How the mind works – Page 6 – Brian Micklethwait's New Blog

The Royal Marsden grand piano

Today I paid an actual face-to-face visit to the Royal Marsden. The Verdict was: I keep on with the magic pills, which will keep on doing me good. So: good.

Here is a photo I photoed today while I was there and just before I left:

This is my favourite place in the Marsden, because it is the one place, aside from the main entrance, where I know where I am. There is a lot of equipment in the Marsden, but I am fairly sure that they only have one grand piano. And when I see this piano, I know that I am in a particular spot very near to the main entrance.

In all other inside parts of the Marsden, the style is interior modernist vernacular. In other words, everywhere looks the same and strangers (that’s me) get totally lost. Architectural modernism has triumphed indoors. Out of doors, in London, architectural modernism is a major force, but it has not totally triumphed, and in many parts of London has not triumphed at all. But inside something like a big hospital, it’s all modern, and all modern in the same way.

Except when they have a grand piano to show off. When that happens, you know where you are.

I photoed the above photo with my mobile phone rather than with my regular camera, to check out if interior and rather badly lit scenes do better on my mobile than on my camera (as operated by me). And guess what, they do. I know I know, if I knew how to operate my camera properly it would do better. But I don’t and therefore it doesn’t. My camera is set on automatic. And my camera’s automatic is much, much worse than my mobile’s automatic, in other words than my mobile.

This is actually quite a big moment in my personal photoing history.

The hope of progress

Having recently received a life sentence of quite advanced lung cancer, I find myself noticing reports like this one entitled Ultra-precise lasers remove cancer cells without damaging nearby tissue. Cancer treatment is progressing fast, in all manner of directions, and I am now seeing stories of this sort every few days. Will it progress fast enough to prolong my life in a significant way? Knowing what I do of how long it takes for an innovation to go from a recent observation or discovery to a routine service, my guess now would be: not. But I can’t help hoping that it might.

In another context, I have described this sort of feeling as the torture of hope.

I came upon this above report at the Twitter feed of Steve Stewart-Williams. There being a lot more to that guy than cute animal videos.

New blue

Indeed:

It’s called YInMn.

Like all good discoveries, the new inorganic pigment was identified by coincidence. A team of chemists at Oregon State University (OSU), led by Mas Subramanian, was experimenting with rare earth elements while developing materials for use in electronics in 2009 when the pigment was accidentally created.

Andrew Smith, a graduate student at the time, mixed Yttrium, Indium, Manganese, and Oxygen at about 2000 °F. What emerged from the furnace was a never-before-seen brilliant blue compound. Subramanian understood immediately that his team stumbled on a major discovery.

And now it is available commercially.

Good to see the graduate student who actually did this getting a name check, along with his boss.

Who (the boss) also says:

“The fact that this pigment was synthesized at such high temperatures signaled that this new compound was extremely stable, a property long sought in a blue pigment,” …

I wonder if this new blue will find its way into architecture, if only as a way to get some otherwise so-so building noticed. My bet is: soon.

Subramanian and his team are now trying to make further colour discoveries, this time on purpose, which may not work so well:

Since the discovery, Subramanian and his team have expanded their research, producing a range of new pigments, from bright oranges to shades of purple, turquoise, and green. They continue to search for a new stable, heat-reflecting, and brilliant red, calling it “the most elusive color to synthesize.”

But while they’re deliberately trying to do all that, who knows what a junior member of the team might stumble upon next?

Much of scientific advance seems to be rooted in the ability to spot the significance of a happy accident.

Late editorial edition at the bottom of this piece:

An earlier version of this article identified YInMn as the first shade of blue created in 200 years. However, it is instead the first inorganic blue pigment invented in the same time frame.

Still good stuff though, if the rest of the report is right.

You cannot be unconventional if there are no conventions

Last October, I wrote about, and quoted Misha Donat writing about, the astonishing outburst that happens during the Andantino movement of Schubert’s penultimate Piano Sonata, D959.

In Standpoint, Jonathan Gaisman reflects on the value of artistic conventions, while writing about that same amazing passage:

We live now in an age which congratulates itself on the fact that art has succeeded in dispensing with aesthetic boundaries; however we do not always recognise what an impoverishment such freedom brings with it. If there are no conventions, it is impossible to be unconventional. In the middle section of the andantino, Schubert flouts every compositional principle, every concert-goer’s expectation. No wonder that András Schiff has said that the piece’s “modernity is incredible even today”. It is in effect a nervous breakdown in music, all the more remarkable from a composer who was writing at the dawn of the Romantic era but whose idiom and language are still classical.

Had Schubert not been cut down in his prime by syphilis, and had he not seen this coming, but had he instead lived to a ripe old age, composing all the while, would that actually have been, for us listeners, unambiguously better? Would he ever have written music like that, and like the other “late” masterpieces that he did write?

Flash grief

So here I was, all set to do a great excerpt from a book about Beethoven. But then, my scanning software suddenly wasn’t working. I alerted The Guru. After the usual palaver about “Is it plugged in?” and “Is the scanner connected to the computer?” (yes and yes) The Guru then spent a while operating my computer from a distance (he has this particular superpower) and he then revealed that the reason my old scanning software had stopped working was that it made use of Adobe Flash, and Adobe Flash has recently given up the ghost.

So, another scanning system was installed, and I am now struggling to make sense of it. The Guru is very wise, but he suffers from the affliction of many gurus, which is that he supposes that what is to him obvious is surely quite easy also for the rest of us to understand. I have to explain it to him that what is obvious to him is, for me, downright impenetrable and bordering on impossible. To him, the new software is easy. He is used to getting to grips with new software. To him, that’s easy. For me, even when he has taken me through every small step, this new piece of software is still a great swirl of confusion, and I need a clear day to get to grips with it.

It is now nearly midnight, and so instead of that Beethoven book excerpt, which I will try to do tomorrow, there has only been time for this.

Sheff U beat Man U

Because of my fondness for 6k and his bloggage, and his fondness for my bloggage, my second favourite team in the football Premiership is now Sheffield United.

Who are now bottom of the table, but who this evening defeated Manchester United, now second to top of the table. I didn’t follow the game. I merely kept half an eye on the score. I was sad when Man U equalised, thinking: oh dear, that’s it then. But then Sheff U went ahead, again. Hurrah! But oh dear, they’ll still lose. Except that they didn’t. The blue 1-2 never turned into a blue 2-2 and then a blue 3-2. Instead the blue 1-2 turned into a yellow 1-2, and Sheff U had won. Anyone can now beat anyone, it would seem. And in particular Sheffield United can now beat anyone.

And so it begins. The torture of hope.

Waves reflected on the side of a boat in Belle Isle

Having the previous day taken off from London City Airport, I am in Belle Isle, off the coast of Brittany. It is the summer of 2014. The light is especially strong. I notice some reflections:

If I had never seen sunlight bounced off water onto another surface in this way, would I ever have imagined that it could look like that? Like some sort of net? Seriously, it’s like these reflections are constructed out of string, just like nets. The effect is particularly strong in the second of the seven photos above. There are even knots to be seen. Weird.

Reflections, eh? Make you think.

The trouble with cultured meat progress is that too much of it is happening in Israel

Maybe media people would make more fuss about the progress of “cultured” meat, the sort of meat that doesn’t involve killing animals, if so much of that progress was not now being made in Israel.

My attitude towards Israel is one of unconditional positive regard. If Israelis do something good, which they frequently do, well done them, as in this cultured meat matter. But if Israelis do something that seems bad, well, I am sure they have their reasons, probably to do with the kind of neighbourhood they inhabit.

However, the typical journo/commentator these days has an attitude towards Israel of unconditional negative disregard. Only when they can explain how Israeli progress in cultured meat is really all about oppressing Israel’s Muslim neighbours will these sorts of reporters report on this, I think, epoch-defining story.