A Fine Weekend

On television tonight, switching between a wonderfully restored version of To Kill a Mockingbird and the glorious scenery chomping of Mr. Heston & Co. in The Ten Commandments. The baseball season has begun, and Friday night I enjoyed a victory by the local Triple A-level nine over their Memphis counterparts and did so in fine company.

And about a couple millennia ago (give or take), sometime after midnight just a few hours from now, an event of significance comparable to the initial singularity itself took place, and human history would not ever be the same.

Blowups Happen?

This article at Wired suggests the best way to deliberately trigger a volcanic eruption. The writer, a professor of geoscience, outlines the way this would be done, but runs into a snag at the end. His problem is that once he's done what he needs to do to start the eruption in motion, he can't guarantee when the eruption will occur. It might happen right away, or the volcano might take as long as a month or even a year to get its Vesuvius on.

"Sheesh! Amateurs!" Ernst Blofeld was heard to say.

The Real Folk Tunes

The 1960s have a lot to answer for. One of the decade's myriad minor crimes was the identification of folk music with reedy-voiced, seedy-looking guitar players strumming plaintive ballads that had all the fire and vigor of day-old damp ramen.

But folk music was originally just that: The music of the folks, which meant that there were dance tunes, comedy ditties, martial airs, blues laments and whatever else people might sing about instead of just excruciatingly self-serious love songs whined out by someone who needed a shave. And on the Renassiance-Faire circuit around the country one can find groups that perform such folk music. From a cappella sea shanties to worship and everything in between might ring out over folks gathered together to display their medieval costuming skills and sell endless numbers of pendants of pewter dragons holding glass marbles.

Tullamore is one such band, and this recording at a Fort Worth-area coffeehouse, named Six Strings and Coffee Beans after the venue, is their second live album and fourth overall. Disclaimer: At least two of the the band's three members will admit having met me.

Some of Six Strings' songs, like "Step It Out, Mary" and "A Man's a Man for A' That" are long-time staples of Tullamore sets. Others like "Follow Me up to Carlow" and "Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation" are new to their recorded repertoire. Both kinds sound very good in this setting -- something about folk music seems to come across better performed than just recorded in a studio. There's no scientific evidence that the song "knows" it's being played live and not recorded into a mixer so it may be just listener perception. But then it may be the listener perception that strengthens a folk song's impact to start with: Fairly simple melodies, relatively easy to sing even without training and designed to catch the ear will usually do just that.

And when played and sung well, as here by guitarist Mark Clavey, violinist Rachel Gaither and hammered dulcimist (?) Mary Hanover, that music will catch the ear enjoyably rather than irritatingly. Six Strings offers a mix of spritely and stately, melding songs with verses into dance tunes and reels that match it and make each song arrangement unique to the band. Clavey, Gaither and Hanover each take lead vocals on different tunes but also offer some wonderful harmonies in different combinations.

The best way to enjoy Tullamore and their brand of folk tunes is live (and if you do it at the University of Oklahoma's annual Medieval Fair you can do that for free), but if you aren't able to catch a show then a live album like Six Strings makes a strong substitute and fine experience in its own right.

Well, Whattaya Know?

According to Stuart Firestein, what scientists don't know is sometimes far more important to their work than what they do know. Firestein wrote a book called Ignorance: How It Drives Science, and the good folks at Brain Pickings talk about it a little bit here.

Firestein suggests that our modern understandings of science tend to turn it on its head. When we think that science involves the accumulation of facts and data and amassing them into a completed whole, we miss the fact that this completed whole is actually where science begins. All of that data serve as equipment scientists take when they explore the unknown, like camping gear and other tools they will need on their journey.

Although Firestein suggests that this runs counter to much of our modern picture of what science does, it seems pretty intuitive once he says it -- pure research involves either looking at a great unknown and and devising experiments that can tell us our guesses are right or wrong, or looking at something that we know but don't understand and devising experiments that might help our understanding.

The book sounds fascinating and if I hadn't just bought a truck motor and a new tooth I'd score it right away, but it'll keep until my bank account recovers I'm sure. I'll mention one implication of this revised paradigm that might come about if scientists were to push it: A greater accessibility to scientific knowledge on the part of the general public. Firestein suggests that when science is seen as the ability to master a mass of data, people shy away from the sheer size of the task. But if the entry point to understanding most science was seen not as what is known but as what is unknown, it's somehow less threatening.

After all, if we're talking about ignorance, well, I'm way ahead of most any scientist you'd care to name.

BOSS, A Nova?

So according to a survey called the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), one of the things that helped the universe look like it does were incredibly ancient waves of sound called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). A couple of explanations of what the survey does can be found here and here.

Not very long after the Big Bang (about 30,000 years afterwards, it seems), matter began to collapse into greater and greater clumps. The collapses set up the BAOs, which moved outward along through space for about 350,000 years, which would have set a Guinness Book of World Records mark for a sustained note, had there been books, records or beings to create and observe them (Of course there was Guinness -- I've got enough Irish in me to understand there's always been Guinness). As they did, they caused the clumps of matter to organize themselves, so to speak, along the waves' peaks and troughs. When the universe cooled enough that the waves no longer formed, the clumps of matter started becoming things like stars, galaxies and eventually us.

The BOSS locates where galaxies are in relationship with each other, and it turns out they are as far apart as one of the mathematical models combining BAOs and dark energy says they should be. More examination of the sky -- astronomers have only surveyed a third of it so far -- should offer a clearer picture of which model is more accurate. The launch of the Euclid satellite in 2019 will allow for even more precision in measuring the galaxies' positions and pare the possibilities down even more.

In spite of the fact that the survey is called BOSS, there is no evidence that the BAO's, had there been people around to hear them, would have been the opening chords to "Born to Run." But there have been hints that the very first BAO's when written chromatically form a mathematical equation that, when assigned corresponding letter values, refers to an unknown agency or being called a "Big Man" and suggests that this Big Man "blow." Scientists are still working out possible meanings.

I completely made that last part up. As far as I know, anyway.

Odds?

On the NCAA men's basketball championship game?

Not the score -- on how many of the players will ever go to class again.

Week

Don't usually do this on this blog, but I invite you to spend the coming week, which leads up to Good Friday and the glory of Easter, in prayer or meditation about the human condition. Do whichever you choose, whether you're a Christian like myself or not. There are worse ways to spend your time, your energy and your thoughts.