Another off-topic post on feminism (sorry): This time, empowerment

I should really post my part two to my Natural History Museum adventure but I think there's something I need to get off my chest.

Whenever you're part of a movement you expect to be burnt at some point. I was burnt very recently by a group of feminists who decided that my disagreement with the letter of their feminism was trolling, being miss-informed etc etc. It got very personal (mocking my use of English as an example, because apparently grammatically correct full sentences are a crime (I seriously don't know what the person's problem was, I made one typo and corrected it)) and I did not like it. In fact it made me want to stop engaging in feminist debate, and that's hard to do on the internet or anywhere else for that matter. (If you wish to see the thread you can't, someone deleted it... Talk about invalidation of feelings; the hurtful thing no longer exists. I'll come back to that later).

But here's something I think I can post about because it's egalitarian enough. Empowerment.
Firstly, power and the gaining of power, always means different things to different people. Empowerment can mean gaining control and leadership, the power to make others do as you ask, having the feeling of total agency in your life or just being told you can do something, those are all types of empowerment and I've not named them all.

But the word empowerment's been batted around a lot recently in relation to female celebrities and females in music videos (I'll not insult your pop culture knowledge by saying who, we all know who and which videos). And there's been a lot of talk about whether these women are being empowered, or whether they really feel empowered, or whether they are lying or been tricked by the patriarchy etc etc.

Here's my axe to grind (listen well internet):

Who the four-letter-word (chose-one-you-like) are the rest of us to debate whether or not these women feel empowered. 

Yes, you can debate all day long whether they are empowered but feel empowered, come the four-letter-word (chose-another-one-or-stick-with-the-last) on! To argue whether a woman feels empowered by being topless is to argue whether a couple are actually in love or not after they've said 'I love you'.

Sorry, words mean things and if you think that a person cannot select the right words to express how she feels, well, where's the oppression? It's us! It's us (the people) saying 'no, no, you can't possibly feel that because you are oppressed by the patriarchy!' We (the people) are actively trying to invalidate someone's own feelings. Active Listening 101 training, you do not invalidate how someone feels.

Now I'm not saying that there aren't societal standards and societal expectations for what constitutes empowerment, but isn't that what feminist movements and egalitarianism is trying to fight against? Aren't those movements meant to be striving for a way that everyone can reach the top of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? (I wrote an essay years ago on those in relation to youth work, you can read it if you like!)
At the top of that pyramid is self-actualisation which we could probably translate as empowerment to be who you want to be and be the best of it.

And it's probably now that's a good moment to point out that not everyone is the same, people are confined (oppressed if you will) by different amounts. A multi-millionaire singer has a lot more agency in her life than a single mother with two children who is working full time. These singers have already broken through a glass ceiling, they are already successful people doing what they want to do. I don't see much in the way of oppression in the way we'd usually think of it for the average Joe or Jane on the street. (I'll come back to that).

Before I sign off I'll briefly mention the dark side of this topless-females-empowerment debate.  As I've already mentioned, empowerment means different things to different people, perhaps being topless is the most empowering thing for these women. After all, they are beautiful, talented and adored but they are also, on one level, controlled (told you I'd mention it again), told how to make money by the industry they are part of, ridiculed or praised by the media. They are influenced, although they don't always need to be. They have enough money and talent to make their own rules if they want. And many do. But for some doing something shocking is their rebellion, their liberation. And if that's how they feel about it, well ok then. But we do need to acknowledge that some of these acts of 'empowerment' are cynical PR strategies. And that's wrong. Not the act. The motivation.

A person's body is their own, not to be bought or sold or used for manipulation, and when something as potentially empowering as taking ownership of one's body becomes cynical marketing. Well, that just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth...

Krakens and Crystals: The Natural History Museum, London (Part 1)

And so the end of Summer arrived and finally the thing I'd been looking forward to all holiday had finally come. I got to go to those hallowed halls in Kensington. I finally got to visit The Natural History Museum.

The last time we tried to visit it had been the middle of the School Summer Holidays. For those unfamiliar with the setting and location of the museum imagine a great gothic-esque brick palace the length of the average British street surrounded by iron railings and overlooked by Embassies (the one closest to the South Ken. Tube station is the French one). And so with bubbling glee we'd headed across London those years ago only to discover the mother, farther, aunt, uncle and cousins of a queue of people. The queue snaked from the entrance, down one half of the building, out onto the street and then down the full length of the building along the pavement.
We did not join that back of that queue. Instead we found Kensington Park and got lost in Sloane-Ranger town, Belgravia were the pavements are just for show.

Years passed (it's been a while since I've been in London proper for more than a day or so) and this time it was it. Visit to the Natural History Museum round 2 was on! And it being during term time all the dino-obsessed five-year olds would be in school rooms up and down the country and I might actually get to see the exhibits.
OK, so the dinos were on holiday (their words not mine, the exhibition was being renovated) as was the earthquake and volcano galleries but that wasn't going to stop me jolly well enjoying the great cathedral to natural science.

Firstly, you have to hand it to the Victorians, we just don't make buildings like they used to. I was astounded by the place itself. Archways and pillars were decorated with birds, plants, fish, the heads of rams. Great Wooden cases stretched from floor the ceiling, the windows were high, flooding each room with as much daylight at possible. The space itself was stunning.

If I sound a little giddy with flowery language this might be because while in London I have been reading a rather interesting book that sparked my imagination more than most I've read recently.

My sister had brought with her on holiday a book she was planning on reading in preparation for next term (like the diligent student that she is, naturally). She had started it but had already got frustrated with the pace (the start doesn't exactly draw you in, partly because the start lulls you into a false sense of normality) so naturally I wanted to take a look, nearly 300 pages later (still not finished) I was enthralled. (No I'm not a bad sister, she wasn't snatching it back from me to read it herself).

Kraken by China Mievelle (yeah I thought he was a she too) concerns itself with the theft and cult-worship of the Giant Squid (Architeuthis dux) that is actually housed within The Natural History Museum. Perhaps there's something both attractive and repulsive about something so Other that makes the book so captivating. I believe there's a saying about what we are most fascinated by is that which we most fear. If that's true I clearly was harbouring an unknown fear for giant squid. As a novelty its definitely a recommended read, just don't expect to necessarily like it.

That's all for now for my intro, my next post will concern itself with the collections proper!

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Quotation of the day from the trip: "Oh no, not more rocks!" - said by a disgruntled family member... aww, bless.

When non-erupting volcanoes make the news...

The massif is the light blue (indicating shallow bathymetry) object located about
centrally between Southern Japan and the Emperor Island Chain.
You can see Mauna Loa at the end of the Hawaiian Chain (bottom right) for comparison)

Twenty years. That's a flipping long time to work out whether a volcano's a volcano or more than one volcano. But geologists have come to conclusion, yes, after 20 years since it was first discovered, that Tamu Massif is one giant, British Isle sized, single vent, shield volcano in the Pacific Ocean, 1000 miles East of Japan.
A staggering 119,000 square miles in area, 2.2 miles high and extends down 18 miles into the Earth, this beauty erupted 144 million years ago and dwarfs Earth's current largest active volcano Mauna Loa. It's so gigantic it's almost on the scale of Olympus Mons on Mars (fun fact below about that volcano). That actually surprised me because I recall Prof. Brian Cox discussing at length in Wonders of the Universe that a massive volcano like Olympus Mons could not support itself on planet Earth because our gravity is too great. Presumably there's a decent explanation!

In other news, international collaboration has meant extensive monitoring of a volcano very few people have heard of.

Mount Paektu (no I've not heard of it either by that or any of it's other, many names) straddles the border of China and North Korea. It's last '1000 year event' in 940 AD was on a scale that was only matched by the Tambora eruption of 1815 AD (which was scientifically termed 'super-colossal' in case you weren't fully aware). Actually, the last explosive event at Mount Paektu occurred in 1903. With a recurrence cycle of about 100 years and recent increased seismic activity naturally volcanologists are concerned.
But it's a proud day for science triumphing over politics for the greater good with volcanologists from the UK, US and North Korea working together. (See full article for details).

Fun fact about Olympus Mons:

Mars was, prior to the space age, the only other celestial body besides the Earth and Moon in close enough proximity to us to be mapped.
As a result a bit of creative naming and a lot of mythology surrounds Mars and its features; Olympus Mons being one of them. It was first identified as a bright spot 20 degrees North of the Martian Equator and was dubbed Nix Olympica. This feature's name was artistically translated as 'the Olympian Snows' by Isaac Asimov in an essay of the same name (it's probably more like 'Olympic snow' but the former is, granted, a more aesthetically pleasing phrase). It was photography from Mariner 9 in 1971 that revealed there was no snow on Nix Olympica, but instead it was one, gigantic, volcano. Perhaps a more impressive thing! Soon after this discovery the volcano was renamed Olympus Mons. A fitting name for the biggest volcano discovered in the Solar System.

References:
Tamu Massif map: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/EmperorSeamounts.jpg
Telegraph article on Tamu Massif: 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10291350/Worlds-largest-volcano-discovered-on-Pacific-floor.html
BBC article on Mount Paektu: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23981001
Wikipedia article on Mount Paektu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Paektu
Definition of the Volcano Explosivity Index scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEI
Asimov, I., 1976, The Planet That Wasn't: The Olympian Snows, Sphere Books Ltd.

Mistakes

I feel kind of sad to discover that the myth that Persian rug makers put deliberate mistakes into their rugs to show respect to Allah is just that, a myth. I liked the idea that skilled artisans that probably didn't knowingly make mistakes in their craft felt the need to muddy the potential perfection of their craft by introducing a mistake. In our mind's eye, anything we make will be perfect. Reality just get's in the way.
    Some people would argue that the 'deliberate mistake' is something of an arrogance. Make a deliberate mistake because an accidental one couldn't possibly happen. I instead like to think of the 'deliberate mistake' as a kind of prayer. A stitch knitted when it should have been purled, the wrong coloured thread on a tapestry. That action feels like an acknowledgement to God that the skills, talents if you like to draw that parable parallel, are God-given. To the person who later finds the mistake perhaps they too will think on the devotion of the maker of the item and perhaps their own spirituality.

    OK, I now feel inclined to link this in with science.
A true scientist of the scientific method must admit mistakes. If they collect data that contradicts their hypothesis they must admit that this is what they find. There should be no shame also in admitting they made an error in an experiment. Something broke, someone read a figure out wrong. To quote The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy book 4 So long and thanks for all the fish by Douglas Adams:

"But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting.”  - Wonko the Sane

While looking for that exact quote I also found this one by Jules Verne from Journey to the Centre of the Earth:

“Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.” 

Too much science it seems, especially in geology these days, is firmly set in dogma. People don't admit they are wrong after being shown evidence to the contrary. Data is manipulated. Lines are drawn in the sand. 

The deliberate mistake is not searched for. The null hypothesis isn't sort.

When I was at high school we were taught to calculate errors in every possible way. The errors of the ruler, the container, how much liquid was lost in transference, how actuate the mass balance was.

There's no such thing as a 5 sigma error test in geology like there is in physics. More shame on us.

Why we need sci-fi: An amble on the topic.

Thinking about the formative books of my late teenage years several of them were science or speculative fiction. Ben Elton's Blind Faith, Orwell's classic 1984 and Ray Bradbury's off-kilter, chilling vision of parlour walls and firemen Fahrenheit 451 shaped my view of the world a lot. They also scared the living daylights out of me.

Strangely I believe that sci-fi manages to frequently go to darker places than any other genre. The horror of a spin-chiller is solely contained within the pages of the book. Although a few nightmares of monsters and murders may follow those terrors are primarily cathartic. We observe horror in film or read it in books, it maybe part of humanity we find distasteful or bestial, we can then examine it within the story and by the end we feel a release, a purging of the emotions associated with secret shames or untold fears. Not being a fan of scares like that I can only comment on other commentary I've heard on the matter (video game commentary actually of the likes of Silent Hill 2) but I think that is the basic psychology behind horror.
Science fiction does not offer that catharsis, if anything the reader is left with a sense of unease at what they have read.

Before I continue I should say that yes, not all science fiction does this. Space Westerns like Star Wars, Star Trek and Firefly or serials like Doctor Who are a little more light-hearted and fanciful but even they manage social commentary in a futuristic or alternative technology setting. (No I will not go into whether Star Wars is true sci-fi right now. However, I will say that some of the more recent novels have certainly elevated the series with more social commentary than usual including elements such as what a Sith meritocracy looks like and whether the Dark Side is grounds enough to plea diminished responsibility to a murder).

Science fiction has often been viewed as the purview of the nerd, geek and cult follower. Things like The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy are often referred to as 'Cult Classics'. Most people will admit they have one favoured romance book, action flick, historical television show et cetera but science fiction  may be dismissed in its entirety. Which is a shame because sci-fi is not just robots, mad scientists and aliens. In fact in what you would call 'hard' sci-fi these things might be present but not the focus. They are narrative devices. Sci-fi is probably one of the most 'message' heavy genres out there because a lot of it is allegory.

1984: Fears of communism
District 9: Apatite South Africa
Do androids dream of electric sheep?/Blade Runner: What makes a person human?
X-men: Social issues of race and sexuality oppression and phobia.
Ghost in the Shell: The internet as the new primeval pools of life and trans-humanism
Ender's Game: Are all things fair in (love and) war?
And that shouldn't be seen as a bad thing, far from it. Allegory is a way into thinking about issues by introducing them through a narrative.

Today I read in a newspaper (code name: The Tea-leaf-graph) that three Shakespeare plays now have to be taught as part of English before GCSE. Setting aside for a moment the limited selection of appropriate plays that one can teach to a 12 year old (is this a dagger I see before me?/A rose by any other name/ If he was in my books I would burn my study maybe?) I fear this is removing space for other genres to be taught.

(My next point requires a bit of set up, bare with me). Now I went through reading Lord of the Flies kicking and screaming (seriously, what is with that pig's head?!) and the less said about Cold Mountain the better, but Regeneration by Pat Barker was a revelation for me (yes I did actually do A Level English, non, je ne regrette rien). I was introduced to a kind of fiction I never thought I would enjoy. For those unfamiliar, Regeneration is a World War I semi-biographic work about Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen during their time at Craiglockhart Mental Hospital. For me, the book was a way into Sassoon and Owen's real poetry and prose as well as giving me a better feel for life for the mentally ill at the time. It also taught me that just because a book might not sound my cup of tea doesn't mean a darn thing!

I really hope that perhaps a classic piece of sci-fi will make it's way into the English curriculum alongside the compulsory Shakespeare and give some young people the opportunity to discover a book, and genre, they probably never thought they'd like.

DVD extras:

Books I would suggest as one's to be taught in schools (with approximate age ratings):

1984 by George Orwell. 16 years and up for the best level of appreciation.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. 14 and up (younger if the children are fairly mature).
Star Wars: Truce at Bakura Kathy Tyers. (11 and up) Don't laugh! Everyone's seen Star Wars and this follows on directly for Return of the Jedi. It has some interesting ideas about the human soul and mind control.
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. (13 and up, or basically over an age where a child can hear the word 'sex' without giggling uncontrollably).
Anything by H.G. Wells or Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov. (I wouldn't include my favourite non-Douglas-Adams sci-fi author in this list though, because Philip. K. Dick is a bit.... odd).

Scotty, beam me up!

Broadband seismometers meme

Yeah, this is one of mine... Yes, I know it's bad...

To make up for it, here's the 8th funniest joke from the Edinburgh Fringe 2013 by Liam Williams:

The Universe implodes. No matter.

Hi ho Silver, away!

Ah, the Lone Ranger.... or as Jasper Carrot once pointed out, the Lone Ranger... and Tonto. (Yes my last post was a bit heavy, so time to lighten the mood)
Despite warnings to the contrary by American critics I went and saw the new 'Lone Ranger' film anyway. And despite its narrative short comings (which is the main issue) it sort of played out like a live action cartoon complete with implausible survival from ridiculous injuries and a quasi-supernatural horse. The plot about maybe-maybe-not-cursed silver was silly but at least I wasn't bored at any particular point which is at least a point in its favor.
    But I'm not here to review the film more use it as a jumping off point to talk about precious metals and silver in particular.

Gold, Silver, Platinum and the more exotic Palladium and Rhodium very much call to mind a certain romance. Throughout human history where ever precious metals have been located humans have coveted it. It's quite easy to tell if an element was known about by an ancient people because it usually don't have an '-ium' on the end of the name. Copper, lead, zinc, tin, sulphur, iron et cetera as well as gold and silver have been known about for a good number of years either because the element was found in a native, pure, form (like silver) or was easily liberated from an ore. Silver is found, often, with native copper although several ores exist.

So here's a few quick (fairly) interesting facts about silver (no not the horse):

1. Many silver compounds, including silver nitrate, are used in photography development.

2. Mirrors were often made by 'silvering' glass. During 19th century silvering was produced by the direct coating of silver onto the glass surface. The process is quite simple, requiring a few chemicals that will cause the precipitation of silver onto roughed glass (to provide a surface of deposition).

3. High quality wind instruments will often have solid silver mouth pieces or whole bodies for superior sound quality.

4. Silver has anti-bacterial properties. You might have noticed silver plasters for cuts in pharmacies.

5. Sterling silver bares the hallmark '925'. Pure silver is marked as 999. Since this is a total out of 1000 (the millesimal system), sterling silver is therefore 92.5% pure silver with the remaining 7.5% often made up with copper. Silver is alloyed like this to improve silver's relatively soft nature.

6. Silver bullets are quite popular in fiction. In myth a werewolf can only be killed using silver bullets. The Lone Ranger also carried silver bullets to symbolize how valuable a life is.

And we're back around to the Lone Ranger again,

Hi, ho, Silver, away!