Older blog entries for marnanel (starting at number 1132)

Gentle Readers: the phoenix rises

Gentle Readers
a newsletter made for sharing
volume 2, number 4
17th November 2014: the phoenix rises
What I’ve been up to

I've been missing writing Gentle Readers. During the last month or so I've been dealing with particularly severe depression: getting out of bed has often been impossible, let alone writing newsletters. Many days have come and gone when I said I'd start writing again yet no words would come. But the phoenix has risen and here we are once more. Thank you all for your patience.

I've been reading Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning, and I recommend it. Frankl was a professor of psychology who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp; the first part of the book is a fascinating and disturbing description of his time in the camp. What seems to have kept him going was finding a meaning in his suffering: the knowledge that he was uniquely well-placed to learn about the psychology of extreme deprivation, and that he had to write it up and tell the world. And he realised that this was an example of the general principle that people need to find meaning in their lives to want to carry on, by which he meant a person's knowledge there was work before them that nobody else could do, or that they were irreplaceable to someone else in the world.

Have you read it? What did you think?

A poem of mine

MARY

Her soul proclaimed the greatness of the Lord
who dwelt within her belly, and her mind.
The light shines on, the humble are restored,
and food and mercy given to mankind.
That day she saw the everlasting light
she memorised, and treasured up inside,
investing for the fading of her sight
the hope that living light had never died;
till hope itself within her arms lay dying,
a frozen journey, ready to embark,
and nothing more is left for her but trying
to comprehend the greatness of the dark;
yet somewhere shines the light, in spite of that,
and silently she sighed magnificat.

A picture

https://gentlereaders.uk/pics/et-in-arcadia-egoNicolas Poussin's painting of shepherds reading "Et in Arcadia ego" inscribed on a tomb.
https://gentlereaders.uk/pics/et-in-arcadia-lego
Et in Arcadia Lego.

 

Something wonderful

We begin with something not in the least wonderful. Mustard gas is a substance used in chemical warfare; its effects begin to show around six hours after contact, causing painfully blistering chemical burns, conjunctivitis, and potentially fatal damage to the lungs. It works by interfering with the DNA so that cells can no longer reproduce themselves. To put it mildly, mustard gas is seriously unpleasant stuff.

The Allies never used mustard gas in the Second World War, but both the UK and the US were secretly manufacturing it just in case. In 1944, the Americans sent sixty tons of the stuff to their troops in Italy aboard a Liberty (merchant navy) ship named the SS John Harvey, reaching the British-controlled Italian port of Bari in late November of that year. But there was rather a queue, and the John Harvey lay waiting in the harbour for a week: the captain was prevented from telling the harbourmaster that his cargo was dangerous and should have priority in unloading because of official secrecy.

On 2 December the Luftwaffe bombed Bari harbour, sinking seventeen ships including the John Harvey, releasing a cloud of mustard gas to drift across the town. Nobody knows for sure how many thousands of people were injured or killed, again because of official secrecy: the whole accident was hushed up and didn't become public knowledge until the late 1960s. Nor did the doctors treating the injured people know that mustard gas was involved. At this point, the Americans despatched a chemical weapons expert named Dr Stewart Alexander to work out what was going on. His quick thinking identified the mustard gas and saved many lives; nevertheless, he still had to go through many autopsies.

But it was at these autopsies that Dr Alexander noticed something odd: people who died from mustard gas exposure had very few white blood cells, because the effects of the gas had prevented the cells dividing. If it stopped white blood cells from multiplying, might it stop cancerous cells from multiplying as well? Dr Alexander's work led eventually to the discovery of mechlorethamine, a derivative of mustard gas that became the first chemotherapy drug, and thus saved the lives of millions.

Something from someone else

THE YAK
by Hilaire Belloc

As a friend to the children, commend me the Yak.
You will find it exactly the thing:
It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back,
Or lead it about with a string.

The Tartar who dwells on the plains of Tibet
(A desolate region of snow)
Has for centuries made it a nursery pet.
And surely the Tartar should know!

Then tell your papa where the Yak can be got,
And if he is awfully rich
He will buy you the creature-- or else he will not.
(I cannot be positive which.)

Colophon

Gentle Readers is published on Mondays and Thursdays, and I want you to share it. The archives are at https://gentlereaders.uk, and so is a form to get on the mailing list. If you have anything to say or reply, or you want to be added or removed from the mailing list, I’m at thomas@thurman.org.uk and I’d love to hear from you. The newsletter is reader-supported; please pledge something if you can afford to, and please don't if you can't. ISSN 2057-052X. Love and peace to you all.

This entry was originally posted at http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/316190.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Syndicated 2014-11-18 01:26:06 from Monument

obsolete offences

"Section 13 [of the Criminal Law Act 1967] abolished the common law offences of champerty and barratry, challenging to fight, eavesdropping or being "a common scold or a common night walker." It also repealed the offence of praemunire, which had survived on the statute books since 1392. It preserved the common law offence of embracery (which was later abolished by the Bribery Act 2010)." --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Law_Act_1967#Part_II_-_Obsolete_crimes

If you're interested, I think these are:
champerty = paying costs of a civil action you have nothing to do with as an investment in order to get some of the money if you win
barratry = stirring up quarrels in court
common scold = disturber of the peace (apparently only for women)
praemunire = sending tax money to the Pope, or submitting to his jurisdiction in civil matters (yes, this was made illegal in 1392)
embracery = bribing jurors.

This entry was originally posted at http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/316110.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Syndicated 2014-10-31 22:11:59 from Monument

street harrassment

[In a discussion on street harassment elsewhere, some dude said: "Hi [name of OP]. There, I did it. I harassed you. Oh the humanity. Do you NOT get how absurd this looks to us guys? The creeper 5 minute guy, yeah I get that. But just saying hi? Get over yourselves ladies. We have a right to say hi on public streets." This is my reply to him]

Here as everywhere else, context makes a big difference. Here's an example from my own life.

I'm male-bodied; people generally read me as a man. Earlier this year I went to a party in drag (and hey, I thought I looked rather fetching). I was walking down a busy street after dark, when someone in the shadows I couldn't quite see called out "Hello darling."

Ordinarily, I wouldn't hear that a threat. But I can tell you that in *that* context it was a moment of raw terror. All the recent newspaper stories of street assaults ran through my head. If he thinks I'm a woman, maybe he's going to assault me (hell, if he thinks I'm a man in drag, maybe he's going to assault me). By appearing female in public I had effectively painted a huge target on my back.

Now of course men get attacked in the street too. But you don't expect that sort of attack to begin with the attacker saying "hello". If someone had come up to me with a knife I'd have been terrified whether I was dressed as a woman or not. But "hello, darling" is often the start of a very different script, and I was someone who might plausibly be cast in that script in a very unpleasant role.

So I can attest to the terror it can cause when a stranger tries to greet you in the street.

This entry was originally posted at http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/315765.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Syndicated 2014-10-28 20:28:59 from Monument

Dravidian languages

Today I drew a tree of the relationships between the Dravidian languages (because someone asked about Tamil). Source.



This entry was originally posted at http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/315548.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Syndicated 2014-10-24 20:02:57 from Monument

Zophobas morio

We got some crickets in the post today, so I put them into a tank we use for feed insects, and there were some Zophobas morio worms in there still. Z. morio is a long wriggly worm when it's a larva, and this is the form in which it's used as spider food. I was surprised, because we haven't had new Z. morio in for months, and I'd assumed that if there were any leftovers they'd be dead by now. But then I noticed the large number of small brown-black beetles in the tank and realised that the worms were (at least) second generation. I don't think I'd ever realised what they looked like when they grew up before: they're small, about a centimetre across, around the size of a new halfpenny.

This entry was originally posted at http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/315227.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Syndicated 2014-10-22 21:11:06 from Monument

and now, a word from 13-year-old me

A few years back, sorting through some of my old papers, I found this poem. It's dated 11th December 1988, when I was nearly fourteen.

FRIENDS

They will stand beside you
When all things are good.
And in the times when things are bad
Beside you they have stood.
They always tell the truth to you
As every good friend must
And they are reliable:
Friends you always trust.
They never will say nasty things
About the clothes you wear
They'll stand up for you against others
When you're not there.
You can always trust your friends
To hold your place in queues.
They'll always tell you "You played well",
Even if you lose.
Always keeping by your side:
Friendship never ends.
Yet, after all, we're only human:
Who has friends?

This entry was originally posted at http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/315117.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Syndicated 2014-10-19 02:00:23 from Monument

Why, why, why, Eliza?

Tell me some more about when you saw light on my window.
Earlier on you were lost like a slave I can't free.
I understand you.
Is it because I deceived you that you came to me?
My, my, my, Eliza!
Why, why, why, Eliza?
I can see you're just a conditional tree
But you remind me we came here to talk about me.

This entry was originally posted at http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/314265.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Syndicated 2014-10-16 23:54:00 from Monument

today's bit of sexist nonsense

Here's a conversation on Twitter between me and a man I don’t know in China. (FWIW I have a rather androgynous-looking user picture.)

He said, “Is it true that less than half of UK MPs voted for the resolution to recognise Palestine?”
I said, “Yes. But that’s irrelevant to the validity of the vote.”
He said, “Oh, I think it’s the most relevant thing in the world, sweetheart.”
I said, “I can only tell you what the standing orders of the House say. And I don’t appreciate being called ‘sweetheart’.”
He said, “sorry but when I hear a little dumb-dumb girl talking silly things I think of my 8 year old girls.”



This entry was originally posted at http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/313996.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Syndicated 2014-10-14 01:47:33 from Monument

multipart

Today I received an email from someone who said they'd attached a file I needed, but I couldn't see the attachment. After some digging, I found that the message was structured like this:

multipart/alternative: (i.e. "these are alternative versions of the same thing")
-- text/plain (a version of the message in plain text)
-- multipart/related: (i.e. "these parts belong together")
-- -- text/html (a version of the message in HTML)
-- -- the attachment

So if your email program shows HTML for preference, you would see the attachment, but if it shows plain text for preference (as mine does), you wouldn't. Of course it *should* have been structured like this:

multipart/related: (i.e. "these parts belong together")
-- multipart/alternative: (i.e. "these are alternative versions of the same thing")
-- -- text/plain (a version of the message in plain text)
-- -- text/html (a version of the message in HTML)
-- the attachment

This entry was originally posted at http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/313678.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Syndicated 2014-10-04 21:39:27 (Updated 2014-10-04 22:02:50) from Monument

Gentle Readers: inheritance powder

Gentle Readers
a newsletter made for sharing
volume 2, number 3
22nd September 2014: inheritance powder

What I’ve been up to

Firstly, a very happy birthday to my (no longer little!) brother Andrew, who is rather younger than eleventy-one today.

As for me: I'm still ill, still working on getting better. Here's a story: a few months ago I was hit by a car when crossing the road. I escaped with only a sprained ankle and bruised ribs, but I was so anxious to get over it that I ignored much of the advice about keeping my ankle iced and raised. Instead, I took painkillers and went on with my everyday life. This certainly had its problems in the short term-- I attempted to carry a powered wheelchair through a doorway, put weight on my bad leg, and ended up dislocating my shoulder-- but I suspect it made the sprain slower to heal as well. And now I'm thinking about this as a metaphor for healing in general. What are the equivalents of ice and elevation, for example, in living with chronic depression?

A poem of mine

REQUIEM FOR AN OAK

I thought I saw an execution there.
The fascinated public gathered round.
The cheerful hangmen stripped the victim bare
And built their gibbet high above the ground.
The rope was taut, my wildness filled with fear.
I saw him fall. I heard his final cry.
Yet when the hangmen left I ventured near
To find my fault: I'd never seen him die.
In fact, I think he'd died some years ago.
There's blackness of decay in every breath.
The sound of flies was all that's left to grow,
Now free to come and feast upon his death;
Prince of the trees, I have a simple plea:
I will not die till death has come to me.

A picture


http://gentlereaders.uk/pics/sheep-worryingDog, to sheep: "I saw the farmer making mint sauce."
Caption: My dog has been sheep-worrying.

Something wonderful

In 1800, there lived in Berlin a young woman named Sophie Ursinus. She was married to a senior politician, who was much older, and (possibly at his suggestion) she had a boyfriend, who was an officer in the Dutch army. Between 1800 and 1801, both her husband and her boyfriend died suddenly; so did her elderly aunt, leaving her a good deal of money. No questions were asked. But in 1803, shortly after Mrs Ursinus argued with her servant, he became ill, and became suspicious; he took the plums she had given him to a friendly chemist, who confirmed that they appeared to have been laced with arsenic. The law was called in.

But there was then no reliable test for arsenic, and the pathologists could not confirm beyond a reasonable doubt that the exhumed body of her husband contained the poison, any more than it could have been detected at his post-mortem. Fortunately they were more sure when they examined the body of her aunt, and so Mrs Ursinus was sent to prison for thirty years.

Arsenic was nearly the perfect poison: readily obtainable if you claim you're trying to kill rats, easily administered by mixing into your victim's drink, causing symptoms plausibly similar to those of various then-common illnesses such as cholera, and-- should you be found out in the end-- almost undetectable in the body by any reliable test. So many people used it to remove rich and elderly relatives who had survived inconveniently long that it became euphemistically known as "inheritance powder".

In 1832 a man named John Bodle was accused of murdering his grandfather by putting arsenic in his coffee, and the prosecution called a chemist named James Marsh as an expert witness. Marsh discovered arsenic in the body, using the test developed by the homeopath (!) Samuel Hahnemann, which was the best available method at the time. But a positive result with Hahnemann's test deteriorates so fast that by the time of the trial the jury were not convinced, and Bodle was acquitted; he confessed his guilt as soon as he was protected by double jeopardy. Marsh was stung, and set out to discover a reliable test for arsenic.

He found one, and published it in 1838: it has become known as the Marsh test. It builds upon the previous work of Carl Scheele, who had shown in 1775 that arsine gas (AsH3) would result from treating arsenic with zinc and nitric acid. Marsh's breakthrough was to set fire to the arsine gas in the presence of charcoal, producing arsenic and water vapour, and staining the vessel with a silvery-black colour that came to be known as "arsenic mirror". (I apologise to my chemist readers if I have misunderstood any of this, and invite corrections.) Marsh's idea had its first successful outing in 1840, in the trial of a French poisoner named Marie Lafarge; so widely was this success reported in the news that poisoning one's relatives with arsenic became passé almost overnight.
 

http://thomasthurman.org/pics/marsh-test
Marsh and his test

One interesting footnote: modern detective fiction began in 1841, with Edgar Allen Poe's story The Murders in the Rue Morgue. I doubt there's any direct connection, but the timing amuses me: detective fiction would be far less interesting with the easy availability of undetectable poisons!

Something from someone else

LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT
by George Meredith (1828-1909)

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
above the rolling ball, in cloud part screened,
where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
     Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
     with memory of the old revolt from awe,
     he reached a middle height, and at the stars,
     which are the brain of heaven, he look'd, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
the army of unalterable law.

Colophon

Gentle Readers is published on Mondays and Thursdays, and I want you to share it. The archives are at http://gentlereaders.uk/ , and so is a form to get on the mailing list. If you have anything to say or reply, or you want to be added or removed from the mailing list, I’m at thomas@thurman.org.uk and I’d love to hear from you. The newsletter is reader-supported; please pledge something if you can afford to, and please don't if you can't. Love and peace to you all.
 
 

This entry was originally posted at http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/313263.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Syndicated 2014-09-23 02:25:33 from Monument

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