Where Is Everyone? The Empty Universe Problem

Here's a nice video I stumbled across, about the perennial question of why ET hasn't visited us yet.



Here's another kind of answer: look at our own planet. There are / have been a number of major cultures / civilisations. At the start if the 19th century there were the Japanese, Chinese, Muslim / Arabic, Hundu and other Indian, African, South American, Native American, Aboriginal, plus smaller civilisations on ocean islands.

I may have missed one, but I'm sure we would still have had steam engines, dynamos, AC current, penicillin, powered flight... what's that?

Some of those cultures (Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Indian) at one stage or another deliberately decided to stop developing? And the rest simply didn't have the resources to develop? It was only the unwashed, disease-ridden, war-inclined, Europeans (counting the Western Russians as European) who developed advanced science and technology? And not all of them at the start.

That's the other answer.

The Universe is full of other civilisations. Most of whom are still struggling to survive on planets with even more marginal environments than ours (and most of our own is only good for the fishes, and a lot of the rest is sand, rock and ice), while the others at some stage decided to stop with all this intellectual development lark. It's a very popular political policy for the ruling class: wait until the circumstances are nicely beneficial for the rulers, and set everything in aspic forever. As long as everyone on the planet does that, it's going to work. Feudal bucolic bliss forever.

The question isn't where is everybody, it's what makes rulers tolerate revolutionaries and even take up the new ideas?

Never mind being alone in the Universe. Imagine if we weren't, and then found out that everyone else was pleasant but didn't have one idea to rub between them?

What do you mean: you don't need to imagine that?

I Turned Round... And There Was This (Hanworth Air Park)

I was walking round my Air Park, turned round, and there was this. The best camera is the one you have with you, and it was the iPhone. Photography is magic-by-selection.

Stereo At The Festival Hall w/ Iveta Apkalna

The Royal Festival Hall was infamous for having the driest sound of any concert hall ever anywhere. Musicians would enter it and instantly be de-hydrated. Bass notes would set off from the stage and fail to make it past Row H. It was just dandy for string quartets, folk singers, jazz bands, and electronic music, but nineteenth-century symphonies just shrivelled. (This sounds a lot like much modern hi-fi equipment, a lot of which is also fine for string quartets, folk singers, jazz bands, and electronic music, but gets confused by a 90-piece orchestra blasting out Bruckner.) The Hall was re-furbished in the Oughties, and the organ was re-furbished over a period of years, ending in 2013. There are larger organs in the world, but mostly in America and mostly for show. In practical terms, the Festival Hall organ is as good as it gets.

The range of this (and any other) organ is two octaves below middle C, and three octaves above. An 88-key piano goes a tenth below and another octave above. The lowest notes are just above the point where hi-fi speakers and the human ear start to roll-off on the bass, so there's no need for a sub-woofer, and that extra octave on the piano is mostly a plink sound. The organ has all the notes the human ear needs.

At first sight the layout of the pipes look like a mirror image. Look at this guide and especially pages 8-9, for the layout of the pipes. This is really four organs in one: a solo organ (top far right), a Swell organ (top far left), a Great organ on the rest of the left and upper near right, and a Positive organ on the rest of the right(*). There are four keyboards: Solo, Swell, Great and Positive, plus pedals for the bass notes.

As a result, if you are sitting in the equivalent of the Hi-Fi Sweet Spot, listening to the organ should feel stereo-ish - if the music is written to use the different sections one at a time. When the big pipes kick in, and the Swell gets going, it's just one vast splendid noise, and the sustained notes bounce off the diagonal reflecting boards at either side of the stage.

Some hi-fi reviewers talk about the way some gear will make the transients (that happen when a string is struck, for instance) clearer, and also make the way a note fades clearer. They are not listening to recordings of large organs when they hear those things. Live, there are no "transients" or "fades" when a large organ is even at half-steam. Subtlety is not a thing with big organs: go to recitals in small churches on one- or two-manual instruments for that.

It's also loud. I'm not going to be playing my Buxtehude or Messian CDs at that volume at home.

The organist was Iveta Apkalna. Organists can move all three of their hands and both their feet independently, and tap their head at the same time. They are not as other musicians, let alone as other mortals. There are no "bad" organists - it's one of those things that has to be done well or it can't be done at all.

She played a short piece by Philip Glass, an extract from the Musical Offering by Bach, and Widor's Fifth Symphony for Organ. All of it was enjoyable and fascinating, especially the more playful parts of the Widor (I know, not the adjective you were expecting for an organ symphony).

Maybe a couple of those Wilson tower speakers with a £150,000 pre-amp + monoblock set up could get something like the live sound. My kit won't. People forget that "classical" music can be VERY LOUD at times, way too loud to play with the neighbours in.



(*) I have no idea what those mean. There's a limit to how much research I'm prepared to do!

Welcome To Barking Riverside

I go to all the glamorous places.

The first trip earlier this year was on a sunny day, which was marred by my awful handling of my camera. I had jogged the exposure compensation dial something nasty and all the shots came out too dark. I vowed to go again, now that I knew better. Except I didn't, and it's a good thing I looked at some shots in the screen, and sorted out the problem. In my head, the X-E4 is still an OM-10. My head is not always a sensible place.

This time the sky was grey, which at least removed any chance of the bright blue bits making the other bits too dark. Here's the obligatory shot of the Emirates ski-lift (all of these can be clicked for an even larger view)

And here's the almost obligatory Manhattan-on-Thames view...

One or too shots are perhaps almost worthy of the Bernd and Hilda Becher, except I don't fade my skies a uniform dull white like they did.

One question asks itself every time I see these riverside tower blocks....



.... who on earth would live here? I'm kinda parochial about London: if it isn't on a line to Waterloo, I'm not going to even discuss it. But these flats are miles from anywhere. Okay, now two shots of a commercial cargo boat at the Tate and Lyle moorings.

Now, who doesn't like a photograph of some containers? This is landscape in these parts...

As the river gets wider, the view gets bleaker. And I think 'bleak' is a fair word here. I think those wind generators actually make it look even more empty somehow...



And then, finally....

Defining The Seasons

Did you know there are official seasons? In fact two sets, one for the meteorologists and one for the astronomers. These are for the Northern Hemisphere.

Meteorologists:
Winter: December, January, February 

Spring: March, April, May 

Summer: June, July, August 

Autumn: September, October, November

Astronomers:
Winter: 22nd December (Winter Solstice) to March 20

Spring: March 21 (Spring Equinox) to June 20 

Summer: June 21 (Summer Solstice) to September 21 

Autumn: September 22 (Autumn Equinox) to 21 December

I offer instead, the Phenomenological Seasons:
Winter: when it starts to be cold all the time to when it stops being cold all the time, and there are no leaves except on evergreens 

Spring: when it's cold in the morning and evening, but warm-ish during the day, and the leaves appear

Summer: when I can wear a tee-shirt all day, and the leaves are all the same shade of green 

Autumn: see Spring, but the leaves are falling

Hence in the UK...
Winter is the five months from November to March (or, from when the clocks go back, to when the clocks go forward)

Spring is about eight weeks from April to May

Summer is the three months plus a week or so from June to sometime in September

Autumn is about six weeks from September to end-October

Brentano Quartet at the Wigmore Hall

I booked a number of concerts for this autumn, to hear live music again, to go to evening concerts for the first time in a decade or so, and to compare the listening experience with my hi-fi.

The first of those concerts was the Brentano Quartet at the Wigmore Hall.

The Wigmore Hall is a niche institution: amongst chamber musicians it is one of the foremost venues in the world. Superstars play there, and not at Royal Opera House prices either. The next evening, you might have a quartet of recent graduates from the Royal College of Music, even cheaper. It's a long rectangular room with a high ceiling

There are no visible signs of acoustic treatment, though the semi-circle behind the stage doubtless reflects and focuses the sound. I could not hear any reflections, and I was sitting far enough back for any reflected sounds to be heard separately.

The Brentano Quartet had the two violins sitting almost one behind the other on the left of the stage (audience's left), with the viola (front) and cello (behind) on the right. Everyone was about two metres from everyone else.

These guys play loud. I sneaked the phone out: between about 55dB-A when quiet and 80dB-A when loud. (And I was two-thirds of the way back: it must have been a good few dB louder down front.) Modern concert instruments are made to be heard at the back without amplification. Except acoustic guitars.

I listen between 55-70 db-A at home.

The soundstage is mono. Close your eyes and you can't point to the instrument as you should be able to with a hi-fi system and a decent stereo mix. I think the mono sound is intentional: a string quartet is intended to be heard as if it were one instrument. (Not to say that some pieces don't exploit a left-right effect, but it's not common.) I had to watch the players' fingers to be able to pick out the individual parts.

The soundstage of a string quartet on my stereo is pretty mono-ish, but the separation of instruments is a bit better, but that varies with the recording.

The music was arrangements for string quartet of pieces for voice by Renaissance composers - Lassus, Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Ockeghem, Wuorinen - with some pieces for strings by Richard Mico (1590-1661) in between. (I'm a sucker for a bit of Early Music, and have some Lassus, Gesualdo and Monteverdi on CD.) Transferring the voice pieces to strings brought out just how darn weird Renaissance harmony is, in comparison with Bach, Mozart and the rest of the gang. There were times it felt as if we could have been listening to a twentieth-century piece.

Definitely checking out some Richard Mico on CD or stream as well.

Parkland Walk, Highgate: Street and Landscape Photography

 Both photographs taken on the Parkland Walk between Finsbury Park and Highgate.

This is a landscape photograph. Also it doesn't show that the rain was pouring down.

The next photograph is street photography (but just not on an actual street).

If there's a jogger in a pink top, it's street photography.

Also, it's a more interesting picture. If I had tried to frame a good landscape shot, the camera would have drowned.