Part 3 of a photo travelogue of my recent trip to Spain with my wife and her family! (Part 1, Part 2)
As I’ve noted in the past parts of this travelogue, our hotel in Madrid was located very close to the Palacio Real: the Royal Palace. For the beginning of our third day in Madrid (well, the third day for my wife and I), we went to take a tour of the palace itself!
We approached from the north side, taking in the Gardens of Sabatini yet again.
Palacio Real, from the Jardines de Sabatini.
Part 2 of a photo travelogue of my recent trip to Spain with my wife and her family.
Though my wife and I had arrived in Spain smoothly on Thursday the 29th of March, things didn’t go so well for her family. My sister-in-law (SIL), mother-in-law (MIL) and niece-in-law #2 (NIL2) were supposed to fly in the same day from Cleveland. However, the connecting flight from Cleveland to Newark was inexplicably delayed, causing them to miss their Madrid connection. Further screw-ups by United Airlines (yeah, I’m calling you out by name) resulted in the trio being stranded overnight in Newark. Their bags would be lost along the way, as well, and wouldn’t all catch up to us until we reached Seville several days later.
At the end of March, I had the great opportunity to take a trip to Spain with my wife and her family. My wife’s niece is spending a college semester in Granada, and we traveled out to visit her during her spring break, spending several days in Madrid, Seville, and Granada. I took a helluva lot of pictures during the trip — probably some 500 total — and I thought I’d share some images and thoughts about the trip.
The first few days were spent in Madrid, the capital of Spain, and I’ll start with posts about our stay in that city. Many of my pictures are panoramas stitched together with multiple images, so don’t be surprised to see the same person in several places in the same picture, or people who are only half there!
Update: Added a couple sentences to clarify that I’m not attacking psychology or psychometrics, but rather the simple-minded attempts distort these fields to justify racism. Also revised my statements about Derbyshire’s particular claims, to be more explicit about the flaws in his “intelligence = IQ” argument.
Pretty much the entire internet is outraged, rightly, at a recent post by the odious National Review columnist John Derbyshire, who a few days ago penned a remarkably racist screed in Taki’s Magazine titled “The Talk: Nonblack version”.
Some background: in the aftermath of the truly appalling and unjustified murder of Trayvon Martin, a young black man, many black parents have revived “The Talk“. A practice that goes back to the Civil War era, “The Talk” might be summarized as explaining to a black man that: “At any time, I could encounter a stranger who believes he knows me, knows my character, and my motives, based on my appearance alone”. It is a sad reminder that African-Americans must take extra care in their interactions with others, especially armed authority figures.
This idea set off Derbyshire, who came up with the “Nonblack version” of “The Talk”, which includes such blatantly racist nuggets as:
(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).
There’s plenty to be said about such idiocy, but what really concerns me is the following:
(11) The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white; five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every test of general cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise. They are reflected in countless everyday situations. “Life is an IQ test.”
There it is: Derbyshire really thinks that black people are simply dumber than white people.
Plenty of folks are shredding Derbyshire’s idiocy: for instance, see Angry Black Lady’s post on Raw Story savaging him. But I want to take another tack here, and point out that the sort of pseudoscientific tripe that he’s peddling about black intelligence has been around, and criticized, for a long, long, long time. To demonstrate this, I want to take a look at a paper that was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London way back in eighteen-hundred-and-fucking-thirty-six, and whose author demonstrated better science, intelligence and morality than Derbyshire ever will. The paper, by Friedrich Tiedemann, is titled, “On the Brain of the Negro, Compared with That of the European and the Orang-Outang,” and argues against the prevailing view of the time that blacks are inherently unintelligent and much more kin with apes.
Been a crazy time at work lately, and things look to remain crazy for a couple more weeks! In the meantime, I’m catching up on some of my weird fiction blogging.
One of the most remarkable and persistent aspects of the work of horror author H.P. Lovecraft is the consistent and extensive mythology he built throughout his stories. Horrific gods such as the tentacled Cthulhu and the sinister Nyarlathotep that were introduced in one story would reappear in others, or at least be mentioned in frightful whispers. Sinister cities, degenerate beings, and forbidden books of lore are shared between many tales.
These “Cthulhu mythos” give the reader the impression that he or she is merely scratching the surface of a larger sanity-shattering reality, and help give the stories the feeling of what is now referred to as “cosmic horror”. Lovecraft’s contemporary protégés added to the mythos themselves, dramatically growing the size of the universe; Lovecraft himself encouraged others to build upon it. The tradition is still going strong, as many authors have written their own mythos stories, and even built their own subsections of Lovecraft’s universe; see, for example, the delightfully unsettling Sesqua Valley of W.H. Pugmire.
I recently came across another Lovecraft-inspired novel written by the Japanese author Asamatsu Ken, titled Queen of K’n-Yan:
This book, translated from the Japanese, tells the story of a beautiful, perfectly preserved mummy of a young woman discovered in a massive tomb in China. The mummy is brought to Japan by a Japanese research corporation, and a molecular biologist from a neighboring university is asked to come help sequence the mummy’s DNA. The mummy is not quite human, however, and it quickly becomes clear that the corporation is seeking to do more than study the creature…
I’ve definitely decided to stop doing a Twitter #weirdscifacts a week, but it’s hard to slow down! I’ll be travelling for the rest of the week, however, so I’ll be forced to stop at last — here’s a few facts to keep you entertained. I’ll be posting intermittently over the next few days.
739. Mar 21: Deep-sea nature is gross: behold the “bone-eating snot flowers“!
740. Mar 22: Researchers have introduced a new form of robotic underwater motion: the robo-jelly! (Via @Verbal_SeduXion)
741. Mar 23: 1939: grad student George Dantzig solved 2 famous unsolved math problems when he mistook them for homework problems.
742. Mar 24: Whale falls: the whale carcasses that support entire deep-sea ecosystems.
743. Mar 25: The science of cats falling from high-rises. There have been (statistical) studies done of the remarkable survival rate of cats falling from tall buildings. It becomes almost obvious when you realize how much of a cat’s time is spent in the trees, and how often accidental falls must occur.
744. Mar 26: 18th century bone telescopes found in old toilets in Amsterdam. It’s odd enough to imagine telescopes made out of cow legs, but it’s even weirder to think that someone threw such expensive items into a toilet! (Via @BoneGirlPhD)
745. Mar 27: How the urea in the Greenland shark inspired an Inuit legend! I get quite amused at thinking about how this legend got started. Inuit #1 eating a Greenland shark: “Ack! This thing tastes like pee!” Inuit #2: “How do you know what pee tastes like?”
Good ghost stories are hard to find these days. Though there is much wonderful horror out there to read (and watch), in my opinion there are few authors that capture the ghostly sense of dread as well the early 20th century masters such as M.R. James and E.F. Benson. I’ve often wondered about this: has the world simply become too modern, too crowded, and even too connected to make ghost stories as effective as they once were?
Such stories don’t even have to be about a literal ghost; it’s hard to say exactly what characterizes a ghost story, by these stories always have a sense of the eerie, of the unnatural — and of death.
This month, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s newest novel, The Drowning Girl, was published, and it meets all the criteria of a ghost story, even if it may not be one:
The Drowning Girl is a memoir written by an insane young woman, and it is about her encounters with a mermaid, a werewolf, a siren, and a ghost — or perhaps none of these, or perhaps all of these at once. It is a compelling and haunting story which kept me reading from pretty much the very first page.
With the fact of March 14th, I have posted a weird science fact on Twitter every day for two years straight. That’s one more year of #weirdscifacts than I expected to do, and I think this makes a good time to slow down the regular editions.
For one thing, it’s getting hard to find unique, obscure facts every single day! There’s a lot of weird science out there, and in fact there is more being announced pretty much every week — the universe is a weird, weird place — but I don’t want to turn my “weird facts” into a straight reiteration of things widely announced through other social media channels. Another thing: scouring the internet for weird science is time consuming, and is eating up time that I could otherwise be spending working on more detailed blog posts.
So I think I’ll be stopping the daily facts! This doesn’t mean that I won’t be posting & compiling #weirdscifacts as I come across them, but I’ll probably do so with less frequency. I hope that others will take up the torch a bit and post their own #weirdscifacts on Twitter as time goes on — I think it would be a great tag to organize the sciencey weirdness that people come across!
I’m still trying to decide what to do with my facts now, and would love to get opinions from folks in the comments! Long run, I might like to convert a collection of them into a nice fun book, though that will take some time. In the short run, I’ve been thinking about relaunching the facts in a Tumblr, where I can post less frequently but in more detail about some of the weirdness that’s intrigued me. Let me know what you think!
In the meantime, here is one more week of weird science, complete with some bonus facts!
732. Mar 14: Via @encephalartos: Sea cucumbers can liquefy their body to get through a small gap.
732a. Via @gkygirlengineer & @NowOverAndOut: Hiding in plain sight: New Frog Species Is Discovered in NYC!
732b. ‘Red Deer Cave people‘ may be new species of human! (h/t @tdelene)
733. Mar 15: Possible communication via neutrinos? (h/t @shiplives)
734. Mar 16: Honeybees deal with large Japanese hornets by forming “hot bee balls“! (h/t @bug_girl)
735. Mar 17: The doctor who was into electricity, dismemberment, and murder! (Part 1 and part 2) (by @rvitelli)
736. Mar 18: L’inconnue de la Seine: anonymous drowning victim of 1880s who became CPR Rescue Annie. (h/t @auntbeast)
737. Mar 19: Oldest rock carving found in Americas? 12k year old “little horny man“. (h/t @mocost)
738. Mar 20: Via @blakestacey: the system of numbers known as the “surreal numbers“.
P.S. Thank you to all those folks who, over the course of the past two years, have suggested or contributed weird science to the list! You’re too numerous to mention individually, but you know who you are!
Welcome to the 45th edition of The Giant’s Shoulders, the monthly history of science blog carnival! We’ve got a lot of interesting entries to cover, so let’s get going!
Captain of the men of death. Over at White Coat Underground, PalMD reposts a classic article describing the early history of the fight against pneumonia.
There was no such thing as the Longitude Prize. Over at The Board of Longitude, Rebekah Higgit clears up a common misconception about the search for an accurate measure of longitude.
The Shocking Dr. Webster (part 1 and part 2). A doctor who electrocuted corpses, a mysterious disappearance, and remains found in a furnace combine into a fascinating 19th-century science-related murder mystery, told skillfully by Romeo at Providentia.
Digital “Computers” 1450-1750: Memory and Calculating on the Fingers and Hands. People were doing “digital” computing long before the advent of computers, as this fun post by Ptak at Ptak Science Books demonstrates with wonderful old illustrations!
1901 — the year the nuclear atom was “invented”! Who really discovered, or more accurately, first conceived of, the concept of a planetary atom? Right here at Skulls in the Stars, I explain how the answer is more complicated than typically imagined.
The iceberg’s accomplice: Did the moon sink the Titanic? Over at PhysOrg, Jayme Blaschke reports on a very unusual new theory about the sinking of the Titanic: did a rare lunar event hide the iceberg from the ship lookouts?
Grave Matters: The Body-Snatchers Unearthed. In the late 18th century and early 19th, “body-snatching” was a common occurrence, as medical students needed bodies to study. The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice takes a look at the practices of the snatchers, and the precautions taken against them.
Eye treatments – 17th-century style. At his eponymous blog, Alun Whithey describes what it was like to be treated for eye problems in the 17th-century. Spoiler alert: not fun!
The tragic tale of Taiata and the artist’s journal. At Nat Waddell’s Blog, we learn the sad story of Taiata, a Tahitian boy who did not survive a trip back to England on Captain Cook’s voyage.
Me, Ludwig Boltzmann, Ludwig Boltzmann and I. At Galileo’s Pendulum, Matthew Francis explains why it is personally difficult for him to write about the famous physicist Ludwig Boltzmann.
A lyrical interlude. We’ve seen a lot of history so far — time for an intermission! Caroline Rance at The Quack Doctor presents a song from an 1886 book of tunes by medical club members.
Nash’s beautiful mind pre-empted million-dollar puzzle. Turns out that the mathematician John Nash was even smarter than we realized! Recently declassified letters between the NSA and Nash suggest he was years ahead of anyone else in thinking about cryptography; New Scientist explains.
Society in the sky: a seventeenth century attempt to redraw the constellations. The constellations are ancient, but not everyone has agreed that they should be permanent! At Thinking Through My Fingers, Michael Kay describes 17th century attempts to modify them.
The first-ever English language retraction (1756)? Papers get retracted from scientific journals these days with some regularity for a variety of reasons, such as discovered errors in methodology and even fraud. At Retraction Watch, Ivan Oransky notes that retractions go back quite a long time, and notes what may be the first English-language paper retraction!
Beatrix Potter: bestselling author, artist – and expert on our native mushrooms. Wow! In years past, science societies would not allow women to present their results. One injustice will be rectified in April, when the works of Beatrix Potter — rejected in 1897 — will be presented to the Linnean Society.
Turing at 100. Nature recounts the tragic mistreatment of Alan Turing, computer pioneer and codebreaker, and reminds us of why he deserves our attention.
History of Lines–a Note on the First Appearance of the Addition (“+”) Sign. In other fascinating post at Ptak Science Books, Ptak takes a look at the ancient origins of the “+” sign.
Newton’s apple tree. We all know the story — an apple falling on Newton’s head inspired him to develop the theory of gravity. Well, the story is likely apocryphal, but there was an apple tree at Newton’s birthplace. At the Royal Society’s History of Science Centre’s Blog, Keith Moore discusses the tree and its descendants.
Augustin-Jean Fresnel’s early years. In another post right here as Skulls in the Stars, I give an example of genius that manifested itself in an unusual way: the optical scientist Fresnel could hardly read at an advanced age, but demonstrated a rather hilarious mechanical knack!
Darwin: Geologist First and Last. You may be tempted to think of Darwin as a biologist, but Dana Hunter at En Tequila Es Verdad argues that Darwin was as much a geologist, and that background was crucial to his Origin of Species!
A Fondness for Fronds. At The Victorian Peeper, Kristan Tetens discusses Victorians’ fanatical fondness for fern fronds!
Laura Bassi, a woman who succeeded in a man’s world: physics. There are so many women whose early achievements in science have been neglected and forgotten! Mike Rendell at Georgian Gentleman introduces us to an especially fascinating woman physicist, Laura Bassi (1711-1778).
It’s not the Mercator projection; it’s the Mercator-Wright projection! Finally, over at Renaissance Mathematicus, ThonyC explains the origins of what has come to be known as the “Mercator projection”.
That’s it for this month’s carnival! The 46th edition will be hosted by Romeo Vitelli at Providentia on the 16th of April.
This is it — today marks the 2-year anniversary of Twitter #weirdscifacts, meaning I’ve been posting facts on Twitter every day for 2 years straight! Not sure what I’ll do with the facts next — trying to decide by next week how to proceed…
725. Mar 07: Electrician gets a Licthenberg tattoo from a lightning strike! (via @swansontea) Lichtenberg figures are branching, fractal-like figures that can be burnt into materials via electrical discharges. Apparently people struck by lightning get similar figures relatively often. (Image via Wikipedia):
726. Mar 08: Mount Roraima, a genuine lost world that inspired “The Lost World”. Pictures of the remarkable mountain can be seen here. An image from Wikipedia is shown below.
727. Mar 09: Sperm discovered doing basic calculus! Well, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but sperm have been discovered to direct themselves based on changes in concentration of calcium, which is essentially the calculus action of taking a derivative! (h/t @sciencegoddess)
728. Mar 10: Horses masturbate around 18 times per day, on average. Post by @scicurious!
728a. Got PMS? Time to Spot the Snake! Bonus weirdness via @scicurious!
729. Mar 11: Einstein, 1934: “There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable.” Many prominent scientists, engineers and visionaries have made strong predictions that turn out to be rather absurdly wrong.
730. Mar 12: The 1967 earthquake in Konya, India: likely caused by the filling of a new dam reservoir. With all the discussion of the likely connection between “fracking” and earthquakes, more attention has been focused on earlier quakes induced by human action.
731. Mar 13: Who killed Pluto? Well, in the late 1980s, Isaac Asimov tried to! (h/t @blakestacey)
The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas. 
Skulls in the Stars 