On my birthday, we took the goats for a walk.
Then, in the evening, we had dinner at Aker Brygge, a nineteenth-century former shipyard by the fjord, in the centre of Oslo. There’s a ferry terminal, new apartments and offices, some shopping and lots of restaurants. At the city-end of the quayside is the Oslo town hall, and across the water is the medieval fortress where after the Second World War Vidkun Quisling was imprisoned and subsequently shot.
I knew vaguely that bewhiskered Italian architect Renzo Piano had designed the relocated Astrup Fearnley Museum of contemporary art at Aker Brygge, but I hardly ever go to Oslo nowadays and I hadn’t seen it until that evening. (This symmetrical black & white boat goes to and from the little islands in the fjord where city dwellers have weekend cabins. From Monday to Friday these boats ferry commuters from the far shore.)
I was quite impressed by the outside of the museum. You reach it by walking down a pier that’s an extension of the wharf. The institution is divided into three buildings: temporary exhibitions are on the left, offices are on the right, and the permanent collection – there’s a tawdry Michael Jackson by Jeff Koons, old cows and butterflies by Damien Hirst, but also decent work by Anselm Kiefer, Bruce Neuman, Gerhard Richter and others – is at the far end, on the right. They are tied together by an enormous glass curved roof.
The roof has sections cut out of it over the canal. The cut outs make it look a bit fussy from a distance but it’s spectacular while you’re walking underneath it along the quayside,
or crossing one of the bridges that link the buildings.
There are a few pieces of art outside. The one I liked best was this huge Antony Gormley figure that’s stuck to the side of the permanent collection building. I’m not usually a fan of his rusty steel and bronze men but I suppose they’re all about location, location, and in this context the man was an agreeable relief to all the grey steel structure.
What I like best about this museum is the way it has been sited. The quay terminates in this little beach (and a big garden to its left, by the water). There was no sun on the beach when we were there because it was about ten at night, but in good weather during the day I imagine it’s crowded. On the water it was still sunny at ten.
And then you turn around and see Oslo harbour. Back down the canal and framed by the museum buildings are the two redbrick towers of Oslo town hall, this is the place where the king presents the Nobel peace prize every November.
A week later, we came back during opening hours. We were curious to see the inside.
The museum was showing a big Cindy Sherman retrospective. That’s a big retrospective and, in places, a big Cindy. The piece below had been stuck to the wall like wallpaper. I noticed the cut around the doorway was beautifully made, very precise; God knows how it was done.
There is one very big wall, lit from the glass roof:
Alma said the circulation – how you move through the sequence of spaces – was awkward.
And she’s right: big galleries, small galleries, over bridges,
up and down steep flights of stairs. It’s all too chopped up. Figuring out your next move takes your mind away from the exhibition.
One huge open space divided by moveable low partitions would have been more suitable, she said and I agreed.
By that time we were at the Caffe Renzo, overlooking the beach. It has an excellent view down the fjord towards home.
What makes the Astrup Fearnley notable to me is the large amount of exterior public space and the way the museum has been planned by Renzo Piano to make use of it. The idea that a city can never have too much public space has been a theme of Piano’s and Richard Rogers’s work ever since the 1970s, when they designed the Centre Pompidou, in Paris, together. The city of Oslo planners deserve praise too. I suppose almost every capital has lots of museums and other cultural buildings, these days. Oslo is no exception: as well as the Astrup Fearnley it has the opera house designed by Snøhetta. That opened in 2009, and next door to it a new museum is being built to house the works of Edvard Munch. Both of these buildings are also by the harbour but over on the east side of town, and they too have lots going on outdoors: outdoor cafes that overlook the fjord and broad terraces that lead down to the water. They embrace the city.
A Bad Guide 
Jolly good: thank you for that. I admit to a frisson of worry, first seeing the goats, then seeing mention of Damien Hirst. It passed.
Yes, that’s a good point. I hope not to have to mention him ever again.
Cable-stayed columns that look really like sailboats’ masts.
Yes! How did I miss that? There are plenty of sailors here who would appreciate it. I’m in two minds about it: yes, it fits with the context by the fjord, but a boat is a boat and a house is a house and why use the language of one to build the other? Unless you live in a houseboat.
A tent is a house and it is cable-stayed. A bridge is a bridge and many of them dangle from cables.
I was at the Astrup-Fearnley Museum with my wife’n’kids a couple of months ago, but we had little time and didn’t pay our way beyond the souvenir shop. I love the exterior, but what struck me was that marvelously ugly … thing … in the entrance hall.
I’ve got nothing against cables. I’m just wary of buildings that try to look like boats or that use nautical hardware for whimsical reasons (they did this at the Festival of Britain). A recent example is the Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth (Rowan Moore expressed my feelings pretty well in his article – why make a building look like a boat when it’s surrounded by real boats?). On the other hand, I like Le Corbusier’s use of nautical bits & pieces.
– And then there’s one nautical detail I’ve always loved: the windows of the New York Yacht Club.
(You can see those windows from the inside, in the Model Room, here.)
Trond, All I remember was a very fancy looking ticket machine that rejected my ticket, but took everyone else’s, thus confirming for my daughter her opinion that I’m an embarrassing trouble maker.
Well, Artur, what else are dads for, but to embarrass daughters?
Virtually speaking, I would tend to agree with Alma. Not about the embarrassing paternal troublemaking I mean, but on the other subject.
That excellent green and ferny “public space” under investigation by the goats looks so much more worth the bother of the exploring than this grand affair, with all its cold steel and glass and gloomy flash and residue of royal fairydust. No offense mind.
Things are bad enough already over here without the cables, always terrible cobweb-traps those. (And too there’s the problem with the bats catching their wings.)
Perhaps it’s just the Big Cindy puts one off.
(Thought for a brief moment — would “hallucinated” be the better verb? — it was Helen Mirren inflated on PEDs.)
In any case, they’d have had none of her sort of steroidal riff-raff back in the glory days of Vauxhall.
New York Yacht Club — That building doesn’t look like a yacht club at all, despite the boat-like windows. You can’t possibly imagine a guy with seawater dripping from his shorts and sand stuck under his flip-flops walking in to ask for a beer or a shower.
Tom, it’s a wonderful idea to build more pleasure gardens. With more statues of people wearing dressing gown & slippers.
Sig, they have a branch in Newport where they do the sailing and other messy stuff (electing the Commodore).
Artur, your influence has proven pervasive, as ever.
Back over at Vauxhall you will now find the Roubilliac statue of Mr Handel deshabillé (just below the Canaletto), together with more cargo of data and interactive toys bringing Mr Bentham and his macabre remains back into view than perhaps the market has any right to demand, much less bear.
All in a spirit of decomposition, mind. That one fact which brings us all together.
(But no, hold on… wasn’t that what the internet was meant to do?)
I just remembered where I’ve heard of the New York Yacht Club. Tesi has a childhood memory of the time when a flotilla of NYYC boats (no doubt commanded by a Commodore) entered the rather tricky mouth of the Westport River and ran aground in great numbers, to the great amusement of the locals.
The locals were laughing all the way to the bank.
I could just do with a ferny glade. Phew, what a scorcher.
Trond, it was an embarrassingly long time before I got the “bank”. Good one.
A scorcher here, too. One of a seemingly endless series of scorchers. Humid, too.
For weeks now, although it’s pretty hot during the day in Cologne and Mannheim, cool breezes and some cloud cover often take the bite out. Nights are almost cold in Cologne. Faute de Lebensabschnittbegleiter, you need a blanket. Fairly unusual weather.
It’s only about max. 24 (75F.) here during the day and also cool at night. Total sunshine. Lovely weather after all the rain we’ve had. I know it’s really hot in England (33 or 91F.), and probably worse in the US. Our neighbour the Crown Prince is having a weekend 40th birthday party, with crowned heads, and all the guests sleeping in tents in the garden (except for kings & queens, who get to sleep indoors). We just saw him parachute out of a plane. He hang glided over our house accompanied by 3 or 4 hang-gliding bodyguards. Tonight they’re playing VERY LOUD LIVE MUSIC, we got a flyer in the mail from the royal court to say so, very sorry.
Naked Capitalism has appointed goats to do the political commentary.
Are balustrades with horizontal infill members authorized in Norway? (For instance what can be seen on the left-hand side on this photo: https://abadguide.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/astrup4487.jpg) In some countries that’s not allowed as children may use the horizontal bars as a ladder to climb up the balustrade and therefore be at risk of tipping over the handrail.
Dearie, thank you for the goat commentary. I love it. How appropriate. Our goats don’t make any of those noises.
I’d never heard that one about the horizontal railings only that, in general, gaps can’t be big enough for a child to get its head through. As far as I know (not very far) they’re legal here and the photo seems to confirm it. The criticism makes sense, but horizontal pipe railings (like on board ship) are very traditional. They’d be hard to get rid of.
I’m sure I’ve heard that such horizontal bars under a railing would be forbidden in new construction hereabouts.
I didn’t think it was allowed here either, and neither did my wife, the architect. But when I ask her if maybe the water makes any difference, providing a soft landing, she says no. But then she suggests a way that the water could matter: The whole area might have been defined as a quay. In that case, a balustrade is not required by law, and even one with horizontal bars would be an improvement from default design.
Goatnewsflash: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/1/goats-help-tend-historic-grave-sites-nations-capit/
P.S. I love that expression “the nation’s capital” – there’s something wonderfully ponderous about it.
P.P.S. And when I’ve heard it said on, say, a news broadcast, it also sounds portentous.
wooferpix
http://maddieonthings.com
I suppose the goats in the cemetery will also be eating any wreaths and bunches of flowers. They don’t do grass, either; you need sheep for that.
To confuse people in Britain we could start with “the nation’s capital”, meaning Edinburgh, Cardiff or London – your choice. I expect it originally was meant to distinguish between state capitals & Washington, but it is an odd cliché: no one uses in it normal speech, only on TV news programmes.
Says here:
That’s right. They’ll eat grass if there’s nothing else and they eat hay all winter which is just dried grass. The woman we bought them from said that they simply ADORE eating stinging nettles, but ours won’t go near them.
The fashionable species here for “conservation grazing” is this nice wee fella.
http://www.moorlandmousietrust.org.uk/about-conservation-grazing.php
2013/08/14
Sunny summer morn
Bright on Mountain Ash’s fruit;
Autumn comes apace.
2013/08/15
Brambles with cream and
Autumn raspberries for dessert;
Winter’s desert soon.
Comment box smaller
But commenter undeterred.
Self-referential?
Comment box bigger
What was I going to say?
it’s a soft day here.
Diseased chestnut leaves
Litter the ground; but beneath
Will autumn crocus rise?
Bright hares box on a
ridge of thatch; they will be dulled
by Winter ere Spring.
Street name seen today.
“Pyrethrum Way, Willingham”
Do they house pests there?
Belted Galloway
Grazing near a peak; “High coo”
Said a passing wag.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Ferret-stowaway-flew-to-Cambridge-on-Hercules-aircraft-reporter-to-border-control-20130829112353.htm
animal charity Wood Green has launched a nationwide appeal to reunite a Dutch ferret with his owner
Should someone tell them that they’re appealing to the wrong nation? That ferret is acting all innocent, “Oh, I’m confused”. I wouldn’t trust it an inch.
Maybe we should move to Northumberland and have a herd of Exmoor ponies.
Because Chrysanthemums contain pyrethrums, they are used as companion plants, to repel pest insects from nearby crops and ornamental plants.[4] They are thought to repel aphids, bed bugs (Cimex lectularius), leafhoppers, spider mites, harlequin bugs, ticks, pickleworms and imported cabbage worms, among others that are in gardens and farms.
Good idea, but bed bugs?
Since the 19C Germans have used a chrysanthemum extract to kill “insects”, among them bed bugs I suppose:
Als Mittel der Wahl gilt das rezeptfreie pflanzliche Pyrethrum. Seit 150 Jahren steht dieser Auszug aus Chrysanthemenblüten in der Tradition als “Insektenpulver”.
There is a prescription-free liquid called Goldgeist containing Pyrethrum. It is applied to get rid of the various kinds of human lice: crab, head and body.
Is pyrethrum a well-known word in both English and German? Am I the only one here who didn’t know it?
die Laus in ihrer Lebensspanne von etwa vier Wochen rund 100 Eier (Nissen) legt
So Nissen are nits, in English. I knew a Godber Nissen, an architect in Hamburg, a pompous know-all, now deceased. At the time, I would have loved to have known his name meant Mr Nits.
Dearie, I meant to congratulate you on you haikus. You should continue, and make them into a book.
How about a few sonnets, next?
Why have you written the dates backwards? Is it something scientists do?
It’s the new international convention, requiring neither the Europeans (with their rational day-month-year), nor the Americans (with their convenient month-day-year) to lose face by swapping to the other’s convention. Maybe we should have done that with lbs vs kilos – swapped to some new units or to someone else’s e.g. whatever the Japanese used before they adopted kilos. Better yet, we should have adopted my own suggestion – we should have retitled the ill-named kilogram the Asimov and so flattered the Americans into changing.
P.S. “Is pyrethrum a well-known word in both English and German? Am I the only one here who didn’t know it?” Aye.
Unfortunately, there are many Americans in the internet who pretend to subscribe to dearie’s convention, but never actually pay the subscription fee – sort of like what they often do with their UN obligations. That is, they write year-day-month, thus confounding both traditional camps.
Local hero.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Serial-pigeon-strangler-strikes-in-historic-Cambridge-city-centre-street-20130902022903.htm
Ferret update from the C.E.N.
The owners of a ferret who tried to board a plane back to his native Holland are buying him a mate – to stop him running off again. The ferret was spotted attempting to board a military aircraft from Cambridge to Holland.
…
His owner, who lives in Cherry Hinton, came forward to be reunited with Freddie – who was named Vincent by the Airport workers. Diana Bijanskiene, 22, who lives near the Airport, has decided to get another ferret to keep Freddie company in a bid to stop him running off again. Diana, who brought Freddie over to the UK with her on a ferry, said: “When we saw Freddie in the pet shop, we fell in love with him. I was crying for days after he escaped. … We might get him a lady friend to keep him company and out of mischief.”
Diana received Freddie as a wedding gift from a pet shop in her home town of Panevezys
Architects, eh?
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/architecture/walkie-talkie-city-skyscraper-renamed-walkie-scorchie-after-beam-of-light-melts-jaguar-car-parked-beneath-it-8794970.html
They should hang curtains on that building, it’s the only thing that will work now.
I don’t really understand why they want bigger floors near top; to see the view you have to be near the windows. And it’s hideous. I’m not crazy about Vinoly’s work.
They could spray it with mud.
Diana Bijanskiene has decided to get another ferret to keep Freddie company.
“We might get him a lady friend.”
Might?
Pigeon in Cambridge city centre
3 Images
Open Slideshow
I love the Cambridge Evening News.
All you can see is a pigeon walking on some asphalt, somewhere.
Have you been busy in England, Crown?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2416812/Postbox-middle-River-Thames-Uri-Gellers-home-Sonning-Thames-stumped-Royal-Mail-letterbox.html
Goat Week at Modern Farmer.
Crown, you know about Art, so I want to tell you about the major piece of Art that we have in our back garden. I say “major” for two reasons: I’ve heard of the artist, and the thing weighs hundreds of pounds.
It’s a bronze sculpture by Malvina Hoffman, apparently called “Boy and Panther Cub”. It used to be in my mother-in-law’s back garden, but she doesn’t have a back garden any more so now it’s in ours.
There’s a picture of that one on the Wikipedia page. I want something like that to provide a focus in our garden and draw you down it. I may have to make it myself becauseI doubt anyone’s going to give me one. Lucky you, anyway.
I’m just going to London. I’ll be back in a couple of days and then I’ll post something here, I see it’s been a long time.
Thank you for the boar goats, Language, and the post box, dearie, which I can’t explain (I’ve thought & thought).
A certain charm, no?
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/10/13/billy-cote/
Local language news.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/croeso-i-asda-shoppers-in-cambridge-encouraged-to-brush-up-on-their-welsh-after-supermarket-runs-out-of-english-signs-8885901.html
Could it outrun a charging goat?
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Is-this-electric-unicycle-the-way-forward-for-cycling-in-Cambridge-20131017032902.htm
Come to think of it, the crucial question is whether it could outrun a hopping wallaby.
a sign for pedestrians put up in Cardiff in the same year told people to ‘Look Right’ in English but ‘Look Left’ in Welsh.
I love that. ‘Look Right’ signs are to remind people who come from right-hand- drive countries, aren’t they?
He added: “It’s easy to use once you get the hang of it”
That’s it in a nutshell. But (assuming I got the hang of it) it looks like fun, and it looks very practical and convenient for city use. So are they going to be everywhere, or what’s the catch?
Hopped all the way from Cambridge. It must be a Marxist.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/oct/22/wallaby-london-highgate-cemetery-video
What we need are killer wallabies that’ll eat grey squirrels, and mangey urban foxes, and tubercular badgers, and magpies and pigeons and Canada geese. And unicyclists.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Shoppers-horror-as-man-in-Nazi-SS-uniform-wanders-around-Asda-in-Cambridge-20131101060004.htm
It is not known whether the Man of Mystery is Mr Ed Balls, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
You can tell that it isn’t Mr Balls because what the chap has to say is interesting.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/SLIDESHOW-Inside-the-home-of-Paul-Dutton-the-man-who-wore-a-Nazi-SS-uniform-to-go-shopping-at-Asda-in-Cambridge-20131101154707.htm
Look. When I next visit Cambridge… Some of the brightest people in the world… Where they discovered gravitation in the planets, DNA. This is where Charles Darwin studied for the priesthood; where Wittgenstein, Russell & Whitehead… Turing, Dirac, James Clerk Maxwell, Ernest Rutherford, and if I see a couple of dozen wallabies bouncing around and a man dressed as Heinrich Himmler trying to take money out of the cashpoint outside Asda, what am I supposed to think?
On the other hand, I’ve never seen a better set of photographs in the Cambridge Evening News. None of them is out of focus, the subject is large and centred in the frame. The colours are bright. It’s as if they want everyone to see this side of Cambridge. The man’s outfit is new and shiny. Who made it, his mum? Well done, mum. It’s too bad about the tattoos; they ruin the effect. And his shirt’s not right.
Compared to George Osborne, Ed Balls is pretty damn popular.
If Osborne has ever sported a Nazi uniform, no photo of it has found its way into the public prints. But one has for Mr Balls.
here you are.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2211486/The-Nazi-uniform-It-just-laugh-Balls-brushes-university-prank-saying-embarrassed-photo.html
Thank you.
“If choosing again, he said he would be a head teacher.”
Or an admiral or a PM. Certainly not just ‘a teacher’. I think Ed may have ‘issues’.
The criticism makes sense, but horizontal pipe railings (like on board ship) are very traditional. They’d be hard to get rid of.
Though it’s not worth dying for, I much prefer horizontal railings – horizontal wood panelling too. Länge läuft in architecture as well as sailing.
George Osborne? The only George Osborne I know is the cad who marries Amelia in “Vanity Fair”.
“Länge läuft”? Was ist das?
Länge läuft – “length runs” – you would know the truth of this better than I: apparently when you’re designing a sailing vessel, the longer it is at its intersection with the water, relative to its breadth, the faster it will go.
That is taken to extremes in hydrofoil boats, maybe ? The width of each foil – at least of the part in the water – is negligeable compared to its length. The less there is of the boat in the water (is that called displacement even in this context ?), the faster it can move.
I sense that I don’t understand much about hydrofoils.
It makes sense that the longer and thinner it is the less resistance, and so the faster it will go. So, if you have a ten-foot-long boat, do you just make it three feet longer and it will – for no other reason than that – go faster? That seems counter-intuitive.
Much of the energy used in driving boats goes into the wave-making. The friction on the hull is usually a secondary consideration.
I thought this might interest you, Crown.
http://architectureandmorality.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/five-years-later-being-architect-under.html
Yes, it does, in a way. There’s always a know-all like that in a medium-sized or big office who makes everything to do with architecture seem so corporate, sewn-up and cold-blooded. They’re very helpful when you need advice about something obscure to do with condensation channels in skylights or the turning radius of a garbage truck – although I’m guessing nowadays they’ve been supplanted in that by google. They’re never very interesting designers.
Okay, “Länge läuft” would somewhat translate into “longueur de la ligne de flottaison”, or “length of the waterline”. This length appears in the equation giving what is called the “hull speed”, which is the maximum speed a boat can achieve without unduly pushing water in front of it. This speed, which is proportional to the square root of the hull’s length, is attained when the wavelength created is equal to the length of the waterline, i.e. when there is a crest at the bow while the next crest is at the stern.
If excessive motor power is used, the length of the wave created by the boat’s movement will tend to increase and the water will start to bulge at the front of the boat. In the case of a rather short speedboat, this speed can be relatively low and it is quite obvious, when the power handle is pushed down, that at a certain point the bow goes up, lifted by the accumulation of water in front of it. It is only when the boat breaks that barrier that it starts to plane, i.e. it no longer displaces water as per Archimedes’ rule. At this stage it glides on water, very much like a plane glides on air while having an overall density far greater than air itself (unlike a zeppelin). This is also where the hydrofoils mentioned by Stu come into action, which work exactly like a water-ski supporting a water-skier.
Incidentally, how do you call a “vasistas” in English, a word which is said to come from the German expression “was ist das”?
http://galeri.uludagsozluk.com/r/vasistas-236068/
It seems this type of small window is also called “vasistas” in a number of languages other than French.
Sig, thanks for the explanation. I understand now that when a ship accelerates from sailing mode into hydrofoiling mode, it changes media. Instead of displacing water while moving through water, it now glides on water while moving through air.
Previously, I had vaguely imagined a similarity to a plane breaking the sound barrier. There, however, there is no change of medium. On the other hand, it occurs to me that a plane moving at supersonic speed might actually be gliding over air masses like a ski, rather than being lifted by a pressure difference between top and bottom of the wings. Is that true ? Does the question make sense ?
About “vasistas”: at the end of the German WiPe article on (a door lite above a door) I found this: “Upper door lites are called ‘vasistas’ in French, pronounced just like the German question ‘was ist das?’. This explains the origin of the word: German visitors in France at the end of the 18C saw this kind of window for the first time, and asked the house owner ‘was ist das?’. The word appeared for the first time in a French dictionary in 1798.”
As to the expression “door lites”, I hope Crown can help out here. A Kämpferfenster seems to be used only to designate a lite above the door, whereas the English “door lite” seems to apply to any kind of glass set into or above a door, its side panels etc.
The Kämpfer- part of the word has nothing to do with fighting. As a Grimm research reveals, it is one of several related forms: (auf)kapfen, käpfen etc (stick up, protrude) from olden-times architecture and building technique. In the current context, we’re talking about a Kragstein, a masonry element that protrudes from either side of a door like a Kragen (neck). These can support a cross-beam that is the bottom part of an upper door lite. See the second image from the top at the right-hand side of the Kämpferfenster article.
Sorry, Kragen today means collar, but related forms used to mean neck: think of the “craw” of a bird. Also, there was a now extinct German verb kragen that designated the vocal sounds made by certain birds and humans (children), and then the necks from which they came. That might be behind the English word “crowing”, which mean jubilating, not making the harsh sounds of a crow.
I got mixed up by the rather detailed explanations in Grimm about the construction elements. They were referred to as if they were parts of the human body: head, neck.
“There, however, there is no change of medium.” You could argue that there is in a rather subtle sense: the air has changed from being an approximately incompressible fluid to a compressible fluid. Biu I wouldn’t argue that because it’s a case of being too clever by half.
“… rather than being lifted by a pressure difference between top and bottom of the wings”: alas, the popular account of how wings work is tosh. Assuming you don’t want to immerse yourself in the details of aerofoil theory, it’s best just to cleave to the proposition that a wing works by diverting air downwards so that the reactive upward force provides the ‘lift’.
it’s best just to cleave to the proposition that a wing works by diverting air downwards so that the reactive upward force provides the ‘lift’
I’ve always secretly believed that. It’s good to know there are a few other souls out there who refuse to be bamboozled by boffins.
Another suppressed truth: the “Coriolis force” that supposedly makes water rotate down into bathtub drains is named after the angel Coriolis. He sits on the moon, holding the far ends of long invisible swizzle sticks with which he causes the water to whirl.
“Lights” is another word for panes of glass or window panes. So door lights aren’t limited to any one position and we have “fanlights” & “cleristory lights” etc. “Lites” is the way such a word might easily be spelled on a set of working drawings, ostensibly to save time.
Thank you for the sq. root explanation, Sig. I remember now I’ve heard it before from a sailor a long time ago. It’s what’s meant by a six-metre yacht, right?
We all have to defer to Dearie. He taught this stuff (& similar, to do with cleaning up oil spills) at university.
I hope you won’t defer: everyone talks cobblers some of the time.
Though come to think of it, I defer to the Second Law.
By golly, that “difference in pressure produces lift” explanation really is wrong, see this. When I was told that story in school, I couldn’t really take it in. I imagined that the lift of a tilted surface pushed forward aginst air must primarily be the upward surface-reactive force matching the downward air-deflective force. And it’s true, at least in simple situations ! Thank you, Mr. Newton !
Thank you, dearie. That is so liberating. I would like to say, with Stu, that I have always secretly doubted the “Bernoulli principle” story about how planes fly. All I can say is that I was made vaguely uncomfortable by feeling that I did not understand it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_%28force%29
I’m afraid that I used to mock the bollocksy theory by calling it the “best friends” theory of aerodynamics: two ickle-dickle elements of fluid couldn’t bear to be separated so one ran as hard as its little legs would take it round the top surface of the aerofoil to meet its wee best friend at the trailing edge.
When someone once objected to my tone and also tried to say that I must be wrong because everyone else espoused the Bernoulli argument, I simply asked what was the force that accelerated the upper element. Silence. Jesus, I hate stupid make-up-your-own-physics stuff.
empty: All I can say is that I was made vaguely uncomfortable by feeling that I did not understand it.
Yes, that describes my reaction more accurately than “secretly doubting”. It’s not as if I had seriously tried to think the matter through, or comb the literature for alternative explanations, or conduct experiments, or even think about it at all much. When “everyone else espouses the Bernoulli argument”, one is neither a physicist nor at bottom cares a rat’s podex about it, and airplanes are built and actually fly – what else is there to do than parrot the argument ?
Every person has to find ways of thinking about things that make sense to him or her. Sometimes, on some subjects, persons exchange sentences that seem to agree with each other as accounts of things. A person can even exchange sentences with himself and feel that these accounts are coherent, for a while.
In trying to give an account of accountings, one traditionally encounters a notion of “reality” that is parroted much more confidently than views about airplane wings. One can offer different ways of thinking about “reality”, but hardly claim to have found “the correct ones” – particularly when those different ways of thinking suggest that the very notion of “correct ways of thinking” is highly tricky.
There are indeed ways to account for thinking about “reality” that do not account for “reality”. Luhmann has many on offer. But there you’ve lost most people. They imagine you’re claiming that airplanes fly because birds have wings.
Dearieme, it can’t be denied that orography can change the speed of the flow of air known as wind, which can blow stronger at certain pkaces when it goes round a mountain for instance. What is the force that accelerates the air molecules there?
Is Bernoulli’s principle a force ?
The English WiPe article on lift says: “Bernoulli’s principle does not explain why the air flows faster over the top of the wing”. It then goes on, in the conservation of mass section, to invoke Bernoulli’s principle as “additional reasoning” to explain things more fully. I suspect that too many contributors have had their spoons in this pot.
The first two sentences of that article are already hopelessly amateurish:
1. “A fluid flowing past the surface of a body exerts a force on it.” Well, the Rhine flows past the surface of my body, but exerts no force on it. That may be because it flows at a distance of several kilometers from me. But I haven’t been moved by it even when sitting on a bench near the water’s edge.
2. “Lift is the component of this force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction.” There is not just one line perpendicular to a “direction”, but an infinite number of them.
“Is Bernoulli’s principle a force ?” Nope.
“What is the force that accelerates the air molecules there?” My point was that anyone espousing the Best Friends theory of flight has to explain what imbalance of forces causes the air flowing over the upper surface to accelerate relative to that passing the lower surface. The onus is on them: I never did receive a decent answer. (It does actually flow faster: but why?)
The correct answer I suppose begins with the source of the overall force moving the air relative to the aerofoil ; if you are in a wind tunnel, a bloody great compressor; if you’re considering an aircraft in free flight, it is its motors. Now, what is the source of the imbalance in force referred to above? That was my question, and answer came their none. The wikipedia article says quietly “To see why the air flows the way it does requires more sophisticated analysis”. You can say that again: I was exposed to that stuff as an undergraduate and, happily, have never had to think about it since. The further we got into the vector calculus of it all, the further we got from a simple answer to “why?” I suspect that nobody had a satisfactory simple answer: maybe the answer is intrinsically unsimple. I’ve become a wee bit suspicious of simple answers. That’s partly from seeing too many charlatans on the telly over the years. But it’s also because of …. well, here’s the story. When I was a fresher the pleasing conclusion of little course on Newtonian Mechanics, shortly after the analysis of the gyroscope, was the analysis of how a bicycle works; that is to say, how it stays upright as you pedal along. You make a simplifying assumption or two, appeal to Sir Isaac, apply a spot of vector algebra, wave your hands excitedly, and there you are. It was some years after I graduated that the news reached me that dynamicists had decided that this cheerful textbook theory was simply wrong. They had little choice: some spoilsport engineering researchers had smelt a rat, and had built a bike that violated the analysis, staying stable when it “shouldn’t” have done. You might wonder why an under-tested theory had been taught to undergraduates around the globe. So do I: just the customary arrogance of physicists, perhaps.
“orography can change the speed of the flow of air known as wind”: yes – if you ask what force accelerates a flow of air through a narrow gap between two mountains, or two skyscrapers, then the simplest useful answer is, I suppose, that the wind is being driven by a pressure gradient. You then apply the Principle of Continuity (which is just Conservation of Mass by another name, allied to an assumption of incompressibility), and bingo! So much for small-scale effects; however, I’d rather not try to answer questions about the big-picture fluid mechanics of the atmosphere: it’s something I’ve never really grasped – too much by way of Coriolis force, I dare say.
Here’s a droll article, dated 2011 – i.e. decades after the news reached me. Still, it’s got references to computers and stuff.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/moving-bikes-stay-uprightbut-not-for-the-reasons-we-thought/
the wind is being driven by a pressure gradient
That’s what I would say as well. Then why couldn’t it be “the force that accelerated the upper element”? i.e. the reason why there is suction occurring on the upper face — though, given that the wing is tilted upward, you would expect pressure to build up more on the underside of the wing than on the upper side. (My point, however, was to say that there is not necessarily something mysterious going on, some sort of black energy, when air speed varies around a wing or a sail.)
dearie: The wind is being driven by a pressure gradient
Well, that’s what I meant by the tongue-in-cheek question “Is Bernoulli’s principle a force?” The principle “states that within an airflow of constant energy, when the air flows through a region of lower pressure it speeds up and vice versa.” So air speed gradients <=> air pressure gradients <=> air forces. The principle is a force on the mind: it forces you to think of gradients as forces. A pressure gradient does not “drive” anything, it is a just a force with a hat on.
Bernoulii pointed out that certain phenomena – air speed gradients and pressure gradients – are the same thing seen from different angles. Or rather: that it profits a man to think of them that way.
Perhaps it’s just that if you think of it as a force, a summation of all the little forces acting in the same direction, you can draw a vector diagram or make some other kind of analysis.
“there is not necessarily something mysterious going on, some sort of black energy”: there’s nothing mysterious going on, in the sense of spooky. It’s just that what is happening is intricate enough that it’s beyond a usefully simple summary, apart from the first order point that if you divert air downwards there’s a reactive force upwards. Whether there is a complete theory of aerofoils I doubt, but I’ve done no reading about it since undergraduate days. In one sense there can’t be; it involves (potentially) turbulent flow, for which there is certainly no complete theory. In that sense it is, at least in part, mysterious. People use CFD packages a lot for aircraft design (Computational Fluid Dynamics), so there is clearly a useful depth of understanding. But they also still use extensive wind tunnel testing, suggesting that understanding is far from complete.
“Then why couldn’t it be “the force that accelerated the upper element”?” Yes, but why is there an imbalance such that the upper air is accelerated compared to the lower air? Remember that your explanation has to embrace the ability of aircraft to fly upside down.
“A pressure gradient does not “drive” anything, it is a just a force with a hat on.” Yup, or rather it does drive things, being just a force with a hat on.
Still, fluid mechanics is a slippery customer. In a way, the bicycle business is more revealing. As far as I know, you can make heaps of customary simplifying assumptions (this is rigid, that is elastic, friction is absent here, friction is dominant there, …) and still it ain’t simple.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_dynamics
Their account of the history of trying to understand bikes remarks that “[it] may require some of the details provided below about steering geometry or stability to be re-evaluated”. Heh, heh.
Two conclusions:
(i) I won’t believe anything about bike stability without experimental testing (consistent with the aeronautical engineers’ desire for wind tunnel testing).
(ii) We should thank our lucky stars that although predicting the behaviour of the simple aerofoil and the bicycle are still partly beyond our ken, “the science is settled” on atmospheric physics. How generous of God to gift such infallible insight to a bunch of distinctly below-average scientists grappling with an infinitely more complicated system.
That’s the crucial info if you’re going to describe the problem. Aerofoils aren’t symmetrical about the horizontal axis. The asymmetry is supposed to provide more lift. I can’t see why planes can fly upside down unless it’s just that the sideways forces are greater than the force of gravity.
Surely most “science is settled” statements just refer to one single cause & effect that’s beyond reasonable doubt: CO2 buildup causes the temperature to rise. You can’t wait to figure out all the details & resolve all the anomalies before taking action to prevent it getting any worse.
“that’s beyond reasonable doubt”: but it isn’t, not even close. All you know is that, other things being equal, if you were to squirt extra CO2 into the atmosphere and it lingered there, you’d expect a modest rise in temperature. But you don’t know whether the size of squirt you’re making is material (because nobody knows where all the CO2 comes from and goes to; the sums don’t add up on that), and you haven’t a clue about the size of the effect of other things not being equal. There is no evidence worth tuppence – none – that you must “take action to prevent it getting any worse”. It is, to use a technical term, bollocks.
Not many people are going to judge global warming based on the science. That’s inevitable; one can’t be an expert in everything. I have to accept people’s word that x is a better product or a more responsible way to behave than y. I base my judgement on whom to trust on lots of things; their qualifications and citation of statistics come into it, but there are other criteria that are irrelevant to the product itself: how much the writer seems to be like me, the quality of their writing and their apparent honesty all affect my reaction, probably. In the case of global warming, there seem to be many more scientists who accept it than don’t. What’s more, the opinions of most of the doubters (with the exception of a few like you) seem untrustworthy: they’re from interested oil companies and groups like the American Tea Party. In short: maybe it’s bollocks, maybe it isn’t, but I’m not going to wait until we know for certain. Best to play it safe.
“there seem to be many more scientists who accept it than don’t”: if true – and the “if” is important – it probably means that they haven’t read up on it. (That’s true in Cambridge: there are “scientists” galore who approve of it without having read any more than the Guardian.) Moreover, most scientists have no experience at all at doing mathematical modelling of complicated physico-chemical systems: they work if at all possible on experiments that are craftily designed so that they can study one variable at a time. Moreover again; many scientists have no experience of using poor quality observational data (such as temperatures measured at weather stations at airports) because their experiments let them take high-quality measurements, and repeat measurements, under reproducible conditions.
But I have done plenty of said math modelling since my first stab at it in 1967 and am well aware of how tricky it is, and of how seductive is the temptation to fiddle the inputs to your program to give you the outputs you seek. (You have to be really stern with research students on this point.) The globalwarmmongers do such”parameter adjustment” all the time. It means they can “fit” past data easily, but that there is no reason at all to take seriously their predictions for the future.
Further I have taken lots of experimental data and a little observational, but quite enough to appreciate the huge differences involved.
Moreover thrice: most – well, I hope it’s most – scientists are at least middling honest in their work, and uncritically assume that others are too. They are therefore vulnerable to crooks, of whom there are many in the global warmongering cam; alas I know, I’ve read their papers. (It’s related, I suspect, to the phenomenon of scientists being particularly gullible about conjuring tricks.)
By the by, have you any evidence for your remark that “most of the doubters … seem untrustworthy: they’re from interested oil companies and groups like the American Tea Party”. I’ve seen no sign of it. Try reading Steve McIntyre at “Climate Audit” or Anthony Watts at “Watts Up With That”.
I, by the way, must declare an interest. I am taking money from Big Oil – to help them reduce their CO2 emissions. Ironic, eh?
Oh dearie me! some people aren’t afraid of being burned at the stake!
Incidentally, from a Cambridge professor: http://www.withouthotair.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8014484.stm
“some people aren’t afraid of being burned at the stake!” I learnt yesterday how it is that apologists for The Inquisition can claim that it killed rather few people. The Inq would find people guilty of heresy, and hand them over to the lay authorities for burning. If the laymen didn’t acquiesce, then they’d be charged with heresy too. Neat, eh?
Isn’t it amazing how you always learn something new from a good book even if you’ve read it a few times before?
That’s pretty much my definition of a good book. But I would say this: unless it’s merely a book of “facts”, you learn something new only because you’ve read it a few times before. When you read a book of subtle, productive ideas (mathematics, sociology, novels, whatever), you simply can’t, at the first reading, notice ramifications that occur to you at the fifth. Foundations first, ramparts later.
In this connection I must mention that I just finished Jud Süß. I was sure that I had read it before, twenty or so years ago. But I must be wrong, because clearly I didn’t understand a goddamn thing at the time, not even the plot. It’s one of the great German novels, in my opinion.
What was your good book, Dearie? I’ve looked up the scientists who are anti-warming and they looked slightly shifty, though not half as shifty as the US senator from I think it was Tennessee who’s the main denier. I’ll look at those two books, though. Of course your points are good and I can’t argue, but I would like to know this: do Mrs Dearie & Miss Dearie agree with you?
I ask because we know they’re both jolly smart and what’s more they may know whether to take what you say at face value or with a pinch of salt.
Thanks for the tip, Stu. A book I’ve been wanting to recommend to anyone interested in the history of German culture is The German Genius, by Peter Watson – 1000-odd pages and every one a gem (semi-precious).
(i) Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. This is my third go and I’ve been finding lots in it. The dreadful old twat really could write, too.
(ii) The two books are websites, Crown.
(iii) Dearieshe assumes I’m right. After I arrived home on the evening of the Challenger disaster and she told me what had happened, I told her what the cause probably was. Since then she’s tended to assume that my pronouncements on science are sound. (She spent many years in Social Science so she’s familiar with the concept that something styling itself “Science” might be largely empty rubbish.)
(iv) Deariewee’s views are not on record: whether she’s yet old enough to stop assuming that Dad is always wrong isn’t clear. (How’s your lass doing in London, by the way?)
Did you see this week that two American medical bodies have sounded the retreat from the drivelly cholesterol theory of heart attacks? Whether that tosh has done more harm than global warmmongering I don’t know.
“Patients on statins will no longer need to lower their cholesterol levels to specific numerical targets monitored by regular blood tests, as has been recommended for decades.” Decades I tell ya.
Happily they’ve come up with some other justifications for mass statination: whether to let themselves continue to enjoy money and power, or just in hopes of defending themselves from a tsunami of legal suits, I don’t know. Or perhaps it’s no worse than honourable intellectual confusion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/health/new-guidelines-redefine-use-of-statins.html?ref=health&_r=0
On the subject of physiology my ignorance is boundless, but I could tell that the cholesterol theory was probably tosh by comparing the quality of the arguments of the pro- and anti- camps. Only “probably” of course: sometimes honesty and reason are overwhelmingly on one side of the debate and still it turns out that the other side is right. Or, at least, so I assume.
Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, said he thought it would take several years for doctors to change their practices. …
“The science was never there” for the LDL targets, he said. Past committees “made them up out of thin air,” he added. …
The Department of Veterans Affairs conducted its own independent review and came to the same conclusion. About a year ago, the department, the nation’s largest integrated health care system, dropped its LDL targets, said Dr. John Rumsfeld, the VA’s national director of cardiology. …
The department had used target LDL numbers as rewards for doctors and hospitals.
“We got rid of that,” Rumsfeld said.
Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/Medical/2013/11/12/New-guidelines-redefine-use-of-statins.html#ZJBi5cCbHoUoUdrP.99
Crown, I’ve seen the Watson book in the Mannheim train station bookstore, and wondered whether I should look at it. Now I will.
My sister told me on the phone this week: in the US there is a growing resistance to prostate removal operations as a “standard” measure against prostate cancer. They often lead to incontinence, impotence and general misery (as in one of my friends). Prostate cancer tends to metastasize, it appears, so you’re going to die of it ultimately anyway. Who wants a prolonged, miserable life ?
Stu that book has, I admit, a terrible title, but it is worth checking out. It’s by a journalist but a seemingly very erudite one. I’ve no reason to think it’s any more unreliable than an academic’s book There are all sorts of things explained, say 18C education or what Kant’s Critique of Judgement meant to art, that you probably know already but I didn’t. I haven’t read the whole thing yet.
Dearie I’d forgotten your views on cholesterol, which from my own experience I’ve always known were right. The general principle behind public health is make as much fuss as possible now & check the facts later, which in cases when they’re later shown to have been mistaken ends up looking like crying wolf. I suppose that’s the same (to some extent) for some of the global-warming arguments.
I’m glad to know roughly where the other dearies stand. I think my family would give me a hard time if I changed my views but that’s never stopped me in the past.
It was clever to guess the o-ring seal fault. I’m surprised that more things don’t go wrong
with these one-off designs. As they say, rocket science isn’t brain surgery – by the way, I didn’t know that about the side effects of prostate surgery, Stu. I’ll try and avoid it.
I’ve been feeling quite fond of Russell recently. I saw an interview with him on Face To Face. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bZv3pSaLtY So maybe I’ll look at his book.
Alma is absolutely loving her course at the AA. Working terribly hard, she had my 87-year-old mother up until 4am helping her make a costume for a photograph she wanted to take. I’d told her that people work hard at university because they’re enjoying themselves and get absorbed in their subject, but it was impossible for her to understand until it happened. School had always been just a means to an end.
Good for her. And for grandma.
Grandma hadn’t had so much fun for years.
Russell’s History of Western Philosophy: I reread that a few years ago, and agree that it’s worth rereading.
Ha!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/18/health/risk-calculator-for-cholesterol-appears-flawed.html?_r=0
“We’re surrounded by a real disaster in terms of credibility,” said Dr. Peter Libby, the chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
The Russell looks very enjoyable. My worry about reading something that old is that I won’t spot the info that’s out of date, but that’s a small price.
I’ve given up the NY Times. I refuse on principle to pay for it online, and I don’t want accept their millions of cookies. Everyone’s now saying the cholesterol numbers are all wrong, but it won’t stop anyone from eating awful margarine and low-fat everything.
Philosophy is like fashion, Crown. When analyses fall from favor, it’s no worse than hem-lines falling. Everything rises again over time.
Forgive me if I’ve told you this before. After some tests a consultant cardiologist told me “Your such-and-such is normal”. I asked “Do you mean normal as in commonplace, or normal as in desirable?” His jaw dropped: clearly in decades of practice he’d never asked himself this question. Ass!
Anyway, I can tell you the two most important things to do to avoid cardiovascular disease. 1. Stop smoking. 2. Become younger.
And in my case, 3. Renounce the diabetes. I gave up smoking but my heart’s still going to get me in the end, probably. I can think of worse things to die of and I do like knowing how I’m going to die, assuming I avoid falling roof tiles, etc. My most serious concern about death is someone saying I’ve “passed away”. You’re powerless to stop that sort of
thing.
My worry about Russell came from the “Look inside” invitation on Amazon, which was all about the Greeks. I felt (not knowing anything) that things must have moved forward since he wrote all that in 1945. I had a mental image of a monochrome British Museum in 1945, surrounded by fog and all its treasures inaccessible, compared to what you can see there vividly today.
I bet they still have the fog.
Some of those treasures appear vivid nowadays simply because they’ve been dusted off, cleaned with solvent and given a lick of paint. Possibly your feeling that “things must have moved forward since he wrote that” is due to an imputation of progress. Never mind the diabetes and tell-tale heart: belief in progress will seriously impair your moral fiber.
Possibly you just fear that reading the History right through to the end might be wasting your time. Well, sure, mebbe. But it won’t kill you to read parts of it. You can always cast it aside if it bores you, or seems to be incompatible with belief in Singer.
The fact is, I have found that reading these old guys (and dolls, I hasten to add) turns up a lot of fascinating, unexpected stuff. That’s why I hesitate now at bird’s-eye books like the one by Watson. I’m trying to read the books that people write about, before reading their opinions on those books. Time’s a-wastin’.
They’ve swapped the fog for busloads of high-quality tourists. Last time I was there I saw a group of Eastern Orthodox officials, very stylishly dressed. I tried to get a discreet photograph (I was too embarrassed to take a full-frontal). It’s not very good.
Cant see where I.B. Singer comes into it.* You can’t pick up a magazine these days without seeing some reference to the so-called Whig interpretation of history, so if there’s anyone left who believes in progress they must be feeling pretty self-conscious about it. My daughter Alma has teen working on a photography project in the course of which she’s decided that these things (culture & progress, I guess) move in a spiral. That sounds like an idea that comes via Hegel, but I don’t know any more about where she picked it up. Maybe you do, Stu.
*(Jokey-poo.)
That sounds like an idea that comes via Hegel
Gosh, I dunno. Maybe it was Hegel (which see, because I haven’t). I find that even Goethe was intoning it:
A spiral with rhythms, like a slinky ! Then it sez here: “the “spiral-shaped” dialectic progress of Hegel, Marx, et al.” I don’t know this Al, just one of the crowd I guess.
I don’t know what so many people find appealing about describing history, culture, progress etc in terms of simple geometrical patterns like circles and spirals – unless it be merely the simplicity. Myself, I see various kinds of jelly with the tadpoles in.
I think jelly with tadpoles is more how historians like to see things nowadays. Any pattern that’s a non-linear could be some kind of improvement. I’ll have to grill Alma about the spiral.
Of course the jelly may spiral upwards over time, but how can we be sure that the polliwogs aren’t swimming downwards all the while, away from the Great Heron In The Sky ? These circle-and-spiral images are breathtakingly brainless. People should be ashamed of themselves – and if they’re not, shame on them.
I think there are lots of “Does History Repeat Itself?” essays, though I’ve never read one
and don’t plan to start.
I meant to say something about the premise of watson’s book, which is that we (esp. in Britain) still see all the Germans as Nazis – don’t mention the war – and people who blindly follow orders. So he sets out to explain the history of German thought for the past few centuries ending up in the mid-20C. It’s all very informative, at least for me though obviously less so for you.
Why obviously less so for me ? I haven’t read the book yet ! I’ve merely been giving circles and spirals a hard time.
“People who blindly follow orders.” Hmm. It will be interesting to see what Watson has to say about that. I suppose it’s more useful to write a book about the notion than to just dismiss it as claptrap.
He doesn’t put it quite this way, but I see Germans as being more law abiding and unquestioning of rules than say Americans or Britons and he attributes it to Kant’s legacy. I’ve seen Germans waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green at deserted crossings and rigidly driving at the speed limit in cities. They have more faith in society and consequently feel less obliged to assert their individual freedom every five minutes. We ridicule a law saying you can’t take a shower after ten pm or that shops close at 1pm on Saturdays – ‘fuck you, I’ll do what I want’ – they don’t. There’s a similar feeling about society in Norway.
[Waits for Stu to tell him he’s got it all wrong.]
Well, not wrong, certainly not all wrong, but … Let me expand my views about this “law-abiding and unquestioning of rules” business.
What might be desirable or profitable in not abiding laws ? It depends on the laws, I suppose, among other things. Certain people may get a kick out of wriggling past any and all laws and through their loopholes, just to be doing. But is this behavior in any respect “better” than not wriggling just for the sake of wriggling ? Or rather not wriggling just for the sake of not-wriggling, i.e. out of habit ?
Is “questioning rules” any better than not “questioning rules”. It depends on the rules and the questions asked, among other things. And so an argument might go that is similar to the one about law-abiding.
Such questions arise when it is suggested that some people (Germans) obey laws without thinking, this being a bad thing, whereas others (Americans/Brits) disobey laws without thinking, this being a good thing.
One of the reasons many Germans “wait for the pedestrian light to turn green at deserted crossings” (as I sometimes do myself) is simply that they’re not in a giant hurry to be there and do that. They take the opportunity to dream briefly of Sauerbraten in safety, without having to assign grey cells to monitor for traffic whizzing around the corner.
Remember that most Germans live in built-up cities where you can’t see around those corners. I bet all nationalities would cross on red at an intersection in the middle of a desert.
For the same reasons, why not “drive rigidly at the speed limit”, for Christ’s sake ? If you need more reasons: it reduces the risk of running over a person or other animal, reduces CO2 emissions, and frees your mind to think thoughts other than “I hope a child doesn’t jump out from between those parked cars”.
For the most part, Germans (and most people, indeed) abide by laws and don’t question rules when they’re not bothered by those laws and rules. They don’t have built-in drives to demonstrate independence and mettle at every little opportunity. Germans can’t be bothered, are not in an American hurry and don’t carry around a sack of chips on their shoulders. I mean wood chips, not potato chips.
By my father’s account, one reason that the German soldiers of the Second World War were so superior to the soldiers of the democracies was that the Germans, especially the NCOs, had been trained to accept responsibility, and to improvise as needs be. When I said as much on an American blog, there was a pained complaint that everyone knew that the American soldiers had proved better at improvising than the Germans at the Normandy beaches. Ain’t propaganda effective?
My father had fought the buggers: the American complainer was my age. Who’d you like to bet on?
Americans with a chip on their shoulder are probably obese. While gobbling bags of potato chips, sometimes one falls out and sticks to the shoulder. There’s many a slip twixt chip and lip.
I can’t see where the chip on the shoulder comes into it. Stu, is libertarianism popular in Germany, as it is in the States and to some extent in Britain? That’s all about individual freedom when it’s not about taxation. On one level, the Henry David Thoreau build your own cabin in the woods and live on nuts & berries level, it seems quite attractive. But as a product of the welfare state myself it’s hard for me to give up the idea that things like a national health service & free education are beneficial.
No one except me is accepting ‘anecdotal’ evidence, for some reason, these days. Anyway, I’ll ignore it. I’ve seen for myself that no one in Britain or the US obeys the speed limit, whereas almost everyone in Germany does. Almost everyone everywhere agrees the benefits that you noted, so what’s that all about?
There’s a saying about Americans being good improvisers. I can’t quite remember it at the moment.
Crown, now I’m not sure we’re talking about the same things. You said this:
The “anecdotal evidence” that you just referred to, is that merely your having witnessed in person that Germans break laws and drive over the speed limit less frequently than do Americans or Britons ? I see no reason to doubt that. My own witnessings are no less anecdotal.
However, I took it that you were saying more than that, in particular because you referred to “Kant’s legacy” and used the expression “law-abiding”. I thought that you were imputing to Germans something like deliberate, conscientious adherence to “higher principles”. If you (or Watson) were not doing that, why bring Kant into the picture ? He didn’t even hold a driver’s license.
It was what I imagined to be your (or Watson’s) imputation to Germans of higher principles (which one can’t witness) that I took issue with. My argument is that not being in a hurry, and feeling “less obliged to assert their individual freedom every five minutes”, as you put it, satisfactorily accounts for what you have witnessed. In that sense Germans are not more “law-abiding” than Americans or Britons – they just are less bothered about laws and rules. I can’t think of anything more likely to make Kant spin in his grave.
Not higher principles, different principles. Individuals versus communities. I’m pretty shocked to hear he never passed his test. Probably something to do with the one way system on the 7 bridges.
If you were to read the phrase “I was only obeying orders”, do you think there’s more likelihood that the writer is, say, German rather than French or Italian? If German, is that just unreasonable prejudice against Germans, based on nothing? No connection with either Kant or any other German philosophers or the Nasty Party?
If you were to read the phrase “I was only obeying orders”, do you think there’s more likelihood that the writer is, say, German rather than French or Italian?
Nope. One Eichmann á la Arendt does not a nation make.
If German, is that just unreasonable prejudice against Germans, based on nothing?
Yep. I know plenty of lawless German males. They’re the most fun kind.
No connection with either Kant or any other German philosophers or the Nasty Party?
Lawless males tend to be unfamiliar with Kant or any other German philosophers. The Neo Nasty Party appeals to xenophobic rednecks. Great Britain and the USA have their equivalents.
I know plenty of lawless Germans too both now & historically, and I agree they’re very fun, but it’s all beside the point. Not sure you’ll get much from Watson. Incidentally there was a very interesting (to me) review in the NYReview, (though it’s only part one of two):
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/nov/21/arendt-eichmann-new-truth/
Alas, I am not quite the man for this job.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2511181/Wealthy-Cambridge-University-student-offers-48-000-just-16-weeks-private-tuition-failed-year.html
I see that the excuse given for the software probs with Obamacare is the need to link to your Social Security details, and IRS, etc. So I did smile at the news that some bozo accidentally signed up his dog. This is your chance, Crown; be the first man to sign up a goat.
What Misty needs is a good dentist. Or any dentist who treats goats. Her teeth are getting longer and longer like a horse.
It’s too bad for him you aren’t interested in the young Swiss person. I’m sure you’d whip him into shape in no time. Still, if he has “time management” issues, perhaps what he really needs is a year working as something like a hospital nurse.
There ought to be a very embarrassed admissions tutor somewhere in Cambridge.
Crown, here’s a wonderful story from your favourite newspaper.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Did-a-Soviet-agent-tip-off-the-News-that-JFK-was-going-to-be-shot-Riddle-of-phone-message-to-the-newspaper-25-minutes-BEFORE-the-president-was-assassinated-20131122060000.htm
Uh, they didn’t add up 10 years ago, when climatologists talked about the “missing sink”. They do add up now, now that the bulk of the ocean is better known.
Watts and McIntyre have little idea what they’re talking about, and make embarrassing spectacles of jumping up and down in joy when they find a typo that, when corrected, changes next to nothing about the conclusions. I recommend http://realclimate.com/ .
So the science wasn’t settled after all, eh? Actually, McIntyre’s stuff strikes me as clearly intellectually superior to most of the stuff I’ve read from the Warmmongers camp. If an undergraduate in a numerate discipline had submitted some of that stuff as an honours project I’d have thrown it back at him. Geeze, what duds.
Crown, did you ever read Nairn?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewmcfbrown/100247410/what-drove-the-great-ian-nairn-to-his-early-death/
Spidergoats! (“A 6min brief on the work being done in Laramie, WY whereby spider silk is being spun from goat milk.”)
Ahoy, Crown: can this be true?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2512663/Heathrow-built-Terminal-5-way-changing-lightbulbs.html
On Monday I had sent that link to some M&E engineer friends. No reaction whatsoever.
But maybe the architect or the lighting designer was to be blamed after all.
I can’t get the goat’s milk video to play. The spiders’ union aren’t goint to like it, though. Will I have to boycott goat’s-milk products?
This might be an interesting story, but the halfwits who write the Daily Mail have screwed up all the details (as above), so it’s hard to tell. Still, they managed to find a picture of Richard Rogers looking shifty, so it must be his fault.
…….The Cambridge News: All the news. About wallabies. As it happens…….
Thank you for the Ian Nairn article in the Telegraph, dearie. I read one in the Guardian but this was much more informative, and I especially liked the video excerpts. His journey on the bumpy Orient Express is a sort of anti-Wicker’s World. His architecture presentations and his knowledgeable and insightful opinions remind me a bit of Jonathan Meades’ programmes.
I am amused to think that I travelled up and down to St Pancras on the Settle line a lot when I was seventeen, without knowing that it would become viewed as a treasure. I thought at first that he was too dismissive of Carlisle, but on reflection decided he was right – it was rather anonymous compared to the Scottish border towns. But he perhaps was being a little unfair: Scottish architecture of any decent age is discernibly different from English, so perhaps he was just enjoying something that was rather unfamiliar to him. (In spite of his name.) I was also amused that he seemed to be a bit sloshed in a few of the shots.