Mammoth Tales

I’m late, late, late, late. I am such a bad person. I am not going to volunteer for another carnival until I’m sure I actually have the time and freedom to carry though on time. Lately, my life has been, to quote Elbert Hubbard, one damn thing after another. Considering his words have often been used to describe history, that’s probably the best excuse I could offer. But enough of that, let’s get on to the bloggers.

Last week we had some art, so this week lets start with a little poetry. There was a time when important people getting important jobs was the subject of odes of praise. Peter Anstey, Jaipreet Virdi, and Gabriel Moshenska provide us with samples of this genre. Though controversial in life, Thomas Sydenham’s reputation rose so quickly that soon one of the highest praises that could be bestowed on a doctor was to compare him to Sydenham in verse. In 1817, an anonymous supporter commemorated the appointment of John Harrison Curtis as Royal Aurist to the Prince Regent, later King George IV. In 1830, Augustus Frederick, the Duke of Sussex and brother to George, who was now the king, became president of the Royal Society and one of his supporters penned a sonnet to celebrate the event. In looking at the quality of the poetry this sort of flettery produced, I think we can be happy that the practice has fallen into disuse. Feel free to write a poem of celebration if you are so inclined.

Before we go into real science, let’s pause for some dream physics. Dark Roasted Blend has a selection nine centuries of perpetual motion machines and machines with optimistic enough power sources that they might as well be called perpetual motion. Even if they didn’t work as advertised, some of them looked really cool.

Thony Christie, one of the organizers of The Giant’s Shoulders who is, by now, despairing that I will ever finish writing this has a nice introduction to Francis Baily. Baily was a respected, if minor, astronomer in early nineteenth century England who was the first to poke a hole in the reputation of Isaac Newton who, while being one of the greatest mathematicians of modern times, was also something of a jerk. Over at Starts with a Bang, Ethan Siegel introduces us to a contemporary of Newton’s, Ole Rømer, the man who gave us our first estimate of the speed of light. Ironically, Rømer was the inventor of that bane of home astronomers, the street light.

It’s hard to think of Thomas Jefferson as being intellectually intimidated by anything, but apparently he avoided geology, explaining that the earth was too big to be understood by a few scratches on the surface. This hesitation didn’t stop him from making perceptive and even beauthiful observations of land around him. Jefferson was not afraid of biology and was an enthusiastic collector of fossils. But he never had a chance to examine Vermes lapidum, the stone worm, which lived by eating rocks. No one else has either. This critter exists only in a few early modern collections. David Bressan has two of these descriptions along with a wonderful seventeenth century illustration. Today no one knows what the heck these writers were talking about. Sadly we do know what a teacher of Elm was talking about when he wrote a letter describing the destruction of a large part of his village by a landslide in 1881.

Benny Goldberg has an excellent post showing an historian at work. Goldberg looks into William Harvey’s Medical Aristotelianism by studying Harvey’s anatomical lecture notes. The essay is very interesting, but what makes it doubly so is that Goldberg has embeded the notes in his post so we can see what he’s working with (Harvey’s handwriting was awful). In a more modern medical note, Kate Clancy shows us the dangers of unacknowledged bias in science through the example of twentieth century male doctors trying to put ancient and medieval ideas about the toxicity of menstruating women onto a scientific basis. Sally Osborn takes us back to the eighteenth century for a look at the various recipes for Daffy’s Elixir a popular patent medicine.

I’ll finish with John Ptak, who runs one of my favorite blogs. John has an extremely unfair advantage at this type of blogging since he has his own book store and specialises in science books and interesting documents. If you were shopping for a computer in 1953, what sort of questions should you ask the maufacturor? John has a brochure. How about sheet music for “The Radium Dance” or ads for radium suppositories (ewww)? Or maybe some notes from David Katcher who was creating an editorial policy for the first issue of Physics Today. I could go on. Every day is a carnival at Ptak Books.

Many thanks to Greg Gbur and Thony Christie for being so patient with my tardiness. I promise I will be better next time!

Friday, sevenish

It’s been over three years since I had a full time job. I get some contract writing jobs from time to time. I take my wife’s wonderful soaps and scents to farmers’ markets twice a week and sell them (buy our stuff!). But I don’t have a very regular schedule and I always have some time to give if my friends need something. That’s why, when Greg was looking for people to host upcoming installments of The Giant’s Shoulders earlier this summer, I volunteered. “Sure,” I said, “sign me up for a month. It’s not like I’ll have a real job or anything.” You can probably see where this is going. A few weeks ago, practically out of nowhere, an aquaintance of my wife’s called and asked if we could work on some instructional materials for a Major Corporation. If these worked out there could be lots more work down the line. The next thing I know, I’m working fifty-plus hour weeks trying to impress the client (or the client’s client, we’re about three layers of subcontrators down from Major Corporation).

The other day I looked in my public mailbox, which I hadn’t checked in days, and found that it was filled with all these submissions. At the top was a nice note from Greg asking how things are going. “IS THAT THIS MONTH?!?” I thought, but I said, “uh, fine.” One of the few nice things about the current crappy economy is that most people in my class are, if not sympathetic, at least empathetic to my dilemna. As soon as I told Greg my problem, he was immediately supportive. “Paying the rent comes first. Let me know what a better time is for you.” Giant’s Shoulders was scheduled for Friday, which was also my deadline. We agreed that Monday would be a better day. Friday came, I turned in my documents, and the client said they wanted more recvisions. Why don’t I prepare them over the weekend and we’ll talk about them on Monday. Monday came and they wanted some preparations for the final review on Thursday. Greg kicked the carnival back a few more days. Thursday came. I spent about six hours on the final review and, of course, the client wanted just a few, itty-bitty changes. Today, I turned in the last_really_final_imnotkidding_thisisit_draft.doc (thats the actual name of the document*). I’m not answering the phone or looking at my mail for the rest of the day.

Let’s blog.

The Giant’s Shoulders is a blog carnival about the history of science, specifially science writing. The masthead says it is a “monthly blog carnival about classic science papers.” So, what is a classic science paper? Classic literature is those books that your high school English teacher made you read. However, high school science teachers rarely have students read old science papers. That leaves it up to us, the bloggers and carnival hosts to decide.

As always, we have lots of Darwin this month. At Entangled Bank, Rachel Mason Dentinger takes a look at a modern study that returns to Darwin’s finches almost 180 years after he wrote about them. Michael D. Barton takes a look at Darwin’s letters to answer an accusation that Darwin avoided dealing with a problem of natural selection (spoiler: he did deal with it). Piers J. Hale gives us a letter of Huxley’s in which he discusses what he sees as the weakness in Darwin’s theory, the difficulty in producing speciation. It’s a complaint that creationists still bring up (despite the fact that it has been done) and reveals more of a weak understanding of the scientific method that weakness of Darwin’s evidence.

Creationists often try to tie Darwin to the ugly history of eugenics in the next century. Though Darwin never advocated such an idea, some eugenics proponents did look to him for validation. Christopher Donohue looks at Progress and History (1916), R. R. Marett’s book about prehistoric man and his idea of the arc of progress. Marett was not a genocidal maniac and his musings on eugenics show some of the good intentions that later led to nightmare. Jeb at Homunculus Argument has his own musings on a 14th century moral essay and its hints of ethnography, a science that would eventually have its own ugly dalience with eugenics.

Tim Jones reminds us that Charles wasn’t the only scientist named Darwin by looking at one of Erasmus Darwin’s letters written a century before the publication of Origin. Grandfather Darwin was a little interested in everything. In this letter he tries to figure out how an artificial warterfall in the Vauxhall gardens was constructed. Erasmus Darwin’s interst in an entertaining spectacle, gives me just the segue I need to move into scientific illustration.

John Coulthart lets us know that he has dicovered his heart’s desire in Albert Schück’s 1910 study of compass roses, those simple or elaborate stars that tell us the directions on a map. Being a map geek, I immediately bookmarked the page so I can follow all his links at my leisure.

I think we were all disappointed to hear that Jessica Palmer was leaving Scienceblogs. Fortunately, she might still post now and again on her original Bioephemera site. She has left us with a decaying body to remember her by.

At Tænketanken, Jan Helldén treats us to another dead body, this one one of the most famous dead bodies in art, Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. It’s also one of the most copied and parodied pieces of scientific art. Among the examples Jan shows us are Muppets and Lego men. Mouchy’s painting of a 19th century vivisection bears an uncanny resemblance to Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson and leads us to the Chirurgeon’s Apprentice, Lindsey Fitzharris’ discussion of reactions to that practice in early modern England.

BibliOdyssey is a blog about books and illustrations and one of the most beautiful science blogs out there. The two posts came recommended this month were one on the hand-coloured engravings from Vol. 4 of Saverio Manetti’s 5-volume treatise on birds Storia Naturale Degli Uccelli (1776) and another on New Dictionary of Natural History by William Frederic Martyn, which features a cheerful, if slightly creepy, sperm whale and an American bison that looks decidedly yak like to me.

End of part one.

Saturday, elevenish

Today was the last of the Georgetown markets for the year. The number of vendors and customers have been dropping for a few weeks. We thought we might carry on for another two weeks, but the management looked at the weather forcast and saw rain for the forseeable future. It was probably a good idea. Today was hot and muggy. I think the only person who did well was the guy selling ice cream. Tomorrow, we’re off the Fremont, where rain is forcast. Tomorrow night after dinner, I’ll settle back with a cup of coffee and read some more blog posts.

Coming Monday: Geology, physics, and other stuff.

* Not really.

Today is my birthday. I keep thinking of cute things to say about that. It is also the tenth aniversary of my father’s death. So, I think I’ll save the clever for another day. I just had a nice dinner and now I’m having a nice beer*. Later, I’ll take a little Scotch out under the . . . → Read More: Today is My Birthday

A few minutes ago, at 1:51 p.m, a magnitude 5.9 earthquake rattled Northern Virginia between Richmond and Washington. That’s no small potatoes. Five nine is enough to crack foundations, knock things off shelves, and cause spontaneous pants wetting among people who have never been in or close to an earthquake. On the West Coast, 5.9 would . . . → Read More: Earthquake in Virginia

. . . → Read More: The Real Reason Mammoths Went Extinct

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day here in the States. For over a week now, we’ve been listening to ads from people telling us to show Mom our appreciation by buying their stuff. Of course, for those of us of a certain age, the only way we can actually show Mom our appreciation is to raise her from . . . → Read More: Every Day Should Be Mothers’ Day

Tennessee is one of the dozen or so states where Republican legislatures have proposed bills this year to force creationism into public school science curricula. Some of these bills have already failed while others are on their way to almost certainly pass. Tennessee is one of the latter.

The Tennessee bill, which also takes aim at climate . . . → Read More: Tennessee Rep. Lies about Einstein

Sweden’s rise as a major European power was abruptly ended in 1709, when an army led by King Charles XII was defeated by the army of Peter the Great at Poltava in far-away Ukraine. Charles, badly wounded, barely escaped by dashing south into Turkish territory. The majority of his army, their escape cut off by Russian . . . → Read More: Tabbert’s Sea-Mammoth