Category: fun things

Greenhouse gas disposal techniques

By now, everyone is well aware of the atmosphere’s rising level of carbon dioxide (CO₂), as well as the fact that this is increasing the average global temperature and causing climate change. While nations and corporations debate about whether or to what extent CO₂ emissions can be reduced, it’s clear that at least a portion of that unwanted CO₂ can be captured and liquefied (for example, as it’s produced by power plants and factories), preventing it from going into the atmosphere. Great, but then what? There’s way too much of it to just store it in giant tanks for eternity.

The process of storing carbon dioxide permanently in such a way that it cannot escape back into the atmosphere is known as carbon sequestration (or, sometimes, carbon dioxide sequestration). You may have heard the term in the news, but what does it really mean? Broadly speaking, there are two places one might put large quantities of unwanted carbon dioxide—in the oceans or underground. Techniques for getting the CO₂ to its putative final resting place (and keeping it there) are in varying stages of development.

Ocean Storage

The world’s oceans already absorb unfathomable amounts of CO₂; some researchers believe they could hold a great deal more with a little help. The upper part of the ocean typically has a fairly high concentration of CO₂ (absorbed directly from the atmosphere), but at greater depths, the concentration is much lower. So one way to dispose of CO₂ may be to inject it into deep ocean water. At depths over 3,000 meters or so, liquid or solid CO₂ is denser than the surrounding water, meaning that it could sink all the way to the ocean floor. Closer to the surface, it would dissolve into the water, which wouldn’t be great because dissolved CO₂ makes the water acidic, with detrimental effects on marine life. Liquid CO₂ on the ocean floor may react with minerals there and form relatively harmless solid precipitates—or it may simply kill off organisms already living there. So it’s an idea, but not a risk-free one.

Geological Storage

Well, what about putting it in the ground? Merely burying CO₂ is not good enough; in order for it to stay put, it has to be stored very deep in the ground, and somewhere that the gas cannot escape into the atmosphere. Some possibilities include:

• Saline Aquifers: An aquifer is a porous layer of rock that holds a large quantity of water—often saltwater. Inject CO₂ deeply enough into an aquifer, and the surrounding pressure keeps it in liquid form. Meanwhile, an impermeable layer of solid rock above prevents the gas from being released back into the atmosphere. Although aquifer storage is expensive, it is likely to have less impact on the environment than ocean storage—and the CO₂ can remain safely underground, theoretically, forever.
• Oil and Gas Reservoirs: If you can put carbon dioxide into an aquifer, you can also put it into a depleted gas or oil well. In fact, the technology to deliver CO₂ into such wells has been in use for decades; pump CO₂ into an oil well, for instance, and you can push out extra oil that would otherwise be unreachable. (Of course, that oil, when burned, will also contribute to CO₂ overload, but the net effect should be positive.) As long as the CO₂ is stored deep enough, it will remain as a liquid.
• Coal Seams: Most of the world’s coal deposits are located too deep in the ground for mining to be practical. When CO₂ is injected into coal seams, the coal absorbs the gas. Meanwhile, in a manner similar to enhanced oil recovery, the process also pushes out methane gas, which can be used as a fuel (again, one that puts back some greenhouse gases back in the atmosphere—three steps forward, two steps back).

And then, of course, there’s a natural CO₂ storage apparatus: forests. Trees are incredibly effective at absorbing carbon dioxide and creating oxygen, so planting (or replanting) millions of acres of forest could go a long way toward solving the CO₂ problem—no drilling or high-tech research required. This is not technically sequestration, as you wouldn’t manually inject previously collected carbon dioxide into a tree—but it does have essentially the same net effect.

Carbon sequestration is not a magic bullet—it will help, sure, but as long as we keep pumping more CO₂ into the atmosphere, we’re still making the problem worse. Furthermore, although all the potential terrestrial CO₂ storage spots show some promise, the safety, capacity, and long-term effectiveness of carbon sequestration is ultimately unknown. At best, it will address only a small portion of the atmospheric CO₂ surplus; at worst, we may find that something we thought we buried comes back to haunt us. (If you want to be really sure carbon never escapes again, you could compress it all the way into diamonds. That’s possible, but requires too much energy to be feasible.)

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on December 17, 2004.

Image credit: LeJean Hardin and Jamie Payne – derivative work: Jarl Arntzen [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Museum in a time capsule

On July 4, 1976, bicentennial celebrations took place all over the United States. I was nine years old at the time, and along with my five-year-old sister, I went to a special gathering just a few doors down from our house near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A local funeral parlor, in a highly publicized event, was going to bury a time capsule (instead of a coffin) in a corner of its parking lot. Memorabilia from the community would be kept there until the capsule was unearthed, as I recall, 50 years later. Children were particularly urged to come, in order to sign a replica of the Declaration of Independence that would be included in the capsule. By the time my sister and I had made our way to the front of the crowd, the page was completely full, so someone brought out extra sheets of paper to hold the rest of the signatures. I remember being both excited to have my signature in a time capsule and annoyed that I had to sign a stupid blank piece of paper.

The capsule was filled with nitrogen to preserve its contents, buried, and covered with a small monument that included a plaque explaining what was inside and when it was to be opened. On a couple of occasions since then, I’ve visited that monument, which is now pretty dingy and largely forgotten. And I’ve thought to myself: Will anyone actually remember to dig this thing up in 2026? The people who buried it will be long gone. And who knows what will have happened to that property by then? If I’m alive and I show up for the disinterment, will I have to bring my own pickaxe? And if someone does remember, will we actually learn anything interesting from those 50-year-old artifacts?

Museum for the Future

The idea of burying something to be found by future generations goes way, way back. But the modern notion of a time capsule didn’t appear until at least the 19th century, if not more recently. The first serious attempt to preserve a large collection of information and artifacts for the distant future is also, to date, the most elaborate: the Crypt of Civilization, sealed in 1940 at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia.

The idea for the Crypt came to Oglethorpe University president Thornwell Jacobs in the 1920s, and he solidified it into a plan in 1936. Jacobs realized that the information left to us by ancient civilizations is spotty at best, and he wanted to do a favor for historians and archeologists of the future. So his idea was to collect a vast storehouse of information and objects representing all of human history to that point—including science, technology, entertainment, and every aspect of popular culture—and consolidate it into a multimedia museum, specially preserved for millennia.

While Jacobs was supervising the three-year collection process, his project got a lot of publicity, and similar (though smaller-scale) efforts began to spring up elsewhere. The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company decided to create a torpedo-shaped container of artifacts to be buried during the 1939 World’s Fair (and opened 5,000 years later). They called their container a “time capsule,” and that term was soon adopted for nearly all such projects. All except the Crypt, that is—even though it was, in a way, the prototypical time capsule, its scope was so much larger that the word “capsule” wasn’t appropriate.

Pooling Resources

In fact, the Crypt is a room that was once a swimming pool. Located on the lower level of Oglethorpe University’s Phoebe Hearst Hall, it is a chamber measuring 20 feet long by 10 feet wide by 10 feet high (6 x 3 x 3 m). Because it was originally a pool, the bottoms and sides of the chamber were already waterproof. It rests on bedrock and has a thick layer of stone above it. In other words, the room will survive nearly any catastrophe outside. It underwent extensive renovations to further reinforce and seal it; and the most delicate items inside are hermetically sealed in specially designed containers. The chamber itself can be entered only through a heavy stainless steel door that was welded shut on May 25, 1940.

The Crypt contains many hundreds of items, from the sublime to the mundane. Among the contents are copies of over 800 books of all kinds, stored on both microfilm and metal plates; audio recordings; newsreels; a radio; electric light fixtures; games and toys; a typewriter; plastic samples; and a container of beer—to name just a few. There are microfilm readers and projectors; the archivists also thoughtfully included a wind-powered generator in case electricity is not available when the Crypt is opened. And—my favorite part—the first thing one will see on entering the Crypt is a machine to teach basic English, so that the rest of the materials can be understood even if English is long dead.

If you’re thinking that sounds like the Crypt was destined to be sealed for a long, long time, you’re absolutely right. Most time capsules are intended to be opened in 50 or 100 years. The Crypt of Civilization, however, is not “scheduled” to be opened until 8113. This seemingly arbitrary date was 6,177 years from the time the Crypt was designed in 1936—which was, in turn, 6,177 years from the first date for which we have historical records (4241 BCE, when the Egyptian calendar began). Thus, the Crypt should contain a fairly good record of the first half of human history as of the date it’s opened.

Pass It On

Considering how much the world has changed in the last 6,000 years, it would be foolish to assume that Hearst Hall, Oglethorpe University, or even the city of Atlanta will still be around when the Crypt is supposed to be opened. After so many generations, it would be quite surprising if someone actually knew the location and nature of the Crypt when the time came. As it is, the Crypt was all but forgotten just a few decades after it was sealed. In 1970, a student exploring an off-limits area of Hearst Hall with a flashlight came upon the mysterious sealed door. That student, Paul Hudson, later became a history professor and co-founded the International Time Capsule Society (ITCS) in 1990. The organization’s sole purpose is to track all the time capsules buried around the world and pass that information on to future generations, so that each one can be found and opened at the proper time.

The ITCS estimates there are about 10,000 time capsules buried worldwide, most of which are “lost”—that is, no one knows the capsules’ exact locations. I don’t know whether the bicentennial capsule with my signature in it is on their list; their registry is not available to the general public. Although I can understand that making information like this public might increase the likelihood of theft, it would also improve the odds that the time capsule will be remembered—and that is (or was), after all, the organization’s mission. However, I have some doubts about that mission’s likelihood of success. A note that appeared on their website in 2016 and is still there today says:

Note: Although the ITCS continues to accept time capsule registrations, it currently is not active.

What does “not active” mean for the future? Perhaps a history student centuries from now will stumble upon an old computer from the ITCS and somehow figure out how to extract its list of time capsules! I kid, but surely any effort to collect and maintain this information is better than nothing.

Meanwhile, Back at the Crypt

The people who bury a time capsule—since they usually will not be the ones to open it—must rely on the goodwill of future generations to follow their instructions as to when the capsule should be unearthed. There’s no authority that can ultimately prevent the people of, say, the year 3936 from opening the Crypt of Civilization if they feel like it—or if the instructions for when it should be opened have been lost. If history has shown us anything, it’s that buried treasure (even if the treasure is simply knowledge) has a habit of escaping.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on April 30, 2005.

Image credit: Oglethorpe University Archives. Used by permission.

Setting the world’s problems to music

My cat likes to walk on the dining room table. I have too many work deadlines. My favorite TV show was cancelled. Motorcycles make too much noise driving down my street.

It’s not hard to come up with things to complain about, but who wants to listen to someone else complain? The surprising answer: just about everyone, as long as the complaints are set to music and delivered in four-part harmony by a choral ensemble. Musical groups called complaints choirs have sprung up all over the world, drawing sell-out crowds (and internet fans by the hundreds of thousands).

Let’s Give ‘Em Something to Complain About

The idea was the brainchild of a Finnish couple, performance artists Tellervo Kelleinen and Oliver Kochta Kalleinen. They were discussing the Finnish term Valituskuoro, which literally means “complaints choir” but refers to a situation in which numerous people are complaining about something at the same time. Tellervo and Oliver thought it would be interesting to make an actual choir of complainers. They circulated flyers and posters in Birmingham, England in 2005 and soon got together a small but enthusiastic group of participants. Each one contributed some random complaints, the list was set to music, and the resulting performance was an instant hit (both in Birmingham and around the world, thanks to YouTube).

The couple proceeded to organize similar choirs in numerous other cities, including Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Jerusalem, and Melbourne. In each locale, group participants create their own litany of complaints in their local language and with a unique vocal arrangement. Some complaints choirs are quite theatrical, while others stick to traditional choral performances in black gowns and suits. But the end result is invariably funny.

Grievances A-plenty

What do these musical complainers complain about? Anything and everything, ranging from the trivial to the profound. In fact, it’s the very randomness of the complaints that often makes the performances so funny. You can see a terrific compilation on Vimeo, and loads of individual examples on YouTube. A few examples…

• In Birmingham, the catchy chorus begins, “I want my money back. My job is like a cul-de-sac. And the bus is too infrequent at 6:30.”
• The St. Petersburg choir complains, “Yesterday the waitress was so rude to me.” “Shoe shops never sell size 35.” “My heart is so full but my wallet is empty. And anyway she wouldn’t love a poet like me.”
• In Chicago, the complaints include “I can’t stop thinking about sex,” “airport security took my mouthwash,” and “only tourists like deep-dish pizza.”
• The Jerusalem Complaints Choir sings, “My bags don’t open and there’s passionfruit in everything.” “Bananas are never in the right state of ripeness.” And “football players only date models.”
• In Helsinki, they sing, “Old forests are cut down and turned into toilet paper, and still all the toilets are out of paper”; they also gripe that “our ancestors could have picked a sunnier place to be.” In addition, the Helsinki choir expresses my very favorite complaint: “Ringtones are all irritating,” sung several times in a row to the tune of that hideous old default Nokia ringtone that we all knew and hated for so long.

If You’re Going to Complain, At Least Do It in Tune

The choirs organized so far have ranged in size from fewer than a dozen to nearly 100 members. In some cities the singers are all experienced and the compositions are top-notch. But in most cases, participants aren’t turned away for being tone-deaf as long as they have something to complain about. The Penn State group, for example, seemed to have an interesting concept but was just too painful for me to listen to. And worst of all, the interest in complaints choirs seems to have died down in the last few years. But hey, if I ever decide to start my own complaints choir, that’ll be the perfect thing to complain about.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on January 14, 2008.

Image credit: Studio Kalleinen, via Vimeo

“Smart home” devices are everywhere these days—you can buy internet-connected light bulbs, thermostats, door locks, sensors, and dozens of other products. But these devices aren’t very smart on their own. Apple’s HomeKit platform offers a way to integrate, monitor, control, and automate smart home devices from a wide variety of manufacturers. Using the built-in Home app on a Mac or iOS device (perhaps along with third-party apps), you can connect to your various smart devices, see what they’re up to, control them, and even get them to operate on a schedule or respond to changing conditions in your home automatically.

Even with HomeKit, however, home automation can be a daunting prospect. That’s why TidBITS Managing Editor Josh Centers wrote Take Control of Apple Home Automation. The book walks you carefully through every step of the process, showing you how you can start with a basic system that costs less than $50 and work your way up to as much complexity as you want or need. And you don’t have to be a computer geek to simplify and improve your life with HomeKit-compatible products. Even if you don’t know a wire nut from a macadamia or which end of a screwdriver to stick in a socket (spoiler: neither!), Josh’s thorough advice will enable you to work wonders in your home.

This book, like all Take Control titles, comes as an ebook, and you can download any combination of formats—PDF, EPUB, and/or Kindle’s Mobipocket format—so you can read it on pretty much any computer, smartphone, tablet, or ebook reader. The cover price is $14.99, but as an Interesting Thing of the Day reader, you can buy it this week for 30% off, or just $10.49.

Artificial noses and beyond

While out for a walk in my neighborhood, I caught a whiff of something that instantly made me think of my grandmother’s house. I haven’t experienced that smell—either from its original source or elsewhere—in maybe 25 years, but the memory of being back at my grandmother’s house was immediate and striking. On the other hand, I can’t really remember or recreate that smell in my mind; either it’s there or it isn’t. I have convenient analog and digital methods of recording images and sounds so that I can see and hear them later, but no way to capture the scent of a dish at a restaurant, a favorite vacation spot, or any other smell that moves me in some way.

I don’t normally think of smelling as being something within the province of machines. I understand, of course, that devices like smoke detectors and breathalyzers perform what amounts to mechanical olfaction of sorts, but I was still sort of surprised to learn that increasingly sophisticated artificial noses are being incorporated into robots and other devices. What intrigues me more than anything is how such sensors might work. How does one go about measuring and quantifying something as broad and seemingly subjective as smell?

Name That Smell

All smells result from molecules of various chemicals floating through the air. Not all substances have a smell—only those containing chemicals that are volatile (meaning they evaporate easily). Our nasal cavities contain millions of neural receptors, of about 350 different types—all of which respond to different chemicals. Depending on which chemicals are present and in what quantities, different sets of odorant receptor neurons are activated; the brain decodes each pattern and assigns a meaning to it: “floral,” “putrid,” “Grandma’s house,” or whatever. Therefore, getting a machine to do the same thing involves two challenges: detecting individual chemical components, and figuring out what a specific combination of components in a given proportion represents.

One way to detect chemicals in the air is to use large, expensive laboratory machines such as gas chromatographs and time-of-flight mass spectrometers. These devices can very accurately detect minuscule amounts of volatile chemicals in air samples—but they also detect substances that have nothing to do with smell, so determining just which parts of their output are relevant adds more complexity to the problem. They are also, so far at least, not very portable. But other, more direct—and more compact—methods of artificial smell detection have been developed. Here are just a few of many examples:

• Aromyx’s EssenceChip has a grid containing hundreds of individual receptors that, like those in the human nose, respond to different chemicals. After a chip has been exposed to a scent, it can be read by a special machine. (Unfortunately, these appear to be disposable, single-use chips—not a real-time smelling apparatus.)
• A quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor is a tiny device that can detect a single, arbitrary chemical. This sensor consists of a quartz crystal vibrating at a known frequency. It’s coated with a material that can absorb molecules only of a very specific size and shape. When it does, its mass increases slightly, changing the frequency of the crystal’s vibration. A simple circuit detects the change and signals that the chemical in question is present. Given an array of QCM sensors, each with a coating that responds to a different chemical, you can detect a wide range of smells.
• A variation on this idea developed by IBM in Zürich is the cantilever sensor: a series of flexible, microscopic silicon beams—each coated with a different polymer. When one of the beams absorbs a specific chemical, it bends slightly; the chip to which the beams are attached detects this change. A similar approach is being studied at Caltech.
• An entirely different approach involves using vapor-sensitive dyes called metalloporphyrins that change color when exposed to certain chemicals. By examining the “before” and “after” states of an array of these dyes, a computer can essentially “see” smells.

Decoding output from an array of sensors (of whatever sort) is an interesting challenge, because substances that are very similar chemically sometimes smell much different from each other; conversely, substances that smell nearly the same can be completely different at the molecular level. For this task, researchers often rely on neural networks, software that can be trained to identify patterns and make educated guesses about new combinations based on their similarities to patterns that have already been verified.

So where is all this technology going to be put to use? And what about those robots?

Follow Your Nose

Artificial noses show the most promise in applications where the human nose is insufficiently sensitive or discriminating. For example, sensors could detect when food is spoiled long before a human nose could—an artificial nose may be built into your refrigerator one day. Just as the bacteria that cause spoilage produce distinctive odors, so do some disease-causing bacteria. Devices have been developed that can diagnose numerous illnesses by smelling a patient’s breath.

But it’s one thing to be able to identify an odor in a test tube; it’s another to be able to trace the source of an airborne scent. This is where robots come in: a mobile platform with an artificial nose can continuously sample the air, reorienting itself dynamically to move in the direction where an odor is strongest. This makes robots that can smell ideal for locating gas leaks, explosives, drugs, and other dangerous stuff—since robots can go places where it would be unsafe to send a human or a dog. One rather gruesome use for sniffing robots is locating buried bodies; this is but one of many possible forensic applications. A mechanical bloodhound may be years in the future, but it’s not at all far-fetched.

If You Could Bottle This Smell…

Many years ago a company called DigiScents made headlines with its iSmell device, a desktop computer peripheral that could synthesize thousands of scents. Their idea was that games could be enhanced with smells (presumably lots of smoke and burnt rubber), email from that special someone could be scented with perfume, and so on. When DigiScents went out of business in 2001 before the iSmell became commercially available, no one was particularly surprised—why do we need to smell computer games, anyway? But I think the real problem was that they only had half of the solution ready: the output but no input. I suspect that if someone created a pocket-sized gadget that could record the scent of a bakery, garden, or any other smell you encounter and play it back accurately on command, it would be a huge success. I, for one, would gladly pay for a machine that could make scents of my childhood.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on July 9, 2004.

Image credit: Genia Brodsky and Noam Sobel (The Weizmann Institute) [CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

Reinventing the two-wheeler

When I first learned to drive, I learned on a car with a manual transmission. It never seemed especially difficult because that was what I got used to. In fact, the first time I had to drive an automatic, I remember being very confused. What was I supposed to do with my left foot? Do I not have to shift at all? And if it’s automatic, then what’s with all these different choices on the gearshift lever? I quickly got the idea, of course, but still preferred the increased control and responsiveness I got from making my own decisions about when to shift. It would therefore seem that I should have the same attitude about bicycles, which not only require manual shifting but typically have many more than four or five gears. But manual bicycle transmissions have always given me trouble, and I’ve frequently wished I could have the convenience of an automatic transmission on a multi-speed bike.

Yanking My Chain

For the record, I am not what you’d call an avid cyclist. Indeed, I’m somewhat embarrassed to say I don’t even own a bike right now, because I work at home, I walk most places I need to go, and on the occasions when I have to travel beyond walking distance, I nearly always need to be transporting more people and/or goods than a bike could accommodate. Nevertheless, I like the idea of bike ownership very much—good exercise, good for the environment, and so on.

But even when my bike was my sole form of transportation a number of years ago, I never fully grasped the way bicycle gears worked. That is to say, I understood the mechanics, but actually using them was another story—the logic of how one must manipulate those levers to reach the desired balance between torque and speed always seemed a bit like a black art. It was not a simple linear progression of lower to higher as on a car, but a function of the ratio of the front gear size to the rear gear size, both of which are variable. My usual practice was just to fiddle with the controls until pedaling felt about right, then leave them where they were until I couldn’t stand it any longer.

Another problem with shifting gears on bicycles is that the derailleur—the mechanism that moves the chain between gears of different sizes—is by nature imprecise. Although some designs are better than others, over- or undershooting your desired gear is common, and if you’re pedaling too fast or under too heavy a load, the chain can easily slip off the gears entirely, requiring a greasy manual adjustment. Wouldn’t it be nice if bikes could figure out how to change their own gears as painlessly and accurately as cars with automatic transmissions?

Gearing Up for a Change

Sure enough, automatic bicycle transmissions of various kinds have been in development for nearly 50 years, though they’re still quite rare (and often expensive). Mechanically, the main thing needed for a basic automatic bike transmission is a motor or piston that moves the chain between gears in place of the standard lever-operated cable. This is a relatively straightforward engineering problem, but the slightly trickier thing is working out how and when to tell the gears to shift. That computation requires the use of a tiny, battery-operated computer along with sensors that determine the current gear and the speeds at which wheels, pedals, and sprockets are moving. The computer constantly recalculates the optimal combination of front and rear gears to keep the rider at a consistent pedaling cadence, automatically signaling the gears to shift lower when going uphill or higher when going downhill. Using a controller on the handlebars, riders can, if they want, adjust the gearing to provide a more intense workout or a gentler ride; they can also override the automatic shifting entirely and use it as a power-assisted manual transmission.

The first automatic bicycle transmission was designed by the Browning family, whose main claim to fame had been gun design. For a while, Browning Components, Inc. was an independent company based near Seattle that focused solely on bicycles and bike transmissions. (It is now entirely defunct, as far as I can tell.) Their most interesting innovation was a special gear with a hinged section (somewhat like a pizza slice) that swung in and out to guide the chain from one gear to the next. It kept the chain engaged in sprockets at all times, rather than simply dropping onto the next gear, virtually eliminating the possibility of the chain slipping; it also made it possible to shift smoothly and almost silently regardless of speed or load. You can still find used Browning bikes or transmissions with some effort and luck.

Shifting More Than Gears

Shimano, the largest manufacturer of bicycle components such as brakes and shifters, also got into the automatic transmission business for a while. One of their designs used a seven-speed, internally geared hub; another used a power-assisted derailleur system, but added an automatic, powered suspension to adjust the comfort of the ride to fit current conditions. But Shimano, too, stopped making their automatic bike transmissions, presumably because they were unable to find enough people willing to pay a premium for them.

But a number of manufacturers are still developing and selling automatic bike transmissions of various kinds. For example, ProShift offers automatic transmissions that can be retrofitted onto racing bikes. SRAM, which makes wireless manual electronic shifting systems for conventional bikes and an automatic transmission for electric bikes, also sells the Automatix, a purely mechanical two-speed transmission built into a hub. And NuVinci offers continuously variable automatic transmissions for electric bikes, as well as manually adjustable, continuously variable transmissions for non-electric bikes, such as Priority Bicycles’ Continuum.

Adding an automatic transmission to a bicycle seems—in the abstract at least—like a wonderful step forward in user interface. It replaces something awkward with something invisible, which is the way good technology should be. But as numerous manufacturers have seen, cycling enthusiasts aren’t warming to the idea very quickly. Some are put off by the extra weight; some feel it’s not worth the money just to avoid having to move a lever; and some just think automatic transmissions are for wimps. Having never used one of these bikes myself, I can’t say whether the performance would be improved enough to make me want to ride my bike more often, but at least I would no longer view gear shifting as the annoyance I do now.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on June 26, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on October 5, 2004.

Image credit: Keanu @ no:wp [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Triumph of His Majesty’s Bathtub Navy

Stories of war—whether modern or historical—are not usually of much interest to me. I don’t like to dwell on tragedy, and war is always tragic, for every side, regardless of the motivations or outcome. Occasionally, however, in the midst of tragedy is a story of hope that is worth retelling. I told such a story here back in 2005, back when the Battle of Dunkirk (which has always been well known in Britain and France), was little known in North America. Then Christopher Nolan had to go and make an Oscar-winning movie about it. So the story is much better known now in outside Europe, but no less interesting, unique, or inspiring.

The year was 1940, and World War II was raging. Hitler’s army had overtaken Belgium and advanced into France. Britain sent over 300,000 troops to assist the French army, but in spite of those sizable numbers, the German force was winning, due to their superior armaments, training, and organization. By late May, German troops had the bulk of the allied forces surrounded, trapped in Dunkirk (Dunkerque in French), in the northernmost corner of France across the English Channel from Dover. To the east was occupied Belgium; to the south and west, the advancing German army; to the north, the sea.

Operation Dynamo

Britain had already suffered severe casualties in France, and they knew this battle could not be won. Retreat was the only option, but all escape routes had been blocked. Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay, headquartered in the reinforced tunnels beneath Dover Castle, was put in charge of evacuating the troops. The rescue plan was code-named Operation Dynamo.

Unfortunately, there were several major problems. Time was quickly running out for the cornered British troops. Ramsay believed he had a week at most to rescue the soldiers, who were packed onto the beaches and being shelled mercilessly. An exodus by sea was the only possibility, but German planes had sunk so many ships in Dunkirk harbor that it was nearly impossible to navigate, and U-boats posed a constant threat. Farther to the west, where the beaches were, the water was so shallow that British destroyers and transport ships could not get any closer than about a mile (1.6km). As if that weren’t enough, Britain had far too few vessels available to transport the hundreds of thousands of soldiers trapped on the beach, even under the best conditions.

Ramsay was deliberate and methodical in his preparations. He arranged transportation, food, and medical care for the troops that would soon be arriving in Dover. He sought out every available ship, and established a complex and efficient communications network. Logistics in place, Operation Dynamo was put into motion on May 26. But after the first day, the outlook was grim. Fewer than 8,000 troops had been rescued, and the most optimistic estimate was that a total of 45,000 might escape before Germany overtook the beaches—at the rate the operation was progressing, it would take 40 days to rescue all the remaining troops. Ramsay faced the possibility that the core of the British army would be wiped out. At that time, conventional wisdom held that Britain would inevitably be invaded as soon as France fell, and with so much of its army gone, Britain’s defenses would be in ruins.

The Bathtub Navy Saves the Day

In desperation, Ramsay put out a public call for help: everyone with a boat—any kind of boat—was asked to help rescue the troops. The response was instantaneous and overwhelming. A makeshift flotilla of 850 “Little Ships”—yachts, lifeboats, fishing boats, and anything else that could float—rushed to the scene. Most of the boats were manned by British sailors, but in many cases the civilian owners themselves risked gunfire and mines to make the 22-mile (35km) crossing. When possible, the small craft were used just to ferry troops to the larger vessels offshore, but thousands of troops used them for transport all the way back to England. By the morning of May 29, officials estimated that 2,000 troops per hour were being evacuated. Nine days after Operation Dynamo began, a total of 338,226 people—including about 95,000 French troops—had been rescued.

Churchill called it a “miracle of deliverance,” and the “Dunkirk spirit” quickly became the stuff of legend. In retrospect, the eventual allied victory might well have been thwarted had Britain lost hundreds of thousands of troops at Dunkirk. Nevertheless, the massive rescue could hardly be considered a victory. There was more to the story than the heartwarming tale of heroism.

The Other Side of the Story

For one thing, the escape was not as clean as the media made it sound. While swarms of small boats were shuttling soldiers off the beach, more than four hundred Luftwaffe fighters attacked, dropping bombs and inflicting heavy casualties. Soldiers returning to England described the beaches as littered with dead bodies. In all, tens of thousands of people lost their lives at Dunkirk.

In addition, the highly publicized rescue obscured the fact that thousands of British troops were still trapped elsewhere in France. Two weeks later, the British ship Lancastria was returning from a rescue mission when it was sunk off the coast of Brittany. Half of the 6,000 passengers lost their lives, but nothing was mentioned in the press about the incident for weeks, lest it dampen the spirits that had been uplifted by the Dunkirk miracle.

Meanwhile, France felt deeply betrayed. The British troops had ostensibly come to their rescue, but then fled the German army. Without any hope left from across the Channel, France surrendered to Hitler within three weeks. Notwithstanding the many French soldiers rescued at Dunkirk, many in France resented what they regarded as British cowardice. It wasn’t until 1944 that Britain redeemed itself, when British and American forces collaborated in the D-Day operation, leading to France’s liberation.

Dunkirk Redux

In June of 2000, on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Dunkirk, Britain commemorated the event with a massive celebration. A large number of small boats reenacted the Channel crossing to Dunkirk. Although there weren’t nearly as many boats as there had been in 1940, some of the original craft had been restored specifically so that they could make the journey again. While British television crews lined the Dunkirk shore to relay the landings to exuberant crowds back home, the French media—as might be expected—gave little coverage to the event.

About 800 British and French veterans who had been rescued at Dunkirk attended a massive parade past the town hall. Prince Charles gave a speech at the Dunkirk Memorial in both English and French, praising the courage of all those who had helped in the miraculous rescue. The remaining members of the Dunkirk veterans’ associations—many in their 80s and 90s—chose that occasion to officially disband their organizations.

Politics and media spin aside, the story of the Battle of Dunkirk inspires me for one simple reason: it shows ordinary people lifting the veil of war—the impersonal propaganda of numbers—and seeing each other as human beings. Fisherman didn’t row across the English channel to transport “troops”; they risked their lives to rescue people with names and faces. That the public could, however briefly, set aside their habit of detached reliance on the machinery of government and take personal responsibility for other lives—especially in a time of war—is to me an immensely hopeful sign. It’s a step toward understanding that the soldiers wearing different uniforms are human beings too.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on April 16, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on January 21, 2005.

Image credit: Frank Capra (film) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Peru’s mysterious geoglyphs

There are certain sites in the world that inspire intense curiosity about their origins, like the Stonehenge formation or the statues on Easter Island. These ancient human-made structures cause us to wonder what was in the minds of those who created them, what purpose did they serve? Another intriguing example of this type of site is the Nazca Lines of Peru, an extensive set of patterns drawn into the Nazca Desert over 1,500 years ago.

Making a Good Impression

The Nazca Lines are a series of negative geoglyphs—patterns drawn on the ground by adding (positive) or removing (negative) stones or soil. Other examples of geoglyphs include labyrinths, burial mounds known as intaglios, and so-called “hill figures”—shapes cut into hillsides to reveal the chalk beneath, most often found in England (such as the Uffington White Horse).

The term “Nazca Lines” refers collectively to hundreds of large designs drawn on the surface of the Nazca Desert. They’re thought to have been created between 200 BCE and 600 CE by the Nazca, a culture known for its distinctive pottery and intricate textiles. This desert, an arid plateau located between the Andes and the coast of Peru, has a very particular topography and climate that allowed for both the construction and the preservation of the figures.

Instead of a sandy surface, the Nazca Desert floor is covered in a layer of pebbles made red through oxidation. Various designs, ranging from straight lines and geometric forms to intricate figures of animals, insects, and humans, were created by removing these pebbles, exposing the lighter-color soil beneath. The lack of wind and rain in the area meant that these figures were not disturbed since their creation thousands of years ago until they were rediscovered in the modern era.

Eyes in the Sky

A curious trait of the Nazca Lines is that they are difficult to identify from the ground; given their tremendous scale, they are much more recognizable from above. Thus it was not until the 1920s, when airplanes began flying over the area, that they were seen in their full aspect. This peculiarity led scientists and amateurs alike to ponder both the how and the why of these formations: How did the Nazca people create these large-scale designs without seeing them from above, and why would they have created them this way in the first place?

An early attempt to answer these questions came from Paul Kosok, an American archeologist, and his one-time assistant, Maria Reiche. Kosok, and Reiche after him, believed that the lines were a type of astronomical calendar, showing the alignment of different planets and stars as they rose above the horizon.

Reiche, who took over the study and mapping of the lines after Kosok left the project in 1948, eventually became its premiere advocate and guardian. Born in Germany and educated in mathematics, geography, and languages, Maria Reiche first went to Peru in 1932 to work for the German consul in Cuzco as a nanny and teacher for his children. She began working with Kosok in 1940, and spent the rest of her life preserving and studying the lines, until her death in 1998.

Although the astronomical calendar theory has raised doubts—including the observation that the multitude of lines and their varying orientations could be found to correspond with almost any trajectory and the fact that astronomical alignments have changed with time—Reiche made a huge contribution to the study of the lines. Her advocacy brought heightened attention to their existence, and resulted in their designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.

Alien Flight Forms

Reiche believed that the Nazca had created the lines using grids, making smaller versions of the drawings and then transposing them onto a larger design. She even found markings she believed showed this initial process near some of the figures. Although the use of this method cannot be confirmed, there is evidence that the Nazca used some form of surveying technique in their production of the designs. Wooden pegs, dated to the time of the Nazca, have been found near the ends of long lines, implying they were used as markers of some kind.

The Nazca were very able weavers, and this ability could have translated into general pattern-making facility as well. Also, there is a similarity between figures they used on their pottery and some of the geoglyph forms. This seems to indicate their aptitude and predisposition to be the creators of the figures.

Nevertheless, some have publicly doubted the Nazca’s ability to create such works, given their earthbound perspective. Chief among these doubters is the Swiss author and UFO theorist, Erich von Däniken (of Mystery Park fame), who claimed in his 1968 book, Chariots of the Gods, that the Nazca Lines were in fact landing strips for alien spacecraft.

Another attempt to explain how the Nazca could have created the lines, when they are only fully visible from the air, was made by Jim Woodman in the late 1970s. He believed that the Nazca could have constructed basic hot air balloons, using materials available to them, in order to survey their designs from above. To prove this point, Woodman and balloonist Julian Nott set out to create a prototype of such a balloon and to attempt flight. They created a balloon out of cotton fabric, inflated it using only the heat from a wood fire, and attached a reed basket to it as their gondola. They did manage to get airborne, but this success does not prove that the Nazca did so too.

In response to this kind of speculation, Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky set out to reproduce one of the Nazca figures (a 440-foot-long [about 130m] condor) without recourse to aerial observation. With the help of friends and family, and using a method of measuring points on a smaller version of the design to corresponding points on the larger design, in a matter of days he succeeded in producing a close likeness of the Nazca condor, sketched out in white lime on a Kentucky field.

Walk the Lines

While most scholars now believe the lines were created by the Nazca, most likely without aid from above, the question of their purpose remains unanswered. What was the motivation for this huge undertaking?

Given their size and their complete visibility from the air, the lines may have served some religious purpose, made for the benefit of celestial beings. The recent discovery of the ancient town of Cahuachi, located near the lines, lends credence to this theory. Archeologists studying the site believe that the town was a pilgrimage center to which people would come before visiting the lines.

Although there is no record of how the lines might have served in religious ritual, some now believe that ancient pilgrims might have walked along the lines as a show of devotion to a particular sacred entity, much as labyrinths were used in medieval cathedrals in Europe, and to a certain extent today.

Some people believe that the lines correlate with underground water sources, a key piece of knowledge in such an arid environment; the religious ritual might even have pertained to ensuring adequate water supplies in this drought-prone area.

Keep Off the Beaten Track

Whatever their purpose, for the first time in their long history, the Nazca Lines are now threatened with serious defacement. Although prohibited, there has been extensive foot and vehicular traffic over the lines in recent years, particularly by looters stealing artifacts from the ancient tombs in the area. Also contributing to the problem is increased tourist activity and the nearby Pan-American Highway.

After the environmentalist group Greenpeace staged a protest near one of the formations in 2014, damaging it in the process, Peru received a grant from the United States to better study and preserve the Nazca lines. As part of that initiative, new drone and mapping technology revealed the presence of 50 previously unknown geoglyphs, thought to be the work of an earlier civilization than the one which created the already-known formations.

This is an encouraging development, and brings hope that the situation can be turned around and the Nazca lines can be protected. It would be truly unfortunate for these fascinating structures to be lost after resisting destruction for so many centuries.

After all, they are not only a part of the rich cultural heritage of the area—which also includes the remains of the great Inca empire—but they offer a unique chance to put oneself into the minds of those who lived so long ago. This is what makes the Nazca Lines so fascinating for modern folk: their inscrutable mystery, which has lasted over the course of centuries.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on July 5, 2006.

Image credit: Paul Williams [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The imaginary Polynesian culture

One day I walked into one of my favorite mom-and-pop variety shops and saw a big display of everything Tiki—a Tiki bar, Tiki glasses, Tiki masks, Tiki statues, Tiki books. My initial reaction was, “Ah, another cheesy American fad is reborn,” followed quickly by, “Cool! I need to own this stuff.” What can I say? I’m a sucker for faux culture, especially exotic faux culture—and particularly when it involves interesting drinks. But I soon realized that I had only ever heard the word “Tiki” used as an adjective. I didn’t know what a Tiki actually was. I could identify Tiki-themed merchandise easily enough, but I wasn’t quite clear what culture it was supposed to represent. So I decided to do some research.

My first step, of course, was to watch the film Pirates of the Caribbean. Other than being set in the wrong ocean, it was a good way to get those Tiki juices flowing. After all, it does involve islands and rum. But it made me hark back to the attraction of the same name that I’ve visited at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland. This, in turn, reminded me of yet another notorious Disney attraction which is also populated by those ubiquitous Audio-Animatronic characters—namely, the Enchanted Tiki Room. Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. So my next stop was the closest approximation of the Enchanted Tiki Room I could find in San Francisco, where I was living at the time: a restaurant called the Tonga Room. And what luck: just in time for happy hour and an all-you-can-eat buffet. At last I was getting somewhere.

The Authentic Fake-Polynesian Experience

The Tonga Room, like any good Tiki bar, is dark and funky, with a nautical feel, fake palm trees, and lots of large carved wooden statues. Unlike most Tiki bars, however, this one has a pool in the middle, with a floating raft that functions as a stage for the band. And every 20 minutes or so, visitors are treated to an authentic artificial Pacific thundershower. Morgen and I sat down, ordered scary-sounding tropical drinks, and loaded up our plates with vaguely Pacific-looking treats—basically a dim sum selection and a number of dishes involving pineapple. There could be no doubt that we were at last having a genuine Tiki experience. But the question still nagged at me…what does Tiki actually mean?

As I learned after some research on the web, a Tiki is a carved statue representing a Polynesian god. OK, fair enough. But it turns out that “Polynesian” is a fairly broad and ambiguous term, as Polynesia covers a vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean—from Easter Island to Hawaii to New Zealand—and the cultures and languages represented are numerous and heterogenous. In some part of Polynesia, apparently, islanders once made and worshipped statues referred to as Tikis. So what does that have to do with a wacky American fad?

In the 1930s, bars and restaurants in southern California began to adopt South Pacific themes, as Americans were just starting to discover Polynesian foods and cultures. A man named Ernest Gantt, who later changed his name to Donn Beach, was the leading figure in this movement. In an effort to lend some authenticity to the bars, owners adorned them with artifacts from various Pacific islands, and Tiki statues soon became regular fixtures. Put a Tiki in a bar and, ipso facto, you’ve got a Tiki bar. And what would a theme bar be without special drinks? So bar owners invented strong, fruity drinks with exotic names like “Mai Tai”—often served in Tiki-shaped glasses—even though the drinks themselves had nothing to do with Polynesia. Neither, for the most part, did the food or music that became part of Tiki culture; like the décor, they were composed of bits and pieces from lots of different places, along with a healthy dose of imagination. Ironically, the very effort to make Pacific-themed bars more “authentic” eventually led to the creation of a pseudoculture that didn’t resemble anything in the real world. But that didn’t stop it from taking on a life of its own.

Pros and Kon-Tiki

Tiki culture soon got another boost. According to Polynesian folklore, the earliest inhabitants of the Polynesian islands had come from South America, led by a mythical figure named Kon-Tiki. But it was popularly believed that such a long voyage would have been impossible using the technology available when the first settlers would have arrived. In 1947, a biologist named Thor Heyerdahl set out to prove the feasibility of such a trip. Along with five assistants, he built a balsa log raft (which he also named Kon-Tiki) and drifted 4,300 nautical miles from Callao in Peru to the Raroia atoll in Polynesia. The trip took three months and was quite treacherous, but it proved that it could be done. Heyerdahl’s book about his adventure quickly became a best-seller, reinforcing Tiki mania.

In most parts of the United States, Tiki bars died out before disco. But in keeping with the modern “retro is good” meme, Tiki is experiencing a renaissance, thanks in large part to the efforts of artist Bosko Hrnjak, who lives in Escondido, California—not far from my current home in San Diego—and creates much of the Tiki paraphernalia you’ll see at Tiki bars. I couldn’t be happier. I missed the Tiki fad the first time around, and of all the imaginary cultures I’ve experienced, Tiki is among my favorites.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on August 24, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on July 14, 2004.

OK, raise your hand if you love being asked to create a new password, or to enter one you’ve previously created. Nobody? That’s what I thought. We’re all asked for passwords constantly, and that leads a lot of people to do highly unsafe things like using the same password everywhere, or using simple, easy-to-guess passwords like password1. Password manager apps can address part of this problem, but how do you choose one, and what should you do in situations where you can’t use a password manager? For that matter, why do we have the whole password problem in the first place, and are there any other ways to make our lives simpler without sacrificing security?

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