Monday Morning Quotations

Moving into the D's, we have a trio of the Darwin family expounding on science.

"There is a grandeur in this view of life." - Charles Darwin, English naturalist and scientist, 1809-82

"A fool... is a man who never tried an experiment in his life." - Erasmus Darwin, English physician and grandfather of Charles Darwin, 1731-1802

"In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs." - Francis Darwin, English botanist and son of Charles Darwin, 1848-1925

With a nod to Olympic patriotism, here is a Canadian quotation to change things up a bit:

"I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker." - Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist, 1913-95

Solutions to Puzzle Number 11

Well, it has been a week since the latest puzzle came out, so it is time for the solutions. I received puzzle responses from Scott, Robert, and Cornucrapia. I also would like to point out that Sarah impressively got the answer to 4 without any help from Google - who knew a physicist would be so awesome at zoology? Her solutions have not been listed below, however, because she lives with me and I am bad at not giving hints. I have reprinted the clues below with their solutions italicized below (and the media category in parentheses).

1.) At an Unknown Location
Lost (Television)
Solved by Scott and Robert

2.) The Manner in which I Became Acquainted with Your Most Recent Female Progenitor
How I Met Your Mother (Television)
Solved by Scott, Ian, and Robert

3.) The Misplaced Planet
The Lost World (Literature - I believe there is also a television show with the name, but I had Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel in mind).
Solved by Scott, Ian, and Robert

4.) Lampyridae
Firefly (Television)
Solved by Scott, Ian, and Robert

5.) Vigorously Cleans
Scrubs (Television)
Solved by Ian and Robert

6.) A Story About Two Population Centres
A Tale of Two Cities (Literature)
Solved by Scott, Ian, and Robert

7.) According to Your Preference
As You Like It (Literature - the obligatory Shakespeare title)
No one sent me a correct solution for this one.

8.) Personal Graphical Representation
Avatar (Movie)
Solved by Scott and Robert

9.) No Rural Region for Elderly Males
No Country for Old Men (Movie)
Solved by Scott, Ian, and Robert

10.) Overcook Announcement
Burn Notice (Television)
Solved by Scott and Robert

Well done to all the puzzle solvers.

Start of the Week Quotations

It is a slow start to the blogging week, commemorating the long weekend I have had and the lazy Monday I have thusly celebrated.

"An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing." - Quentin Crisp, English writer, 1908-99

"You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose." - Mario Cuomo, American Democratic politician, 1932-

"Christmas is the Disneyfication of Christianity." - Don Cupitt, British theologian, 1934-

And so ends the C's, and here is a sneak preview of the D's:

"How I love a colleague-free day! Then I can really get on with the job." - Hugh Dalton, British Labour politician, 1887-1962

Busy Day

Today is the 201st anniversary of Darwin's birthday, the Winter Olympics are starting, and I've got a whole mess of brains to co-register into a common space (a task which is proving far more difficult than it ought to be, considering how often published neuroimaging results are based on co-registered brains). I had planned to offer some commentary on the Olympics, but I wasn't able to find some of the links I wanted and now I don't think I will have the time to properly formulate my thoughts (perhaps that will come in a few days). I will, however, offer a brief tidbit of information that recently came to my attention concerning the city of Darwin, Australia.

Darwin is a lovely city, albeit suffering from an overabundance of humidity and, occasionally, the dreadful propensity common to many coastal tropical cities for inclement weather. When I visited Darwin as a child, however, I never even questioned how Darwin got its name. As I believe I have mentioned before, I was wildly into dinosaurs as a child and as such had quite a bit of exposure to de-facto acceptance of evolutionary theory. I was vaguely aware of some controversy when the idea was first introduced, but the fact that evolution was obstinately resisted by people living in the modern world had never even crossed my mind. Darwin, therefore, was a name I recognized for eminent scientific achievement and world-wide influence, and thus as fitting a name as any for a city. Apparently, however, Darwin was not actually named after Charles Darwin for his scientific achievements, but rather received its name because one of Darwin's former ship-mates was simply going down a list of old sailing buddies and naming places after each in turn. I guess it is just convenient that one of the most important cities in the Australian north ended up catching the most notable name on the list.

Puzzle Number 11: The Oblique Titles Strike Back

Clearly I didn't plan out my oblique title puzzle names properly, since The Return of the Oblique Titles preceded The Oblique Titles Strike Back. Oh well, hopefully my lapse in foresight will be overlooked by the great fun to be had in decoding the next set of titles. As before, these are a set of titles pulled from movies, television shows, and literary works (and, occasionally, more than one of those categories) and then obfuscated with synonyms and alternative definitions. I think a couple of these are rather challenging, so have fun!

1.) At an Unknown Location

2.) The Manner in which I Became Acquainted with Your Most Recent Female Progenitor

3.) The Misplaced Planet

4.) Lampyridae

5.) Vigorously Cleans

6.) A Story About Two Population Centres

7.) According to Your Preference

8.) Personal Graphical Representation

9.) No Rural Region for Elderly Males

10.) Overcook Announcement

Note: Anyone who gets #4 without looking it up has earned some profound trivial respect.

Note: Solutions can be found here.

Dirty Chemistry Humour

Similar to my post this morning, here is something that I forgot to put up when it first came to my attention a few days ago. Behold what is probably the most amazing image from an article abstract in years:


When I first saw this, I assumed it was a joke, but it appears to be from a legitimate article. So, to Sergio H. Toma, Miriam Uemi, Sofia Nikolaou, Daniela M. Tomazela, Marcos N. Eberlin, and Henrique E. Toma, I say well done.

Risk Intelligence

I meant to post a link to this last week after PZ Myers mentioned it, but then I wanted to try taking the test first which meant my post got delayed and then forgotten about for a few days. If you haven't already had a look at the Risk Intelligence test, though, I think it is worth going to (as far as internet intelligence tests go). The basic idea of the test is that you don't simply answer every statement with a True/False response, but rather with a percentage - 50% meaning you have no idea and think the statement as equally likely to be true or false, 100% meaning you are certain it is true, and 0% meaning you are certain it is false. There are 10% increments in between for all of those pesky facts that you are pretty sure you've heard somewhere else, but you wouldn't bet anything much of value on.

I scored a 78 - apparently that is a rather good score, but not as good as PZ Myer's 83. It would seem that I lack confidence in my responses (judging by the response curve given at the end). Of course, I don't know how much stock to place in any internet quiz, but I still thought it was an interesting project. Plus, whoever put it on seems to be gathering data, so you might be helping out someone's research by taking the test.

Book Review: The Sea Wolf by Jack London

Over the weekend I finished my latest 'on the bus to work and back' book, which was the classic novel The Sea Wolf written by Jack London. Although probably not as famous or well-known as London's novels that actually involved wolves (The Call of the Wild and White Fang), The Sea Wolf was certainly an interesting piece of literature. If you are interested in late 19th century/early 20th century philosophy, literature, and psychology, then I would recommend reading this book. It is an exciting adventure novel and period piece with all the elegant prose that is so sorely lacking in most modern novels. Although I will try to keep from overly spoiling the novel, my discussion hereafter will contain details that those planning to read the book might not want to hear.

As one might have noticed, I hedged my praise in the introductory paragraph with the catch-all (and therefore not very descriptive or flattering) descriptor 'interesting'. The reason for this is that the book has a somewhat lopsided construction - the first half of the book is excellent and builds up a complex relationship between the narrator, Humphrey van Weyden, and Wolf Larson, the captain of the sealing schooner Ghost. Humphrey is a gentleman scholar and literary critic who was lost at sea following the collision of a ferry boat and steamer in the San Francisco harbour, only to be saved at the last moment by the passing Ghost. Instead of turning around and depositing him back on shore, however, Wolf Larson decides to teach Humphrey to "stand on his own two legs" and forces him to be part of the crew. As an intellectual and an idealist, Humphrey has great difficulty dealing with the world of harshness and brutality that he now finds himself a part of. While much of the opening chapters is taken up by tales of cruelty and violence, Larsen begins to emerge as an enigma to both distract and frighten Humphrey. Although never properly schooled, Larsen is an accomplished autodidact with a personal library pulling from literary analysis and grammar to astronomy, mathematics, and biology. That the captain possesses such a keen intellect but still acts in a monstrous and brutish manner both fascinates and appalls Humphrey, while Humphrey's years of education provide the captain with an intellectual peer for perhaps the first time in his life. The two develop a bizarre camaraderie, verbally sparring about philosophy and the meaning of life while the brutally physical nature of the ship continues around them in excessive violence.

Just as things seem to have reached some sort of uneasy equilibrium, London introduces a few new characters out of the blue in the form of a rescued lifeboat containing a trio of men (all pressed against their will into service by Larson) and a lone woman, Maud Brewster. The inexplicable introduction of Maud is generally greeted as a great failing in the construction of the story, but I disagree that this is the point where the novel goes entirely astray. Being the first and only woman the entire crew is likely to see for months at a time, the fact that Larson refuses to sail out of his way to drop the rescued foursome on shore clearly spells trouble. Maud is a dangerous element being interjected into the relationship of Humphrey and Larson (the only two men aboard the ship who have any clear chance of her affection, in the case of Humphrey, or possession in the case of Larson). She forces their relationship, oppositional though it has ever been, out of the safe realms of mental sparring and verbal debate and back into the savage physical world of the isolated life at sea. The tension seems wound to bursting, and a climactic showdown appears inevitable... except it never happens. The moment it appears that it is actually going to happen, when Larson begins a lustful and physical advance on Maud that looks like it can only end in her rape, and Humphrey abandons all caution and attacks his much more powerful adversary, the tension simply disappears as Larson instead collapses under a sudden and vicious headache.

Although it would seem that perhaps this has only delayed the climax of the novel, instead Maud and Humphrey escape on a lifeboat that night and the story from that point on becomes one of survival in the northern sea and on an isolated northern island. It is this inexplicable twist that, for me, is the great failing of the novel. London spent the first two thirds of his book expounding flowery prose and conducting his words into what ought to be a resounding and terrible crescendo of struggle, action, cunning, and fight, only to transform his book into an oddly restrained love story of almost sickening chastity and propriety. Even when mutiny, rebellion, and foul weather lead the Ghost, carrying Wolf Larson himself, to shipwreck on the same god-forsaken rock that Humphrey and Maud end up having been washed upon by a storm, the philosophical and physical show-down has become spoiled and lop-sided through Larson's new-found infirmity (it would seem he is suffering successive strokes or suffers from some other degenerative neurological disorder). Thus, although it was very nice that Humphrey and Maud managed to repair the masts, sail off, find a steamship to rescue them, and finally get around to pecking each other on the lips, the last third of the novel was so anticlimactic that one hardly cared at that point. I might be, of course, overly harsh in hindsight, but it was rather disappointing.

Now that I have described the plot, however, I would like to give some incidental thoughts. London sets up the philosophical showdown as one of the moral, genteel man of faith (Humphrey) versus the materialistic, amoral, and atheistic brute (Larson). While I recognize the time period in which this was written, it does still somewhat bother me that no distinction was made between Larson's materialism and his sociopathy (for he really was a sociopath of the highest degree). During London's lifetime biological altruism was a seeming enigma, for kin selection, the iterated prisoners' dilemma, and all the other models and explanations explaining why cooperative behaviour really can be better for every individual had yet to be discovered. Despite my understanding, though, of why this particular dichotomy of outlooks was chosen, I really wished I could have interjected at a few points.

The other observation that struck me as a little funny was how comparatively uneasy modern society is with the idea of masculine beauty (at least masculine beauty being recognized by other men). There are several passages in which Humphrey describes the finely crafted lines of Larson's face and body, with one particularly awkward scene (to be fair, I would have found this scene awkward with any gender combination of characters since it strikes me that Humphrey was simply being a creep) involving Humphrey being summoned to the captain's quarters to help tend to his wounds after a fight. Rather than help out, however, Humphrey forgets himself when he is partway through wetting the towel and just stands and stares after Larson strips off his shirt. This is certainly not the first piece of literature I have read in which male characters dwelt at length on the beauty of other male characters (although the titles of those texts now escape me), but it is something that I think is very rare in modern novels (presumably, of course, there is some really smutty fan fiction out there involving Kirk giving moon-eyes at Spock's ears or Ron lovingly following the line of Harry's scar down to gaze soulfully into his soft green eyes, but I am here referring to mainstream writing). I am curious when and how that changed, and more-so why it only seemed to change for men. Women, after all, still seem perfectly comfortable remarking on the beauty of other women.

Now that I have inexplicably brought out a bizarre and only tangentially related observation at the very end of my review, I think I shall follow the form of The Sea Wolf and end here.

Monday Morning Quotations

I have been taking a break from my start of the week quotations, but this week I am going to try and get back in my proper blogging habit. To that end, here are some quotations to start the week off right:

"the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer." - Charles Caleb Colton, English clergyman and writer, c. 1780 - 1832

"Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out." - Cyril Connolly, English writer, 1903-74

"It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes..." - Joseph Conrad (Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski), Polish-born English novelist, 1857-1924

"Mankind has probably done more damage to the earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history." - Jacques Cousteau, French naval officer and underwater explorer, 1910-97