With all the ups and downs in my private life, Quincy was one of the anchors in my life. The last few years he usually slept in the bed, usually curled up between my arm. He’d come to sit on my lap while I was practising, and every now and then he’d bring a toy leather mouse as a gift for us, from him, the mighty hunter. He had a special kind of meouw that was reserved for bringing us the mouse. He was always trying to take care either of other cats, or us, and he knew when someone was feeling down, so he would come and keep company.

He had great vampire teeth:

He was very photogenic, though not often a willing victim:

Although he really *was* photogenic:

And had so much belly fluff! We called it flokati.

Shortly after getting Quincy we got Kira to keep him company:

When we lost Kira to some mystery heart attack, and got Maggie, they too got along well:

The mighty hunter had had some teeth issues in the last couple of years and at some point almost all of his teeth had to be pulled because of gingivitis. Only the vampire teeth remained. In summer 2010 he developed what we thought was an infection but turned out to be squamous mouth carcinoma, a very aggressive form of cancer. He underwent surgery and for a while it looked as if had worked and all the cancerous cells had been removed. Unfortunately, in September the cancer came back, more aggressive than before, giving him trouble breathing and also affecting his eye. We had to make one of the hardest decisions ever and so the vet come to our flat and put him to sleep.

Fluffy, beautiful, social, shy, loyal, flokati vampire cat – we miss you.

On that note (hah!) I have now been taking and thoroughly enjoying piano lessons for a whole year, with no intention to stop anytime soon … or indeed ever.

Oh, and I did a talk at the Nottingham Skeptics in the Pub. I enjoyed that a lot even though we started with an hour delay because the room the presentation was supposed to be in was double-booked with a pole dancing class and much hilarity ensued. In the end the audience gathered around the pool billiard table and the fire place, and the slides were projected between the radiator and the ventilator. Fun times! *grins*

But apart from that my days currently consist mainly of writing and more writing. And worrying about finding a job. Feeling pressured to write up faster to find a job, and then feeling pressured to write slower so I don’t finish and lose funding before I have found a job. It’s all a matter of finding and maintaining the equilibrium … and if anyone has figured out to do so, please let me know urgently.

On the bright side, my sleeping patterns have definitely improved, which is a welcome relief. Denial and sticking your fingers in your ears and going “lalala” are such a much-maligned and under-appreciated strategy, which is unfair, because it seems to be working well for me. *whistles*

What’s up next? Next week I’ll be in Edinburgh from Tuesday to Sunday, attending to a number of events on the Fringe Festival, seeing the Military Tattoo (go on, mock me, I know you want to), and give a talk myself as part of the Fringe of Reason event series. I may or may not have a look at what K1 Yarn has to offer — okay, who am I kidding, I plan to visit them and drool all over their yarn.

When I return it will be time to … *gasps* … notify the uni of my “intent to submit”, which is a fancy way of saying I have to tell them I’m serious about this, and it means they’ll expect thesis submission from three months on.
*blinks*
Denial. Coffee. Denial. Ear plugs. Coffee.
Right, where was I? Yarn … yarn is good. There cannot be such a thing as too much yarn.

Daniela,
over and out

On second thought, that may explain my reluctance to Write. Even. More.
Yes, that means I’m currently writing up. *twitch* I’m officially in the writing up phase (since the beginning of April), I conducted all studies and now there’s only writing left – finishing literature review, finishing discussion, tying up all loose ends, and in the process somehow magically creating an intelligent, coherent structure that reads as if I knew what I was doing all along. Nothing easier than that.

To keep myself sane, I continue to knit and play the piano. And I drink copious amounts of coffee. *twitch* In case anyone was wondering – that strategy isn’t really working out right now. However, in the true spirit of my intention, I continue to pursue the same strategy, fully expecting to see a different result anytime soon. For now, I can proudly say that I am apparently capable of knitting a perfectly looking, well fitting sock, improvising (for myself) on the piano without dying of embarrassment while doing so and beautifully formatting a half (okay, three quarters)-written thesis in TeX — but sticking to a self-imposed deadline, getting shortlisted for a Research Associate position, finishing the literature review, or even getting to sleep at a decent hour, or for a longer uninterrupted period are skills that currently elude me.

The last point may be directly related to previously mentioned enormous amounts of coffee, but only because the stress of it all keeps me awake, hence I don’t get enough sleep, hence I am tired throughout the day and need to drink coffee to stay awake. Makes perfect sense to me. Also, coffee is my friend and saviour. No, I won’t give it up. It is mine and you can’t have it. Now gimme back my mug … yes, and the other one too.

Over and out, but not defeated,
Daniela

1. Stage: Pride
If I’m starting a new piece it seems to mean that my piano teacher thinks I am making enough progress with the pieces I am currently working on to start on another one. Unless I’ve chosen a new piece to learn all by myself in which case instead of Pride the first stage can also take the form of Smugness: look at me, I’m a dedicated learner. I learn things on my own. Yeah, that’s how I roll.

2. Stage: Anticipation
New music! How will it sound? How long will it take me? There are new things to discover, new shapes and new sounds, new combinations, new melodies – the possibilities are endless!

3. Stage: Discovery
The possibilities are endless. However, the possible matches from notes on paper to keys on the keyboard are finite, as are the number of my fingers. Two or more evenings are spent deciphering the notes, repeatedly. You would think that once you know which note to play, you know which note to play, right? Wrong. Turns out that my brain forgets the note-to-key match faster than a politician forgets his promises right after he’s been elected. Still, it’s fun because this is all about trying to understand the piece and figuring out what the best fingering would be for the individual passages.

4. Stage: Bargaining
After the stage of Discovery, I will have a very rough, very theoretical notion of how the piece is supposed to be played. I will also have a very clear idea of the extent I will be able to play it. Thus I enter the stage of bargaining: What tempo is this piece in – allegretto? *faints* No way. I’m sure it will sound just as well in … Largo. Largo is good. We likes us Largo. And I can’t even begin to think about minor details such as, erm, dynamics, pedalling … phrasing. You know, only the stuff that helps express the piece’s individuality, its meaning and spirit. It will have to wait until my fingers have conquered Mount Improbable and are capable of making a smooth transition from C# to D#. Till then I am pleading with the notes that, for example, a joyful, exuberant melody can be played equally well at a slow tempo with no concernable phrases or indeed any emphasis at all.

5. Stage: Fear and Humility
It slowly sinks in just how many elements I need to master to make this sound beautifully. Deciphering the notes is a laughably small part of it. Combining the notes of the right and left hand together, at the right time is a whole other part. And reading the notes fast enough so it sounds like continuous music instead of a slow… laboured… sequence of fingering exercises. And if that’s not enough, the pedal has to be coordinated too. While observing the phrase marks. And the dynamics. And thermodynamics. (Okay, I made that one up.)

6. Stage: Denial
It’s the only way. I continue to practice. I cannot face the enormity of what this piece demands of me. (This, obviously, is relative. We’re talking “Home on the Range”, not Beethoven’s piano sonatas.) Bit by beat, I mean, bar by bar. However, denial can only be maintained for so long. Once the fragile walls of self-defence break start crumbling, the crushing despair of Still.Not.Being.Able.To.Play.The.Damn.Thing. can only lead to one possible outcome:

7. Acceptance
More practice. Sensible, me? Oblivious to common sense, more like it. There is no way out. I will not give up. I will most certainly not take a break, take a deep breath, back down, or do any of the other things the more feeble minded less stubborn more sensible among us would do.

8. Cautious Relief
Eventually, a melody or a song emerges. Or rather, is forcefully pushed and dragged and shoved and coerced into existence. Feeling scarred, battered and bruised and ever so slightly victorious I will now proceed to play the piece ad nauseam just BECAUSE I CAN. Of course, once I mastered (in a relative sense) a piece of music, a new piece will appear on the horizon, ie. the page in front of me. Luckily learning a new piece is a bit like giving birth (or so I have been told) and the rush of endorphines of being able to finally play this piece in a not entirely atrocious nice way immediately make you forget the pain and suffering and fear and insanity … and look forward to learning the next piece. Fun and adventure awaits!

Note: In order to make it through all of the eight stages without significant loss of sanity, confidence, self-esteem or will to live, a good enabler teacher is essential. Without lessons I would be perpetually stuck between stage 4 (Bargaining) and 5 (Fear). I’m privileged for having found the perfect piano teacher who even in my most atrocious performances always finds something to praise (I don’t know how he does it!). He always manages to pick up and then rebuild the shattered remains of my confidence for which I will be eternally grateful.

And now to something completely different. I may have mentioned before that I am learning to play the piano, and that I am rather enjoying the whole process. That may have been an understatement. I am officially obsessed and madly in love with music in general and the piano in particular. I am spending an obscene amount of time practising each day (an hour and a half by now), and when I’m not practising I’m listening to classical music wherever I can, learning music theory, and generally just obsessing over classical (piano) music. If I can’t listen to music or can’t practice I feel like something is almost painfully absent. Apparently there was a roughly piano-shaped hole in my life I hadn’t noticed up until now … and I am as much surprised by this as anyone else. Or maybe it was just a vaguely music-shaped hole and I was lucky enough to find the right instrument?

Whatever the reason, it’s quite an overwhelming experience – I practice for hours, and sometimes I will go back to the piano after having had a practice session earlier that day. I learn musical theory for fun even though I won’t be needing (i.e., being able to use for playing) some of that knowledge for quite a while. I even try to practice on an acoustic piano every now and then so I get used to the different feel of acoustic and digital pianos, though Sven is strangely reluctant to let me buy a second (acoustic) piano for practice, pffft.

Is the aforementioned obscene amount of practice somehow related to the also-aforementioned lack of work for my PhD? Quite possibly. The perceptive reader might be tempted to point out that I could cut down on piano time and work more on my PhD, at which point I would invite the perceptive reader to try and keep my from my piano practice, if they’re feeling brave. Or suicidal. And on that note – back to uni work. Need to work fast, so I have more time for practice later…

Aaaaanyway, I am certainly not procrastinating by writing yet another blog entry. Oh no! I am, um, dutifully following my obligations as a *cough* regular blog writer *cough* to keep you, my dear readers – yes, all four of you! – uptodate. Or up to quarter, as it were.

Christmas is only a week away, and that means in another two weeks we’ll have reached the year 2010. This seems to be a good time for me to gather my thoughts, take a deep breath and ask the really important questions, such as “When the heck did this happen, what happened to the last year, and do they really expect me to finish my PhD in half a year from now?!”

Well, as far as I can see last year happened mostly during the last 350 odd days, so that’s that question out of the way. What happened to last year was *takes a deep breath*…  going on vacation in the States to see New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Dragon*Con;  TAMLondon; presenting a poster at a conference in Edinburgh; conducting three studies for my PhD; discovering my obsession for learning and playing the piano; holding a talk at the Leicester Skeptics in the Pub; reconnecting with a dear old friend only to be disconnected again after just a handful of email exchanges; walking 17 miles in one day at the Samaritans Annual Conference; losing a stone in weight; knitting an estimated half a dozen of scarves, none of which I kept; spending way too much time on Ravelry; holding two lectures on research methods; attending a teaching course; and spending an estimated month’s salary on yarn;.
Not bad for a year’s work, eh?

Now, for next year a few smaller tasks have lined themselves up already. One of those minor, inconsequential, err, tasks is the completion of my PhD. Ahem. Excuse me while I stick my fingers in my ears and go “Lalalala” …

Where was I? Finishing, right. The experimental side of it is nearly finished at this point – I will test about 20 more students at the beginning of next term because students couldn’t be bothered to turn up, causing a minor nervous breakdown on my side I didn’t manage to get quite as many participants this side of the year as I was planning to. Barring any nasty comments in the viva leading to a request for major amendments, this recent study then was the last study for my PhD. The studies themselves are mostly written up, though some parts of the results and discussion need to be written in a more thorough, structured and precised way revised. Also I still need to write revise my introduction and literature overview, write the overall discussion and then take care that everything looks like I knew what I was doing all along lines up nicely and forms a coherent structure.

Apart from that my plans for next year currently include two scheduled talks for the Edinburgh and Liverpool Skeptics in the Pub; hopefully losing another stone or two?; increasing the knitting output; continue feeding the obsession playing and learning the piano; attending TAM Las Vegas; and trying to spend more less money on yarn.

However, for probably decades I had always *wanted* to learn the piano. Embarassingly enough, this was mostly based on wanting to be able to play one particular song – for those who are interested, “Neverland” by Suzanne Ciani – and … err, nothing else, really. This was the full extent of my motivation. I did say, it was kinda embarassing… When a friend – *waves to Iris* – started talking about learning to play the violin this decade-old dream of thought of mine popped up again, followed by the thought, “oh, what the heck, why not give it a try” and I went to look for piano teachers in Leicester and had my first lesson at the start of August.

To say it’s been a revelation would be an understatement. After the first lesson I was excited, after the second lesson I was thoroughly enjoying myself, and after the third I was completely hooked. Whatever I was expecting when I started taking lessons, I certainly did not expect to be completely blown away like this by the sheer enjoyment of learning and playing the piano. In the first three or four weeks I tried to practice half an hour a day, but for the past couple of months I’ve consistently practiced a good hour a day. Okay, so maybe I am developing an obsession … never mind the hours and hours – alright, make that days – I’ve spent on listening to classical music and catching up with what I’ve missed out so far.

A good part of the credit for enjoying this so much goes to my piano teacher, who is very nice, extremely patient, and terrifyingly knowledgeable. He’s making a point of mistakes being a natural part of the learning process, which admittedly is a very alien concept to me. *grins sheepishly* I really like that I don’t only learn about the technicalities of sightreading and playing, but also how to enjoy and appreciate music. On a side note, I’m fascinated by the fact that I don’t mind much talking and teaching in front of 12 or even 120 students, but playing a piece I practiced at home during the lesson reduces me to a nervous wreck. Go figure!

Or, in English: since I started cutting down on sugar I have lost a stone in weight. Without dieting. Woohoo!

I have quoted some of the most disturbing statements below. I’m shocked and dismayed to find that someone that horribly uneducated in the application of critical thinking and scientific methods can make it to a position this important. But read for yourself. You have been warned.

Before turning to research, I want to focus on ethnic treatments, which are used by many people in this country. I am thinking of Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. I want to look at how they are part of those cultures and at how those cultures look at the sky as part of their medical disciplines. Chinese medicine is closely aligned to feng shui, which is popular in this country and has a sub-discipline called “right directions”, and it relies on Chinese astronomy and astrology. I was on the last parliamentary delegation to Hong Kong before we gave it back to the Chinese, where I met Chris Patton‘s Chinese astronomer and astrologer—it was important to the Chinese that he should have one. Ayurvedic medicine also has a long tradition of looking at astronomical and astrological factors, and Lahiri is the official astrological system of the Indian Government.

And we ask ourselves: So what ? Having a long tradition doesn’t mean it’s right or good. I thought we had that covered already. Note the wording “astronomical and astrological factors” which I take to be a way of getting round the problem of Mr Tredinnick not being able to tell the difference.

I am arguing for more research. I have been criticised for raising the subject, but the criticism is generally based on a misunderstanding. It is based on the idea that I am talking about the stuff that we see in the newspapers about star sign astrology, but I am not. I am talking about a long-standing discipline—an art and a science—that has been with us since ancient Egyptian, Roman, Babylonian and Assyrian times. It is part of the Chinese, Muslim and Hindu cultures. Criticism is deeply offensive to those cultures, and I have a Muslim college in my constituency.

The same argument. It’s been used for a long time, hence we should keep using it. It’s part of other people’s culture and haven forbid, we shall not try to offend other cultures by questioninig their superst… their beliefs. At all.

The opposition is based on what I call the SIP formula—superstition, ignorance and prejudice. It tends to be based on superstition, with scientists reacting emotionally, which is always a great irony. They are also ignorant, because they never study the subject and just say that it is all to do with what appears in the newspapers, which it is not, and they are deeply prejudiced, and racially prejudiced too, which is troubling.

I think Mr Tredinnick will find that “studying the subject” is in fact exactly what scientists do. I for once am only concerned with what appears in the newspaper to the extent that the newspaper don’t often publish the scientific findings accurately. He will also find that most if not all elements of the scientific process aim to eliminate the emotional component. Then again, he just stated that “criticism is deeply offensive”, and surely that would be an emotional reaction?

Over the past few years I have looked at the issue in detail, as well as at the impact of astronomy and astrology on western herbalism, as taught by Culpeper, whose book “Culpeper’s Complete Herbal” has been in print longer than any other book in this country besides the Bible. There are now people who teach, such as Jane Ridder-Patrick, who published “A Handbook of Medical Astrology”. They look at aspects of the subject and how it affects people’s health. Whatever one believes personally, the issue is one that we should look into and consider. We must get away from this awful, mediaeval superstition.

I very nearly couldn’t comment on that, because I was so dumbfounded. The audacity to demand that we look into things regardless of what we believe, to get away from medieval superstition – well, guess what, that’s what scientists do. And whenever they looked closely and carefully they things like astrology and homeopathy lacking and ineffective.

(…) I am grateful to the Minister for her helpful response. A number of disciplines were mentioned and I could have referred to radionics, for example, for which a double-blind trial is almost impossible, yet it is very popular because people believe that it gives them the ability to get remote healing. We need to think out of the box here. As with healers who can do remote healing, it is no good people saying that just because we cannot prove something, it does not work. The anecdotal evidence that it does is enormous.

Radionics, in case you didn’t know, is “the use of blood, hair, a signature, or other substances unique to the person as a focus to supposedly heal a patient from afar” (Wikipedia). You’ve read that correctly, we are talking about remote healing, a process that, according to most peoples’ common sense , cannot and should not work. Wikipedia has put it succinctly: “Radionics devices contradict principles of biology and physics, and no scientifically plausible mechanism of function is posited. In this sense, they can be described as magical in operation. No plausible biophysical basis for the “putative energy fields” has been proposed, and neither the fields themselves nor their purported therapeutic effects have been convincingly demonstrated.”

Tredinnick has it wrong by saying “just because we cannot prove something, it does not work” – if it can’t be proven to work, if it violates the known principles of physics, and if it doesn’t stand any scientific tests, then we are more than justified in concluding it doesn’t work. If it can’t be tested, it’s not a scientific theory. Anectodal evidence is worth zilch, nada, zero, nothing. Bullshit is bullshit by any other name.

However, the Guardian was allowed to mention that the case involved London solicitors Carter-Ruck.  That piece of information was enough for a number of bloggers to access the parliament records, which, by the way are public record.  It appears that this law firm attempts to suppress information about their Trafigura client dumping toxic waste at the Ivory Coast.

Since then the combined forces of the internet, markedly the blogosphere and Twitter have demonstrated a beautiful case of the Streisand effect, whereby any attempts to silence internet voices to suppress potentially embarassing or legally implicating material spectacularly backfires by creating more publicity than would have possibly ensued by just leaving the issue untouched.  Go have a look, google “Trafigura Guardian gagging order” … does that look like a successful silencing attempt?

Oh, and by the way – apparently this is the document they don’t want you to read. Oops. How did that make it to my hard drive? *face palm*

ETA: The ban has been lifted, and the Guardian is now allowed to report on the subject matter. I think it’s fair to say that this is mostly due to the enormous internet publicity.

ETA 2: The story continues. While the injunction against the Guardian has been lifted, Trafigura has now prepared an injunction against a Norwegian newspaper. It appears that Trafigura wants to suppress circulation of and reporting on the Minton report, which details the likelihood (very high) and consequences of toxic waste disposal to waste dumpsites at the Ivory Coast.  Considering that this document is available on Wikileaks, and has by now made it’s way to links all over the blogosphere and, I would assume, not a small number of local personal hard drives  …  I think this will prove to be yet another futile attempt.

In case you don’t want to read through all seven pages of the Minton report, our reader @Zyaama was kind enough to provide a short summary of the content:

“According to several media reports, in August 2006 the tanker ship Probo Koala, chartered by the company Trafigura offloaded about 500 m3 of a mixture of substances that would be considered hazardous waste according to European regulations in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The information about this mostly comes from general media  (The Guardian, BBC, Der Spiegel) and the “Minton report”. This is supposed to give a short summary of the Minton report for people who may not have a background in chemistry. While the information I found is consistent, I can not judge its veracity at this point in time.

Fuel regulations in most industrialised countries put very strict limits on the amounts of sulphur fuel is allowed to contain. The reasons for this are in part environmental – sulphur is oxidised when the fuel is burned and will end up as sulphuric acid, a main reason for the so-called “acid rain”. The other reason is technical: Sulphur is a catalyst poison and would destroy catalytic converters. Modern refineries therefore aim to remove nearly all sulphur from their products using one of several catalytic processes. These processes are efficient but expensive.

The material the Probo Koala is reported to have shipped was “coker naphtha” with a high sulphur content. Coker naphtha is one of the products that is obtained from refineries by thermally “cracking” the long chain hydrocarbons that form the residue after a first destination of crude oil. Naphtha as such is a valuable commodity, but the high sulphur content in this case means that it would have to be treated extensively to be converted to fuel. This would of course reduce its value.

It is my understanding, based on the Minton report, that in this case the sulphur removal step was performed on board the tanker ship. The process used is known as Merox reaction. “Merox” is an abbreviation of MERcaptan OXidation. Mercaptans are organic sulphur compounds, they are analogous to alcohols, but with the oxygen being replaced by sulphur. This process is a proprietary process developed by UOP.

At this point I would like to stress again that a modern refinery is a combination of many highly complex processes. Trying to emulate one of these processes in a large tank on open sea is a bit like performing heart surgery on your kitchen table. With a spoon.

When performed in a refinery, the Merox reaction is a two-step process. The catalyst used consists of a mixture of sodium hydroxide and a cobalt compound in water, allowing both steps to of the reaction to take place without the need for any further addition of reactants. In the first step, the mercaptanes are converted to their sodium salts. These salts are water-soluble and can therefore be found within the alkaline water phase of the mixture. As anybody with cooking experience probably knows, oils and water don’t mix, so the water phase can easily separated from the organic naphtha. In a second step, the sodium salts are then oxidised to disulphides, which are not water soluble. In a refinery, this means that you can transfer the sulphur compounds into the water phase, remove the water from the hydrocarbons and then remove the sulphur from the water. A rather elegant and efficient process.

According to the Minton report, this was tried aboard the Probo Koala, reducing the sulphur content of the naphtha by 47 %. I cannot say what exactly that means for its resale value, but we can safely assume that it increased by a large margin.

Unfortunately, due to the less than optimal reaction conditions, what remained was a mixture of waste products containing various mercaptanes, disulphides, cobalt compounds and sodium hydroxide. Many of the sulphur-containing substances will easily be converted to hydrogen sulphide. Nearly all organic sulphur compounds have a very unpleasant odour that give people enough of a warning to leave the area.

 I considered describing the adverse health effects that can be expected from exposure to these substances, but actually the Minton report already does this very well. Section 3 of the report describes “Health and Environmental Impacts” in enough detail to cause nightmares for anybody who has experience with toxic chemicals. The report estimates that about 285 metric tonnes of slop were dumped in Abidjan, containing 22.4 mt. of sulphur compounds and 28.5 mt. sodium hydroxide. According to press reports, Trafigura tried to dispose of the slop in Amsterdam first, where a specialised company offered to treat the waste for 500,000 Euro. This could be seen as being in contradiction the the company’s current position that the material dumped in Ivory Coast contained no toxic waste.”

Sources

• Minton report: http://wikileaks.eu/leak/waterson-toxicwaste-ivorycoast-é2009.pdf
• Guardian: e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/13/trafigura-ivory-coast-documents-toxic-waste
• BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5385480.stm
• Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,618414-4,00.html
• NRC Handelsblad: http://www.nrc.nl/binnenland/article1726401.ece/Voor_15.500_euro_wilde_Tommy_de_klus_wel_klaren
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Côte_d’Ivoire_toxic_waste_dump#cite_note-nrc.nl-12
• Merichem (producer of the catalyst used): http://www.gtp-merichem.com/products/ari-100/catalytic_reagents.php