When things go wrong

. . . then things go down, Maritime division.

I have a couple of friends, one from Central Europe and one from South America, who met while working for the IMO [International Maritime Organization] in London. They were both competent adults, one qualified in international law. When we'd visit from gritty Geordieland, it was a different world. The IMO, and its ~300 workers, had diplomatic status, and didn't have to take the Calais ferry to avail of duty-free. In London, there were several bonded warehouses which served this market each producing a catalogue, like Argos, but with more cases of gin. Transnational ex-pats could order up a tax-free car to potter about the city attending embassy events, galas and conferences. Wheels were also handy for collecting crates of booze when it was their turn to host a party.

The IMO features in a book by William Langewiesche: The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime [2004]. He (1955-2025) was a prolific writer for inter alia The Atlantic, covering cover-ups and war-zones. He was on the ground at Ground Zero after 9/11 for six months and wrote it up long-form for The Atlantic. 9/11? did someone say Multiple Conspiracy Theories? Well there's plenty more The Outlaw Sea esp in discussing the fate of the MS Estonia, a RoRo ferry lost in the Baltic 30 years ago [Mentioned in passing in a 2014 Blob about Zeebrugge]. 

Langewiesche makes, but does not belabour, the point that the IMO has been subject to corporate capture. A great many great ships are owned by MegaCorp but registered in MicroNations like Panama, Liberia, Marshall Islands: the three [dwt deadweight tonnage] biggest Flags of Convenience FoC. Panama, for example, flags 30x more ships than the USA. MegaCorp uses FoC because regulations and inspections carried out by 'real' countries are . . . not convenient for shareholders. The Environment [bunker fuel alert] and South-Asian deckhands do not have a seat at the table when the IMO is in session - but MegaCorp is entitled to be part of the Liberian delegation (in an advisory capacity, like). The IMO is funded by nations pro rata by dwt. It's not the Marshall Islands (with a population less than Dublin California or our own Dundalk) who are funding the duty free lifestyle of IMO apparatchiks in London. It is rather Evergreen [2021 Suez prev], Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd.

The Estonia was a flag-ship for the recently created Baltic republic of the same name. Everyone agrees that, on a regular over-night shuttle between Tallinn and Stockholm the front fell off in a storm at 01:00hrs on 28 Sep 1994. Hundreds of white people died, so it was front-page news for a while. Although a Swedish company co-owned the MS Estonia they applied their inspections with a light hand: cutting the recently Soviet state some slack in becoming a fully compliant member of the Corporate West. An international committee investigating the tragedy was likewise reluctant to blame Estonians for poor maintenance and top-down management structure. The draft report suggested design failure. The German ship-builder commissioned a much fatter counter report and managed a successful reputational damage control campaign. Nut-job conspiracy theories [Jutta Rabe, bombs, KGB] didn't help reveal what really happened. Which is desirable to stop this sort of thing happening in the future.

The Outlaw Sea only devotes the middle third to the Estonia. The rest of the book includes stories of 20thC piracy on the High Seas; disastrous oil spills [cw: shadow fleet, threadbare hulls, under-paid crews, drunken captains]; and end of ship-life issues on the beaches of Gujarat and Chittagong. In our throw-away world it is just . too . expensive to dispose of agéd ships [asbestos, bunker fuel, TBT anti-fouling paint, copper, steel, bronze] using unionized [white] labour wearing hazmat suits. If Greenpeace achieves a corporate regulatory coup on South Asian ship-breakers, one likely consequence will be an up-tick of mysterious ship-loss at sea. 

Great read. It's 20+ years old now but I bet the basic principles are relevant today . . . with added shadow fleet. Next time you order garden furniture, solar panels, shoes, shirts, skirts, mutter a prayer for deck-hands and dolphins?

PIE for beginners

 If you're reading this, you are either a) struggling or b) part of the anglophonie. English is a bit peculiar because all the short words are "germanic" related to Nederlands and Frisian but the $10 words - from cooking, law, politics, science and tech - come from the South mainly Latin, via [Norman] French, but with a smattering of Greek. We'll ignore the obvious loan words like adobe, bungalow, chutney, divan, embargo, fjord, gulag, hummus, incognito, junta, klutz, mantra, nark, opera, poteen, Qi, robot, sauna, Tory, ukulele, veld, wanderlust, yacht, zero. These blow-ins can be a poser, but not a problem for linguists digging into the origin of languages. The origin of Language itself is another, deeper, more speculative, problem.

The Blob has had much to say about PIE (Proto Indo European) but, because there's 2½ million words schlubbing about in the archive, and because I eat more than I speak, I've had more to say about Pie [apple, mutton, lemon-meringue, scotch]. When Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (2025) by Laura Spinney [critical review by Franis "Pagan" Young] was mentioned, I was all over it like a rash reserved a copy in the library. Spinney is a journalist rather than a philologist and so is better equipped to write a pop-sci account than someone who has internalized the phonetic alphabet. Not least because her investigation draws on three, previously quite separate, threads of research: linguistics (both written and spoken), archaeology and genetics. 

Since my pal Dan Bradley [FRS] pioneered the sequencing of ancient DNA thirty years ago in Trinity College Dublin it has become a booming speciality. Not just permafrozen mammoths and neanderthals but regular "recent" humans who may have spoken PIE or one of its many descendants. Now, the grave goods (bronze, beakers, beads) can be cross-referenced to the Y-chromosome of the honoured dead and inferences can be made about whether the interee was local or colonizing blow-in from the steppe. This doesn't always help with the language because there are cases where invading hegemons adopted the language of the natives, like the Vikings and Normans in Ireland; and also where their language because the aspirational prestige language of power, as with Normans in England.

I didn't twig that Baltic and Slavic were two different branches of the PIE bush. That would have added some friction to the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth aka Królestwo Polskie i Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie (1569 - 1795) before it was finally dismembered and gobbled up among Russia, Austria and Prussia.

Who doesn't love the fact that Elfdalian / Övdalian is a separate descendant of proto-germanic spoken by about 3,000 folk in one corner of Sweden. They have mobilised 7 extra letters to help with the pronunciation: Ąą, Ęę, Įį, Ųų, Y̨y̨, Ą̊ą̊ and Ðð. And, just to be contrary, the language was written in runes until just over 100  years ago. Needless to say, like all the Gaeilgeoirí in Ireland, all speakers are fluent in Swedish, because they need driving licenses. 

Spinney throws judicious hat at a Ukrainian [as opposed to Anatolian, south across the Black Sea] origin of Proto. Most likely a crew by the name of Yamnaya, who buried their dead in pits under kurgans [barrow, tumulus]  and sprinkled them with red ochre before covering them over forever. 

Did someone mention Ukraine? The War there has put a bit of a damper on excavations of known or new Yamnaya sites. Archaeologists are happy out digging with a trowel and a paint-brush but are understandably ill-equipped to deal with land-mines and unexploded munitions. But there have been some wins among the tsunami of losses. In 1930, the Soviets decided to build Azovpol a steel plant in Mariupol. They weren't totally oblivious to culture and when the zeks uncovered an ancient burial site, Mykola Makarenko was allowed in for an emergency dig. It was rushed but careful and the artifacts and drawings were lodged in the Mariupol Municipal Museum. In Feb 2022 the Azovpol steelworks turned into a meat-grinder during the Russian invasion. The stellworks were destroyed along with the museum and everything in it. Very slow hand-clap.

otoh, in 1956,  during the next five year plan, the R. Dnieper was dammed for hydropower and irrigation at Kakhovka. The resulting reservoir covered the oldest known Yamnaya site at Mykhailivka, putting it off-limits to further excavation. The dam was blown up by the Russians or sabotaged by the Ukrainians in June 2023 releasing 18 cu.km of water. 60 people and uncountable livestock were killed and 40 communities flooded  . . . but the meadows at Mykhailivka became accessible for the first time in 60 years.

But enough of these anecdotes, get the full overview by reading the book! I've returned 'my' copy to the library. 

Courthouse steps

It's a little more than 10 years since I was called for Jury Service. In 2016, I attended the County Courthouse, along with ~70 other citizens, three times over an elapsed week. On day two I came within an ace of making it onto a jury but was rejected by the defense counsel. I had some sour things to say back then about the cost and inefficiency of vindicating people's rights to trial by jury.

Well Tiocfaidh ár lá I was re-called to attend the Circuit Court in April and joined 75 fellow citz, crammed into a room with only 65 seats at the County Court House [view from the steps R] on Tuesday last at 14:00hrs. We were roll-called as if it was 1926, with no pretence at GDPR. Which enabled me to discover a) that my distinctively / uniquely named neighbour had failed to answer the summons b) the name of a distinctively-faced former colleague from The Institute whom I hadn't seen for 6 years. We watched by video the arraignment of someone in the main court room but he pled guilty. So no trial, no jury, and we were requested and required to return the following day at 10:30 for the reserve team match. 

It took the rest of the morning to reduce the mill of people to 12 who were a) unobjectionable to prosecution and defense b) not proffering a last minute excuse. Despite wearing my Tweed Jacket of Patriarchy TJP, I was accepted as one of that week's jurors. We were told that the case was estimated to take 2-3 days and that we should cancel other arrangements for Thursday and Friday with a outside chance of being required for the Tuesday. Then we went to lunch to be back at 14:10 sharp. Lunch was at the Hotel Generic with 3 choices: meat, fish, other meat. Enormous portions. Dessert = tea or coffee and a sliver of biscuit, whc fair enough: nobody needed more Kcals after the meat&carbs. The case continued until 16:00, most of which we spent in the tiny jury room as legal arguments surged back and forth in the court. Obvs I can't / won't give any details of the case. Or identify any of the jurors about whom I got to know rather TMI as we chatted idly in limbo or to, fro and at lunch.

I am the third member of our family who has recently been doing the state some service (jury division). Funnily enough all three cases hinged on evidence from cctv footage. In his summing up, our Judge referred to the admissibility of chinese cctv data. An unintentionally hilarious comment on the surveillance state we currently inhabit. He was, of course, referring not to the PRC but to the camera outside the Hop Kweng Schezwan Restaurant round the corner. One of the lawyers had a tendency to $10 dollar words (animus, disharmony) [betting they graduated from TCD]. At one point they asked if some key shrubbery was exuberant, to which the witness replied "wha'? it's about knee high".

It seems that, in our current state, anyone over the age of 65 can ask to be excused jury service. Which is further proof of the power of the grey vote. Every pensioner who refuses to serve the community (which is supporting us with free travel, fuel allowances and medical cards) is pushing an unwonted burden on someone younger who is currently struggling with a cost of living crisis, unattainable house prices, child-care and existential angst. Check your privs, Gramps! 

Anyway, I'm glad I finally got my chance to Do That Thing (many are called but few are chose etc.). But I have to say I left the courthouse on Friday evening feeling slightly soiled with what we had had to do. I ambled up the railway station where I was meeting The Beloved on her way down from Dublin.  A couple passed me on the platform and I heard her say " . . . that was not fair, the whole thing was based on a pack of lies". I'm about 60% certain (i.e. not beyond reasonable doubt but on the balance of probabilities) that they also had just come from the courthouse. It gave me pause.

One final comment: the courthouse has A Lot of steps: imposingly running up to the big front doors but also serving a warren of rooms and corridors inside. There is a single lift, so it is formally wheel-chair accessible but heck-and-jiminy I wouldn't want to try escaping from a fire.

Blackstairs Yomp 2026

Almost very year this century walk we have acknowledged the annual Blackstairs Challenge: an up and down yomp of 33km along and 1.5km up organised by the Wayfarers Hiking Club. We were here for them this time last year. Caisleán Bob is 300m up from the county road where the 13:00 cut-off check-point is located; so the tide of people, walking poles, ruck-sacks and gaiters drains away from us at ~12:45. We have always provided water:

The pixellated sign says "Trail Fairies / W A T E R". Over the last several years, for the craic, I've baked a few slabs of flapjacks for the troops and these all seem to disappear. 2.75kg flapjes / 180 hikers =  ½oz each. But not evenly distributed because some people take two and [so] some get none.

The weather in mid-May is usually pretty good: neither sno-blizzard nor sun-broilard but today was the drizzliest it's been for a few years. I felt I should add our agéd beat-up Aldi-speciaal parapluie to the support kit:

. . . not that any of these hardy hikers would cower under cover at the first splash of rain. 

Earlier in the week I was talking to an ex-Institute colleague, now also retired. He used to run the Institute Hill-walking Club whom we hosted 13 years ago. He said he'd never made it to The Challenge because the demand far out-strips supply. But he'd done the 33k route several times in a smaller group (saving €46 each on the registration and logistics fee). All good fun. I'm glad I was up early to set everything out, before it started to rain in earnest.

And the rain stopped shortly after the local cut-off time, which meant I could tidy up after 2026's challenge. Just about to close the gate when a delegation from Wayfarers Centraal came up the lane in a vehicle to deliver a bottle of whiskey: a much appreciated tribute which is getting to be a habit with them. Thanks! We took that dry moment also as a window for moving our sheep to a greener field. Then I strode up the hill to collect [another 2026 innovation] my water-warning sign [R] from the mountain gate. There behind the sign is the bottle of Jimmy. 

Not all great though. When I collected the sign, the mountain gate was open and my neighbour-above's cattle were out on the side of the hill munching through the heather. I called. The cows are meant to be there. But ne↑ghbour added the info that, when she went up to check the cows at noon, both gates were open. Which leaves the cattle with an unimpeded path all the way to the county road and Freedom. Wch is a mighty pain in the arse for their owner. Tsk! and, like, FFS.

Kangaroo Euclid

Most of us account [dyswidt?] math-anxiety an unfortunate outcome for any system of education. Some adults struggle making change from £5, or sawing a 8ft = 2400mm 4x2 into three equal parts. When I was in school, we were just moving out of rote-learning our times-tables and grinding through obviously artificial 'problems' that filled the pages of Pendlebury's New School Arithmetic [my edition is 1924]. Didn't make me no differ, I was 'good at maths' and institutionalized biddable, so the medium of teaching was largely irrelevant. I remember wetting myself when I cracked a code that was printed on the cover of the SMP text-book series that was the basis of math-ed at my school. But I gotta admit that teaching math there-and-then didn't light any fires. It wasn't FUN.

Gdau.I is in secondary school in England and "good at school" like me, and quite competitive: unlike me. With encouragement from her teachers, she signed up for an extra-curricular math jam called Kangaroo Math run by The UK Maths Trust, "the leading charity that advances the education of young people in maths". The programme is derived from Kangourou sans Frontières which in turn owes a debt to a programme started in Australia by Peter O’Holloran and Peter Taylor in 1978: hence the Kangaroo label. Gdau.I's parent shared a link to Past Papers [2015-2026] from the UKMT scheme: grey kangaroo is for younger kids while pink kangaroo is aimed at "A" Level = last two years of secondary school. As I say above, I was great at the tricks to get good marks in tests [incl "A" Level] for The Calculus and other advanced math stuff.

Kangaroo is attempting, like so many school-math reforms, to go beyond instilling basic numeracy in the populace. They are hoping to bring more kids over the threshold into math can be diverting and intrinsically interesting and maybe even inspiring; rather than a merely functional, doubtfully useful, skill. As the least competitive person I know, I could wish this was achieved without pitting children against each other. Because if there are winners, there are losers and that gives people's self-esteem a biff.

But, out of solidarity with the young herself, I've been plugging away at some grey kanga past papers . . . as an alternative to sudoku, like. The set-up is for each paper to have 25 multiple choice questions: starting easy and getting harder. It's good fun (for the likes of me) and I can, with furrowed brows, motor through Q1-Q15.  Beyond that, I have to mobilise a pencil&paper. But, because it's recreational, I give up on the last tuthree [difficult for 15 y.o.s] Qs because my life doesn't depend on getting 100%.

2016 Q12 Two kangaroos Bo and Ing start to jump at the same time, from the same point, in the same direction. After that, they each make one jump per second. Each of Bo's jumps is 6 m in length. Ing's first jump is 1 m in length, his second is 2 m, his third is 3 m, and so on. After how many jumps does Ing catch Bo?

Possible answers: A [10] B [11] C [12] D [13] E [14]

2019 Q9 In the diagram, PQ = PR = QS and ∠QPR = 20◦. What is ∠RQS? 

Possible answers A [50°] B [60°] C [65°] D [70°] E [75°] 

Don't know about you, but these Qs seem a bit more fun than Pendlebury's equivalent 100 years ago:

99. A ship 600 miles from shore springs a leak which admits 6 tons of water in 20 minutes. 60 tons of water would suffice to sink her but pumps can throw out 70 tons in 4 hours. Find her average rate of sailing that she may reach shore just as she begins to sink 

 

Batman and Moggyn

Seems my memory [of whc fallibility prev] told a fibby-whopper about my reading matter 50 years ago. In 2022, I maintained that I had been reading an Elizabethan translation of Isidore of Seville's De Natura Rerum. I wrote it up in CGN Carnivore Genetics Newsletter for which I was crimper-in-chief for several years in the early 80s. About ten years later, I left a complete archive of this niche publication in care of the library of the Genetics Department of TCD, my alma mater, when I was back there as an adult. About 10 years after that a new generation of geneticists threw the whole thing in a dumpster when they were "streamlining" their inventory. Some scientists are so fixated on the Future that they see no value in the past.

In March, I was on a unexpectedly deep dive looking for something to read and checked the TCD Library catalogue for that book. While I was 'down in the archives' I thought I'd check my Isidore reference. There I discovered that what I had actually spent an afternoon with in 1977 was:

"Batman vppon Bartholome his booke De proprietatibus rerum, newly corrected, enlarged and amended: with such additions as are requisite, vnto euery seuerall booke: taken foorth of the most approued authors, the like heretofore not translated in English. Profitable for all estates, as well for the benefite of the mind as the bodie. 1582. Bartholomaeus, Anglicus, 13th cent" TCD Catalogue Reference.

And it is possible to track down [at the rather wonderful bestiary.ca site run by David Badke in BC Canada] the passage which so interested me back when I was obsessing about coat-colour in cats in the 20thC.  The whole booke is searchable at the Wellcome Collection.

The Cat is called Murilegus, & Musio, and also Cattus, & hath that name Murilegus, for he is enemie to mice & to rats, and is commonly called Cattus, & hath that name of ravening, for he ravisheth mice and rats. Or els he hath that name Cattus of Cata, that is to sée, for he séeth so sharply, that he overcommeth darknesse of the night by shining of the lyght of his eyen, and the name Cattus commeth of Gréek, and is to understand slye and wittie, as Isi[dore] saith li. 12. And is a beast of uncertaine haire & colour: for some Cat is white, some red, some black, some skewed and speckled in the féete, and in the face, and in the eares, and is most like to the Leopard, & hath a great mouth, and sawie teeth & sharp, and long tongue & pliant, thin & subtill, . . .

There; I'm glad we set the record straight. 

 

Moneta Roma Antiqua

A parapal on Metfilter recommended Moneta: A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins (2024) by Gareth Harney. Obediently, I reserved a copy and it came to my local library quicker than average. The Blob's book-world has been in similar listicle-land before: 

• A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor 
• also A History of Ireland in 100 Objects by Fintan O'Toole;   
• A history of Ireland in 100 words by Arbuthnot, Ní Mhaonaigh and Toner. 

Moneta is not 12/100ths the length of those other books, because the publishing world doesn't work like that. It is, therefore, more discursive and less exec summ; and definitely not the worse for that treatment. Indeed, I ripped through its 300&some pages in a tuthree days and popped out the other end feeling better informed and indeed smarter.  I'd be quite the pub bore about it for the next couple of weeks . . . if I ever went out.

Harney's journey was set when, as boy, his father gifted him a small silver coin that was "Older than both world wars, older than Shakespeare, had already existed for a millennium when Harold took an arrow in the eye at Hastings". It takes a certain romantic imagination to evoke just how long the tiny artifact had survived and through whose hands it might have travelled. Roman coins have turned up in Ireland, Iceland and Indonesia: places where the writ imperial never ran.  

The book, not stinting its brief, features a lot more than the 12 coins which head up the twelve chapters: Wolf -- Nemesis -- Dictator -- Ides -- Pax -- Kingmakers -- Arena -- Zenith -- Philosopher -- Split -- Cross -- Collapse. You might, like me, guess that Ides centres et tu Brute; Arena centres the Colosseum; and Philosopher centres Marcus Aurelius: whose likeness continues to grace the Italian 50c coin [L]. I knew a lot more Roman history, myths and legends when I was 12 than when I'm 72. I hadn't thought about Romulus and Remus being orphaned and suckled by a wolf for decades but Chapter One dredged the image up from my memory and gave it a brisk polish. Where does memory lurk unbidden for so long and still be available for recall?

We were in Roma briefly in 1978 passing through in a Citroën Dyane on the way to Sicily. I remember the Colosseum, largely because it was crawling with cats and I was going to the 1st Conference of Cat Population Genetics and Ecology. But I am now booting myself that we didn't pause to marvel at Trajan's Column, which features on a golden aureus at the head of Chapter VIII, Zenith. The column is a story-on-a-stick with 23 helical turns unrolling to 200m of graphics show-and-telling Trajan's trans-Danube adventures conquering the province of Dacia. The column had to be 100 Roman feet = 38m tall to match the height of Quirinal Hill which was carted away in baskets to level the area for the Column and ancillary Forum. The column is a stack of 20x 32 tonne marble drums. Nobody denies that the Romans were determined and effective engineers.

The conquest of Dacia resulted in the acquisition of 320 of gold and 450 tonnes of silver. Much of that was minted into 30 million aurei and 160 million denarii to dole out to the Praetorian Guard and pay for bread and circuses. Ice cores from Greenland document the quality of the atmosphere over the last 100,000 years. There is spike in the lead Pb content, as a by-product of silver smelting, that peaked in the 2ndC and died away to nothing for the next 16 centuries until industrial pollution really cranked up in the late 1700s.

I could go on, but it's all spoilers, and you'll want to get the book out of the library when I return it.