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Notes & Queries 9th October, 2013 - Why did the Crystal Palace burn down?

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image by Grok A.I. Additional processing by GIMP The framework of the Crystal Palace was made from an iron alloy known as Mittene, which was patented in 1812 by Jean-Louis Fouré. The following year, Fouré was knocked down by a horse in the streets of Paris and only partially regained consciousness. He died in 1814 while in the care of the nuns at Petit Gethsémani in Montmartre. Eleven years later, a nephew of Fouré named Laurent Vigier, who worked in the naval shipyards at Brest, pushed for the use of his uncle’s alloy in the construction of the early ironclad warships. The weight of the material and the additional expense involved in its production meant that it was never a serious consideration. Only three vessels incorporating Mittene parts alongside conventional iron plate ever took to water. Mittene exists in a constant state of rapid chemical reaction and it is these processes that give the material its stability and high tolerance to external loads. The heat generated is around ...
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Notes & Queries 4th October 2013 – Harald Bɵrja revisited (What makes a painting a masterpiece?)

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image generated by Grok A.I. The Norwegian writer and commentator, Harald Bɵrja, is regarded as the founding-father of the mikro-estetisk (micro-aesthetic) school of art criticism. He has vigorously distanced himself from the movement. In interviews he defines himself as a scientist, for whom visual beauty is incidental and subservient to underlying physical processes that are invisible to the human eye and all but the most powerful microscopes and scanners. He regards the universe as deterministic and therefore void of any true creativity or spontaneity, which he demotes to a byproduct of artistic vanity. I will not delve any further into Bɵrja's complex opinions on this subject, mainly because all attempts to accurately translate his 2700 page treatise from its original Norwegian, in a manner that conveys its true meaning, have failed. Regrettably I do not speak the language well enough to make my own attempt. For Bɵrja, a masterpiece is defined by details that exist beyond the s...
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Notes & Queries 4th October 2013 – A troubling encounter with Harald Bɵrja

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image generated by Grok Nobody would dispute that the impression Harald Bɵrja has made upon the global art scene has been largely through force of personality. In the past he has been criticised for his use of intimidation and aggressive behaviour to draw attention away from his selective approach to the hard scientific data which underpins his methodology. I have been on the receiving end of one of Bɵrja's flem-flecked tirades, which was delivered three inches from my face in bellowed Norwegian, while an accompanying interpreter calmly listed an inventory of diseased farm animals (including many non-native species) that my mother apparently had congress with in order to bring me into the world. I was once a passenger on a cross-channel ferry, during a force 10 gale, and came away from that experience rather less rattled than I did following the five minutes that I spent in the rabid company of Harald Bɵrja. The source of our disagreement (as far as I can tell) was the beauty, or l...
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Notes & Queries 4th October 2013 – A Brief Overview of Hoph’s Vesicle

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image generated by Grok To get down to the fundamentals of this question we must be prepared to probe the human brain; we need to really dig our fingers in there and pry it apart. It is for these reasons that I do not advise readers to attempt any such study at home, or on a living subject. Hoph's Vesicle is a diminutive region of the brain that occupies the space between the amygdala and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. It is unique in that certain external stimulus focusing around low level aggression, such as one might witness during an argument, cause it to become engorged and expand to as much as five-times its normal size. Possibly for these reasons, it is referred to by French neurobiologists as the “pénis du cerveau” (penis of the brain). The term was coined by Dufour (of course) and while one admires its lewd poetry, it is a rather fanciful description. In fact sexual arousal has been shown to have no effect upon this area of the human cerebrum. As Hoph's Vesicle enla...
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Pratfalls and Persistence: A personal odyssey in self-publishing

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  Recently I self-published a book – my second - a themed collection of short stories, titled Boiled Branches, Green Wood: A Book of Trespassers. After I finished writing it, I edited it, which took absolutely ages. I laid it out three times. OpenOffice corrupted the formatting twice; the first time in a manner that was so random that it gave me pause to wonder whether I was watching an emerging artificial intelligence failing to fully grasp its responsibilities. The second time was more comprehensive, in line with the application of some disruptive algorithmic principle, to which I had not been made privy. Apparently I was not the first to have experienced this unexpected reorganisation of the furniture in a saved OpenOffice document. The responses on the support forums were, at their most helpful and polite, along the lines of ‘Yeah, it’ll do that’. I have reached a peculiar point in my life where setbacks of this kind no longer fill me with self-righteous anger directed at an u...
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Notes & Queries 21st September, 2013 - Longinquusphyta: A boring aquatic plant

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image generated by Grok Skim an empty brandy glass (or any drinking vessel of your choosing) across the surface of a pond, or standing body of fresh water. Now raise it up to the light and examine its contents: You will hold in your hand a veritable cornucopia, teeming with microscopic aquatic life – a movable feast fit for a tiny king. Drifting without purpose across this thriving ecosystem will be millions of Longinquusphyta algal spores. Longinquusphyta plays no role in the food chain in the sense that no other species goes out of its way to consume it (because of its small size it is commonly eaten by accident, despite the absence of any tangible nutritional value). It does not contribute or impact upon its environment in any meaningful way. It has no known antibiotic properties and is one of a rare class of living things that pharmaceutical companies regard as being completely and utterly useless to man. “If all the Longinquusphyta died tomorrow, the world would be neither a bette...
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Notes and Queries 21st September, 2013 - The UK's oldest standing castle

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image generated by Grok At an estimated of age of 127 years old, the Borough Market Tower – a giant tortoise, who labours under the prosaic Christian name of Andrew, may not be the UK's oldest standing castle, but he is certainly the most enigmatic. Andrew's nickname is derived from his unusually peaked shell, whose pleurals are raised up into bumps resembling the crenelations on the fortified walls of a medieval stronghold. He first lumbers into the footnotes of history on the 4th June, 1920, shouldering his way through crowds of bemused travellers and well-wishers, along one of the platforms at Paddington Railway Station, in London, having apparently disembarked from the morning train from Plymouth. The two young boys riding on the back of the tortoise claim no connection to the animal when challenged by a porter, and make themselves scarce before a constable can be summoned. Astonishingly the tortoise is allowed to leave the station and it is only half a mile later, as it en...
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