Which is, apparently, when sperm whales sleep: While diving.
Scientists at St. Andrew's University tagged the well-known square-headed mammals -- the largest living animal with teeth, which I believe means the answer to "How did they tag them" is "Verrrrry carefully" -- and then recorded their behavior. They found that the whales catch 10-15 minute naps during their dives, which can go as deep as 1.8 miles, and actually sleep less than two hours a day (Note from cats: "That's insane!").
The article writer suggests that sperm whales literally drift off to sleep during these dives, probably comparing the relatively slow speed of the sleeping dive to their top speed of about 25 miles an hour. But I don't know if "drift" is the right word for something that averages more than 50 feet in length and forty-five tons in weight as do adult males. I'd think no matter how slowly it was moving, if something's that big you have to call it a "power nap."
Here at Discovery.com is a video of a pod of whales caught during naptime.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
From the Rental Vault (2006): A Battle of Wits
One of those eras is called the Warring States Period, in which smaller states were gradually absorbed by larger ones. By about 550 BC there were four major powers (Qi, Qin, Wei and Chu), some semi-major powers and some small states that survived by being too small to be worth conquering or by playing one larger power off another. These spend the next couple of centuries skirmishing across their borders. A Battle of Wits (also called Battle of Warriors) is set in that time frame, around 370 BC. The formerly minor state of Zhao has gained power and territory from its weaker neighbors and is on a path to challenge rival Qin. As part of that path, Zhao forces plan to besiege and conquer the small independent city of Liang. Liang's king is making ready to surrender, as the request he sent for "Mozi warriors" to help defend the city seems to have been ignored. In actual history, these Mozi warriors would have been siege engineers who followed the Mohist philosophy's embrace of math and physical sciences, allowing them to help cities construct formidable defenses.
Before the king can surrender, a single Mozi arrives -- Ge Li -- and he stirs the people of Liang to try to fight off the Zhao army. They do, and using Ge Li's Mohist knowledge of tactics and defensive formations, repulse a Zhao attack. Ge Li makes friends of Yinyue, the female calvary commander, as well as, eventually, the prince of Liang. But the king has become jealous of Ge Li's popularity and worries he will have to do something if he wants to keep his throne once the Zhao are finally thrown back for good.
Battle is based on a Japanese comic book series that is itself based on an historical novel by Ken'ichi Sakemi. Whether the source material is any good I have no idea, but if they are director/writer Jacob Cheung has made good material a brutal and more than faintly ugly mess. Much of the movie involves Ge Li relating the "impartial love" guiding rule of his Mohist philosophy and his agony over the many deaths the battle causes, but considering that Liang chose to resist Zhao at his urging, it sounds kind of hollow. Understanding that the Mohist idea was outside mainstream Chinese thought can help make some sense of these scenes, but that's not adequately explained in the movie. Veteran Hong Kong actor Andy Lau decides, for some reason, to play nearly the entire movie without changing expressions, meaning it's next to impossible to believe he has all that much invested in anything going on around him. Fan Bingbing is adequately earnest as Yinyue, but she has too little to do too much of the time.
The actual city-state of Liang was eventually conquered not by the Zhao, but by the major state of Qin, which would ultimately unite most of what we think of as China under the first imperial Chinese dynasty, the Qin Dynasty. The dominant legalist strain of philosophy accepted by the Qin would mostly erase Mohism, meaning that most of the political Mohist work -- helping cities defeat attackers -- as well as its philosophy would turn out to have little lasting impact. Much like A Battle of Wits, although the philosophy probably leaves a lot less of a bad aftertaste.
Monday, March 5, 2012
The Trees May Be Angry
A poll at an article on The Pope Center website -- a foundation that studies higher education and policies connected to it -- wonders which of the specialized niche works published by different academic presses might have a shot at being bought by someone other than the university library at the school connected to each press. Or by someone other than the author's mom. Who really should have been given one of the comp copies, don't you think?
The article's writer suggests that the reason we have so much hair-splitting scholarship is because the academic world puts great pressure on the publication of original ideas as a way of identifying who should and shouldn't be on the university payroll. The "publish or perish" imperative also drives the competition for tenure or job security. The question of actual teaching ability, of course, is rarely if ever discussed in these matters. Very few university-level instructors have taken many courses in how to teach (applicable Greek-derived polysyllable: "pedagogy"), which many people who've sat through some entry-level undergraduate courses could tell you explains an awful lot.
Some of the listed books do indeed sound ridiculous. Of course the subject matter of Empire of Dogs: Canines, Japan, and the Making of the Modern Imperial World is of interest to someone. But of equal course, the set of "someone" is exactly the same as the set of "the instructor and any students assigned readings from the book for the course." Tack on the $40 price tag ($30 on Kindle) and you pretty much ensure that only those people will ever be interested in how Spot helped Western culture take over the world -- beginning with Japan.
And some sound like things that might be interesting to skim through, like Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary. But for $25 in paperback, $60 in hardcover or even $9.99 in Kindle? Not that interesting. Especially when you read the cover description, reproduced on Amazon: "... Drawing from intensive field work in a highly diverse North London neighborhood, Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward focus on an everyday item--blue jeans--to learn what one simple article of clothing can tell us about our individual and social lives and challenging, by extension, the foundational anthropological presumption of 'the normative.'"
Only one of the books sounds like one I'd pick up unless I saw it on the shelves at Half-Price Books. Since I'm a baseball nut and I particularly love the nooks and crannies of the sport's history, I'd be tempted to check out The Kings of Casino Park: Black Baseball in the Lost Season of 1932, especially since Amazon lists some used copies for under $25. In fact, I stuck it on my wish list to see if the price dips some more, because I may wind up buying one myself. People who read the poll seem to agree with me -- that book is in second place (to "none of the above") as of this blog entry on Monday morning and it's the only book to be within shouting distance of 100 votes.
It's kind of interesting -- if you write a book about an esoteric slice of any particular field that interests just you and a few other people and you ring up some self-publishing house to get a couple hundred copies run off, we say you've been published by a "vanity press." Do the same thing but instead those same copies are run off by a press hooked up to a university, and you're a scholar. There's a racket in there somewhere.
(ETA: Someone pointed out that "pedagogy" has Greek roots, not Latin ones. Correction made)
The article's writer suggests that the reason we have so much hair-splitting scholarship is because the academic world puts great pressure on the publication of original ideas as a way of identifying who should and shouldn't be on the university payroll. The "publish or perish" imperative also drives the competition for tenure or job security. The question of actual teaching ability, of course, is rarely if ever discussed in these matters. Very few university-level instructors have taken many courses in how to teach (applicable Greek-derived polysyllable: "pedagogy"), which many people who've sat through some entry-level undergraduate courses could tell you explains an awful lot.
Some of the listed books do indeed sound ridiculous. Of course the subject matter of Empire of Dogs: Canines, Japan, and the Making of the Modern Imperial World is of interest to someone. But of equal course, the set of "someone" is exactly the same as the set of "the instructor and any students assigned readings from the book for the course." Tack on the $40 price tag ($30 on Kindle) and you pretty much ensure that only those people will ever be interested in how Spot helped Western culture take over the world -- beginning with Japan.
And some sound like things that might be interesting to skim through, like Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary. But for $25 in paperback, $60 in hardcover or even $9.99 in Kindle? Not that interesting. Especially when you read the cover description, reproduced on Amazon: "... Drawing from intensive field work in a highly diverse North London neighborhood, Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward focus on an everyday item--blue jeans--to learn what one simple article of clothing can tell us about our individual and social lives and challenging, by extension, the foundational anthropological presumption of 'the normative.'"
Only one of the books sounds like one I'd pick up unless I saw it on the shelves at Half-Price Books. Since I'm a baseball nut and I particularly love the nooks and crannies of the sport's history, I'd be tempted to check out The Kings of Casino Park: Black Baseball in the Lost Season of 1932, especially since Amazon lists some used copies for under $25. In fact, I stuck it on my wish list to see if the price dips some more, because I may wind up buying one myself. People who read the poll seem to agree with me -- that book is in second place (to "none of the above") as of this blog entry on Monday morning and it's the only book to be within shouting distance of 100 votes.
It's kind of interesting -- if you write a book about an esoteric slice of any particular field that interests just you and a few other people and you ring up some self-publishing house to get a couple hundred copies run off, we say you've been published by a "vanity press." Do the same thing but instead those same copies are run off by a press hooked up to a university, and you're a scholar. There's a racket in there somewhere.
(ETA: Someone pointed out that "pedagogy" has Greek roots, not Latin ones. Correction made)
Sunday, March 4, 2012
A Stellar Vision
Ralph McQuarrie, a concept artist who designed many of the spaceships, settings and buildings seen in the first three Star Wars movies, passed away today at 82.
You can see some of his Star Wars artwork here, and note how many of these visualizations made it into the movies. Many of the critters he drew didn't, of course, because special effects technology hadn't yet caught up to Mr. McQuarrie's vision. Of course, by the time technology had caught up to that vision and we had the prequel trilogy, we found out that George Lucas didn't have the vision to match his technology.
You can see some of his Star Wars artwork here, and note how many of these visualizations made it into the movies. Many of the critters he drew didn't, of course, because special effects technology hadn't yet caught up to Mr. McQuarrie's vision. Of course, by the time technology had caught up to that vision and we had the prequel trilogy, we found out that George Lucas didn't have the vision to match his technology.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
The Curious Cows
The lack of a late freeze means the weeds have gone to town in the back yard. Before I can hit them with the mower, they'll have to be reduced with the weedeater. Which I was doing this evening when I looked up and noticed two of the cows in the neighbor's field watching me closely, and two more ambling over as well. The four of them stood there for about ten minutes while I swung my modern-day scythe, apparently very interested, then they left.
What they thought I was doing, I have no idea, but I have to admit I never figured the bovine brain had room for curiosity. They probably figured the stupid two-legged critter would have had a lot better time eating the plants, but it didn't know any better.
What they thought I was doing, I have no idea, but I have to admit I never figured the bovine brain had room for curiosity. They probably figured the stupid two-legged critter would have had a lot better time eating the plants, but it didn't know any better.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Wrinkled Time
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Stink...Stank...Stunk
I frequently say a lot of movies released these days stink, but I'm just a guy who runs my mouth in cyberspace whose only connection to the movie industry was a year in high school spent slinging popcorn and tearing tickets at the local moviehouse.
A dude who knows more than me wrote a book detailing some of the obstacles different movies have faced and why some really good scripts never saw a camera, and the website i09 reviews it here. Free-range vocabulary warning issued.
Turns out the main reason is that the movie industry has a lot of dumb people with power in it, and they exercise their power to either have their own way with the creative vision of the moviemaker or they use it to block movie ideas they don't like or think may put their own jobs at risk. Yup. That's it (the book goes in to more detail and is funnier).
Apparently when it comes to stupidity, Hollywood is no more creative than anywhere else.
A dude who knows more than me wrote a book detailing some of the obstacles different movies have faced and why some really good scripts never saw a camera, and the website i09 reviews it here. Free-range vocabulary warning issued.
Turns out the main reason is that the movie industry has a lot of dumb people with power in it, and they exercise their power to either have their own way with the creative vision of the moviemaker or they use it to block movie ideas they don't like or think may put their own jobs at risk. Yup. That's it (the book goes in to more detail and is funnier).
Apparently when it comes to stupidity, Hollywood is no more creative than anywhere else.
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