Unrequired Reading, 003

Tools over problems

I've been thinking this week about how addictive it is with these new tools to be able to build things without so much of the friction. The danger of that is falling in love with the effort and interactions over solving the problem.

This is partly because of Karl Koch's piece on falling in love with the build, which is about the dangerous little pleasure of making something nice and then trying to find a reason for it afterwards. It is aimed at design engineers, but it applies neatly to almost anything creative. Just look at this website, it's exactly that level of over-engineered.

Reading

I read the comedic Sir Ernest Shackleton's Journal Entriesfrom the Week He Stayed Home with His Sick Kids, which is exactly as stupid and well-aimed as the title suggests. It takes the language of heroic polar endurance and points it at the much greater trial of being trapped indoors with ill children.

Hands bandaged, arse bedeviled, writing difficult... I write this from the safety of the garden shed. The children are crazed, rebounding with the pent-up energy of a week indoors. The six cups of tea might not have helped. Their capacity for destruction is amazing... Persevere, Shacky, persevere. Tomorrow is a school day, and all shall be saved.

I am also reading If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, which is in a very pleasing lane for me, thoughtful and not trying to punish you for turning the page. Each story is as different as it could be.

And I have started My Man Jeeves, because sometimes the correct answer is simply P. G. Wodehouse. He has a wonderful way with words a kind of sentence-level buoyancy. The plots are ridiculous and I instantly read Bertie Wooster in Hugh Lawrie's voice.

Listening

I have been listening to the soundtrack from Masters of the Universe, take a watch of this track on YouTube. It is a wonderful campy, glam rock with Brian May nailing the wailing guitar.

I am not sure what the film itself is going to be like (I missed it in the cinema), but I am hoping for a Flash Gordon-esque campy adventure: big colours, questionable decisions, guitar heroics, someone in a cape taking the whole thing extremely seriously.

Watching

I finished The Boys latest and last series. Absolute gore and filth. But it landed in a way I found surprisingly satisfying. A neat, tied-up, suitable ending. Everyone gets their horrible little consequences.

The Smithsonian Letter

A letter from the Smithsonian to a man donating 'artefacts' from his garden, if you'd rather have this read by Keegan-Michael Key it was on LettersLive. This was later found to be that of urban legend and untrue but it's still incredible.

Smithsonian Institute, 207 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20078

Dear Mr. Williams,

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labelled '93211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post... Hominid skull.' Funny true story - Smithsonian Exhibit

We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago. Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety that one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be 'Malibu Barbie.'

It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradict your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to its modern origin:

1. The material is moulded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilised bone.

2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimetres, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.

3. The dentition pattern evident on the skull is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.

This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:

1. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.

2. Clams don't have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon-dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly due to carbon-datings notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record.

To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon-dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results.

Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name Australopithecus spiff-arino. Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin.

However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a Hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your Newport back yard.

We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,
Harvey Rowe Chief Curator-Antiquities

Yours artefactually,

Matt