ThinkingShift

I’ve been doing some reading in KM, so I’ll gather together in this post some of the more interesting items. But first, do yourself a favour and hop on over to Dave Snowden’s blog at Cognitive Edge and read his opinion on the hijacking of the language of complexity. Couldn’t agree more. I’ve noticed recently that everybody and his dog is talking about “sense-making” (without necessarily making sense!). Long ago, way back in the mists of time, I was at library school learning about Brenda Dervin’s sense-making model. If you don’t know it, check it out here or here. And her seminal paper (1995), which we poured over in library school - Chaos, Order and Sense-Making: A Proposed Theory for Information Design - is here.

Basically, Dervin’s model goes like this (as I understand it): her theory of sense-making is a metatheory. “Sense-making” has a number of meanings and can refer to a methodology, a set of assumptions or assertions or a theory. Don’t jump on me just yet: I’m using this post to sort out my thoughts :)-

Dervin’s model assumes a number of things - the individual is constantly moving in time-space; human reality is discontinuous; the individual makes sense of reality in order to bridge any gaps caused by discontinuity; information-seeking (to help bridge the gap) is a part of sense-making. So as the individual moves through time and space (known as the Situation in Dervin’s sense-making model below - the context in which an individual needs to make sense of something or where an individual is blocked), a gap is encountered. Dervin uses a gap-bridging metaphor. I think the example I heard her use once was of a man walking along a road and he comes across a huge gap - what to do? I always think of a huge bridge, you’re walking along noting the world surrounding you when, bang - no bridge to cross to the other side….huge gap, what to do?

So the Gap in Dervin’s model is an aspect of the Situation that requires clarification so that the person can continue to move in time-space. Help is how one makes sense of the gap, closes the gap and ends up happily on the other side of the bridge going in a direction that makes sense to the individual. I hope I haven’t massacred her model! Information studies people apply this model to the reference interview and information users. I’ve always liked the model because of its (to me) creation/destruction of bridges over gaps imagery. Now, of course taxonomies can help bridge the gap - but that’s another post.

Then I came across Dave Snowden’s elegant Cynefin framework with its four domains of Known, Knowable, Complex and Chaotic, which is a sense-making device for a complex and complicated world. Read Dave’s paper here. I have used this framework in taxonomy development and my work with communities of practice. I think some of my students are sick of me trotting it out in the various KM courses I teach, but hey, when you’ve found something that makes perfect sense…..

Slight diversion sorry: so I came across this interesting article in the JIKM (Applying Sense-Making & Narrative Techniques to Capture Lessons Learnt by Bonnie Cheuk), which applies both Dervin and Snowden’s theories to lessons learnt (using narrative techniques).

Then there’s a couple of other interesting pieces. Baby Boomers and KM. The first Boomer has apparently applied for social security in the US. And the funeral industry is salivating at this thought: “It will be 2010 before the baby boomer generation comes on-stream”. On-stream I guess is a way of saying shuffling off the planet in a cascading flow. But of course, a sizeable chunk of the workforce will depart soon taking with it hundreds of years of expertise. So what to do? Well, you can read an Inside Knowledge article here. Not really an article, more some basic thoughts to trigger off thinking about generational knowledge transfer.

Then there’s this article from CIO Insight that highlights social networks in organisations and bottom-line expectations. Speaking of social networks, I came across news in the IHT of a new form of social networking. It’s called Baagz and the idea is that you can put a lot of personalised digital stuff in your “baagz” on a public Web site. According to the article, Baagz uses an underlying semantic description of every Web site stored in a baag to determine what a given baag is about, whether or not a given Web site is specifically tagged by users, or baagerz. The system then uses this knowledge to connect baagerz with shared interests. Okay, let’s understand something: I can spell, I don’t think these dudes can. Presumably, baagz means a bag or container.

You can check out Baagz here, but you need to give them your email and they’ll send you an invite to join.

Now, I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m obsessed with death and dying - because I’m not. I rarely think about it. But occasionally, like everyone else I guess, I wonder what that final moment will be like and how it will happen. I’ve never had a near death experience so I can’t tell you. Nor have I wafted down some tunnel with light at the end of it and relatives saying to me “go back, it’s not your time yet”. Mind you, I’ve been down many a dark tunnel with no light at the end of it - oh, sorry that would be another post about my work in KM and organisations :)-

So….if you have no interest in gaining some knowledge about the ultimate human experience, read no further. But if you are at all intrigued about what happens when you’re number is up, then I’ll share with you what I’ve learnt from the latest issue of New Scientist (No 2625). I think we could say that New Scientist is a tad obsessed with cheating death since a large slab of this issue is devoted to extremely interesting articles on how our current culture chooses to shun death; how longer lifespans will present society with some pretty nasty moral dilemmas; and…..how it feels to die.

But first…as I was reflecting on these articles, I was thinking of a book I just polished off - Deborah Cadbury’s The Dinosaur Hunters. Second reading of this book for me (love her writing) but this time around I was really caught up with the sorry life of Gideon Mantell, a doctor who’s claim to fame is discovering some of the first dinosaur fossils, particularly the iguanadon. I say sorry life because this poor dude, apart from having to slug it out with Richard Owen - his long-time nemesis - suffered a horrible accident in 1841. His carriage rolled over and he was left with debilitating spinal injuries, which ultimately led to painful deformity and snuffing it from an overdose of opium as he tried to relieve the pain. (As an aside: Owen had his spine removed, pickled it and put it on display at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Eewww!).

Victorian times were filled with stories of children succumbing to epidemics; women dying during childbirth; people high on opiates to relieve pain; and crippling deformities that possibly could be resolved in the hands of modern medicine. Death was a regular and common visitor for Victorian families. Children were exposed to corpses lying in coffins in the family parlour, tarted up to look “alive” and ready for the family viewing. Death was maybe feared but it was not hidden, not even from children.

Cut to contemporary times: death and the elderly are the “invisibles”. We see death in movies sure, but “real death” is taboo. It’s entirely possible for a relative to die in an aged care facility and the body never seen as it moves from facility to funeral parlour and on to burial or cremation. There is an increasing trend towards family and friends not wishing to “view” the body and, as our lifespans increase, it is entirely possible that many young people have never encountered real death. The dead, like invisibles, can be shunted off to the funeral parlour while the consumerist society parties on. This is in sharp contrast to earlier times, when “ageing” really didn’t happen because 200 years ago, for example, the average human life span was about 30 years. People died young and often rapidly due to infections and epidemics. Now death is a slow descent marked by degenerative diseases and failing, confused minds. Ageing is an artefact of culture - a medical construct if you will - as medicine has eliminated some causes of death, people live life long enough now to suffer from old-age diseases like osteoporosis, rheumatism, heart failure, diabetes, strokes and so on.

So if you check out of life earlier and don’t hang around long enough to suffer through Alzheimers or the aged-care facility that will cost you every cent you have, then this is how it might feel to die according to New Scientist, not me! Don’t read on if you think you’ll get distressed.

Drowning: I must admit to a fear of swimming pools. I’m a strong swimmer but I must have watched too many sci-fi films when I was younger, the sort that have murky, dark pools in which something sinister lies at the deep end. So whenever I see a swimming pool, I’m not overly keen to jump in. And then there’s the fact I can’t hold my breath for longer than two nano-seconds. So these two factors combined could cause me a problem and death by drowning is a thought that has occurred to me. Should you go this way, you can expect to thrash around and gasp for air for around 20-60 seconds; then start sinking while valiantly holding your breath. This will last 30-90 seconds, then you’ll cough and splutter and start to inhale water. Water in the lungs blocks gas exchange in delicate tissues and inhaling more water triggers the airway to seal tight. Basically, you’re toast at this point and survivors say that “there is a feeling of tearing and a burning sensation in the chest as water goes down the airway. Then that sort of slips into a feeling of calmness and tranquility”. The calmness apparently means you are losing consciousness from oxygen deprivation.

Heart attack: I reckon when you gotta go, it would be good to simply drop dead on the spot preferrably with your last vision being of something beautiful (George Clooney would do that for me). But heart attacks don’t always cooperate with us that way, they can come on slowly and seem like indigestion or conversely a huge elephant sitting on your chest. Either way, you have around 5 mins to get help or…you’re toast.

Bleeding to death: known as exsanguination or bleeding out. You can go in seconds if the aorta, the major blood vessel from the heart, is completely severed. Or it can be much slower if an artery has only been knicked. The human body has 5 litres of blood (if you’re a vampire, this fact will come in handy). If you lose 1.5 litres, you will feel weak, thirsty, anxious and you’ll be taking rapid breaths. By 2 litres, people experience dizziness, confusion and then unconsciousness. Survivors of haemorrhagic shock report a range of feelings from fear to relative calm.

Fire: I’m leaving this one out as it’s just too gruesome. But it appears that you’ll be dead from toxic gases long before you feel the excruciating pain from the nerves destroyed or the inflammatory response.

Decapitation: it always seemed to me that the guillotine was a cruel way to go. But it seems if you have a choice, this might be the fastest and least painful way to exit (assuming that blade is razor sharp that is). So maybe the French who lined up all those royal dudes during the French Revolution and sent them for the chop had the right idea after all. But then again…..the jury’s still out because quick though it may be, consciousness may continue after the spinal chord is severed. Possibly for 7 seconds or up to 30 seconds.

Poor Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 faced an ax rather than the guillotine. It’s said it took the axeman three attempts and he had to finish her off with a knife. And then there’s Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury, who in 1541 was at the mercy of an inexperienced axe man who gashed her shoulder rather than her neck. Mary leapt from the chopping block and was chased by the executioner who struck her eleven times before she died.

Lethal injection: maybe some of us think that we are more civilised than Tudor England and that a quick lethal injection is a more humane way to go. Think again. Lethal injection was designed in 1977 in Oklahoma as an alternative to the electric chair. There are three injections involved: the first one is the anaesthetic thiopental to zip away any feelings of pain; this is followed by a paralytic agent called pancuronium to stop breathing; then…potassium chloride, which stops the heart almost instantly. But if the dose of thiopental is stuffed up (apparently the same dose is given regardless of body weight), then awareness of what’s going on is a very real possibility. The person could have feelings of suffocation from paralysed lungs and the searing, burning pain of a potassium chloride injection. But the effect of the paralytic may mean that witnesses to the death may never see the internal struggle going on.

Explosive decompression: this is the one that most interests me. I spend a lot of time reading about space - the Apollo 13 incident really freaked me out. I admit to wondering what it might be like to get flung out of an airlock a’la Star Trek or being happily traversing the lunar landscape only to look down and see…gasp…a tear in your (preferrably pink) spacesuit. Apparently, death due to space depressurisation has only happened once - in 1971 when the Russian Soyuz 11 mission was returning to Earth and a seal leaked on re-entry. All three crew members died from asphyxiation.

But this is what happens - when the external air pressure suddenly drops, the air in the lungs expands, tearing the fragile gas exchange tissues. Now, if you try and hold your breath or if you haven’t exhaled prior to decompression….well, you’re toast. Oxygen escapes from the blood and lungs. It’s quick though - about 15 seconds or less.

I was thinking of booking a seat on Virgin Galactic, so if the worst happens and I go this way, at least it’s not as bad as say electrocution or hanging. Well, an extremely fascinating if rather macabre New Scientist issue. Tomorrow I’ll concentrate on Knowledge Management, which some cynics could say is death by slow torture for those of us working as KM practitioners :)-

Video Sniffin. Have you heard of this term? I hadn’t until recently but I’ve been sniffing around to find out more about it and it’s kept me away from the darker side of surveillance. Video sniffin is a term that refers to the practice of picking up the public signals being broadcast by wireless CCTV (aka hacking wireless CCTV). As with a recent post where I told you about the film Look, using images from CCTV, here’s another example of people using public webcams to create art, in this case a short film. Makes sense to me: why buy expensive video equipment when there are millions of public webcams around to use?

MediaShed, the first “free media” space to open in the east of the UK, uses Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and waste electronic equipment. So it’s taking accessible media apart, reusing it without limitations and creating an artistic expression. Some members of MediaShed decided to use CCTV to make a film. Using cheap video receivers, they sniffed out 24 public webcams or hotspots and used the CCTV cameras to make a film called The Commercial. You can view it here. So you’ll see that young people are using technology, that is normally surveilling their activities, for creative purposes.

MediaShed also headed into a shopping centre in Manchester to make a film combining free-media with free-running. Parkour or free-running involves fluid uninterrupted movement adapting motion to obstacles in the environment. Like free-media, free-running makes use of and re-energises the infrastructure of the city. Professional parkour breakin’ crew, Methods of Movement, choreographed a performance that was filmed in the shopping centre over three consecutive nights. The film was shot using only the existing in-house CCTV network of 160 cameras operated from the central control room, with a soundtrack created entirely from the sounds and noises recorded during the performance. The film is called The Duellists and you can see it here. How good is this??!!

Source: MediaShed

I blogged the other day about the 50th anniversary of Sputnik. During the Cold War, it was a two country race to the Moon, Space Race 1.0, but now it seems Earth’s satellite is up for grabs. Like the recent tussle over the North Pole, there are a number of contestants in the latest space race. China, Japan, India and Europe, as well as Russia and the United States are all outlining plans to fling themselves into space and race to the Moon. China says it will set up an outpost on the Moon after 2020 (that is if it can find the Moon through the heavy pollution in China’s air!). And they’ll begin their quest later this year with an unmanned lunar mission.

The Japanese have a head start having launched a $479-million spacecraft toward the moon in September and they hope to be neighbours to the Chinese with their own outpost by 2030. Google and X-Prize Foundation got into the act of course with their offer of US $30 million for privately funded space exploration. India is planning a mission later this year and the Americans are moving forward with the Constellation programme, which will return astronauts to the Moon by 2020 and put fresh bootprints on our dusty satellite.

Whilst the Americans may be intent on beating the Chinese to the Moon, I rather suspect that private industry will get there first to check out what use they can make of the minerals and resources and how they can service future outposts. Hey, maybe even Maccas is thinking about how good a set of golden arches would look on the old Tranquility Base site of 1969.

What’s the rush and what’s the attraction? After Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the Moon, space exploration seemed to grow less appealing (been there, done that) and NASA funding dried up. A few trips here and there to Mir, space shuttles now and then, but the 1990s and so far in the 21st Century, space hasn’t exactly been crowded with manned missions.

Bush’s science advisor, John Marburger, kind of gave the game away in a recent speech when he commented that the new vision for space is:

“As I see it, questions about the vision boil down to whether we (US) want to incorporate the Solar System in our economic sphere or not“

Well, that makes sense. We’ve stuffed up the planet, nearly finished with razing the Amazon to the ground, so we humans do need an offshore target to exploit - let’s go to the Moon! But what on earth is there on the Moon that would be of economic benefit? A form of helium for one thing that could be used for fusion energy although the jury’s out on whether this form of helium can be used back on Earth.

Really it’s the enormous global political advantage: up there on the Moon, having your permanent outpost, glaring down on Earthly citizens, maybe having some weapons of mass destruction along with you (who knows what weaponry will be like in 2020 or 2030) aimed at Earth.

Being cynical, I somewhat doubt that the pursuit of science and knowledge is driving the current space race. Or just the thrill of exploration. I might have this confused but I think it was an Arnie film - Total Recall - that was set on Mars in the late 21st Century and some dude had a monopoly on a depressing slum city full of poor workers who just wanted to escape back to Earth. I think Mars was referred to as the Outworld or Offworld or something like this. This is what I have visions of - if I was to pop back in 150 years’ time - the Moon would be crowded with cities and slums; whatever resources were there have been stripped; solar power stations beam the Sun’s energy back to Earth; the Moon is used as a launching pad for missions on the way to Mars and Jupiter maybe; Earth-bound humans snigger and refer to Lunar colonists as Offworlders; and who knows what evolutionary changes would happen to humans living on a satellite. Tourist spots and hotels will be set up and I can just imagine the tours taking people to the site where Neil Armstrong set his foot in the lunar dust. Here’s one person’s vision of what life on the Moon could be like.

Well, let’s hope that as the various countries race to the Moon and crowd the Earth to Moon corridor, there’s no collision with private citizens who are increasingly seeking a thrill from space travel. Since 2001, Space Adventures has sent five very rich people to the International Space Station. Since we’ll have precious little to visit on this planet because we’ve destroyed Nature, space tourism will take the place of international travel. Virgin Galactic has a pretty swish movie on becoming the world’s first commercial space carrier. View it here. Forget the Chinese and the Americans, I’m placing my bets on Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic to get to the Moon first and rename it Virgin Lunar.

And when we’re all zooming around space, inter-planetary travellers can leave Earth without taking their Visa card - the Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination (or Quid) has just been designed. This new currency can withstand the stresses of space travel. There are no sharp edges, chemicals or magnetic chips to annoy space tourists or business people. The Quid has been designed for the foreign exchange company, Travelex, (good ploy: get in early before AMEX!) by scientists from the National Space Centre and the University of Leicester. Here’s a picture of the new Quid - reminds me of one of those old Coca Cola yo-yos. They’re made from polymer (used in non-stick pans) and the different sizes and colours denote different “coin” values. Cool!

Source: BBC News

I was toying around with whether to blog on this or not. But an incoming article from my RSS feeds made up my mind. Nazi Germany. We’ve all learnt about the horrors of the concentration camps at school or university. (Let me say at this point, if you don’t believe that the Holocaust happened, buzz off to another blog). We’ve all seen the photos of skeletal camp inmates or gassed bodies piled high on top of each other.

The Nazi symbol was of course the swastika and you probably know that it has been widely used in Hinduism and Buddhism for example and so it has religious connotations. But the Nazis appropriated it and 60 years after WWII is remains a powerful, controversial symbol. So I was a bit taken aback when I read that some dude in India has come up with a line of bedspreads he’s calling the Nazi Collection, complete with the swastika symbol. He says Nazi is an acronym for “New Arrival Zone of India” and is not meant to be offensive or anti-Semitic. What the? Is this okay or do you find this extraordinarily insensitive and offensive?

And this news coupled with newly released, rare photos provided by the US Holocaust Museum showing SS officers and Auschwitz camp staff living it up as the gas chambers and crematoriums were operating. The 116 images were taken by Karl Hoecker, the adjutant to the camp commandant, between May and December 1944. They show SS officers having a ripping sing-a-long with an accordion player (including Josef Mengele), hunting trips, the camp’s Christmas tree being lit up, and female SS auxiliaries eating blueberries and then mockingly crying and posing with empty bowls. Here are some of the images, but you go here and see more. Take time to explore the album. I found it quite disturbing.

Even though I’ve studied Nazi Germany extensively at Uni in my undergrad history degree, I find it hard to come to grips with the concentration camps. I guess the SS officers and camp staff were ordinary, everyday Germans and when you look at the photos you have to ask yourself : were they oblivious to what was going on? They were simultaneously carrying on social lives and celebrating Christmas while mass murder was being committed. How did they see themselves? It’s a juxtaposition of luxury and celebration versus unimaginable suffering.

Historically, it’s very valuable to have these artifacts released as a counterpoint to the photos of Jews being dragged off to their fate. It puts faces on the people who carried out unspeakable horrors. It reminds us that history can indeed repeat itself and the images should act as a warning for future generations, which is why I chose to blog about it.

Source: BBC News

Have you ever really thought about your first name? Have you ever wondered what it meant? Was your name plucked out of a 1001 Baby Names book? My first name is Kim - not Kimberly, Kimber or Kimble. When I was growing up, Kim was a pretty unusual name to have. My friends had names like Jessica, Susan, Karen, Helen, Lisa or Penny. I always liked my name but, as with most kids, I was landed with a couple of nicknames - Kimbies (presumably after the nappy brand) and Kimba (presumably due to Simba). I certainly didn’t like the Kimbies business, so I chucked a hissy fit in high school and for 3 years changed my name to Victoria, which is my middle name. But I ended up not liking the shortening of this to Vicki (or worse, Vicks) so it was back to Kim by the time I hit University.

I still like my name and am secretly pleased that it’s not that popular (at least in Australia). It doesn’t even rank in a list of the top 1,000 baby names I looked at. And this list shows the popularity of Kim as a name in countries around the world - certainly Kim is not up there as a favourite. A few years back, I was being introduced at a conference in Thailand by someone who hadn’t yet met me and was referred to as “Mr Kim”. Kim, of course, is a popular Asian surname (mainly Korean) and I’m sometimes asked when in Asia why I have this name as a Westerner.

So what’s in a name? How does our name define our identity? When I asked my mother why I was called Kim she told me it wasn’t her choice. It was my grandmother’s and my father’s selection. My grandmother said she’d always loved Kipling’s book, Kim, and my father said I was named after Kim Novak, the Hollywood actress. Personally, I preferred the latter explanation rather than being named after a male character in an essentially male novel of colonial India. My mother was going to land me with these names: Brydie, Blanche, Brittany, Bethany or Bridget (clearly, there was a thing going on with Bs). I simply cannot imagine myself as, for example, a Blanche - it changes the whole way I think about myself. I’d imagine being much older, a smoker (which I’m not), a fragile, troubled, emotional personality (sorry to any Blanches reading this post). I’m probably being influenced by Blanche in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire or Blanche in The Golden Girls.

I like Kim because (IMHO) it’s a strong name, short and punchy. It’s a no nonsense kind of name. Apparently, it’s of Anglo-Saxon origin and means variously: chief, ruler, precious metal, gold. Okay I can deal with all those meanings especially the gold part! And my name is declining in popularity from its starting base as not so popular anyway - so that makes me even more unique. Check out this table I found of the popularity trend for Kim - since 1993 it seems Kim has slipped off the radar.

I’ve always been fascinated by the names given to African-American children - Delroy, Jermaine, Tyjon, Latreese, Larhonda, Chantoya - to name a few I’ve heard. Much more exotic than plain old Kim. But if you happen to live in Africa, you might just be called Passion, Givethanks, Honour, Trust or even Knowledge. Although I work in KM, not sure I’d want to be lumbered with the moniker Knowledge. There is a trend towards Anglicising names, but the African tradition is to choose names that convey a special meaning, whereas Western names are usually chosen because they’re trendy or remind us of celebrities.

If a Sotho-speaking girl becomes pregnant before marriage, her unhappy parents may name the baby Question or Answer — an answer to the question of why their daughter was behaving so strangely before the pregnancy became known. Zimbabwean children carry names like Wedding, Funeral, Everloving, Passion and Anywhere. And a cafe worker in Harare is called Consider Enough because he is the last of 13 children and his mother thought…consider that enough! Never Trust a Woman is a baby named by his father who was off fighting in the Congo and when he returned home to Bulawayo, his wife presented him with a baby that he hadn’t fathered.

According to my Thai friend, Lalida, things can get a bit complicated when choosing a name for a Thai baby. Parents will consult a monk or astrologer so that they pick an auspicious name that will bring good fortune to the child. And the day the baby is born is taken into account - certain letters and vowels are avoided - so for example if the baby was born on a Monday, no vowels are used in the name. You can read about the complicated process of choosing a Thai name over at Thai Blogs.com. I don’t how I’d feel about being given a Thai nickname though. Popular ones are Pig, Crab and Fat. But increasingly the English language is influencing Thai culture and now you can find nicknames like Seven (as in 7-Eleven). One child was named Bonus because he was born on Chinese New Year and his father received a bonus from his company.

Intrigued, I found the list of popular baby names for 2006 from the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages:

I suspect that Sienna has crept into the list due to the UK actress, Sienna Miller. And the boys’ list shows a strong liking for Biblical names.

So…..what is the meaning of your name and how does it define your identity? if you could change it, would you? And to what?

Inspiration: International Herald Tribune

Following up on yesterday’s post, I came across really fascinating news. I’ve always loved the Impressionist art movement - the vivid, fiery sunsets of a Turner painting; the dappled waters of a Monet reflecting the electric blue sky; the churning clouds; the emerald greens of a Renoir. I studied them in art school but have never stopped to think of Impressionist paintings against the backdrop of climate change. Until now…

Climate change scientists are busy analysing Turner’s paintings along with other Impressionist artists and sniffing out signs of climate change. In 1883, Krakatoa blew its top and coughed up rocks, dust and assorted debris that circled the globe. For many years, stunning sunsets were seen as the retreating light was scattered by reflective particles thrown high into the atmosphere. So the scientists have examined 181 artists who painted sunsets between 1500 and 1900 - before and after Krakatoa - and calculated the amount of material in the sky during the 1880s. This will feed into a scientific study of a phenomenon called global dimming, which is caused by air pollution blocking sunlight.

When Mount Tambora in Indonesia blew up in 1815 there was so much stuff in the atmosphere that 1815 was referred to as the “year without a summer” and there were massive crop failures in Europe, which led to famine and economic collapse.

The amount of red and green along the horizon in each artist’s painting has been calculated by a computer. Sunlight scattered by airborne particles appears more red than green, so the reddest sunsets indicate the dirtiest skies. And the result was most paintings with the highest red/green ratios were painted in the 3 years following Krakatoa’s eruption. There were 54 volcanic sunset paintings.

Interestingly, Turner was in the right place at the right time. He lived before, during and after several volcanic hissy fits: Tambora in 1815; Babuyan, Philippines in 1831, and Cosiguina, Nicaragua in 1835 and in each case the scientists found a sharp change in the red/green ratio of the sunsets he painted up to 3 years afterwards.

The team of scientists hope to check out 4o paintings from the 20th Century to see if the effects of pollution since the Industrial Revolution have been captured in sunset renditions.

Source: Guardian Unlimited
Images: Wikipedia

A new report, Climate Change in Australia, has just been released. Developed by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology it provides the most comprehensive (and pretty scary) assessment to date of Australia’s future climate. Basically, Australians are going to be increasingly saying “it’s getting hot in here”. The report looks at the years 2030, 2050 and 2070 through the lens of a number of different greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Here’s the bad news:

• by 2030 temperatures will rise by about 1 ºC throughout Australia
• then it depends on the level of greenhouse gases as to what happens next, but….
• if emissions are LOW, warming of between 1 ºC and 2.5 ºC is likely by around 2070, with a best estimate of 1.8 ºC.
• but…if emissions are HIGH, then we’re stuffed - under a high emission scenario, the best estimate warming is 3.4 ºC, with a range of 2.2 ºC to 5 ºC.
• the number of days hitting 35ºC may triple
• the likelihood of seeing rain is pretty slim - under a low emission scenario in 2070, the best estimate of rainfall decrease is 7.5%. Under a high emission scenario the best estimate is a decrease of 10%.

And as a result of all this? well…..a long list of potential catastrophic scenarios:

• more frequent droughts particularly in south-west Australia (well, let’s just extend our current long drought straight through to 2070!)
• high-fire danger and more frequent bushfires
• more intense tropical cyclones
• rising sea levels.

You can freak yourself out with a climate change map of Australia here on the CSIRO site. The technical report is here if you want to wade your way through it. And if you live in Sydney, here’s the really bad, worst case scenario news - an annual temperature rise of up to 4.3 degrees by 2070. And we can’t panic now because it’s already too late to avoid a warming of about 1 degree by 2030.

The report highlights a warming of 0.9 degrees since 1950 and an increase in hot nights have been mostly due to greenhouse gas emissions. There’s been a 40% reduction in snow depth in Spring in the Snowy Mountains in the past 45 years.

And obvious signs of climate change are already happening at the top end of the world. In Greenland, in the year 985, Erik the Red, who was leader of a medieval Norse colony, built his farm and raised sheep, cattle, and barley. Erik and his cohorts could do this because the climate was warmer, but then the Little Ice Age arrived and the colony was doomed. Now, it’s come full circle - in Qassiarsuk, Greenland, young potatoes and radishes are sprouting up. Scientists say that nowhere else in the world are the effects of climate change so obvious as in Greenland. Winter sea ice is rapidly disappearing, which means the Inuit might be in for a rough ride - ice-hole fishing, sled dog mushing and other traditional means of living and surviving will disappear along with the ice. Farming, which is an occupation not heard of 100 years ago in this area, will stage a comeback due to warmer temperatures.

Source: CS Monitor. Photo credit: SMH

Everyone has secrets. Now I’m finding even plants have secrets. Plants such as strawberry and clover can instant message each other along a linked network. These types of plants send out runners along or under the ground and the runners become new buds. Eventually, you end up with an entangled network that shares food, water and….communication.

Scientists have discovered that during times of stress, say if plants are being attacked by some nasty fungus or leaf-eating insect, the network buzzes into action sending messages about imminent danger. The message is sent through the phloem - a tube system plants use to transport organic compounds like carbohydrates - and plants who receive the message beef up their resistance in order to face the danger. The plants undertake chemical changes to make their leaves less tasty to a caterpillar for example or harder to nibble on. But these defensive changes inhibit the ability of the network plants to grow so I’m hoping that the plants are pretty smart when it comes to knowing there’s a real danger out there. The fitness of the network relies on a plant being able to communicate with its neighbour. If the neighbour has been knocked out, then the plant second down the line will be more vulnerable to attack. Plant networks are also capable of spreading viruses.

I’m writing this post on my balcony, sitting opposite a lot of plants with interconnecting runners (see photo). I bet these plants are all whispering: “those humans are onto us at last, we’d better use secret code from now on”!

Source: National Geographic

I saw that Google changed its logo last week as a hat tip to the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik in 1957. I just finished reading a lot of articles on the historical and cultural significance of Sputnik, so with all the celebration and reflecting going on, how could I not do a post on Sputnik!

Now, let me start off by saying I wasn’t around when Sputnik was flung into space but I did grow up during the time when the Cold War was still cold. When the Russians were still a suspicious bunch of people (despite my Russian ancestry) and when the United States was all mom and apple pie and hadn’t tainted itself yet with Iraq. I vaguely remember being a bit worried that one of my relatives spoke Russian - despite living in Australia I imagined the CIA popping out of unmarked vehicles and spiriting her away. Or worse: maybe she was really a Russian spy. After all, Australia went through that whole 1954 Petrov Affair business - our very own Cold War spy drama. My parents told me they watched the drama unfolding at Sydney airport on some grainy black and white TV of the 1950s. Poor Evdokia Petrov was hauled onto the aircraft going back to the USSR by Soviet agents, then hauled off again in Darwin by police. High drama: full of Soviet agents rough-handling a woman; Petrov with his secret documents about Soviet espionage in Australia (were we that interesting to the USSR?); Prime Minister Menzies imploring us to look for “reds under beds”.

Sounds like 1950s and 1960s Sydney might have been a pretty exciting place: lots of talk about Soviet spy rings; schools running drills on how to evacuate in the event of a nuclear attack; people building bomb shelters (my father once showed me abandoned plans he had for building one in our suburban backyard - shame, would have been a great play area for me!). And of course there were the great spy movies of the era pitting Soviet evil against Western freedom.

I remember thinking of the USSR as probably quite an exciting place too - full of whizz bang secret technology; Soviet agents who had been trained meticulously since birth to speak “American” and insinuate themselves into American society as sleeper agents. I had images of Soviet agents lurking in shadows with fedora hats spying on diplomats and politicians. No doubt that happened, but when I eventually went to the USSR before it collapsed and met a relative, I saw that the excitement I had imagined was the stuff of TV. What they really faced was food shortages, Soviets spying on Soviets, people disappearing, drab, depressing Stalinist apartments with foyers that smelled of urine; suspicious glances at anyone who spoke Russian with a foreign accent.

But the launch of Sputnik in 1957 left the USA in the dust. Anyone who’s read Deborah Cadbury’s great book, The Space Race, would be well aware that during the 1950s the USSR and USA vied for supremacy in conquering space and that the Soviets won the battle and demonstrated the superiority of Communism over over-indulgent, hamburger-eating, democracy-loving Americans.

I remember my father telling me that there was a bit of hysteria when the news broke of Sputnik’s launch. People rushed out to view the night sky, waiting to see a winking Sputnik fly over, no doubt with spy technology zooming down on innocent Westerners. Culturally, Sputnik had an enormous influence on the 1950s and 1960s. It was a great time for space age movies and TV series: Star Trek, The Jetsons, Lost in Space, Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Invaders, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Architecture, interior design and furniture proudly showed off sleek futuristic lines or UFO shapes:

And then you had visions of future transport as seen in this 1958 clip entitled Magic Highway USA from Daily Motion - what a classic!

Science suddenly mattered but in the context of politics. The Americans swung into action heeding President Kennedy’s call to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. But would it have all been different if the truth had been known…..that Sputnik wasn’t a high-tech artificial satellite and the product of a cunning Soviet strategy to outwit the Americans? Sputnik was…

….the second stage of its booster rocket (Quelle Horreur!) that had been flung into space by the efforts of one man, Boris Chertok, one of the founders of the Soviet space programme. Chertok is 95 years now and has been reflecting on the Sputnik era. He tells us that Sputnik wasn’t part of a strategy to conquer space. Nope: it was the product of a frantic effort to develop a rocket capable of striking the USA with a hydrogen bomb (this would really have been Quelle Horreur!). The humongous R-7 thruster rocket programme was delayed, so Chertok seized the opportunity to launch Sputnik as the Americans were planning to launch a satellite in 1958 as part of the International Geophysical Year. He was nearly thwarted as the military wanted to keep the R-7 to wipe out the Yanks with a bomb. But Chertok and his team sketched a plan for a primitive orbiter and called it “Prosteishiy Sputnik” or the Simplest Satellite (not very exotic!).

The satellite was built in less than 3 months, weighed 184 pounds and was basically a polished aluminium alloy basketball-sized sphere with a couple of pathetic radio transmitters and four whisker-like antennas. It was launched on October 4, 1957. Pravda failed to mention that the light circling the Earth was actually the spent booster rocket’s second stage, which was in roughly the same orbit as Sputnik. Sputnik itself was invisible to the naked eye, so all those people rushing outside gazing in awe as the space age was ushered in were really looking at a tired old booster rocket. You can read about Chertok and the true story of Sputnik here on CNN.com.

I don’t know: sort of takes the glamour and thrill out of the whole space race when you know the truth! We don’t blink an eye now when NASA talks about a mission to Mars - space exploration is perhaps seen as a frivolous activity (not to me though) when we live in a society more obsessed with Self than What’s Out There. I have memories of living in a world shared with the Soviet Union, the KGB and cosmonauts. I guess anyone born after 1985, when Gorbechev started uttering the words glasnost and perestroika and the USSR finally teetered off the edge in 1991, will never know what it’s like to live through a Cold War with the subliminal fear of nuclear annihilation or whether Soviet spies are running amok. Now the Russians are just like the rest of the world - obsessed with wealth and material goods. And instead of space-age inspired toys, furniture, cars and architecture, we have designer labels that all tend to look the same. Mmmmm….maybe the 50s and 60s weren’t THAT bad!

And for those of us interested in Sputnik and the space race, The Library of Congress, Science Reference Section has a fab resource list for further reading.  Check it out here.