Good morning.
We joyfully await the 100% chance of
heavy wet snow on Saturday (according to the National Weather Service). Or not.
This falls in the "I hope it's
not so" category of research findings.
"Mosquitoes can hear over distances much greater than anyone
suspected, according to researchers at Cornell and Binghamton University." It seems that up now, biologists believed
that eardrums were needed for hearing at a distance and that other means of
hearing only worked at very short distances (like a few inches).
A series of experiments has now provided neurophysiological and
behavioral evidence that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes -- which transmit such
diseases as yellow fever, Dengue, Zika, West Nile and Chikungunya viruses --
can hear specific frequencies as far away as 10 meters (32 feet) or more.
Wonderful.
Moreover, the frequencies the
mosquitoes can detect include both that of female mosquitoes in flight—and
human speech. I did not know (or
particularly care) that mosquitoes breed in flight, so it is no surprise that
males are attracted to the beating of a female's wings. I can't picture how they did this, but the
researchers "fitted mosquitoes with an electrode in their brains and made
neurophysiological recordings of the auditory nerve" from some distance
away. Apparently the hairs on a mosquito
can "sense sound from air particles vibrating at certain frequencies." They can "hear" people speaking.
This is not reassuring; it's
"we don't know": their work
"offers no proof that they use it [sensing sound] to home in on people.
The insects are known to pick up sensory cues such as carbon dioxide, odors and
warmth to locate people."
What amazes me about this research
is that electronic devices are now so small that they can be put on or in a mosquito. I know electronics have been shrinking over
time, but that's really small.
Presumably these electrodes do not interfere with the ability of the mosquito
to function.
The usual question: so
what? The results, they say, "do
not offer viable new avenues for mosquito control" but, oddly enough,
"they open the door for developing highly sensitive directional
microphones and hearing aids that use fine hairs that sense the speed of air
particles as they are jostled by passing soundwaves." Another case of goofy-sounding research
potentially having real-world application.
In this case, totally removed from the focus of the research!
* * *
Tell me what this is about: "Chirality of Weyl fermions." I did not look at the article or the precis. I do not know the meaning of three of those
four words (I understand "of"). I don't pose the query to be snarky. What it tells me, in four words, that there are
advanced fields of research that, at least in short descriptive titles, are far
removed from much human understanding.
Certainly from mine. I assume
that whoever looks into this chirality could explain it to me if I were to
inquire.
* * *
Those of us who have lived in the
Twin Cities for a very long time (that is, at least back to 1990) remember the
Halloween blizzard of 1991 and the "Black Friday" blizzard in late
November that followed a month later.
Especially in the case of the first one, the National Weather Service
really blew it on the forecasted amounts of snow, and I recalled (I thought) it
had to amend and amend the forecast as the storm progressed. Kathy and I were talking about those snowstorms
recently (as we were watching a heavy snow coming down), and wondered if the
NWS technology had improved in the intervening 30 years so that they wouldn't
be likely to miss like that again. So I
wrote to my buddy Kenny the meteorologist/climatologist.
Kenny told me that I recalled correctly.
The Halloween Blizzard was initially forecast at 3-6 inches, then 4-8,
and even when 8 inches fell on Halloween alone, before the main event was
supposed to have started, forecasts were modified to 8-16 inches. Not until
most of the damage had been done did the NWS get the forecast totals right.
Part of the issue was reasonable disbelief: how could a storm at that time of
year really produce that much snow? Also, models were worse and there were
fewer of them. The best ones at the time only had forecast about half of the
total precipitation, and never picked up on the track and intensity of the main
low pressure system.
However, the late November, Black Friday blizzard one month later was
much more traditional, and the NWS was able to see a big one coming a few days
in advance. Forecasts for a foot of more were in place a day in advance.
Kenny said my hypothesis was
correct: with newer surveillance
techniques and equipment, "I do think it is much harder to get surprised
by something as enormous as the Halloween Blizzard." More usual, he said, is predicting totals
that are higher than what falls or making errors about location. In the case of big storms, "the last
really big bust was on March 8-9, 1999, when MSP recorded 16 inches of snow,
after expecting 3-5."
So the last mistake of any
significance was 20 years ago. It's a
little disappointing, in a way, that we're unlikely to get bushwhacked by a
storm like we did at that Halloween.
I've noticed that this year, for example, the NWS snowfall predictions
are usually pretty close to what actually falls. But it was fun in a strange way to see that
snow keep coming and coming, beyond all expectations. Of course, with global warming---which likely
means more winter storms for us—we may see snow coming and coming with greater
frequency than in recent decades. When
*we* (that is, my cohort) was in elementary and secondary school, we had to
walk (not bus) through mounds and walls of snow. Elliott and his generation missed that
challenging experience. Perhaps their
children will get to relive our experience.
* * *
Some time ago a long-time
friend and I exchanged messages on different art forms. He is a talented guy who is, among many other
things, a published poet. I don't read
poetry but I sent him a link to an article I thought he might find interesting. He wrote back after he'd read the article.
If you read it, I’d be
curious to know what you think, as an avowed non-reader of poetry. Part of the
thesis in the book he is reviewing . . . is that Poetry is set up on an
unrealistically romantic-idealist pedestal in the way that it’s taught and
discussed, so that most poems fall short of attaining "True Poetry"
and most erstwhile young poets also fall short and early on give up on writing
(or continuing to read) the stuff. Does that seem on the money to you? As one
of a tiny minority in this country who actually grew up enjoying poetry and who
has continued reading lots of it throughout my adult life, I am still a little
bit confused about why hardly anyone else finds it as interesting and enjoyable
as I do.
I wrote
back to tell him that part of my lack of understanding of most poetry is that
I'm particularly dense when it comes to allusions and imagery. I mostly have no idea what the poet is
talking about when I read poetry.
There's a reason I was a good academic staff member: I dealt with straightforward stuff that
required little creativity (in any artistic sense of that term). Just facts and processes and policies and
writing them or writing about them. At
the same time, I confessed that I have not given poetry a serious effort,
although I did try to help both my kids when they had poetry sections in their
high school English classes. They hated
it, and when we'd work together to try to read and understand and interpret a
poem, we were all hopeless cases (like father, like children, it seemed).
I also contended that poetry
is more difficult than other forms of artistic expression. Opera?
The plots are only barely plots, only there to provide roles for
singers. Classical music? Most of it one can listen to without
believing there's any particular message or understanding one should take away
from it. Sculpture and painting? Sometimes there's more than what meets the
eye, but even if one doesn't understand that, it's still possible simply to
enjoy the work. Plays? When there is a subtext, usually a good
program will provide context and analysis.
And so on. I can understand, in
varying degrees, these expressions of creativity. Not so with poetry, at least for me.
It may be, I concluded, that
I just like reading non-fiction, which is about 80% of my reading. That which isn't is junk reading purely for
pleasure, like murder mysteries.
My friend responded and gave
me a marvelous disquisition on poetry.
What you’ve written makes
sense to me, mostly. It seems that one of the things you’re getting at is that
most of your reading is more or less utilitarian, intended to get you from
point A to point B in some way (to gain knowledge or answer questions or
explain rules or lay out plans) and the rest helps you relax, transporting you
effortlessly and vicariously elsewhere, providing you with entertaining
cinematic plots and characters, that sort of thing. . . . I get that, whether or not the content is
challenging, your reading material of choice is easily digestible in terms of
presentation format: solid, standard,
serviceable prose, meant to communicate clearly while not calling attention to
itself. Right? [I told him that he was indeed right.]
I think I’m drawn to poetry
for two complementary reasons: to enjoy the musical qualities (tone, cadence,
rhythm) of the language itself, and to invite a dialogue between the printed
page (or the poet out loud) and the part of my mind that works with metaphor
and intuition and the appearance of the macrocosm in the microcosm. For the
first, another person might rather go straight to music or song lyrics, with
some bits of Joyce or Faulkner thrown in to taste. I suppose most would go to
church or read philosophy for the rest.
Your point about helping your
kids with poetry homework assignments reinforces my impression that teaching
poetry in school often misses both of these reasons, and turns the poem under
consideration into some sort of complicated logic problem or sudoku-style
puzzle. As a substitute summer school English teacher, I’ve had that same job,
helping kids work through the proscribed comprehension questions in the
textbook. If poetry was all about analysis, I would join in the usual response:
"if that’s what they were trying to say, why didn’t they just say
it?!" Like many types of analysis, that whole process takes all the joy
out of the poem. From what I can tell, our language arts curriculum (especially
at the secondary level) is still under the thumb of the New Criticism of the 1940’s
and 50’s, where the emphasis is on explication, picking apart the bones of the
poem to examine its central "argument". And the patient dies on the
operating table.
I’m pretty sure most
contemporary practitioners would agree that this is not the way poetry should
be taught. Unfortunately, most high school English teachers either enjoy that
sort of thing, or else they dislike poetry as much as their students but figure
a small painful dose of it is good for them. So students end up viewing poetry
about the same as Huck Finn viewed castor oil.
My friend proposed we
exchange examples of art forms: he'd
send a poem he liked and I'd get him to an opera. He sends me the occasional poem (most of
which I like), but he hasn't gone to the opera with me (yet)!
-- Gary
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