Mum - This Border Collie is Ending Sentences With a Preposition!

I had one more thought on the whole eyeball-shrinking thing. I calculated (well some clever person on The Internet did) yesterday that the focal length of a lens shrinks in exact proportion to the radii of focus of the eye. I didn't bother with the variability of the refractive index of the lens. The RI of a substance describes how light is affected when it travels through that media- and is the relation between the speed of light in a vacuum - c - and the speed of light in the substance - v. So RI = c/v.

Now, for our diminutive heroes, the refractive index of their tiny lenses will depend on how they were shrunk. Discussion of these methods is obviously beyond my intelligence but I can see that, as the light is not shrunk and the matter in the lens is, there is distinct possibility that light travelling through a shrunken lens will have a speed lower than that of light in a full-sized lens. And this does indeed change the focal length not in proportion to the radii of curvature because it changes the refractive index. 

It could be even worse. Any mechanism we might develop to shrink things will probably involve some technique rooted in the mysterious and badly-behaved realms of Quantum Theory and other, as-yet-undiscovered physical theories - possibly manipulating mass after harnessing the power of The Higgs Boson - humour me - I know this is all tosh - like questioning the grammar of a talking dog. This might result in complete changes to the properties of the matter affected - transparency may be changed to opacity and we would not be able to see at all. Though if matter was affected to that extent I suspect that shrunken life might not be viable at all. What about the viscosity of the liquid in blood. Would the heart be unable to provide enough pressure to keep the blood flowing?

Enough of this rubbish. It's the weekend. Let's dance.

James Burke Would be Proud

An eyeball yesterday. Are you bothered that it's looking to the right? I am.

Well that was a lot of connections. This article deals with a lot of science facts (and some fictions) but tangentially it refers to the author's own book -  Infinity Drake: The Sons of Scarlatti - which involves the shrinking of humans to small size. Ever since seeing Fantastic Voyage I have been wondering if there was a serious flaw in the premise or small people, in that the focal length of the human lens would not be reduced in proportion and would require a great deal of adjustment to let the puny humans actually see clearly. I am afraid that the bit of physics required to check this was retained only for the length of time it took me to regurgitate it for the exam and the question raised by the film was strangely not on the paper.

Well just as The Internet solved my question about the line from The New Millionaires - "Just like Arbogast on the top two stairs." (look it up) - I have also clarified this optical issue. In fact I didn't even need to do any longhand calculations. This website does it all for me - a quick googling for the radii of curvature for the human lens - heck it's so easy - it's in The Abstract for goodness sake - and hey presto it is clear that the focal length shrinks in exact proportion to the radii of curvature. So an eye ten times smaller than normal would have a focal length a tenth of the full sized organ and Raquel Welch wouldn't need bottle-bottom glasses.

I suspect that somewhere an optician, astronomer or slightly precocious toddler will be saying that this is obvious. It probably is but at least it's now proved. I say proved. I suppose for absolute proof I should derive the focal length formula from some empirical data but hey - I only have lunchtime.

Next one to think about is whether the view of a galaxy which appears tilted from Earth, is distorted because the light from the far side takes many thousands more years to reach us than the light from the near side. I've probably mentioned it before but does the continuum of variance in how long the light takes to reach us from  across the whole disk cancel out any strange distortion or is there a measurable increase or decrease in the apparent density of stars? I suppose that this one will again be obvious when I eventually find the formula.

On and on.

Philosophy for Dummies

Wow! It actually exists - Philosophy for Dummies.

Alain de Botton's latest book - The News: A User's Manual - got a right Hislop-style slating in Private Eye and that review has indeed put me off reading it - I already have Religion for Atheists to get through anyway. My reading has suffered through a) having a shiny, newish tablet and b) not switching the Internet off during what should be reading time. However, one thing which has come out of that review is the new website from the shiny-pated, big, Swiss Cheese called The Philosopher's Mail which both pays homage and takes the mickey out of the Daily Mail right down to its horrible, click-baited side-bar which I think goes down beyond The Mohorovicic Discontinuity. Check it out and let its randomness suck you in. I thought at first that it was designed to propagate good news but it's obvious that it is aimed at making its readers think about the news differently. Doh! I of course mean philosophically dude!

There is one thing it's not duplicated from The Daily Mail - there are no comments - and having seen some of the below-the-line rantings and ramblings that populate that paper's interaction with its users - sorry - readers, this decision is of course, a good thing. However rational you may think your thoughts when someone is wrong on The Internet, bear in mind that whatever you say in the comments section will make someone think you are a wibbling, raving lunatic. I'm not sure why I'm on Twitter to be honest.

Oche-a-vay.

Revolutions, Counter and Otherwise

Of course he was just a poet,
Not armed for conventional putsch,
Or break with falsified traditions,
A man who cared for other men,

Empty handed in the wilderness
Of power, dressed as their belief
States, with prayer cloths, with altars,
Shadowed by the painted symbols

And shrouds of Propaganda,
That drag a good man to his end,
For nothing more than blank verse,
Or for loving the whole earth.