Tim O’Hare
observations, thoughts and useful stuff…Homo Britannicus
I just finished reading “Homo Brittanicus: The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain” by Chris Stringer. This was a book that I decided to read after hearing Chris Stringer interviewed on the Scientific American podcast a few weeks ago. He came across as a really enthusiastic, knowledgeable and skilled story teller and so I thought his book would probably be an interesting read. The book tells the story of a recent research project called the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) that set out to bring together a whole range of experts from different fields to integrate, extend and better understand the evidence for early human occupation of the British Isles. It takes the reader into the worlds of Neanderthals, early Homo variants, archaeology, anthropology, paleaoclimates and paleaontology and explores what the evidence can tell us and what it can’t tell us.
I did enjoy the book but not as much as I had expected to from listening to the podcast. It’s a little heavy going in places and I got a bit lost sometimes working out which inter-glacial period or ice age was being referred to because the overall time-line of the story isn’t that strongly put across. Still, the book took me into a world that I don’t normally encounter or think about thich is always a good thing I think. One of the key elements of the events surrounding early human occupation of Britain was the dramatic changes in sea level that accompanied changes in ice volume associated with ice ages, and there’s a lot of emphasis placed on the fact that the British Isles used to be much more connected to (what is now) mainland Europe across the North Sea. An important region of this land bridge is called Doggerland (now submerged). So, it was interesting to pick up this week’s New Scientist, Issue 2735 [21 November 2009] and read an article all about how archaeologists are turning to evidence from the seafloor (from places like Doggerland) to unlock further secrets of early human history in Europe.
100 greatest albums
Following up on the recent “100 Greatest Films and Books of the Decade” features in The Times newspaper, last Saturday’s edition included the “100 Greatest Albums”. I didn’t expect to do too well with this list (i.e. I didn’t expect to have too many of them in my CD collection) but I thought I’d take a look anyway. So, here goes my list from the 100 Greatest Albums:
02: Back to Black [Amy Winehouse]
03: In Rainbows [Radiohead]
10: The Seldom Seen Kid [Elbow]
17: Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends [Coldplay]
59: Beautiful World [Take That]
65: Scissor Sisters [Scissor Sisters]
71: A Rush of Blood To The HEad [Coldplay]
Noot so good really and I’ve even had to cheat a little by including the Take That and Scissor Sisters albums which, although located in my CD shelves, are not exactly mine…
I only narrowly missed out on having the top 3 though. No.1 in the list was Kid A [Radiohead] – I have four Radiohead albums but not that one.
So that’s 11 of the top hundred – a better return than I managed for the top 100 films (see previous blog post).
There are a couple of others in the list that I’m definitely going to read at some point including:
06: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference (Malcolm Gladwell)
57: Fleshmarket Close (Ian Rankin)
and a few titles that sound like my kind of book so there’s a little scope for my total to go up.
It’s rather alarming to note that my “top book” in this list is Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” but I should also point out that this was also listed as the No. 1 “worst book of the decade” in the same report. Fortunately, I have definitely not read, and never ever will read, the No. 3 “worst book” – “Being Jordan” by Katie Price.
The World According to Bertie
I recently finished reading “The World According To Bertie”, the fourth book in Alexander McCall Smith’s “44 Scotland Street” series. These books are interesting for the way that they are constructed – McCall Smith wrote the first one (I’m not sure about the subsequent ones) as a serial in The Scotsman newspaper, with each short chapter appearing in print on successive days. So, the books are made up a lots of short chapters about four pages at a time which build through the book to tell the stories of a whole series of individual characters who sometimes interact but are often only loosely inter-related. Bertie, of this book’s title is a highly intelligent six year old boy with an insufferable “new age” mother and a put-upon father but although the book carries his name he features no more than the other half dozen or so characters that McCall Smith has introduced through the series.
I enjoyed this book less than the others in the series – perhaps the format and the character is getting a little tired – but I do think it is a clever way of putting together a book that has wide appeal. It’s inevitable that each reader will have one or two characters who they are more interested in and with a wide range of characters its hard not to be drawn to someone in the story. I think that in this particular case one or two of the less interesting and more irritating (to me) characters get more “page-time” which is probably why I didn’t enjoy it so much. It’ll be interesting to see whether McCall Smith does a fifth one in the series or whether he too is getting tired of the format – some of the plot twists and resolutions did seem a bit forced as if this might be the last one.
It means something to me
This picture will mean nothing to anyone else (well, almost anyone else) but it means something important to me.
100 greatest books
Over the last couple of weekends The Times newspaper (which I buy on Saturdays only) has run articles on the “100 Greatest Films/Books of the Decade” (the decade in question being 2000-2009). I thought it would be interesting to see which of these films/books I have watched/read – perhaps this is a measure of how “current” or media-savvy I am. So, here goes my list from the 100 Greatest Books:
10: The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
17: Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling)
18: Bad Science (Ben Goldacre)
22: The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman)
25: The Curioius Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon)
44: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner)
48: A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)
54: Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (Lynne Truss)
60: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (Jared Diamond)
75: The Damned United (David Peace)
91: My Father and Other Working-Class Football Heroes (Gary Imlach)
So that’s 11 of the top hundred – a better return than I managed for the top 100 films (see previous blog post).
There are a couple of others in the list that I’m definitely going to read at some point including:
06: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference (Malcolm Gladwell)
57: Fleshmarket Close (Ian Rankin)
and a few titles that sound like my kind of book so there’s a little scope for my total to go up.
It’s rather alarming to note that my “top book” in this list is Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” but I should also point out that this was also listed as the No. 1 “worst book of the decade” in the same report. Fortunately, I have definitely not read, and never ever will read, the No. 3 “worst book” – “Being Jordan” by Katie Price.
100 greatest films
Over the last couple of weekends The Times newspaper (which I buy on Saturdays only) has run articles on the “100 Greatest Films/Books of the Decade” (the decade in question being 2000-2009). I thought it would be interesting to see which of these films/books I have watched/read – perhaps this is a measure of how “current” or media-savvy I am. So, here goes my list from the 100 Greatest Films:
06: Slumdog Millionaire
09: The Queen
34: Finding Nemo
42: The Incredibles
71: Monsters Inc
89: School of Rock
That’s it – I’ve seen just six of the top hundred and four of these are films for children (says it all really).
Mind you, I have a couple more on DVD ready to watch:
08: Casino Royale
50: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
and there are a few others in the list that I’ve nearly watched or thought about watching such as:
23: Man on Wire
39: Lost in Translation
94: An Inconvenient Truth
so it’s not impossible I might be able to creep up to 10% of the list eventually.
Fractal forecasting
There’s an interesting piece in New Scientist, No 2733 [07 November 2009] outlining some new published research which has used satellite derived rainfall data to explore how atmospheric processes show the same patterns of variation whatever scale they are examined on. Such behaviour is called multi-fractal and basically means that if you look at something on a large scale you see a certain pattern of variation but then when you look in more detail at a smaller scale the same pattern shows up (an oft-quoted example of this are coastlines which show large-scale undulations/headlands/bays but which, when viewed more closely show similar undulations at smaller scale). Fractal behaviour is starting to show up in all kinds of data and processes.
Anyway, the importance of this finding for meteorology is that currently it is verydifficult to build numerical models which accurate forecast larger scale processes because the resolution of the models prevents accurate description of processes on smaller scales (and so these have to be added into the model as special parameterisations). If atmospheric processes are really fractal (an idea that was first suggested at least 80 years ago by Lewis Fry Richardson) then it will be possible to properly (or at least better) describe the smaller scale processes in numerical weather prediction models.
I’m a believer that much of the complexity that we observe in the real world is governed by relative simple underlying principles and behaviour and this research is an example of this occuring in practice.
A new kind of cloud?
Preparing for my recent lecture on clouds I came across this set of images on the BBC website [01 June 2009] along with a brief explanation of a campaign by the Cloud Appreciation Society (yes, I am a member) for a designation for a new type of cloud – “asperatus” (meaning “roughened up” or “agitated”). Click through the images in turn and read the captions to find out more (or just enjoy the REALLY awesome photos). There’s more on the campaign for asperatus clouds at the Cloud Appreciation Society website.
Peter Shilton’s Nearly Men
As a child I was always really into football but I was brought up in a non-sporting family in the middle of a non-football county (Somerset) and so my football-related activity was limited to reading loads and loads of football magazines, covering the walls of my bedroom with pictures of footballers, obsessively keeping records of results and scorers and playing endless Subbuteo football tournaments against myself. Then, when I moved away from home to go to university I ended up in places where football wasn’t a big deal. It was only when I pitched up in Plymouth in July 1992 that I was finally in a place where there was a proper football team.
I remember that not long after we moved to Plymouth my wife and I were walking in Central Park when a bunch of guys in training kit came running towards us. Out in front of them was the manager and as they passed us my wife looked at me and said with a tone os surprise “That’s Peter Shilton” (who if you don’t know was a very famous England goalkeeper). Shilton had fairly recently taken up his first, and only, appointment as a club manager.
Anyway, after a few months I finally got myself to Home Park to see Plymouth Argyle play (they lost to Huddersfield) and from that point onwards I was hooked (I’ve hardly missed a home game since 1993 which means that I will have been to something like 300-350 games). At one time I actually used to write the match reports for the official club website and even helped out with online commentary (usually my role was to be the side-kick to the main commentator although I did also get the odd stint doing the full commentary). My first full season as an Argyle fan was 1993/94 and this was rather a momentous season for Argyle as Shilton built a team that played attractive passing football and scored absolutely shed-loads of goals. They reached the play-off semi-finals only to fall to a depressing defeat (at Home Park) in the second leg to Burnley. That season Argyle played great football but they also let in too many goals and missed out on what should have been a straightforward promotion.
The following season (1994/95) everything went badly wrong. Players got injured, the squad fractured (thanks Peter Swan) and Shilton was eventually sacked following disagreements and highly-public fallings-out with the Chairman. It was a horrible season and ended in relegation.
“Peter Shilton’s Nearly Men” is a new book written by Argyle fan Paul Roberts that describes this whole period at the club, from just before we moved to Plymouth to the relegation that followed Shilton’s departure. It’s a great read for any Argyle fan who recalls that era, being based on lots of research including extensive interviews with the players and other figures at the club at that time. It took me right back to that era – one that in some ways is still fresh in my mind but in other ways seems like ancient history. It was good to be taken back to that periods, not only to remember the football but also to recall the other memories that I have of my first couple of years in Plymouth.
How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World
Last night I finished reading Francis Wheen’s book “How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World“. This is a book by Guardian journalist Wheen that sets out to explore how modern thinking has been taken over by irrational and ill-supported ideas and frameworks. I picked it up in my local Oxfam shop and thought it looked like the kind of book I might enjoy; the cover claims that it is “hilarious” and there are other reviews that describe it as “entertaining” and “amusing”. I didnt really find much to laugh at in it and rather plodded through it, not exactly not enjoying it but certainly not lapping it up with gusto. I guess it required a bit more political knowledge than I possess and so I probably didn’t get all of the points it was trying to make. Still, there were some interesting part (I can’t remember any detail about what they were though…) and it certainly stretched my brain into areas that it doesn’t normally go why can’t be a bad thing.
