Weather – Me on the net

Supply Chain

When I go into the supermarket, I see foods from all over the world. I’m not talking about the items in the so-called International section, but even the stuff on the other shelves. I just picked up the nearest supermarket purchased item that came to hand. Batteries. They are packed locally, but are manufactured in China. When I say locally, I mean almost 500 kilometres away.

Much of the fruit and veges that I purchase come from overseas. Bananas and pineapples don’t grow here and are imported from various countries. If I want to buy a t-shirt it will almost certainly originate in Asia somewhere. I just looked at the t-shirt that I’m wearing at the moment, and yup, while it has a designed featuring a local attraction it is manufactured and printed in China.

All our electronic gear come from Asia, our clothes from Asia and plastic ware like laundry baskets also originates overseas.

This is not unique to this country though. It’s much the same in any other country. This country produces dairy products, meat and meat products, fruit and wine which are exported to other countries. The world is full of goods being shipped from one place to another, and sometimes a product will go to more than one location on its journey from where it is produced to the supermarket that it ends up in.

I don’t know if this actually happens, but one can envisage that milk taken from a cow is turned into milk powder here, sent elsewhere to be turned into mozzarella cheese, which is then sent to a pizza manufacturer, who sends the finished pizza to an pizza outlet where it is cooked and then sent out to satisfy the appetites of people somewhere else yet again.

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There’s a term for this. It is “supply chain”. Actually it’s more like a supply network as, if we consider the pizza case, the pizza is made up of multiple ingredients all of which pass through several stages. Even the box that contains the pizza may have a complex history before the pizza is dropped into it and it is sent off.

It’s also possibly that the box may be made of recycled material. Cardboard collected at a recycling station may be pulped, processed and made into pizza boxes. Some of the collected cardboard may be old pizza boxes.

Generally, though, the components or ingredients of a consumer item, like a cell phone or a pizza with extra pepperoni start out by being harvested or dug out of the ground. If you want to cut out the supply chain, you could grow your own, but then you need to source the seeds, you need to buy in compost, unless you make it yourself from vegetables that you’ve sourced somewhere else, which come from goodness knows where, and you need to feed the plants with chemicals which have all come from somewhere else, and most likely have been processed in various ways.

So what would happen if the supply chain broke? People in the cities, who have no other way to acquire things except through the supply network would quickly starve, and would likely flee the city for the countryside, where things would be much better, and where they could settle down and grow things, right?

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Except that most useful productive land in most countries has already been taken for farms, and the fleeing city folk would be forced onto marginal land and would starve, or they would be forced to steal from the farmers who are already there, or maybe they would beg for food from the farmers or work for them for food. Or they would fight to displace the farmers from their lands. In any case a flood of refugees from the city would likely be a trigger for conflict.

Actually the farmers would not be that much better off than the city folks. Most farms these days are more like little factories feeding into the supply chain and would concentrate on one or two crops. A beef farmer would have a surplus of beef, a potatoes farmer would have nothing but potatoes, and so on.

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So, it is likely that even farmers would have severe problems if the supply network broke. Even if the farmer could trade most of his produce with other farmers so that he did not have to subsist purely on potatoes, he would have great difficulty in producing more crops after the first one. He’d quickly run out of fertiliser and without insecticides he would probably loose a lot of his crops.

The problems would be even worse if his land was deficient in some critical mineral. Many farmers these days have to add traces of minerals to their land, either to help grow bigger produce or to add the trace elements that the crops need to even grow.

Of course, not everyone would starve. Some non-city dwellers would eventually, after a period of realignment, be able to feed themselves. But many, many city dwellers would die, and a significant number of non-city dwellers would also die before an new balance is found. All trade would be local, probably barter based, as the city dwellers are the ones who keep the banking systems going, and they would be dead.

I haven’t yet considered what sort of catastrophe could disrupt the global supply network. If the oil ran out, and couldn’t be replaced by some other source of energy, that would do it. Local power could be generated using solar energy or water power, but the ships that ship goods from one place to another run on oil. That means that we would not be able to source solar cells in sufficient number.

If someone started a global nuclear war, then that could cause significant disruption and throw many countries back on their own resources, especially those who are more isolated than most. Similarly, if a super volcano were to erupt anywhere in the world, and as a result the world would become shrouded in clouds of dust for years on end, killing all food crops, then there would be no food to be shipped, even if the ships were to keep on working. And without food crops animals would starve, and so would we.

2018

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Today is the last day of 2017. I will probably stay up tonight to “see in” 2018, but I’m not about to follow other traditions, such “first footing“. It’s all superstition anyway.

I think it’s interesting and a little illogical that we celebrate arbitrary dates throughout the year, such as midsummer’s day or May Day, though I understand that the origins of these celebrations. When the Church ruled (in at least the part of the world that I come from) and when times were uncertain and you could be fine one minute and dead of the plague the next, superstition comes naturally.

I can understand the joy that a winter solstice or other celebrations at that time of can bring. We are, at those times, at the lowest point of the year, and things can only go up from there. Strangely the low point of the year in the Northern Hemisphere comes at the top of the calendar. Who arranged that?

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There are no equivalent large celebrations around the time of the summer solstice, at least in the places in the Northern Hemisphere that I have lived. In the middle of the summer, winter is so far away, and I guess that we don’t want to celebrate it. In the Southern Hemisphere the summer solstice occurs round about the time of Christmas and New Year. In either hemisphere we celebrate the summer solstice by getting out in the sun more.

In the spring, in the Northern Hemisphere, there are some celebrations of May Day, around the time of the Vernal Equinox. At that time of year, we are leaving the darkness of winter and the short days for the longer sunny days of summer, and that is probably worth a celebration. May Day actually falls closer to the middle of the climactic spring than the equinox does.

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Of course any spring festival coincides with the increased fertility of the soil, plants and growing and animals are mating, spring plantings are complete, humans also respond to this. Some spring festivals acknowledge this time of the quickening of the blood in various ways, and sometimes the establishment, notably the Church, tries to suppress or at least put the reins on some of the excesses.

Autumn is the time of harvest and any festivals around the Autumnal Equinox acknowledge this fact. However the tone of such celebrations is likely to be restrained as people buckle down for the chills of winter.

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In the Southern Hemisphere, all this is messed up. The calendar is the same, so the southern Spring Equinox happens in September, around the twenty first of the month. Since most of the traditions have been imported from the Northern Hemisphere, mainly from Europe and particularly the UK, there is no obvious spring celebration to copy.

However, the southern Autumnal Equinox happens in March, and there is a northern celebration at the beginning of May. May Day is celebrated as an almost purely political holiday, with roots in the union movement, and is not, generally celebrated in the same way as May Day is in the Northern Hemisphere.

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When people emigrate from the Northern Hemisphere, specifically from Europe, they often experience homesickness. It can take a lifetime to shake off, but most people eventually relocate their roots. In particular, people from the Northern Hemisphere often find it strange that Christmas falls in the summertime.

People from the Northern Hemisphere expect Christmas to be in the winter. Short days, inclement weather and the perennial question “Will it be a white Christmas?” At one time carollers used to travel from door to door, wrapped up in thick coats, scarves and wearing woollen hats. Father Christmas is well wrapped in thick red and white clothes as he takes orders in the frantic malls before Christmas.

In the Southern Hemisphere, Father Christmas still wears his thick red and white clothes, and sits in a grotto decorated with fake snow and snowflakes, but he is most likely to be near hypothermia as the mercury rises.

There is however a southern version of Father Christmas. This version wears red swimming trunks and usually retains the red hat with the white rim and the white bobble, but may sport sunglasses and wear jandals on his feet. He may even carry a surfboard. He may be lying in a sun lounger shaded by a parasol, and with a non-alcoholic (of course) fruit based drink to hand.

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While Rudolph and his team may feature south of the equator, in Australia Santa’s sleigh is pulled by six white kangaroos, known as “boomers” (at least according to the song recorded by Rolf Harris). The implication is that the traditional reindeer can’t handle the summer heat in the Southern Hemisphere.

I’ve drifted somewhat from my initial topic, which was the New Year. New year in the Southern Hemisphere is about beach parties, if you are below a certain age. For those above a certain age, New Year means backyard barbecues.

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Beach parties can be riotous, to the point where police intervention is required, but largely they are good natured and convivial gatherings. New Year comes towards the beginner of the seasonal summer, and the celebration doesn’t really equate to any Northern Hemisphere celebration.

The northern Christmas and New Year celebrations are constrained by the short days and the long nights and are celebrated indoors in cosy snugness. In contrast the southern celebrations revel in the long days and short but warm nights and celebrate the outdoors.

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I think that we in the southern hemisphere got the best deal. If Christmas and New Year in the northern hemisphere had, for whatever reason, fallen in the summer, then the southern hemisphere Christmas and New Year would have fallen in the winter, and we would have got the short nights and the bad weather.

We would have had to celebrate Christmas and New Year indoors and during the short winter days. There’s no doubt that it would be enjoyable, the interactions with family and friends, but I’m glad that our main holiday falls in the summer.

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But, whatever, the New Year is in ninety five minutes, at least here in Wellington, so, when it swings around to you, I hope that you have a good and enjoyable New Year. I’ll sit here in my t-shirt and shorts, with bare feet enjoying their freedom from shoes, and wish all you there in the Northern Hemisphere, togged up in your woolies and gloves and hats, a Happy New Year.

Tau Hou hari!

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Spring is here!

It’s officially spring and things are starting to warm up. Funnily the temperatures have not changed much, but it feels a lot warmer. The chrome sharp acid edge of winter has gone leaving a more bearable softer edged coolness behind. Lyrical words for a lyrical season.

Spring in this part of the world means waves of damp weather coming from the west. A cyclone, a normal one, not one of the monsters that cause devastation, may throw off several fronts as it approaches or passes over us, and we receive several burst of rain.

This year, we have had a wet winter and things are tending to be a bit boggy and muddy. It makes it much harder to keep things clean as the mud tracks indoors. This is particularly bad if you have a dog who think mud is for rolling in. Fortunately our pooch is not one of those.

The wet spring weather means spending time indoors, unless you are prepared to don wet weather gear and brave it. We look forward to the burst of spring sunshine between the bands of showers. Showery weather means clouds and while the sky may be grey, it is not the depressing slate grey sky dispensing drizzle that I remember from England.

The intervals of blue sky should become longer as spring progresses but they are welcome however brief. The enable one to get out and about, to note all the buds bursting from the trees and birds, particularly Tuis, dashing about defending territories, chasing off other birds and generally singing their hearts out.

Some trees have already blossomed and are now presumably in the process of fruiting. I’ve watched fruit trees in the garden throw out blossoms only for the blossoms to fall almost before I can get into the house for my camera! Some flowering cherries have been masses of blossom and are now merely green.

The pale green of new shoots is a unique colour, contrasting strongly with last year’s foliage which is a much darker colour. This changes the character of the light for photography, but the effect doesn’t last long. The new shoots rapidly lose that unique tinge, even if they are not yet as dark as the last year leaves.

The grass also grows strongly at this time. Paths which were mere tracks are now corridors between rapidly growing walls of grass. Much of this new grass will shortly pause, flower, seed, then turn yellow brown and die back. Fortunately I don’t suffer from hay fever, but during the flowering phase suffers with curse the wind blown pollen.

It’s not just grass that lets loose a volley of pollen. There are no fir trees near where I live, but the wind screen of my car, the edge of the lingering puddles and other sheltered spots develop a yellow edging from the pollen of fir trees kilometres away.

There’s a surprisingly sizeable population of ducks in this suburban area. The reserve and parks all seem to host a few ducks, and they even visit gardens in the area. It’s breeding season for the ducks, with all the raucous clamour that that entails. It’s sometimes difficult to know whether they are courting or fighting.

Good spring weather brings out the lawnmowers. I’m not sure that the ground isn’t a bit too wet at the moment as things are still pretty boggy. In the reserve which I and the dog visit the mostly frequently, the grass cutting has resulted in a mess of tyre marks and some areas where the grass is damaged by the mowers. It looks pretty bad, but for experience I can say that marks will be undetectable in a week or two.

I’ve not seen many insects this year yet, but they must be around as I’ve seen the Welcome Swallows around twisting and turning and catching insects in the air. They are called “Welcome Swallows” because they appear at the beginning of spring, heralding the better weather to come.

I’ve not seen the kingfisher recently where I usually see him/her in our local reserve. He/she has been about in the last weeks though, so I shall probably see him/her soon. The full name for the Kingfisher is the Sacred Kingfisher. It’s called “sacred” because it is said to holy to the Polynesians.

I like the bird’s original binary classification name of “Halcyon sancta”. “Halcyon” can mean calm, peaceful, happy or golden. “Sancta” means sacred of course. “Sacred peace”. The drug halcion is used to induce sleep or relaxation and there is possibly a connection between the two words. Unfortunately the binary classification name of the bird has been changed and it is now the less appealing “Todiramphus sanctus”.

One advantage of spring is that we can start to discard the multiple layers of clothes that we are forced to don over winter. I hate piling on the sweaters and overcoats, changing shoes and so on that going out in the winter involves. Every layer that I can leave off is a cause for rejoicing. Unfortunately the fickle weather of spring with the occasional cold snap means that tomorrow I might have to layer up again.

Today the weather is a bit grey. It’s not too cold. Later on it is forecast to be showery again. That’s OK because I know that better weather is coming. The weather will be up and down for a while, it’s true but the ‘ups’ will get more up and the ‘downs’ will be less down, and before we know it, the t-shirts and shorts will be out, we’ll be looking forward to summer.

Spring is a turn around season, where we say goodbye to the fierceness of winter and look forward to the mellowness of spring. No more chopping of wood and lighting fires, cold draughts through small cracks and mounds of bedclothes to keep us warm. No more donning layer upon layer of clothes when leaving the house. It’ll be back to open windows, time in the garden and much lighter bedclothes, and just picking up the car keys when we leave the house.

Two Hundred and Fifty

This post will be my 250th. 250 times approximation 1,000 words. A quarter of a million words. Wow. I didn’t think that I could do it. I hit the target. I reached the summit of Everest. I ran a marathon. And other similar metaphors for success.

Of course, I could be posting into a void. I see that I get, usually, a few dozen views for each post and some people are actually “following” me. I even, now and then, get a comment. I’ve done zero in the way of self promotion. I finish each post, figuratively pat it on its back and send it on its way, never to be seen again.

This doesn’t concern me. It seems that, for me, writing this blog is a bit like playing a piano in an empty room, or doing a jigsaw on the Internet. The reward is in the doing. I certainly feel a sense of achievement when I hit the “Publish” button, but I don’t often follow up on the post.

What I found amazing is my ability to ramble on for 1,000 words on any subject. I reckon that I could probably stretch any subject out to 1,000 words. In fact, I usually go over. Around the 300 to 400 word mark I’m wondering if I will reach the 1,000, and then suddenly I’m a couple of dozen words past the mark and wondering how to stop. Many times I will just stop so if you think I dropped a subject abruptly, you are probably right.

Some subjects have come up more than once. If you have been a regular reader you will have noticed themes running through my posts. There’s science, particularly physics and cosmology, there’s philosophy, there’s maths. I’ve tried to steer away from politics, but Trump has crept in there somewhere.

There’s weather, there’s seasons, there’s discussion on society, as I see it, and occasionally I discuss my posts themselves. These things are, obviously, the things that interest me, the things that I tend to think about.

Apparently I have 144 followers. That’s 144 more than I expected. I hope that some of them read my posts on a regular basis, but that’s not necessary. I hope that more dip in from time to time and find some interest nugget.

That sound disparaging to my followers, but that’s not my intent. My intent is to reflect on the realities of blogging. I follow other blogs, but I don’t read all the posts on those blogs. Maybe one or two of them I read pretty much every time the blogger posts a new post.

Someone's blog post — Someone’s blog post

That’s the reality of blogging I think. Millions of blog plots are published every day, and I reckon that very few of them are read by more than one or two people at the most. Some blogs strike the jackpot, though, and have millions of followers.

I’d guess that the big blogs are about politics in some shape or form, or fashion and fashion hints and tips. Maybe cooking? I’ve seen a few cooking blogs and they seem to be quite popular. Some big firms have taken to publishing a blog. Some people blog about their illnesses and their battles with it. The best of the latter can be both sad and uplifting.

You know the sort I mean? You go to the firm’s website and there’s a button or menu item that proudly proclaims “Blog”. When you look at the blog, it’s simply a list of what the CEO and board have been up to, or releases of new products, or sometimes posts about workers at the firm getting involved with the local community. All good earnest stuff, but scarcely riveting. I wonder how many followers they get? Probably about as many as me! I hope so. At least they are trying.

(Approaching 600 words of waffle. I can do it!)

Since I’m not doing a political blog, I don’t think that anything I post is controversial, which is probably reflected in the number of my followers. I don’t stir up any furores with my words on Plato’s Cave analogy, so far as I know. I get no furious comments about my views on Schrodinger’s Cat. “You should see what he says about Plato’s Cave! You must go on there and refute it!” Nah, doesn’t happen!

As I said, the low number of hits doesn’t worry me. It would be a hassle if suddenly my followers shot up to thousands, and I felt obligated to provide all these people an interesting post on a regular basis. As it is I can ramble on about prime numbers or the relationship between the different number sets and potentially only disappoint a few people. If any.

What have I learnt from all this blogging? That it is hard. It’s not just a matter of sitting down and blasting out a 1,000 words. Well sometimes it is, actually, but most times I grind it out in 100 word or so chunks. I aim to write the blog on Sunday and add pictures and publish on Monday.

Sometimes I miss the Monday deadline, out of sheer forgetfulness, mostly and pop it out on Tuesday or even later. Sometimes I forget to write my post until late on Sunday, but it is only rarely that I have to write it on Monday or even later. So far as I can tell, I’ve not completely missed a weekly post since the earliest days.

This is not the first blog I’ve tried to write. I had several goes before this one and I think that maybe this attempt “stuck” because I set out my aim to publish weekly early on. Maybe. It may also be the target of 250 posts that I set myself early on. Now I’ve achieved that goal.

So what next? I’ve not decided. I might stop now, or I might go on to 500. I may not know right up until the last minute. 500 posts is approaching 10 years of posts which seems a phenomenally long time. But then again, 250 posts is around 5 years of posts and I achieved that. We’ll have to see.

(As I sail past 1,000 words, I reflect that I can extract that many words from practically nothing. It seems to be a knack.)

Trickle, Brook, Stream, River

When it rains water collects in little puddles and hollows in the uneven earth. Sometimes the water sinks into dirt until the dirt can hold no more and the water forms the puddle. If the rain continues to fall it forms a surface, rippled and blown by the wind. The puddle may be muddy, or it may be clear depending on whether the water is stirred enough by the wind or by an animal or maybe by a child, wrapped up for the weather and wearing rubber or plastic boots.

Some rain falls at altitude in mountains or hills and falls on rocks, trickling down into cracks and crevices. Some rain falls on plants and is absorbed or runs down to the roots and is absorbed by them. Such rain takes the shortcut back into the air as the plant pumps it to the leaves and it is expired into the air.

Much of the rain that falls is not seen again for a while. It trickles through the soil, through open spaces between and within rocks. Some it soaks into cracks which take it deep within the earth to aquifers which can hold the water for years, decades, or centuries. Some it soaks into soft and soluble rocks like limestone and can form caverns underground. Sometimes this water evaporates underground and creates the beautiful rock forms that we can stalactites or stalagmites.

Some of the water remains on the surface and is joined by water seeping through the soil or the rocks to form little streams. The visible part of the stream is not all there is to a stream. Most streams have rocky or pebbly beds, or gravel or sand beds and water flows through those, as well as the free-flowing visible water. Indeed, some streams are not visible at the surface with the water running under the pebbly bed. Unless the stream is in flood that is, when the water fills the channel perhaps to overflowing.

Up in the mountains or the hills the small trickles of water tumble over or under the rocks and gradually merge to form small streams. Water oozes from wet soil and sometimes springs from rocks where the aquifers reach the surface. Rocks stick up through the water, little waterfalls chute the water in glistening curves and air mixes with the water to produce little white water patches. Vegetation hangs over the little streams, moistened by the stream and dripping water back into. Water loving mosses abound, and trees dip their roots.

The stream is continually renewing. This is not the same steam that you saw here yesterday. That water has flowed on perhaps by now reaching the sea. This water was yesterday floating in the sky in the form of a fluffy white cloud, or a grey dense cloud, or merely as an unseen vapour, measured only by humidity. Gravity’s imperative call pulls the water down from the hill.

There may be life in the water. Small insects and similar tiny organisms survive in the tumbling water, and even smaller little animals, from single cells animalcules to tiny multi celled beings live in it. They creep over the rocks and pebbles, feeding on debris that falls into the water or on little plants that also cling to the rocks, or each other.

As the stream progresses downhill it gathers more and more water from tributary trickles and merging flows. It deepens and flows over rocks which higher up it would have flowed around. Pools form and pools make it easier for life to exists. Maybe crustaceans and fish could now be lurking in the pools and even in the deeper less turbulent flows. Such life would also attract birds such as ducks.

All this life lives on a knife edge. A sudden storm upstream may swell the flow to many times the normal rate, moving rocks and boulders and even reshaping the banks of the stream. This would be a disaster for the wildlife in the stream sweeping it downstream and out of its usual environment into areas to which it is not adapted. Such storm events shape the little streams much more than the every day trickle.

A stream which I’m describing has a steep course. It may sweep past last stones and boulders and drop many metres for each dozen or so metres traversed. In many places it will reach places where the underlying geology changes and a waterfall forms or a cascade. A cascade is where the stream drops several metres in a short distance and the bed is full of boulders and rocks which may be totally or partial covered by the stream.

A waterfall usually drop into a pool caused by the water falling on and removing rocks and boulders. The spectacle of the drop and the pool makes it very attractive and people will sometimes hike for miles to see a waterfall.

As the stream becomes a river it becomes more placid. More life lives in it, it is broader and deeper. We can fish in it, float boats on it, and use it as a highway. We often live by rivers as they generally follow the easiest route through a sometimes tricky landscape. Large cities are more often than not found on rivers for this reason. Farmers on the banks of a big river want to trade with people up of downstream.

We tend to forget, in these days when we travel mainly by road, that rivers were once the prime highways, and indeed our principle roads frequently follow the route of a river.

As a river reaches lower altitudes it become more placid, as I have mentioned. People live next to it, and so they are in danger of flooding if a storm hits up river. A river is constrained by nature banks, but these many be breached. Consequently we have tamed many rivers, building large earthworks to constrain it to its usual course in the case of floods. However, the flooding of a river and the bursting of its banks deposits nutrients on to the soils around the river.

The ancient Egyptians knew this and worked with the annual flooding of the Nile. They developed geometry and mathematics to reinstate farm boundaries after floods. They also developed a legal system at least in part to legislate the inevitable disputes.

Photography – Yet Again

I wondered if I had ever written a post about photography. So I checked. The answer was that I’ve done quite a few. Oh well, it’s a big subject!

I don’t count photography as a hobby of mine, but more as an interest. I’ve got a camera, but it is only an enhanced point and shoot, and I sometimes even use the camera on my cellphone. I haven’t bought any camera gear and I probably won’t. Handheld is good enough for me.

Of course photographer want the best picture that they can get, so better cameras and lenses are the way to go, and probably a tripod would be the next buy. Special filters and accessories enhance a photographers art and this can get expensive. Not to mention bulky and hard to carry around.

I have nothing but admiration for those photographers who will hike kilometres and wait for hours for the right light to capture a particular shot. I’m usually constrained by a number of things that need doing, plus I usually have a dog attached to me when I have the opportunity to snatch a picture.

Nevertheless I try to take good pictures. I might spot the opportunity of a picture and I wrap the dog’s lead around a convenient tree while I compose and take whatever has caught my eye. I usually take a few shots of the same subject to enhance the possibility of one of the pictures being an acceptable one.

Usually I don’t fiddle with the camera settings, some of which are meaningless to me anyway, but occasionally I will experiment with the shutter timings and the aperture settings. I say “shutter” but I’m pretty sure that my camera doesn’t have a shutter.

I have to trust the autofocus as there is way on my simple camera to easily adjust the focus. I can lock in the distance setting by partially pressing the button, and I have done so in the past, with variable results.

One consequence of the digital revolution is that the potential picture is displayed on a LCD screen rather than through a viewfinder, and these are often difficult to see and compose a picture in. I sometimes take a few pictures of my subject from different distances and different angle, but composing a picture is still difficult.

Fortunately my camera is pretty clever, and the focussing is usually better than I expect. Composition is pretty hit and miss for the reasons I mention above. Usually there is at least one photograph from the many that I take which is acceptable and many are better than I could hope for from my somewhat random shooting method.

It’s not quite a “Monte Carlo” method of taking photographs, but it is close. It’s not often that I get a picture which is better than merely “good”. But even then the picture will not be razor sharp, and serious photographers would probably look down on them. That’s OK, as I don’t aspire to having them blown up to A4 or even A3 and hung on a wall.

So, why do I take photographs? Well, I do post a lot of them on Facebook, so I must feel the need to get others to look at them, and hopefully they will like them and if they like them or don’t like them, hopefully they will say so.

Above the bridge — The stream from above the bridge

My Facebook pictures are public, but most comments come from friends and family, which is understandable as I don’t do anything to publicise them. When friends and family comment on them, others may see the pictures so they do find their way out there.

Facebook and other “social networking” apps have changed photography for me and for millions of others. Without Facebook taking a photograph of oneself is a bit pointless. Who would ever see it? But “selfies” allow the photographer to include his/her self into a picture.

It’s a form of bragging. The selfie taker is boasting : “Here am I and here are my friends, and we are having fun, in this indiscernible location, and we are drunk as skunks”. OK, well, some selfies are taken in recognisable places and the selfie taker is not under the influence of alcohol, but many, many are.

So the pictures that I and other serious and not so serious photographers post to social media are usually not selfies and most often don’t contain babies, other children, pets and people grinning at the camera. The pictures that I and other posts are in the minority, and of course there is a huge number of pictures that fall into both categories, the trivial and the hopefully not so trivial.

For instance, the pictures of dogs running where you can’t see their legs and so they appear to be floating are funny, essentially trivial, but make a good photographs, even if it transpires that the pictures were serendipitous. The stunning picture of a sunset taken on a honeymoon, may be snapped on an iPhone, and is arguably less trivial.

I mostly like to take pictures of fungi, flowers and trees, not to mention insects and other small animals. I see beauty in a spider or beetle or slug and often try to bring this out in my pictures. Also in fallen leaves or leaves with autumn colours, or the small flowers that others refer to as weeds, but which repay a closer look. Often the structure of such small plants is amazing.

I also take pictures that I think of a “records”. Such as the time when the stream turned into a raging torrent during a big storm, or the moment when a Monarch butterfly hatches from it pupa. While some of these may transcend being a record of the event, many are interesting but less of a photograph and more of a picture. The lighting many be wrong and the image fairly dark, but it still shows the insect expanding its wings from mere sacks to the beautiful wings of the complete insect.

There’s nothing wrong with selfies and other similar photographs, but one would hope that the selfie taker would graduate to something better eventually. If what I might term a “proper” photograph is actually better in any real way.

Getting the Wind Up



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A plant disease called “myrtle rust” has appeared in New Zealand, apparently after the spores have been blown across the Tasman sea from Australia. That’s over four thousand miles. The prevailing winds are from Australia to New Zealand and the cyclones and storms that hit New Zealand are formed in or off the coast of Australia, or further north in the Tropics, or further south in the Southern ocean.

In these areas low pressure areas form and consequently winds blow from the surrounding areas of slightly higher pressure into the lower pressure area and start to swirl clockwise. The clockwise movement is the result of the Coriolis effect, which is difficult to explain, but relates to the fact that when an object moves north or south on the rotating Earth, it moves closer to or further from the Earth’s axis of rotation.

A low pressure area sucks in air and it is forced up in the centre where it cools and forms clouds and rain. As this process continues, the pressure at the centre of the low drops and the spiral of winds gets tighter and, if the low is very deep, more destructive. I’m not sure why a low deepens, when one would think that all the in-rushing air would fill the low, and the few explanations that I have read have not convinced me.

On a larger scale, bands of winds circle the Earth, with winds coming from the west in the south and the north of the two hemispheres, with prevailing easterly winds nearer the Equator in both hemispheres. The sometimes destructive cyclones and anticyclones are mere ripples in this larger flow.

Even in quiet wind conditions there is usually a breeze, often stimulated by local conditions, such a large lake or sea. All that is required for a breeze is a small differential in temperature, with local heating expanding the air or local cooling causing it to contract.

The sea will absorb heat from the sun more slowly than the land, and the air over the land is therefore warmer and becomes less dense. Consequently a breeze develops flowing from the sea to the land. The reverse occurs at night, when the land cools more quickly than the sea. Such conditions are however very local and are often unnoticeable and overridden by cyclonic and anticyclonic wind conditions.

Within a large weather system, such as a cyclonic system, local conditions may affect the wind directions and strength. Often the wind direction and strength varies widely locally, giving rise to conditions that are described as “blustery”. While such conditions may be good for drying laundry, they making sailing a difficult pastime. Sailing races can be won or lost depending on whether or not the sailors catch the good air or fall into a pocket of stale air.

The strength of the wind obviously varies tremendously. At the one end of the scale a breeze may cause a flag to limply stir, while at the other end of the scale, a really large storm may uproot trees and destroy houses. In some parts of the world tornadoes may form when weather conditions are right and may sweep destructively over the land, ripping apart anything that stands in their way.

There is energy in the wind, and efforts are being made to economically harvest this energy to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Such fuels are not infinite, and we will sometime or other run out of them. It may be that we have enough fossil fuels to last centuries, but getting at them involves the disruption of mining, and as they are used up, mining will become even more disruptive than it is now. Mining even small amounts will become very expensive.

It makes sense to develop machines to harvest wind power, and the signs are that this is becoming economically more competitive. At one time, before petrol engines became common, the only ways to power transport were wind and steam, and it may be that petrol and other fossil fuelled engines may only have a relatively short time span of usefulness, maybe only a century or so.

We also use fossil fuels for our plastics. Almost everything in our modern world has a large proportion of plastics in it, sourced almost entirely from oil. It remains to be seen if we could replace our need for fossil resources from renewable resources.

Hay fever suffers may curse the wind as it blows pollen up their noses and into their respiratory systems, but many plants rely on the wind to propagate themselves. A case in point is the myrtle rust I mentioned at the start of this post. Plant pollen can travel thousands of kilometres and fall all I know can circle the Earth. It’s an efficient way of spreading the reproductive material, but its a really inefficient way of getting the reproductive material to a member of the species of the opposite gender.

Obviously it works best where the plants are grouped together, and it works even better if the plants are hermaphrodites, but it does work (occasionally) when the plants are far apart. This mechanism for reproduction probably arose a long time ago before plants invaded the land. plants growing in the sea, and many animals too, just broadcast their gametes into the sea and trust in at least some of them finding other gametes so that they can grow into mature individuals. (Caution: It’s complicated!)

We often hear the sound of wind. It can be caused by wind blowing through trees or other plants. It can be caused by wind blowing through gaps in our houses, mainly doors and windows. We build our houses to protect us from the wind and other aspects of the weather, as a sort of synthetic cave, I guess.

We can even make music (well, musical sounds) using the wind. Many people have “wind chimes” which are metallic objects strung on wires arranged so that the wind can bash them together, making a chiming noise. Some people like them, and others dislike them (I fall into the second camp).

Strings can be placed on a sounding board and used to produce musical sounds, and such “Aeolian Harps” were once as common as wind chimes. An accidental Aeolian harp can be heard in the sound that power and telephone lines make when a strong wind blows.

Time for this post about wind to wind down now, if you will excuse the pun.

Water, the cause of surfing.

I came across one of those pages on the Internet which state something like “At least a few molecules of the water in your body probably passed through the kidneys of Julius Caesar“. They generally use statistics to show that what they are saying is true.

Only those who believe in homeopathy should be disturbed by this. To anyone else, a molecule of water is a molecule of water, and the fact that it had once been contained in a stream of urine is irrelevant. In any case it is too late. 60% of our body is made up of water, so water from Caesar’s urine is already in us.

Water is a fascinating chemical. It carries stuff around as it is the basis for blood and lymph and all the other fluids of our bodies. It carries nutrients up the stems of plants. It wears away mountains and builds rocks, it cools lava to form other rocks. It brings nutrients to our crops and washes them away. It even sinks ships.

“You are water
I’m water
we’re all water in different containers
that’s why it’s so easy to meet
someday we’ll evaporate together.”
― Yoko Ono

It’s difficult to think of any occurrence in our familiar world which is not mediated or affected by water in some way. Shortage of water to a society is a disaster, as food cannot be produced, leading to famine and deaths.

Water is thought by most people to be liquid at usual temperatures, though there are some places where it is to be found in solid form. Actually there is a great deal of it around in the gaseous phase, or vapour. We measure this airborne water in terms of the humidity or wetness of the air.

Water is extraordinarily pervasive and can be found in all the nooks and crannies in the materials that we have around us. It acts as a lubricate, and if the water is driven off, by heating or chemical means things become stiff and fragile. Even so, water cannot be completely removed from things – even a diamond probably has a few entrapped water molecules.

Water molecules attaching to each other by hyd... — Water molecules attaching to each other by hydrogen bonds (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Water plays a role in rotting things down. A corpse kept in a very dry environment desiccates and turns leathery and fragile. I guess that this is because the organisms that rot a body away cannot function in a water free environment.

A body of liquid water fills things from the bottom up. Gravity pulls the water down to the lowest parts of a container and water continues to layer the container. The surface appears to be flat, but that is an illusion. At a small scale, if a tiny bit of the water happens to be higher than the rest of the water, gravity will pull it down, while the other water molecules resist by being in the way.

Eventually as the water stills, the differences in level even out, and the water surface becomes as level as it can. However, at the molecular level, molecules of water, which are moving relatively fast on these scales, can pop out of the liquid and float away. Other molecules can also pop in to the liquid, so that on average the water is level.

Why doesn’t the surface appear blurry and ill defined then? Well we can’t see at the molecular scale, and also the water molecules form weak electrical bonds with each other. A water droplet is like a large crowd of people all milling about, holding hands much of the time. Those on the outside are not as tightly bound as those further in.



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Imagine now that the crowd is surrounded by a storm of people who are moving faster, and are more spread out so they rarely join hands. One of these gaseous people will now and then bump into the crowd. They may knock loose one of the crowd who will shoot off and become one of the gaseous people, while gaseous person who hit him may now be travelling more slowly and link up with the crowd.

Even in the macro world a water surface is rarely really flat. The dynamic nature of the flatness is apparent when a container is jolted slightly and tiny waves form on the surface as compression waves disturb it. Wind and rain also cause visible disturbances in a lake or pond.

Flowing water often forms a smooth, if not level surface. A submerged rock in a river or a weir or fall in a river can form persistent ripples of flumes as the water flows over them. Kayakers know to aim their craft at a flume to safely descend a rapid or waterfall, although downstream of flumes the river often forms “haystacks” where turbulent water is forced into humps which can prove difficult to navigate.

A little stream may be described as turbulent as it makes its way over and around boulders and small drops, but interestingly it is not random. It is not chaotic. A close look will reveal that the bow waves of stones in the flow may flutter and throw off little whirling vortexes, but the bow wave and the pattern of vortexes persists. The little waterfall over a small stone ledge persists, even though the shape of the waterfall may ripple a little.

In large bodies of water, such as lakes and seas, winds form waves which can travel many thousands of kilometres across oceans and seas. Water waves don’t represent the movement of water over those distances – the only thing that moves is the energy in the wave. Water molecules in a wave move mainly up and down and only a little forwards and backwards.

Circular water current in a wave (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However when a wave travels over a beach or shoal, the movement in the vertical direction is curtailed, and the energy is transformed into a forward motion – the wave breaks. Water is transported forward, with the water higher up moving faster than the water at the sea bed which may be water draining off the beach from the previous wave and the wave steepens until it collapses. Hence surfing!



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Seasons (again)

This is a bit of a repeat, since I almost forgot about writing this week. I decided to revisit the seasons thing.

English: Kukulkan at its finest during the Spr... — English: Kukulkan at its finest during the Spring Equinox. Chichen Itza Equinox March 2009. The famous descent of the snake at the temple. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We have just begun the season of Southern Hemisphere spring. This officially starts on 1st September and runs through to 1st December. Then summer starts and runs through to 1st March, then autumn runs through until 1st June, and winter extend to 1st September and the cycle repeats.

The reason that the seasons are defined like this goes back to 1780 when an organisation called “Societas Meteorologica Palatina” defined them as above. The organisation chose those dates because the seasons pretty much aligned with those dates in terms of temperature and rainfall and so on. The coldest three months in the Northern Hemisphere tended to be December, January and February, the warmest tended to be June, July and August, and so on.

Since the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, the southern cycle is as described above. We have Christmas on the beach and spend July wrapped up and close to any source of heat!

Astronomers do it differently. They divide the year into four seasons, but the seasons are not aligned climatically, but are defined relative to the Earth’s position in its orbit around the Sun.

Because the Earth’s axis is tilted relative to its orbit around the sun, the axis is be tilted towards the sun at one time of the year and away from it six months later. When the axis is tilted towards the sun, the sun is at its highest in the sky and more energy is received on Earth per square metre than at any other time of the year. It’s summer and warmer. When it is tilted away, the sun is at its lowest and we receive less energy than at any other time of the year. It’s winter and colder. (But read on).

On Earth, when the sun is high it is in the sky longer than when it is lower. The day is therefore longest and the night is the shortest in the yearly cycle. When the sun is midway between its highest and its lowest, the day and the night are of equal length.

English: Midnight Sun in Tromsø, seen from the... — English: Midnight Sun in Tromsø, seen from the old port. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The time when the sun is highest or lowest in the sky is called a “solstice“, either a winter solstice, or a summer solstice. The times when it is half way are called “equinoxes“, either an autumnal equinox or a vernal equinox, and the night and day are equal in length. These are the four main signposts of the seasons, as used by astronomers.

Strictly speaking, to say “Today is the summer solstice” or “Today is the autumnal equinox” are incorrect. Since the day and night lengths are changing all the time, the solstices and equinoxes are points in time, not whole days.

English: Two equinoxes are shown as the inters... — English: Two equinoxes are shown as the intersection of the ecliptic and celestial Ecuador, and the solstice’s times of the year in which the Sun reaches its maximum southern or northern position. Español: Se muestran los dos equinoccios como la intersección del ecuador celeste y la eclíptica, y los solsticios momentos del año en los que el Sol alcanza su máxima posición meridional o boreal. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are four lesser known and less important signposts of the seasons, they are Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain and Imbolc. I’ve used the Gaelic names, but they correspond, in order, to the Christian festivals of May Day, Lammas, Halloween, and St Brigid’s Day. These all fall more or less halfway between the four main seasonal signposts.

Astronomically the Winter Solstice, which occurs around 21st December in the Northern Hemisphere. Many sources identify the date of the solstice as the beginning of winter. Similarly the Summer Solstice is identified as the start of summer, and the equinoxes are identified as the start of their respective seasons.

This is odd, as the climatic seasons are usually considered to start three weeks earlier, with Northern Hemisphere winter climatically starting around the 1st December, and similarly for the other seasons. Starting the astronomical seasons on the 21st (or sometimes 22nd) of the month misses out 3 weeks or nearly a quarter of the season!

It’s also odd for another reason. The Northern Hemisphere winter solstice is when the sun is at its lowest point in its apparent position in the sky, so it is at its turning point in the cycle of the season and indeed the word “solstice” means “the point where the sun stands still”. It seems to me that this should be considered the mid point of the season, not the beginning of it.

This is obviously true for the summer solstice too, and the equinoxes, being halfway between the solstices are add the mid points of the sun’s climb or descent to the solstices. They too also should be the mid points of their seasons, not the beginning points.

If the solstices and equinoxes are the middles of their seasons, where are the start end points then? Well, they would then coincide with the Gaelic or pagan festivals of Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain, and Imbolc! For example Beltane is about halfway between the Northern Hemisphere spring equinox and summer solstice on 1st May.

Although Beltane is a Gaelic or pagan festival and has mostly fallen out of favour, some cultures do celebrate the festival and some of the customs persist, such as the custom of dancing around a Maypole. Beltane and the other three similar festivals coincide with important agricultural events, such as sowing seeds and gathering in of harvests, so were of interest in earlier times.

However, if the astronomical seasons starts and ends were to be moved to coincide with the Gaelic festivals they would not coincide with the climatic seasons. The reason for this is that there is a seasonal shift because of the time that the seas and land take to warm up in spring and to cool down in winter. This pushes the climatic seasons back a few weeks and the start of climatic spring in the Northern Hemisphere is pushed back to about the 1st March and the same for all the other seasons.

That’s why I think that the current idea of the astronomical seasons starting at the solstices and equinoxes is wrong! They should coincide with the Gaelic festivals instead, and then the astronomical and climatic seasons are related by the seasonal shift, instead of not being related properly at all.

Illumination of the earth during various seasons (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Nebulosity

Clouds are collections of water droplets suspended in the air. A cloud is formed as the water vapour in the air condenses onto particles of dust or other water droplets. The water in a cloud weighs tonnes! It’s a good job that the droplets don’t have time to coalesce into great balls of water before they reach the ground, but I suppose that to insects a droplet is a huge ball of water, and able to cause havoc.

As anyone who has flown in an aircraft is likely to know, clouds are not well defined, and in fact they could be described as nebulous or hazy. From a mathematical point of view they are fractal and the fractal dimension (a measure of their fuzziness) varies depending on the cloud.

A common pastime on a summer’s day is to imagine shapes in the clouds. That one may look vaguely like a car, that one like a dog, and so on. But really, the only shape that clouds have is “cloud-like“.

There are many types of cloud shape, depending on the conditions and the altitude where the cloud is forming, but the usual depiction of a cloud generally looks like a cumulus type. This type forms the usual shape like piles of cotton wool in the sky, with mountain, canyons, and even castles.



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There is always water vapour in the air, even if it doesn’t form clouds, although we cannot see it. As I said above, clouds are formed when this water vapour condenses on small particles in the air (and other conditions are right). Sometimes there are attempts to make rain by “seeding” a cloud with small particles to increase the rate of condensation and thus increasing the size of the water droplets.

At a certain size the droplets become to big to be buoyed up by the air and start to fall, picking up more moisture as they do. As I understand it, this cloud seeding process is limited in its success, but I may be wrong.

Clouds sometimes form at ground level, if the conditions are right, and then we call them fogs or mists. This often happens when light rain is falling and there is a lot of moisture in the air, but it can happen simply because the conditions are right.

Living where I do, I occasionally have reason to visit the local airport in Wellington. The airport is situation on a section of land that was brought up by a an earthquake, so that it is on a narrow stretch of land between two sets of hills. Over the hills to the East of the airport is the entrance to the Wellington Harbour.

On several occasions I have seen sea mist roll in from Cooks Strait to the South and extends tongues of thick mist over the airport and the Harbour entrance. This causes the airport to shut down until the conditions have cleared, spoiling the travel plans of hundreds of people.

Other clouds which are familiar to many are the stratus clouds. These clouds are layers which cover all or most of the sky under some conditions. They often presage rain or other forms of precipitation. Stratus clouds range from light to dark and in many cases might cause a drop in one’s spirits.

Certainly the dark stratus has that effect on me, and there is little that is more spectacular than breaking through a layer of cloud in a plane. The tops of the clouds will be brightly lit by the sun, and sometimes whorls or rivers of cloud can be seen from above.

The tops of the clouds can be quite lumpy and cumulus-like, and descending into the clouds is like descending into mountains and canyons and the lumps and bumps of the cloud can whizz past like scenery on a train, until the plane finally breaks through the greyer, darker ceiling of the cloud layer.

However, broken stratus clouds are the clouds which produce amazing sunsets as the sun drops through the layers and gaps in the clouds. Very often a beam of sun breaks through a stratus layer and lights up the water droplets or dust producing what looks like a column of light. These rays are known as crepuscular rays.

Add to that the amazing colours that result from the breakthrough sun beams and the dust and water droplets and sunsets can be very beautiful, even if the sun light is in fact refracting or reflecting from pollution in the air.

When the sun has gone below the horizon, it can still illuminate clouds above the horizon causing them to glow with an orange light, as the blue light is absorbed by the thick layer of atmosphere these rays which are almost tangential to the earth’s surface have to pass through.

Cumulus clouds are often sought out by glider pilots, since they are often formed by an up welling of air over a particularly warm piece of land. The up welling of air provides the glider pilot with extra lift, which allows them to travel vast distances, but a downside is that some clouds can be chaotic and turbulent. Birds will often guide a pilot to the up draughts there is no cloud.



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Another totally different sort of cloud has appeared over recent years, and that is the Internet cloud. The Internet cloud is also somewhat nebulous, and allows us to take a photograph on one device (computer phone or tablet) and view it almost immediately on another device.

The cloud (often the Cloud) also allows for automatic backups for devices – if your device implodes or is lost or stolen, your data is safe. Mostly. For if you sync (synchronise) your device with the Cloud, and then delete a photograph, it will shortly be removed from the Cloud and lost.



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To prevent data loss, you can backup to somewhere else on the cloud, so there are two (or more) cloud copies, or you can backup to a local computer or local storage, so that if you delete something by mistake you can always get it back. As anyone in the computer business will tell you, one backup is never enough!



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