An nua Cnuas

In 1981 An Taoiseach  Charlie Haughey launched a free lunch for The Arts Block founded Aosdána to support a small number of creative people in a modest [2021= €20,180 / year] fashion. Cynics called it out a political smokescreen to distract The People from the latest scandal unravelling around Haughey and his merrie band of fixers and finaglers. But Cnuas, the stipend, was gratefully received by the chosen few [N = 200 initially; now 250] who, more or less, became more productive because the wolf was no longer right at the door. For them garrets were yesterday. Only an indigent subset of Aosdána took up the Cnuas: Seamus Heaney was doing alright thanks, what with sales and readings and lecturing gigs - especially after he landed his Nobel Prize. I'm delirah to report that our neighbour Rachel Joynt [illustrated below, her Keepsake – Cuimhneachán] was elected to Aosdána in September last year. That brings to 5/250 the number of Aosdánites with whom I've broken bread. Everyone has heard of some of the people [list] in this exclusive group.

Fianna Fáil are back in [half-]power again and the current Taoiseach Micheál Martin is pushing out a pilot scheme entitled [!?!] Basic Income for the Arts. The applicant portal will be opened on 12th April 2022 TOMORROW and wannabe recipients have to get their stuff together and submitted before lunchtime of 12 May 22. 

Eligibility is somewhat arbitrary. In the film world, the following tasks qualify: Actor, Animator, Artistic Director, Cinematographer, Costume Designer Director, Editor, Screenwriter, Film Designer, Filmmaker, Film Editor, Lighting Designer/Engineer, Hair Designer, Make-up Designer, Prop Designer, Production Designer, Sound Designer/Engineer, Script Writer, Scenographer, Set Designer, Special Effects Designer, Scenic Artist, Visual Designer, Voice Over Artist, Writer. 

While the following do not: Armourer, Assistant Stage Manager, Audio-Describer, Chaperone, Costume Supervisor, Costume Assistant, Directors Assistant, Dresser, Editorial Assistant, Film Crew, Film Critic, Fly Operator, Hair Dresser, Lighting Technician/Operator, Make-Up Artist, Production Assistant, Production Manager, Props Master, Pyrotechnics Assistant, Rigger, Runner, Set Builder, Set Dresser, Sound Technician/Operator, Stage Crew, Stage Manager, Wardrobe Supervisor, Wardrobe Assistant, Video Technician

What about Best Boy, Key Grip and Boom-Operator ?? Riddle me that!

There's a few positives about the implementation. 

1) It's a lottery: if you meet the basic criteria you have as much chance as the next gal to secure one of 2,000 seats at the table.  It's not as gracious as Cnuas -- €325/week = €16,900/yr compared to €20,180 -- but better than Job Seeker's Allowance . . . and you don't need to seek jobs. Aosdána elects their own; so with the best will in the world, there will be a conservative tendency to accept new members in the image of the existing crew. With a random number generator we can hope for some really Out There creatives to bring their vision to the world. 

2) There's going to be [whoa! science!!] a control group who will get two weeks of hand-out €650/yr provided they fill in the same reports and evaluations as the lucky 2,000.
Q. Why would The Man need a control?
A. Because The Man is distributing €25 million through this scheme == 100 starter homes down the country. The Man, from their comfortable permanent and pensionable desk-job, must ensure that these Arts proles are delivering value for money.

The thinking must be something like: we'll measure the artistic productivity of those who are getting €16,900 and compare that to qualified but unsuccessful applicants who are only getting €650. A win will be a significant difference in output between the two groups.

Fie! and, like Pshaw! If you're doing stats you need to define your units: otherwise you're comparing oranges with an apple-pie bed. Metrology [on which The Blob has had much to say] to the rescue!:

• 3 haiku = 1 sonnet
• 5 sonnets = 1 sonata
• 4 sonatas = 1 three-act play
• 4 three-act plays = Excalibur!
  
• etc.

PS Sorry for delay today:
a AM/PM error

sun Apr 2022

In touch with the numinous . . . and other matter

• Dances with dolphins Stenella longirostris
• Why worry by Horses & Joy 
• Mark n EmmyLou give it go
  
• Basic український from Olga for our refugees
• Sondengänger aus Deutschland bib bip beeep
  
• Transport: Alphabetti trucketti
  
• The Hump, gravity fed freight-trains
  
• Yearning for car-free neighbourhoods? Toronto Islands
• Canada? High Points!
• Ice? Death Valley moving rocks
  
• Science
  
• Sewage meets brewage with Brady
  
• Instrumentation 1801 with 'nother Brady and Keith 
• Carbon capture is bollix a pipe-dream 
• IPCC Report deconstructed by Adam & Miriam
  

ласкаво просимо до Ірландії

Transliterated: laskavo prosymo do Irlandiyi or, being translated, Welcome to Ireland ! 

Back at the birth of The Blob, I was bemused and tickled that a large chunk of my readership seemed to have Ukrainian IP numbers. I had some harmless fun with myself greeting them specifically and making inclusive jokes about Europe and the Viking Kingdom of Kiev. These japes were met with the deafening silence they deserved. But I did wonder if Blogger's measuring robots needed adjustment - perhaps confusing Kiev with Killarney. And that sent me down a rabbit hole of superficial "research" about this almost mythical country at the other end of Europe.

It might be time to reprise my 2013 UkrEire post which riffed on a vague shape-similarity by twinning Irish counties [N = 26] with Ukrainian Oblasts [N = 25] - ya couldn't make this up. The executive summary is this handy map for pairing the administrative districts:

On Tuesday 05Apr I met my first Ukrainian refugee. She and her two boys are billeted on the other side of the valley: we can see their temporary home-from-home from our back garden. Her neighbour-&-landlady gave us 2 hours notice that she'd be bringing this guest of the nation to tea with us. Which was time enough to a) rustle up a batch of scones b) whip some cream c) knock off some basic Ukrainian. As you see from the post title, Ukrainian is one step more difficult than, say, Polish - because Cyrillic script. But by the time I'd gotten 12 words in Ukrainian into my noddle - and forgotten 6 of them - I twigged that it is quite close to Polish. This was brought home to me on Olga's 4-minute Ukrintro when she said я не розумію ya ne rozumiyu = I don't understand.  "Rozumiesz?" = geddit? was used as often as commas by Tadek our Polish wwooffer back in 2007. My agricultural Polish was much better than Tadek's English by the time he left. Knowing the Polish for rock kamień], spade [łopata] and oaktree [dąb] didn't help at all at all trying to buy train tickets in Warsaw when I went for the away fixture the following Summer.

As our tea-time guests came into the yard, I launched into " ласкаво просимо до Ірландії " at which one of them teared up. Quite emotional these Easterners. Indeed, Easterner is true because this family escaped from Суми = Sumy which is East of the R Dnieper (and only 50km from the border with Russia). Strictly, according to my realpolitik twinning scheme [above], coming from Суми, they should be in Kildare not Carlow but there is already a place in our hearts for them in the valley.

Late return fees

 . . . won't be applied in the case of the missing notebooks. Librarians in Cambridge are, au contraire, cock-a-hoop that two of Charles Darwin's leather-bound notebooks, half-inched in the 00s, have been carefully wrapped up and returned in a pink gift bag. Anonymously, of course.

We can't be more specific about exactly when the notebooks were stolen because the security systems back then was so full of holes that any bad-hat could drive a coach and horses through them. A 19thC metaphor for a 19thC mindset, when the only people who would want, or obtain, access to archival manuscripts were gentlemen and scholars. Theft being unthinkable the librarians assumed the material in their charge was somewhere in the vaults. It took Jessica Gardner the new, and less complacent, director in 2017 to insist on a root and branch search and conclude that the notebooks had been stolen. If this is ringing a distant tinkle, it may be because you read about in The Blob at the end of 2020.

Back in the 1970s when I was studenting in Trinity College Dublin I requested, for my own extra-curricular researches, access to a 17thC book. I was sent up to the rare books room in the old library and a while later, the book was laid on the table in front of me. There were rather strict rules and regulations about bringing ink anywhere near the old books and manuscripts. Presumably in the knowledge that at least some of the gentleman-scholars might have a palsy while filling their pens adjacent to the priceless ancient paper. It would have been difficult for me to stuff the book I was reading up my jumper when I packed up. In the regular TCD Science Library at that time before magnetic bleeper strips, it was easy enough to liberate a book; ask me how I know.

The missing Darwin notebooks were a particular loss because one of them contained the Great Man's most famous doodle [see L]. This 1937 tree-of-life pic is widely disseminated as an example of the process whereby the ghost of an idea is developed into a stated hypothesis which can be shared with the community and, importantly, tested. Darwin was notably engaged with his many children, dragooning them to help him catch and mark humble bees or collect worm-casts in the garden at Down House. At least some of the doodles in the Darwin collection were contributed by his offspring.

The collection in Cambridge is huge, and I'm not in a position to chide them for not knowing where every item is at all and any times. But it really is a lesson for folks like me, who have a lot of books - and eek scientific notebooks, me - to speculate on the utility of maintaining an extensive personal library. Lucky that I R retire and have time on my hands because I spend silly amounts of my remain time on earth trying to . . . find . . . that paper . . . which . . . I know is somewhere in the house.

Walking for the Bird

Seven weeks ago, I was getting tetchy about 1,000 strangers walking straight through the middle of our property without anyone troubling to ask if it was okay. I was allowing past experience of urinating, dog-owning walkers requiring me to clean up their mess after them to colour my expectations of the ClimbWithCharlie caravanserai. Then 3 weeks ago a sign appeared down on the "main" road at the cross:

My old boss used to laugh at the pretensions of Kiltealy, the last village in Co Wexford, which has road signs directing the unwitting to it from 30km away. Tourists expecting Great Things are met with a church, 30 houses, one-and-a-half pubs and a choice of three roads out of hamlet. Now t'buggers are annexing our hill despite it being in a different county!

The walk was clearly going to happen, come rain, com shine, last Saturday the 2nd April. On Thursday, The Beloved and I snatched up a couple of feed-sacks and litter-picked the verges from our gaff to the main road. We do this most years, so it was just a question of bringing forward the spring-clean chore a few weeks . . . and beating the obscuring flush of spring-time weeds.

Friday dawned frosty but by lunch had laid on the sunshine with a gurt buttery trowel and I took a yomp up the hill to see if there were more signs of preparation for the hordes of walkers. I had just reached the mountain gate, where the lane debouches to the commonage, when a beat-up 4x4 overtook me and puffed and groaned sloowwlly up the rutted potholed excuse for a drove-road. With HiViz jackets the two lads within were clearly on some sort of scoping expedition. And indeed when I came up with their parked vehicle a while later, I spotted them in the middle distance laboring up the last stretch of impossible "road" trying to control some large plastic signs against the stiffish breeze. 

They had turned and parked at the last fork on the lane where one branch heads straight for the Mt Leinster TV mast and the other curls away to zig-zag up the back of Knockroe. And Lo! The Christians have been out again and installed a not-unseemly indicator of the way to heaven [see R]. It's much safer, and possibly quicker, to reach the cross on the top of the hill by going the long way round rather than the direct crow-flies path; which is steep, covered in bushes to scratch or skirt and grikes to disappear a leg into. 

On Der Tag des Aufstiegs Ascension Saturday we hunkered down and cast a cloak of invisibility over the yard between 1000 and 1600 hrs. Two Civil Defense ambulances and a truck containing 3 portaloos went up past our yard and a stream of chatter could be heard following. All in all it was really not worse than a regular Saturday in the walking season and I could find no evidence of urination once again [cue Dubliners]. Elsewhere Charlie summitted Croagh Patrick [loud cheers; even if rather too much Ryan Tubridy in front of camera!]. And €2million has been raised for Charlie's charities. Unfortunately one man took ill and died on the slopes of Mt Brandon Co Kerry.

Wimmin in construction

• Move over Bob!
  
• Laura "Do It" Kampf is an inspiration
• Women hold up half the roof
• Sisters in The Brotherhood
• And chopping wood
• Go Aisha: one brick at a time is 400 bricks a day 
• Stephanie welder
• Jade welder with Scots subtitles
  

Loose talk about φ

I am so, engaged in social media. I'm still pushing out The Blob, albeit now at a slower rate than May 2013 - May 2021> I guess that qualifies as social media, although it is quite one way [= out] in its traffic. My only other outlet [and inlet, it is very much more two-way] is Metafilter, which I tune into most days. One of the wings on that site is Ask(Metafilter) where subscribers put questions for the hive-mind at the rate of about one every hour. It really is a window into the human condition. Last week there was a solicitation for Fun Facts My contribution to this burning question included: ". . . your height from heel to pate is pretty damn close to the span to the fingertips of your outstretched hands and the height from heel to navel vs heel to pate is p.d.c. to φ the golden ratio 1 : 1.618 . . ." Which I stand by as it is stated there.

A couple of days later, in another thread about pseudoscience, participant = MeFite Zumbador offered: In art, and graphic design: The idea of the Golden Mean and that certain proportions are inherently both more beautiful and based on proportions in nature (shells, the human body etc). It's confirmation bias. Not based on science. 

I had to respond or get woollywoo-labelled, and did so thusly: Whoa! As I just made such an assertion over on MetaTalk I'd better qualify it with some data gathered from and by 200 students over several years at my last place of work. The average ratio between height vs height to navel = 1.63; standard deviation = 0.09; range (1.48-1.79) which is significantly (p ~ 0.02) higher than φ = 1.618. I'm glad we've cleared that up. The point I made in class was that humans in all their diversity still maintain consistent proportion in their growth and development that makes each of us recognisably different from, say, koalas. But not before [and not before time] I dug out my old laptop and hunted up the data from Cell Biology classes from 2015 -2019. Data which is summarised in the quote. "p.d.c. to φ the golden ratio 1 : 1.618" is loose talk it is rather close but no cigar close to 1.618. It is exactly the same to one significant figure [1.6 == 1.6] but the range among people is considerable, so it is only imprecisely true.

I have to acknowledge that Zumbador was right to diss loose talk about φ, the Golden Ratio. Their point about confirmation bias is that, IF you have a) a human body [applies to most readers] b) a quest to find the Golden Ratio, ANDIF c) you allow a certain flex because biological data THEN you will surely be able to find two lengths which approximate 1.618 : 1 - between this flap and that nodule. YTF are we choosing heel-head vs heel-navel to measure? Why not heel-head vs heel-nipple? or heel-crutch vs heel-knee? or the difference between the two phalanges of your thumb?

Turns out Dau.II and I had thrashed this out quite exhaustively way back in 2015. I'm not primarily bringing all this he said she said up here to vindicate myself. In these troubled, credulous, times we really need to be careful what we say and how we say it; it is too easy entirely to be taken up wrong by donogoodniks. Let's not give those creatures ammunition.