Searching for the invisible

Dark matter and dark energy have proven to be remarkably elusive, resisting all efforts so far to be directly detected. The best evidence we have for their existence is indirect, through gravitational effects that we have ascribed to their presence. The problem is that the gravitational force is both very weak (the weakest of the four fundamental forces) while at the same time, in the presence of huge masses like the Earth, stars, or galaxies, its effects are also large, dwarfing the effects of other forces. But such indirect evidence for the existence of fundamental particles is never satisfying because scientific history has examples where that has led us astray. So the search goes on, with the construction of evermore sensitive detectors that we hope will finally provide convincing direct evidence.

One of the latest efforts is to send detectors into space.
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Bye, bye Boris (again!)

Boris Johnson resigned from the UK parliament before the release of a report that would say that he had violated norms by lying to the House of Commons. Such an action would trigger a 90-day suspension and Johnson clearly did not want to face that ignominy so he quit.

Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament over Partygate and was part of a campaign to abuse and intimidate MPs investigating him, a long-awaited report by the privileges committee has found.

In an unprecedented move, the cross-party group said he “closed his mind to the truth” and would have faced a 90-day suspension from the Commons had he not quit in rage at its conclusions last week.

Johnson was also found to have knowingly misled the committee itself, breached Commons rules by partially leaking its findings last Friday, and undermined the democratic processes of parliament.

As a result, it was recommended Johnson be banned from getting the pass granted to ex-MPs that allows them privileged access to the Westminster estate.

Johnson was originally set to face a suspension from parliament of 20 days – enough to trigger a recall petition that would have probably led to a byelection. But the committee said his blistering attempts to intimidate it last Friday would have increased the punishment to 90 days.

Two MPs on the committee – one Labour and the other from the SNP – had pushed for Johnson to be expelled from parliament. But the final report and punishment was signed off unanimously by all seven members.

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Ulysses and the nature of difficult novels

Fans of author James Joyce and his novel Ulysses celebrate today (June 16th) because it is the day in which all the events of the book take place and it has come to be known as ‘Bloomsday’, named ofter one of the key characters in the book Leopold Bloom.

Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. Parts of it were first serialized in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and the entire work was published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce’s fortieth birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called “a demonstration and summation of the entire movement.”According to Declan Kiberd, “Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking.”
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Glenda Jackson (1936-2023)

That wonderful actor has died. She had a striking presence on screen and was a consistent voice for progressive causes, and served as a member of the British parliament from 1992 until 2015, after which she went back to the stage to appear as King Lear in 2016.

Sir Michael Caine has described actress and former MP Glenda Jackson as “one of our greatest movie actresses” following her death aged 87.

Jackson won two Oscars, three Emmys, two Baftas and an Tony in an acting career which spanned six decades.

Sir Jonathan Pryce said he believed she was “the greatest actor that this country has ever produced”.

Back in 2018, I posted a clip of her delivering a blistering attack in parliament on Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism when Thatcher died. Not for her the bogus pieties that people feel obliged to give to awful people when they die. A conservative lawmaker tried to get her censured for attacking Thatcher instead of paying a tribute but the Speaker shot that down.

Film review: Russian Ark (2002)

I recently watched this extraordinary film by Alexander Sokurov. It is set in the magnificent Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the entire film lasting 1 hour and 39 minutes was done in a single take, even though it has a massive cast of about 1,000 actors and 1,000 extras dressed in elaborate costumes and three orchestras, and moves though 33 rooms of the museum, making it not only the longest shot in film history, but also the first feature film ever created in a single take.

If that was not enough of a challenge, the museum would only close for 36 hours for the making of the film so everything had to be set up, filming done, and then removed within that time. Postponements were out of the question. Filming was begun on the afternoon of December 23, 2001. They had only a few hours of daylight in the Russian winter to complete the film. The first three takes had to be abandoned within the first 20 minutes or so due to glitches and that left them with just one final chance to do it. Furthermore, the camera batteries were also running low. But they managed to complete the last take just in time. There was just one cameraman Tilman Büttner to do the whole film and he had to lug around about 35 kg (over 70 lbs) of Steadicam equipment while walking through the vast museum and up and down stairs. He deserves a huge amount of credit for making it seem so smooth.

And yet the final product is a lush and opulent extravaganza that looks like it was filmed over months.
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What’s next in SSAT’s legal travails

Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) was arraigned yesterday in Miami and pleaded not guilty on all counts. His valet Waltine Nauta was present but did not have a local attorney and so did not enter a plea and will do so June 27. While SSAT sat and scowled during the proceedings, Nauta apparently looked confused. No tentative date was set for SSAT’s trial, maybe because his codefendant Nauta could not enter a plea.

In federal criminal cases, the defendant has a right to a speedy trial within 70 days of entering a plea. But the defendant can waive that right and the trial can be much later. It is expected that SSAT and his lawyers will try and drag this out as long as they can with all manner of procedural motions so that it does not occur before the elections. If SSAT wins the presidency, he can order the justice department to drop the case and even pardon himself. This would be an incredible misuse of presidential power but when has that stopped SSAT? While his devoted supporters keep saying that the justice department has been weaponized against him and that what is happening to him is making the US look like a banana republic, it has always been the case that SSAT is the one who had made a mockery of many of the institutions that constitute a functioning democracy.
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Surviving a plane crash

More details have emerged about what happened to the four children (aged 13, nine, four, and 11 months) who were rescued 40 days after the plane they were in crashed on May 1 in the Colombian Amazon jungle, killing their mother and two other people.

The mother of the four young Colombian siblings who managed to survive for almost six weeks in the Amazon jungle clung to life for four days after their plane crashed before telling her children to leave her in the hope of improving their chances of being rescued.
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A search team found the plane on 16 May in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board but the children were nowhere to be found.

I was reminded about something I used to do with faculty to make them aware of the benefits of using cooperative learning techniques with their students. It consisted of an exercise called Survival in the Desert and involved giving everyone the following scenario. (This exercise was developed by the US military and there were several different scenarios for crashes, the desert being just one.)
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What’s with all the naked Greek men?

Sarah Murray, an assistant professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Toronto in Canada who is a cultural historian and archaeologist specializing in the material culture and institutions of early Greece, ponders an intriguing question: Why are so many of the Greek men found in depictions of ancient Greek art not wearing any clothes, even when they are engaged in everyday activities such as working in a foundry where basic safety should suggest that clothing was essential?

Scholars struggle to answer these questions with certainty. The truth is that male nudity, as both an aesthetic and a real practice in the ancient Greek context, was many-faceted. Men in Greek art seem to do pretty much everything without their pants on, ranging from the obvious (having sex), to the sensible (bathing and swimming), to the painful (riding horses), to the seemingly suicidal (fighting battles). The convention of nudity in Greek art cuts across apparent class differences as well as a wide range of activities: ‘working-class’ nude men harvest olives and dig clay for pottery production, while heroes and gods from Greek myths and legends fight battles, pursue paramours and mourn lost friends, all while clad in armour that curiously leaves their most sensitive bits exposed.
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Extraordinary survival and rescue of four children in the Amazon

This has to be one of the most incredible stories in recent times.

Four children have been found alive after surviving a plane crash and spending weeks fending for themselves in Colombia’s Amazon jungle.

Colombia’s president said the rescue of the siblings, aged 13, nine, four and one, was “a joy for the whole country”.

The children’s mother and two pilots were killed when their light aircraft crashed in the jungle on 1 May.

The missing children became the focus of a huge rescue operation involving dozens of soldiers and local people.
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The children belong to the Huitoto indigenous group.
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A massive search began and in May, rescuers recovered items left behind by the children, including a child’s drinking bottle, a pair of scissors, a hair tie and a makeshift shelter.

Small footprints were also discovered, which led search teams to believe the children were still alive in the rainforest, which is home to jaguars, snakes and other predators.

Members of the children’s community hoped that their knowledge of fruits and jungle survival skills would give them a better chance of remaining alive.

That hope turned out to be justified.

The children’s grandmother, Fatima Valencia, said after their rescue: “I am very grateful, and to mother earth as well, that they were set free.”
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She said the eldest of the four siblings was used to looking after the other three when their mother was at work, and that this helped them survive in the jungle.

“She gave them flour and cassava bread, any fruit in the bush, they know what they must consume,” Ms Valencia said in footage obtained by EVN.

For the 13-year old to be able to keep the others, especially the one-year old, alive for more than a month in a dangerous jungle shows remarkable presence of mind. I do not think I would have lasted for more than a few days in that situation, even if I did not have to care for anyone else.

I just hope that they are not too traumatized by the loss of their mother and the whole experience.

Bye, bye, Boris

Boris Johnson, who was forced resign as prime minister in July 2022, has now also resigned from his position as a member of parliament, ahead of the release of what was expected to be a critical report from a parliamentary committee that he violated his own government’s covid-19 protocols by attending parties and then misled parliament about it, something that come to be called, inevitably, ‘partygate’.

His resignation statement was long and angry and very Trump-like, loudly proclaiming his innocence and claiming that he was wronged by his enemies and the target of a witch hunt by those opposed to his vision for the UK and angry about his role in championing Brexit.

Since leaving the prime minister’s office, he has been at best a lackluster backbencher, voting just four times since then, choosing instead to spend his time giving lucrative speeches.

Along with his resignation, two close allies of his also resigned as MPs. One was Nadine Dorries, seemingly over some inside-baseball stuff about her being nominated for a peerage by Johnson and then having it withdrawn, and Nigel Adams. This means that there will be three by-elections in Conservative-held districts within a short time, giving the first major test of how the government of Rishi Sunak is viewed by the public. Currently they are behind Labour in the polls. General elections have to be held by January 28, 2025 at the latest.

If the Conservatives take a beating at the next general election, Johnson might try to make a comeback as party leader and prime minister, using the fact that he lead the party to a huge 80-seat majority at the last general election in 2019.