d'Albret on the fields near Agincourt in the North of France. An English victory to be sure, but probably better immortalised by the Bard in the eponymous play where King Harry rouses his troops thus:

What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmorland. No, my fair cousin:
If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will, I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It ernes me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace, I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more.
Rather proclaim it presently through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart. His passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the Feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a-tiptoe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day and live t'old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian":
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Henry V, IV, iii.

A splendid speech this, nearly making Your Fair Editrix go berate the nearest Frenchman just on principle, but I digress.

Thus the memory of Harry and his happy few lives on to the modern day, and rightly so. Unfortunately the Saint(s) involved in the day-naming here have not been so well-spoke of late.

My sources (E.B.) expert in Celtic mythos tell me that Crispin and his twin brother Crispinian may have been syncretisations of Lugh (Mercury from Caesar's description from his Gallic histories). Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, but by the modern era, the Bishop of Rome had these two fellows demoted a bit, so there are not many recent St Crispin's Day festivals, nor greeting cards.

Fortunately in the East, Crispin and Crispinian are still honoured as Saint-Martyrs, and in the Anglican West they still rate a commemorative day.

So, on this day, this happy day, let us who were not there raise a glass to King Harry and his Brothers, and while we're at it, toss back a wee bit for old Crispin and Crispinian.

Update in Anthropology, and an Editorial

2007-09-30T22:17:00.000-04:00

Bones of the Romanovs.

The BBC have reported that Russian scientists have made preliminary identification of remains found in July, stating that they were highly probably those of Alexei and Maria, children of the last Tsar, Nicholas II.

The remains were found in Ekaterinburg, the location of the execution of the Royal Family. The remains of the family, along with their servants, were found in 1991, in a concealed pit north of the city. Two individuals were missing from the original site, however: the Tsarevich Alexei, and one of his sisters.

The identity of the remains was aided by DNA testing from members of the British royal family. Recall that the Tsarina Alexandra was Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is the grandson of Alexandra's elder sister Victoria, Marchioness of Milford-Haven; Philip provided the DNA sample for comparison.

The new finding should bring some closure to this question, that of the missing Tsarevich and his sister. In 1998, the then-identified members of the family were laid to rest in the St Catherine Chapel in the St Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. Nicholas, Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia may now be joined by their lost kin.

Russian Victoriana.

For a Caledonian readership, perhaps more well-versed in the names and faces of the British Empire, a few points of reference are in order. Queen Victoria's progeny were found throughout the European noble houses; one of the well-known manifestations was the spread of haemophilia from her gene defect.

Several extant photographs show the Queen with her granddaughter Alix and Nicholas Romanov.

Alix in Coburg Summer 1894 with (left, seated) Kaiser Wilhelm; her fiancé the Tsarevitch Nicholas; Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria, Tsar Nicholas II, Alix and Olga, Prince of Wales, Balmoral 1896

"Tsar-Martyr".

After word spread of the execution of the Tsar, a popular cultus that developed around Nicholas. The so-called Tsar-Martyr was invoked in prayer and featured on icons. A hagiography is detailed here, with numerous accounts of supernatural events associated with Nicholas.

In 1981, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (one of the portions of the Church formed in exile after the Bolshevik revolution) elevated the Tsar and his family to sainthood, as 'passion-bearers' (страстотéрпец, strastoterpets) -- not martyrs in the Western sense, but rather ones who faced their end with faith. After 8 years of further debate, the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate recognised the family as passion-bearers as well. This was not without some dissension; Nicholas' legacy of rule was not entirely glowing, and arguably contributed to the downfall of the Russian Empire. Proponents argue that, his policies notwithstanding, his personal piety was exemplary.

An editorial.

Somewhat out-of-character, I will offer a few thoughts on this recent update to the Romanov history. There are a few historical events which, when I learned of them in childhood, seemed to have a particular indelible and resonating quality. The murder of the Romanovs was one of those. No one wishes to dwell on disaster or evil, but there was just something about the story that begged for re-telling and re-reflection.* The tragic ending of the lives of the Tsar and his innocent family in a cellar at the hands of a Bolshevik firing squad is one of those pieces of history that cannot be un-seen, once seen in the mind's eye. Part of me has always been deeply moved and troubled by the image of the haemophiliac Tsarevich, the innocent Grand Duchesses, and the non-Russian-born Tsarina sharing the fate of the head of the Empire. Even if one reckons the Tsar's fate to be similar to that of a captain of a sinking ship, the fate of the rest of the family was an unusually cruel one.

So, on to the canonisation, and the associated difficulties. The despicable slaughter of the Romanovs holds just as much weight as that of all the nameless who suffered during and after the revolution. There were many more Anastasias than the Grand Duchess killed by the Bolsheviks and the Soviets. Does one slight the nameless when one reverences the now-sainted Romanovs? I would like to think the two are separated, the so-called New Martyrs and the royal passion bearers. Certainly they are separated theologically**, but on a humanist level, perhaps the Romanovs serve as a touchstone, a symbol, of the brutality of one group against another.

Regardless of my reader's spiritual and/or religious beliefs, I would put forward that, with this new reminder of the events of 1918 in Ekaterinburg, we strive to remember all such victims of violence -- and there are no lack of examples, from one's doorstep out to the ends of the earth.

I appreciate the reader's indulgence in matters more philosophic than scientific in this editorial, and will return the Proceedings towards more science in the near future.

--
* Note the particular interest in the stories surrounding the loss of 1490 lives in the North Atlantic when Titanic sank.
** Theology is quite beyond the scope of this periodical. Interested readers may contact me directly for references to the appropriate sources.

Loch Avie and the Terrain Disaster

2007-08-12T16:03:00.000-04:00

Nicholas K, Bellambi E. Unexpected loss of terrain data in a Caledon duchy. Proc Royal Soc 2007;8.

ABSTRACT
Caledon Loch Avie suffered a data casualty on Friday, August 10, during a period of ongoing unusual server performance. One of the authors (EB) witnessed a whole-scale disruption in the Loch Avie terrain. Land elevations were affected across the sim, with some locations receeding over 1 metre. Three woman-hours of terraforming was required to return the Loch's landscaping to normal.

BACKGROUND
While the reader is likely familiar with the typical SL behaviour after client updates and on busy weekend times, the usual set of errors has not, to date, concerned sim structure, but rather, the classic shoe-bum attachment and loss of inventory.

After an uneventful period in-game, EB discovered that across the Loch, terrain elevations had been altered. Land permissions had not been changed, and were re-confirmed to have public terraforming disabled. A check of the estate tools revealed no change to the sim-wide water level, or terrain features.

FINDINGS
The damage consisted of widespread lowering of certain -- but not all -- locations in the loch, and affected both the major land division (Loch Avie proper) as well as the Inbhir Abigh ("Inveravie") sub-parcel at the southwest corner.

The most obvious indicators of a change in terrain were objects now above the ground level which once were at ground level. More subtle changes involved ground on the railroad tracks, and changes in shape to the mountains.

Approximately three hours of terraforming was required to return the Loch to the closest pre-event state possible. The 'revert' land tool proved very useful, though there were significant differences in pre-event and original terrain due to two duchesses' worth of ownership.

CONCLUSIONS
Caledon Loch Avie's terrain was diffusely changed by an unknown mechanism. Repairing the damage was made easier by using the land reversion tool, and by looking at objects to gauge the amount of change that had occurred. Sim owners could increase the ease of terrain recovery by using the terrain data file upload and download features in the estate menu (though neither author has any experience with such). Sim rollback would be another, if drastic, option to investigate.

The cause of the mishap is unknown. Given the fact that the simulator terrain data is an integral part of the sim, and not under the control of the asset server, such a fault would suggest something amiss with the computer on which Loch Avie is simulated, and not a client-side or asset server-side problem.

The Society will continue to serve as a clearinghouse for any future information on such events. Readers are invited to share any information as it may become available.

Found on the desk of Mme Nicholas.

2007-08-05T18:34:00.000-04:00

Telegram to Dr Beaker Honeydew.

Volcano elevation, on Sir Adso's stationery.

Laboratory notebook page 2237: seismographic analyses of the event.

Laboratory notebook page 2238: geometaphysigorical data.

Draft of a note to BardHaven.

As requested, I have located seven mobile seismographs suitable for portage by penguins. I am sure that this is not part of an elaborate joke, though, honestly, I had my doubts at first.

I have rec'd information from the captain of the vessel Aronnax that he is inbound to the Cay, and should arrive within a day. Unfortunately, your first choice of vessel, the Argonaut, was unavailable, as her captain is still a bit -- how shall I put it plainly -- perturbed at the Society's last fling (or expedition; I won't be pedantic about it). And your second choice, the Arktik is currently employed by the Tsar's academicians at the Pole.

I am happy to vouch for Lady Darkling's credentials, given your question of yesterday. Her dossier in our files is in proper order.

Lastly: the geometaphysigorical data (a few sheets enclosed) are troubling. Honeydew is unusually quiet on this question, and Krogstad has been avoiding the subject altogether, even when prodded. And I do not have to explain my skills at prodding to you, I assure you.

Looking forward to reports of your endeavours, I remain, &c.

KN

Oneirocritica.

2007-07-04T20:32:00.000-04:00

Interest in the analysis of dreams goes back to antiquity. Despite this, such analysis has not yet benefited from the scientific method, which explains my normal disinterest in discussions of dreams.

However ... I came across this poster for the Saint Petersburg Zoological Gardens (in a crate of materials from the Rodina), and I could find no other explanation for it than "A Dream Inspired after a Late Night of Caledon and Whisky".

The caption: "1903 г. С.П.Б. Зоологическiй Садъ"

("S.P.B. Zoologic Gardens")

I defy anyone to look at this poster, and not find themselves, or some personal interest, depicted. Look -- isn't that Mr Pearse there in the back row?

До свидания! Dasvidanya!

Update in Ægyptology.

2007-06-27T21:53:00.001-04:00

Update in Ægyptology
~ or ~
Raiders of the Lost Queen.

In a case of 'real life imitates Second Life', recent reports have been making the rounds concerning the discovery of Hatshepsut's mummy.

Why, Hatshepsut's mummy is where it has been since last year: the second level gallery of the Royal Society offices!

Fig 1. The Queen's exhibit.

We obtained the Queen's mummy via a, er, circuitous route (1), and put her on display as the centrepiece of our Ægyptology exhibit. Oh, and she also doubled as our Hallowe'en décor last October.

In any event, while we at the Society have had no doubts about the location of the first female Pharaoh, our colleagues in the real world have had more difficulty.

Fig. 2. "Eva, Hatshepsut. Hapshetsut, Eva."

Overview of Hatshepsut and her context.
While the interested reader is directed to a wonderful synopsis of the life and times of the Queen, I shall provide a shorter version of the story.

Hatshepsut was Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt during the New Kingdom, XVIII Dynasty, and unique in that she was the first Queen of Egypt to adopt the well-known (and male title) Pharaoh. She was known as a great ruler, responsible for building campaigns, and prudent domestic policy.

Disappearance.
Unfortunately, after her death, her successor (and prior co-regent) Thutmose III apparently in an Orwellian mood, had her name and likeness eradicated from, well, pretty much wherever it existed.

So, to her mummy. Her tomb has been no secret. Located in the Valley of the Kings, and labelled KV20, her tomb contained her two sarcophagi, but not her mummy (2). So, where did she go?

Clues appear.
Perhaps due to the aggressive grave robbing going on in the Valley of the Kings, later priests took it upon themselves to gather up the royal mummies from their original tombs, and secret them away to more obscure locations. One such cache, TT320, contained an astounding collection of royals (3). Despite the site's contents spanning the XVII to the XXI Dynastic periods, Hatshepsut was absent. Her liver however was present and accounted for: a canopic jar bearing her name, complete with mummified liver, was part of a collection of artefacts in TT320 belonging to the Queen.

Fig. 3. Canopic container. Liver not visible.

Now, another tomb, KV60, was found to contain two mummies, but not much else of value, having been looted in antiquity. One mummy was lying on the floor, partially unwrapped, and unidentified (4). The other rested in a sarcophagus bearing the name of In-Sitre, the Royal Nurse of Hatshepsut's court (5). One theory holds that Thutmose III moved his former Queen out of her tomb, demoting her to a B-list site. Ironically, this shuffling may have saved the Queen for posterity, rather than succumbing to loss at the hands of tomb raiders, if I may coin a phrase.

Finding the Lost Queen.
Dr Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, and a modern-day champion of Ægyptology (6) recently announced a solution to the identity of the unidentified mummy on the floor of KV60. A funerary box associated with Hatshepsut, upon CT scanning, showed a tooth removed from a mummy, and given the requisite rites due a post-mortem piece of a Pharaoh. Dental examinations of the tooth, and of the KV60 mummy provide an exact match. Dr Hawass alludes to further mitochondrial DNA sequencing evidence to link the mummy to that of Ahmose Nefertari, Hatshepsut's grandmother.

Summary.
The argument for Hatshepsut as the unidentified KV60 mummy is well-made, though I will anxiously await Dr Hawass publishing his data in a peer-reviewed journal. Should the mDNA conclusions pass muster, then it would seem that we indeed know where this great Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt is. Regardless, her works and legacy remain.

(Now, if I could only figure out where that golden box-thing in the crate in the corner came from, the one that Prof Krogstad brought back from that particular trip to the Levant ... )

Footnotes.
(1) Provenance of our mummy: the Royal Society's Hatshepsut was liberated from a shady antiquities dealer in Cairo, portaged by camel caravan to Jerusalem, then Acre, then (following the crusaders' route) Nicaea, Constantinople (not Istanbul), and then (via a series of misadventures too long to present here) eventually to Sankt Pitrbyurg, by a Baltic route over to Denmark, then (following Beowulf's route) to the United Kingdom. Then things became confusing, and, really, it's not that important at this point. See me after class for more details.

(2) KV20: Thutmose I and Hatshepsut. www.thebanmappingproject.com/sites/browse_tomb_834.html

(3) TT320: A cache of royal mummies, moved to the location presumably to protect them against further grave robbery. Hatshepsut was not among those represented.
http://www.tt320.org/

(4) The unidentified mummy in KV60: http://anubis4_2000.tripod.com/mummypages2/UnidentifiedB.htm

(5) KV60: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/sites/browse_tomb_874.html

(6) Dr Zahi Hawass discusses his findings: http://www.guardians.net/hawass/hatshepsut/search_for_hatshepsut.htm

A report on initial experience with sculpted prims.

2007-05-27T14:27:00.000-04:00

Nicholas, K. "A report on initial experience with sculpted prims." Proc Royal Soc 2007; 2 (advance communication ahead of printing).

Abstract.
Availability of sculpted primative constuction allows for a greatly-expanded repertoire of objects for the builder. Preparation of the sculpted prim is nonintuitive, and requires additional methods and skills that may not be readily available. Further work is suggested to improve access to sculpting methods. Proceeds from the sale of the developed sculpted-prim glassware should go towards future research and development of sculpting methods.

Background.
Constructing a primitive object (prim) has to this point required little in the way of preparation or skills beyond that required for day-to-day existence. Linden Lab have added an option to transform a prim into a unique shape based on a map of sorts (Fig. 1). Construction of this map is nonintuitive, and requires what appears to be a fair amount of mathematics
to translate a three-dimensional representation into this color-based map.

Fig. 1. Color-map of an object.

Methods available to perform this conversion require a knowledge of three-dimensional artistry, and an investment in the tools. One tool requires a L$ 1,820,000 capital outlay (1). Less-costly tools are available, with varying degrees of utility, and are detailed elsewhere (2).

Methods.
Using the "Rokuro" software (3), a series of maps were created to model common laboratory glassware (the first objects available for study). Eleven items were created; five were solid objects, and six attempted to recreate the hollow nature of actual glassware (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Hollow versus solid objects.

The object maps were loaded on to the beta grid for testing. All objects were given a standard glass texture (without any alpha channel), set to 30% transparency, with low reflectivity and "brightness" bump-mapping settings (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Texturing parameters.
(See text for 'A' and 'B' discussion.)

Results.
Creating the object maps via the lathe tool took on the order of 5 to 10 min per object, trending towards the lower end as the author gained facility with the method.

Figure 3 shows the different effect seen with hollow ("A") and solid ("B") prims. At a uniform level of transparency, the solid prims provided a more life-like outer appearance, with the hollow objects showing a penumbra, and the solid objects presenting a clearly-defined outer edge.

Figure 4 shows the glassware on a different background; figure 5, with different lighting (sunrise), and figure 6, at night, using only ambient lighting.

Fig. 4.

Fig. 5.

Fig. 6.

Conclusions.
Simple sculpted primative construction is within the ability of the average-to-advanced builder, using very specific tools, and and access to the beta grid for testing. Glassware emulation produces reasonable results, though the correct, hollow representation of vessels produces a somewhat-indistinct outer edge. No attempt was made to optimise texture methods, and it is acknowledged that texture map creation for sculpted prims is difficult (4). Further research is required to maximise the utility of sculpted prims; furthermore, more available (and accessible) tools for builders are required.

Advertisement.
All of the glassware will be on sale at the offices of the Royal Society, in Tamrannoch, Caledon. These will be priced at below-upload-cost, with the set of 11 pieces sold at L$100. Naturally, proceeds from the sales will fund futher sculpting methods.

Acknowledgements.
The author is supported by a new-materials grant from the Duchy of Loch Avie (LA-21-003), and by viewers like you. She has no industry support or conflict of interest to disclose.

Footnotes.
(1).   Autodesk Maya (ex-Alias|Wavefront, ex-Silicon Graphics) was sighted at US$ 6999. Linden Lab's current officially-suported sculpted prim import pathway (singular) is for Maya.
(2).   Building forum, secondlife.com. Accessed repeatedly, often to little avail.
(3).   Jewell, Y. Rokuro (lathe) http://www.kanae.net/secondlife/ Accessed 25 May 2007.
(4).   Krogstad, A. Personal communication.

Initial Report: Analysis of a ship-wreck off Loch Avie.

2007-05-12T14:04:00.000-04:00

Nicholas K, Krogstad A. "Analysis of a ship-wreck off Loch Avie." Proc Royal Soc 2007; 2 (advance communication ahead of printing).

Abstract.
The discovery and analysis of the site of a wrecked submersible in the littoral waters off the Duchy of Loch Avie are reported. Findings support that a submersible vessel, likely under steam power, suffered a catastrophic boiler failure. The wreck is relatively recent, and the lack of crew remains suggests an autonomous vehicle. Further studies are ongoing regarding the origin of the vessel, and details of its control mechanisms.

Background.
No reports currently exist regarding any underwater archæological sites in Caledonian waters. The experience of one author (KN) during the Caledon Hydrographic Survey suggests that, as of January 2007, there were no identifiable wrecks in surveyed areas, and a more-detailed exploration of Loch Avie in conjunction with the study of Nessie the Loch Beastie (1) revealed no wrecks in or around Loch Avie.

Despite ongoing civilian and naval traffic, there are no reports of loss of ships, impediments to navigation, or damage to vessels that may occur during inadvertent collisions with submerged wrecks.

As well, there has been no reported seismic activity in the area that may either expose wrecks previously buried under silt, or produce rogue waves that may be a hazard to ships.

Discovery of the site.
The site was initially discovered by one of the authors (AK) while doing sediment testing on the sea floor. One sample container was retrieved containing several pieces of coal; the Caledonian strata are not known to contain anthracite. The authors returned to the site in the Royal Society's submersible (fig. 1) to ascertain the source of the coal.

Starting at the location the coal was found, a standard search pattern (βουστροφηδόν) was begun, in 10m wide rows. Visibility was estimated at 15m at the surface, and 10m at depth. Measurement of the sub-surface currents were in line with prior observations (2), with a 1 m/sec (0.1 Sievert) current at the bottom. A 2-degree-Centigrade thermocline was present at 12 m depth.

The bottom was at 21 m depth, and fairly uniform across the search pattern. It consisted of the typical sedimentary deposits, without evident rock outcropping or other features. No flora or fauna were identified, save for ubiquitous plankton in suspension.

The first evidence of the wreck site was the finding of a screw-and-shaft mechanism, partially buried in silt. (Fig. 2.) The screw was toroidal, with a 50-cm estimated radius, and appeared to be brass or copper. The survey course then continued east-north-east at 80 degrees, along the visible axis of the debris field.

A field of lump coal was found to the east of the propeller, with an approximate 10 m diameter spread. The coal was visibly similar to the originally-extracted specimen, and consistent with fuel coal used in coal-fired steam plants. (Fig. 3.)

Beyond the coal field came larger debris pieces. Multiple metallic shapes were scattered along the debris field axis, buried in silt to various degrees. No identifiable structures or components were among the pieces. (Fig. 4.) The metal was of uniform make-up, averaging 5 cm thick, and without paint or markings. Edges of the fragments were curled and deformed; where an interior/exterior differentiation was noted on the fragments, the deformity trend was from in- to outside. The pieces ranged from one to 3 m in diameter. Application of the external magnetometer revealed the fragments to be uniformly ferrous.

There was no evidence of oxidation or combustion on any of the visible fragments. A failure of the on-board under-silt sounding apparatus prevented locating any obscured pieces, though the magnetometer did detect signal changes under silt.

The four largest pieces formed an axis of 110 degrees, to the east-south-east, turning right from the initially-seen debris field direction. (Fig. 5.) Absent from this section of the site were any smaller (sub 1 m) items. No encrustation of the debris was noted, and no plant or animal life was noted in the vicinity of the wreck. Gieger counter readings were consistent with background radiation.

Proceeding along the secondary debris field axis, the largest piece of the wreck was found approximately within 10m of the eastern-most portion of the debris. (Fig. 6.) A single metallic object, 15 x 2 x 3 m, with a cylindrical protrusion 1 x 1 x 3 m in the mid-section, was lying on the silt, aligned nearly due east. The eastern end was conical, and partially buried in silt. The western end was severely deformed, again with an in-to-out orientation of damage. The interior of this largest piece was open to the sea, but a combination of metal damage and sediment prevented close inspection. However, certain interior features were noted. A plane of metal consistent with diamond-plate decking was evident, along with several pipes, levers, and gear assemblies. No biologic matter was noted, neither human remains, nor expected sea life. The cylindrical feature on the hull was consistent with a sail and hatch, and was rotated nearly perpendicular to the sea floor.

Discussion.
Taken together, these findings are most likely the remains of a submarine vessel. Based on the forward section, the estimated size would have been 25 x 3 x 2 m, with the hatch just forward of amidships, standing at 1 m above the hull. No diving planes were seen; however, it appears that some portion of the wreck has been covered by silt, probably at the time of initial impact with the sea bed. Based on the presence of coal, and the fragmentary remains of the stern, the craft was likely under coal-fired steam power, and suffered a boiler explosion. Due to the relatively compact east-west dimensions of the debris, the vessel was likely stationary at the time of the engineering catastrophe. When the boiler exploded, the aft end of the vessel ruptured, ejecting the coal stores, and sending the shaft-screw section aft. Due to the lack of apparent impact damage, or deep embedding in silt, the vessel was probably close to the bottom, estimated at 15 m depth. The fast undersea current at the site helps provide some timing on the loss of the craft; significant time had not passed between the wreck and its discovery, as there was not appreciable dune formation on the up-current end of debris. The lack of remains (human or otherwise) with this time frame raises the possibility that the vessel was under autonomous control (3). The data do not support further conclusions regarding the method of operation, or origin, of the craft.

Summary.
A submarine craft was lost off the southern coast of Loch Avie some time between January and May of the current year, likely closer to the latter. It may have been un-manned, and suffered an unrecoverable hull failure after steam plant explosion while at depth. No evidence exists as to the origin, nature, or type (civil versus military) of the ship. Metallurgical analyses are currently being conducted, and a second expedition to explore the interior of the hull is planned.

Footnotes.
(1) Nicholas K et al. Proc Royal Soc 2007; 1.
(2) Krogstad A. Unpublished data 2006.
(3) Bell L et al. The speed of post mortem change to the human skeleton and its taphonomic significance. Forensic Sci Int 1996; 82(2):129-140.

Sloth, and a Few Other Deadly Sins.

2007-03-19T20:05:00.000-04:00

Acedia (sloth). *

Several patrons, as well as others, have noted a conspicuous tardiness of entries from the Mainland Expedition, as well as other notifications from the Society.

That, dear reader, is solely my fault. Mea culpa.

The liturgical calendar is now in the penitential season of Lent, so it is altogether fitting that I air out my shortcomings.

The Mainland Expedition has been proceeding, albeit more slowly, and there are two entries forthcoming, one by Prof. Krogstad alone. We have uncovered a number of rather interesting settings and inhabitants, which the reader will no doubt delight in discovering.

I thank you for your patience, and hope you will not think less of me for my lassitude.

Luxuria (extravagance; later, lust).

Despite my lack of missives, I have accomplished something recently. Apart from the work with Callipygian Christensen on her portrait exhibition, I have been able to remodel the Society offices, and add a new product or two.

First, may I present the Nellie Plush Toy for your amusement. Nellie, as you recall, is the daughter of the water-beastie in Port Caledon. The photographic record of the Society's Loch Avie Expedition provided a wealth of evidence with which to construct a souvenir toy commemorating the adventure. The eioch uisge ("water horse") is available in a table-top size, as well as a larger version suitable for placement in one's herb garden, say. The beastie comes with faux steam and a sound effect reminiscent of the expedition.

-~< >~-

Next, I have been crafting some eye-wear. I admit that this was initially for personal use (superbia; pride), but due to requests, I have placed these in the Society offices for sale.
The æsthete will find the spectacles to offer a smart, learned look, in addition to a clarity of vision that so many academicians find essential. The glass is tinted a refreshing light blue, a shade that will be complimentary to any outfit.

-~< >~-

On the other hand (or perhaps, the opposite side of the same hand), the scientist will exclaim "INDESPENSABLE!" upon seeing these laboratory goggles. These are constructed of treated leather over platinum wire, and the lenses tempered against fracture, pitting, and corrosion from the abuses likely found in one's laboratory or work-shop. Aficianados of the steampunk æsthetic should find these goggles to be just the thing to arouse one from one's state of fashion stupor.

-~< >~-

The astute reader will note the steam engine in the background of the spectacles advertisement. This device is for sale at the Society offices (simply exit the back door), and further such implements of industry are forthcoming.

-~< >~-

Finally, the reader is directed to roam about all four levels of the newly re-designed offices. Hatshepsut's mummy and sarcophagi (yes, plural) remain on display; various pieces of laboratory equipment may be found on the third level; and, the as-yet-unidentified artifact from a Bronze Age dig in the Levant is resting up there as well. Prof. Krogstad's work on this item continues, and he promises that he will have an article about it in the next issue of the Proceedings.

Ira (wrath).

In conclusion, dear reader, I pray that you will not fall in to a wrathful temper as you await further missives. My extra-Societal activities seem to be held in check for the moment; Prof. Krogstad swears that he is working on divers projects; and despite Ms. Bellambi's acquisition of the Duchy of Loch Avie and elevation to the role of Duchess, Her Grace remains a vigourous supporter of the Society.

Please contact me if you have concerns, and certainly, if you have any suitable article for the next issue of the Proceedings. Most importantly, thank you, dear reader, for your ongoing support of the Royal Society.

* The Seven Deadly Sins are as follows: Luxuria, Gula, Avaritia, Acedia, Ira, Invidia and Superbia. The specific nature of each is left as an exercise to the reader.

Mainland Expedition - day two

2007-01-21T22:03:00.000-05:00

A Few Difficulties; Indigenous People; and, a Sea Monster.

The best-laid plans of mice and men.

THE expedition was going along so swimmingly that it should have been no surprise that we began meeting with difficulties even before we set foot on the mainland. Before you suspect that my prior comments regarding the helpfulness of our sea captain and his vessel were overly rosy, I assure you that our mode of transport was nothing short of adequate.

Rather, it was more the disembarking. Attempting to transport* to shore with our equipment (and still no sherpas) was a dicey proposition at best. Multiple attempts were met with, well, not much. And by 'not much', I mean effects, or results, and not 'frustration' and 'hair-pulling dramatic fits' -- those we had in abundance.

Going ashore was often likened to wading through molasses in January**. We were repeatedly thrown back to our ship, only to try again.

It was enough to test the patience and mettle of anyone.

Yet, we persevered in the face of such adversity. We hope that the reader, snug in a leather chair, brandy in hand, safe in Caledon or wherever else, can appreciate the magnitude of fortitude required to succeed.

After much ado, wringing of hands, and gnashing of teeth, we landed on the western shores of the Mainland.

* You may read this as 'teleport', with no loss in meaning.
** The Great Boston Molasses Tragedy of 1919 notwithstanding. Ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boston_Molasses_Disaster

A Meeting with the Natives.

We came ashore without further events. This point of land (we would later learn was called Campello) stood out of the sea on modest cliffs. The hoped-for beaches turned out to be fairly scant. On climbing the cliffs, and portaging our gear, we discovered a lone brick tower. Prof. Krogstad climbed up (as he was the only member of the party not in a skirt), and found no evidence of, really, anything. We were expecting, say, a lighthouse, beacon, or ceremonial site. There was a lovely woven mat at the base, however. Attempting to plant the Caledon Expeditionary Banner met with no success, unfortunately: the ground was unyielding, so we simply held the flag aloft for a moment, and hummed the National Anthem.* Mme. Bellambi thought a photograph would not be meet or right, so we packed up and moved on.

To the north-west, a small bay, and beyond, a hut, in the usual primitive appearance. But what piqued our interests were the, well, for lack of a better word, gaudy** advertisements to be found further inland. Ah, such a pretty sunrise, marred by gauche signs. Three out of the three of us decided not to consider buying land from anyone who displayed his wares thus. Even A.K., normally without much of a sense of style, had to agree.

We then sighted our first native: it was Mme. Bellambi who spotted him. Young, and not particularly dangerous-appearing, he presented a pastoral appearance. He was not dressed in the manner of other natives our readers have no doubt read of, or imagined, with loin-cloth, bead necklace, collection of shrunken heads. No, he wore a simple cloth shirt, and denim trousers. Seeing no others around, we walked up and introduced ourselves.

And what a reception! He introduced himself*** and welcomed us to his land. He was as curious about us as we were him, and stated that he had not only heard of Caledon, but had been there on occasion. His only negative recollection was a lack of gentlemen's clothing. We proceeded to explain that at least that defect has recently been corrected, much to his delight. Mme. Bellambi proselytised at some length regarding the social season, diverse events, amusements, and such. I attempted to keep some context to her evangelisation by mentioning our cultural and industrial efforts of late. Prof. Krogstad wandered off at this point; more about that later.

Our host was soon joined by a lady, who (also pleasant, welcoming, &c &c) was equally enthralled by descriptions of day-to-day life in Caledon. Imagine! While you, our esteemed reader, sits amused by our travels, here is someone who would take equal delight in your every-day existence!

After a time, we obtained photographs of our party with the natives, and provided contact information regarding Caledon and its commerce. Collecting ourselves, we discovered Prof. Krogstad nearby, with an amazing discovery.

* 'Oh Caledon', by Dr. John Henry Holliday: Oh Caledon, Oh Caledon your rolling hills so rolling. Your sea shores full of sea, your forests full of trees. Oh Caledon, Oh Caledon you are the land for me!
** I do not mean any confusion with the extraordinary talents of the architect Antoni Gaudí of Catalan, designer of the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família.
*** The natives will be kept anonymous, to protect them from any possible retribution from others on the Mainland who may be jealous of their achievements in manners and poise.

The 'Evil Seat'.

While we were busy chatting up the natives, singing Caledon's praises, Prof. Krogstad had wandered off, as he is wont to do; but on this occasion, he actually stumbled upon a remarkable find.

He found an array of wooden crates, each about half a metre on a side, laid out in a rough circle on the ground. It is unclear if the exact position of the crates was significant; the reader is undoubtedly familiar with the history of Stone Circles (including one in our own Tamrannoch), and their connection to the astronomy of the ancients. What was most amazing was the issue of light -- perhaps more accurately lightning -- from these boxes.

All but four were emitting showers of coloured lights, in the manner of fireworks, but without the loud reports or the scent of gunpowder. They seemed to be fully autonomous, and self-powered. Harnessing this phenomenon would provide for a number of useful applications for home and industry. Prof. Krogstad attempted to remove one of the boxes for further study, but was thwarted: they were firmly attached to terra firma.

The non-emitting four boxes were equally intriguing. Hovering over two of them were an ætherial description, 'Evil Seat'. This alone would be sufficient to amaze (how exactly does one put letters aflight?), but the prospect of what 'evil seat' meant was tantalising.

It would appear, by a vote of actions, that Mme. Bellambi was the bravest among us, since she dared sit. And without noise, or flash of light, or other warning, she was rudely shot up into the air, only to land (after several agonising seconds) among some bushes, upon her backside. Uninjured, she ran back over to examine the crate that launched her some thousand feet. After literally tens of minutes of study, we could find no mechanism or moving part to explain such an action.

The less-educated may regard this as magic, along with the lightning-fireworks. May I submit, though, that sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I may conclude then that at least some persons on the Mainland possess technology far greater than we have devised.

After pondering the intersection of philosophy and science, we moved on.

A Deserted Temple.

We headed north-east. Mme. Bellambi had (briefly) spotted a river in that direction during her unexpected flight, and presuming water transport to be quicker than that over land, we decided to give it a go.

Coming down off a hill, we nearly literally fell into what appeared to be a temple in the Grecian style. The floor mosaic was reminiscent of that of Pompeii, and the columns were either Attic or Doric. The current inhabitants appeared to redecorate in an eclectic fashion, so I can not be certain of the dating of the site. I will also refrain to comment upon the taste in decor the owners seem to have.

One unusual feature was a small collection of pink spheres. Like the wooden crates before, these were laid out in some pattern, the meaning behind which remained opaque. A.K. caught Mme. Bellambi on film whilst she was down examining them. There was something ... unsavoury about the spheres; we will leave the investigation of such to later explorers.

Past the temple, again north-east, was a river. A dock provided a convenient place for converting our flat-bottomed boats from their over-land forms (on a chassis with wheels; see the prior missive). Now happily riding vice walking, we headed on.

Here There Be Monsters.

The river itself was wide, with some 10 feet of draught in places, and an imperceptible current, all of which made navigation a joy. Unfortunately, we were quickly lulled into a stupor of water-bourne convenience, and nearly floated headlong into a sea monster!

Well, a river monster, to be sure. With a length of some 10 to 15 metres, and wings nearly that in span, this lizard-like beast presented us with quite a shock. We were no doubt spared its ferocity due to its lack of consciences; otherwise, we'd have been done for, and our valued reader would be out of luck for entertainment.

Prof. Krogstad jumped out to survey the beast. Its wings were bat-like, but it was certainly no mammal. It had no perceptible limbs, placing it likely in the order Squamata, suborder Serpentes. While not a herpetologist (or a herpetophile, for that matter) Prof. Krogstad reckoned it to be a new species, and set about sketching it for posterity. In the mean time, I procured a snapshot.

Our curiosity sated, we made haste to put the snake behind us*. With sunset nearing, we took advantage of a small dock around the bend of the river. Disembarking, we surveyed the area, and saw a large variety of paintings on display, and various objects d'art -- enough to make for an enjoyable day at least.

Having made it thus far with us, the reader may ask if every day will be expected to hold such content as to keep one in rapt attention, on the edge of one's seat, in fervent imagination of the wild Mainland. In a word, yes. So await the next report with great anticipation -- you shan't be disappointed.**

* "Vade retro!" from: οπισω μου σατανα
** Given suitably ambiguous definitions of 'disappointed'.

Society Expansion

2007-01-20T23:37:00.000-05:00

THOUGH your president has been preoccupied (occupied, acually) with the expedition of the Mainland, I should let you know that the Society has expanded its land holding in Tamrannoch, thanks in no small part to the efforts of our benefactrix the Duchess of Loch Avie, and the seemingly-tireless work of our Benevolent Monarch, Desmond Shang.

This expansion will allow for the construction of a larger Society office, with expanded museum and exhibition space, and for more goods for sale.

I shall be less of a procrastinator, or sloth, when it comes time to announce the grand opening of the new office, and the much-awaited Plush Toy Nellie.

Regards,

Kate Nicholas, F.R.S.

Mainland Expedition - day one

2007-01-14T21:51:00.000-05:00

Day One: The Western Approaches.

With our benevolent leader announcing to the nation his interest in furthering the exploration of the mainland, the Society has decided to step up to this challenge. We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. And for self-aggrandisement, naturally.

As many of our readers (and certainly our members) are well-aware, grant monies for such endeavours are rather a bit hard to come by. Supporters seem to be much more interested in projects that provide potential income, if not titillation.

I and two of our willing Fellows (E.B., A.K.) came to the conclusion that we could not really prove that such outcomes would be in store, and so these travels would be funded out of the petty cash fund of the Society. Any baubles, trinkets, or other artefacts brought back would help re-fill our coffers.

First, provisioning: no problems on that front. The Society's attic is brim-full of various items appropriate for supporting a proper expedition, including enough tea for the round trip. In fact, while scrounging around the attic, we came across a few things we frankly forgot were up there, which we will clean up and display when we return.

Second, transport: somewhat of a problem, what with our very limited budget, and all. Professor Krogstad, being an open-seas fisherman in his youth, used his network of contacts to find transit on a tramp steamer headed east, with the small additional inconvenience of deck-swabbing to help pay the fare. (I of course delegated such duties to Prof. Krogstad, while Mme. Bellambi and I pondered our route on the mainland.)

Third, additional help: the three of us, having quite a bit of field work under our belts so to speak, knew the key ingredient for a successful expedition:

sherpas.

Now, as our readers know, even Our Fair Isle has no lack of persons of varied occupations, lifestyles, and interests. Unfortunately, sherpas are at quite a premium, and we were unable to locate even one.

Not to be dismayed at this early stage, Prof. Krogstad managed to adapt his flat-bottomed river boats (last used for the Caledon Hydrographic Survey of 2006) to sit upon a wagon-frame of sorts, with the steam engine normally driving the propeller shaft now providing locomotive power on land. Such brilliance! We are indeed lucky to have this chap along, his tastes in accommodations notwithstanding.

After gathering up all the necessary equipment, reviewing our wills, and pre-paying Mr Shang for the next cycle of land fees, we sat off. A crowd of literally several bid us "adieu" and "pax vobiscum" from the Society's Office on the sea in Tamrannoch.

By my reckoning, the trip should be some 26,000 metres to the south-east. Starting out on Saturday, 13 January, we would expect landfall by dusk on Sunday.*

* The reader even the least-bit acquainted with mathematics will realise that taking 36-odd hours to travel 26 kilometres means that we would travel at roughly one-tenth a metre per second, quite similar to the brisk pace of the three-toed sloth (Bradypus spp.). People: suspend disbelief!

The Open Sea.

Putting to sea from Tamrannoch, we found the water to be quite calm, dark blue, and apparently devoid of fish. Prof. Krogstad was unable to sound the bottom, making the depth at least 20 fathoms (the length of our sounding cable). We made good time, headed variously east and south-east. There were a number of islands, many appearing inhabitable, that flanked our course; these will need to wait until the greater economic potential of the mainland has been tapped.

Of interest to the Caledonian reader living in the eastern portions of Our Fair Isle, there is a large island due east of the Duchy of Primverness, with diverse and unique features. However, we weren't close enough to capture any images.

The day and night passed without difficulty. Fare on board our steamer was fortifying, if basic. None of us developed that scourge of the open seas, sea-sickness, and we spent our night below-decks playing bridge by lamp-light.

Sunday dawned at sea, with increasing sights of clouds and haze to the east. We were still right on schedule, and as we plied eastward, we enjoyed tea and strolled about the less-soiled above-decks areas.

By late afternoon, we sighted land for the first time. An island, roughly a quarter of a kilometre east-to-west, and twice that in the opposite direction, appeared off our port bow. We passed within half a kilometre or so, enough for all three of us to survey the area with telescopes.

And what a sight! Like a vision from Dante's Hell, the island was strewn bric-a-brac with the most bizarre assortment of materials any of us had ever seen. We could make out some of the natives, in gross detail, who were evenly divided between building the unusual structures, and walking about, no doubt enjoying social intercourse.

The population density on this island was such that, being extremely outnumbered, we decided to continue on to the south-east, to a point of land just beyond.

The point (which Mme. Bellambi dubbed "Point Anarchy") was nearly identical in population and behaviour to the island just passed. Outnumbered (and non-sequitured), we turned south by south-east, giving these natives a wide berth. I offered the supposition that the two tribes had split themselves into an island clan, and a mainland clan, and that the gulf between them was likely a site of ongoing battles. We didn't tempt fate.

Soon we sighted an island, running east-west in it longest dimension, perhaps a kilometre. It was made up of three land masses, perhaps remnants of prior volcanic activity. As we approached, the beaches and cliffs appeared quiet, and bereft of life. After some 20 minutes surveying from the ship, we understood why: full-out warfare!

Consider the rowdiest Guy Fawkes, or Independence Day, or New Year's fireworks display you have ever seen. Now, picture it ten- and hundred-fold, in non-stop pyrotechnic action. Fortunately, we sighted no naval vessels, but before any sprang upon us, we reversed course for the north-east.

No sooner than the Island of Armageddon (my suggestion for a name, thank you) slipped behind, another small atoll appeared off the port bow. Even from our distance, we could hear the reports of cannon and artillery fire. Telescopic inspection revealed a number of persons (in various uniforms, or none at all, as best as we could tell) engaged in testing of arms. They directed no attention at us, which was all for the best, I feel. We continued on to the north-east.

By this time, we were starting to wonder: is the south-western coast of the mainland engaged in some civil war? What would be the conditions on land? Are the Bizarre Builder Clans that we initially saw involved in this conflict? Are the natives homovores?

The mood of the expedition lifted when we sighted our eventual landing spot: a lovely point extending out from a bay, surrounded by sandy beaches. No sign of Dali-esque construction, nor unrestricted warfare. With that, we dropped anchor, and planned to spend the night on board, and set out in the morning.

Our gracious sea-faring host has been most accommodating to this point, to my surprise, I am happy to report. Travel by tramp steamer is much under-rated, but I cannot recommend it for anyone of delicate constitution. Note, though, that Mme. Bellambi and myself did manage without much difficulty.

As the quote reads, "When he reached the New World, Cortés burned his ships. As a result his men were well motivated." We plan no arson, of course, but as the steamer will be leaving us after our going-ashore, we will find ourselves highly-motivated to overcome the obstacles on the mainland.

Next: On to the Mainland!

An expedition to the Mainland.

2007-01-12T11:05:00.000-05:00

Your president has learned of a planned expedition (or rather, a series of expeditions) to the Mainland, spurred on by our benevolent ruler Mr Shang, and his interest in promoting the advancement of geography, anthropology, and the allied fields.

On behalf of the Society, I have offered its assistance with these plans for exploration, and am anxiously awaiting word from Mr Shang as to what we may bring to bear for the success of these travels.

No doubt, those members of the Society with an interest in cartography, scientific illustration, and comparative anthropology will wish to volunteer their services.

The Royal Society for the Advancement of Knowledge in the Natural Sciences looks forward to this opportunity to serve the greater good of exploration, and to promote our fair nation in the process.

I shall forward more information as it becomes available.

Regards,

Kate Nicholas, F.R.S.
President

Happy new year. Also: a new issue of the Proceedings.

2007-01-01T13:00:00.000-05:00

On behalf of the entire Society, I would like to wish all of our supporters a Happy New Year. And personally, I will extend thanks to our fellows (Mme. Bellambi, Mr. Krogstad) and our members, who have greatly advanced both scientific knowledge as a whole, and the Society in particular.

We have released the latest (actually the first, for those keeping count), issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society. One may obtain a copy at the offices of the Society in Tamrannoch, Caledon.

Of particular interest is Mme. Bellambi's work on documenting the history surrounding the newly-discovered aquatic animal that has taken up residence in Loch Avie. Thanks to Her Grace, Duchess Flasheart, the Society was given free rein to survey the Loch, with particular attention to the beast, who has been dubbed "Nellie."

One may expect a display of the results of the expedition at the Society offices in the forthcoming days.

I am looking forward to the new year, and towards an increase in the scholarly activity of the Society. Abstracts of scientific work may be submitted to me at any time, for publication in future issues of the Proceedings.

I wish you the best of luck with your upcoming endeavours, and I await the many outstanding achievements that are, no doubt, to come from the Society.

Regards,

Kate Nicholas, F.R.S.
President

Proceedings of the Royal Society

Free data broadcaster & gauge kit.

Movement of objects between virtual worlds.

From the *real* Proceedings: Dangers of Being a Female Spider.

Good news for catgirls and evil tiny kitties alike.

The Hapmouche Event: Unexplained phenomena in Caledon-on-Sea.

200+ years ago in the real Proceedings

Neanderthal music, heard 30,000 years too late.

The Avarian Expedition: initial notes

Advertisement: New Snow-Making Equipment

Have Gunbunnies Met Their Match? Zoology Update.

Salinity Data for Caledonian Waterways.

Oceanography update: Rough Sex at 40k Leagues Under the Sea

Public Health update: Papal mortality and Welsh rugby

Archæology: top ten discoveries of 2008.

A great day, comrades: we sim into history.

A Summary of Effects of Recent Changes by Linden Lab.

Editorial: Instability of Saint Kitt Islands.

Tunguska, part 2.

The Tunguska Event at 100.

'The World is Just Awesome'. Plus, Kate's sister.

Photograph of the day: mainland advertising.

Additional notes from the field.

Update in Mycology.

In Search of ... Fungus!

A biologic and geologic survey of Saint Kitt Islands.

Enough levity for a fortnight: The Bard on Fark

The Earliest Audio Recording (at least as far as we know).

A non-scientific announcement.

Failure analysis of the Loch Avie Cryogenic Seasonal Support Engine

Shameless advertisement: Mainland expedition site.

Victorian LEGOpunk Adventurers Meet Cthulhu.

British Medical Journal: Origins of Magic

In which Mme Nicholas offers Addt'l Random Facts.

Anthropology Update: A Visage of Saint Nicholas

Balise et contre-balise.

Beowulf wæs bealu: Editorial comments upon the new film.

Mediæval performance: An Updated Beowulf

St Crispin, St George, and Harry the King

Update in Anthropology, and an Editorial

Loch Avie and the Terrain Disaster

Found on the desk of Mme Nicholas.

Oneirocritica.

Update in Ægyptology.

A report on initial experience with sculpted prims.

Initial Report: Analysis of a ship-wreck off Loch Avie.

Sloth, and a Few Other Deadly Sins.

Mainland Expedition - day two

Society Expansion

Mainland Expedition - day one

An expedition to the Mainland.

Happy new year. Also: a new issue of the Proceedings.

From the real Proceedings: Dangers of Being a Female Spider.