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on 12/8/2010
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By Frank Close
Ray Davis was the first person to look into the heart of a star. He did so by capturing neutrinos, ghostly particles that are produced in the centre of the Sun and stream out across space. As you read this, billions of them are hurtling through your eyeballs at almost the speed of light, unseen.
Neutrinos are as near to nothing as anything we know, and so elusive that they are almost invisible. When Davis began looking for solar neutrinos in 1960, many thought that he was attempting the impossible. It nearly turned out to be: 40 years would pass before he was proved right, leading to his Nobel Prize for physics in 2002, aged 87.
In June 2006, I was invited by The Guardian newspaper to write his obituary. An obituary necessarily focuses on the one person, but the saga of the solar neutrinos touched the lives of several others, scientists who devoted their entire careers chasing the elusive quarry, only to miss out on the Nobel Prize by virtue of irony, chance, or, tragically, by having already died.
Of them all, the most tragic perhaps is the genius Bruno Pontecorvo.
Pontecorvo was a remarkable scientist and a communist, working at Harwell after the war. When his Harwell colleague Klaus Fuchs was exposed as an atom spy in 1950, Pontecorvo immediately fled to the USSR. This single act probably killed his chances of Nobel Prizes.
In the following years, Pontecorvo developed a number of ideas that could have won him one or more Nobels. But his papers were published in Russian, and were unknown in the West until their English translations appeared up to two years later. By this time others in the USA had come up with the same ideas, later winning the Nobel Prize themselves.
Amongst his ideas, one involved an experiment which Soviet facilities could not perform. But most ironic were Pontecorvo’s insights about neutrinos.
Ray Davis had detected solar neutrinos – but not enough of them. For years, many of us involved in this area of research thought Davis’ experiment must have been at fault. But Pontecorvo had another theory which indicated that like chameleons, neutrinos changed their form en route across space from the Sun to Earth. And he was right. It took many years to prove it, but by 2000 the whole saga was completed. Davis duly won his Nobel Prize, but so many years had elapsed that Pontecorvo by then was dead.
So although my piece for The Guardian began as the life story of Ray Davis, Pontecorvo was there behind the scenes to such an extent that it became his story also. It is also the story of John Bahcall, Davis’ lifelong collaborator, who, to the surprise of many, was not included in the Nobel award.
The lives of these three great scientists were testimony to what science is all about: as Edison put it, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
A final sobering thought to put our human endeavors in context: those neutrinos that passed through you when you started reading this article are by now well on their way to Mars.
Frank Close OBE is Professor of Physics at Oxford Univeristy and a Fellow of Exeter College. He is formerly Head of the Theoretical Physics Division at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN. He has written several books including The Void, Antimatter,
0 Comments on Hunting the Neutrino as of 1/1/1900
According to our friends at Toonzone, Peter Fernandez, best known to animation fans as the voice of Speed Racer, passed away this morning due to lung cancer at the age of 83.
Fernandez adapted scripts, voice directed and acted on Speed Racer and Marine Boy. Another significant credit for him was as the non-singing voice of Alakazam in Alakazam The Great (1961). He co-wrote the animated series Johnny Cypher In Dimension Zero for Joe Oriolo Productions, dubbed the animated French feature Light Years (aka Gandahar, 1988) and voice directed The Adventures of The Galaxy Rangers. He could also be heard in numerous live action Japanese monster movies - from Mothra and Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster to the Ultra Man series.
Most recently Fernandez had a cameo role in the live-action Speed Racer (2008) and was also the voice director for Cartoon Network’s series Courage the Cowardly Dog.
THE LAND'S MEANING
For Sidney Nolan
The love of man is a weed of the waste places,
One may think of it as the spinifex of dry souls.
I have not, it is true, made the trek to the difficult country
where it is said to grow; but signs come back,
reports come back, of continuing exploration
in that terrain. And certain of our young men,
who turned in despair from the bar, upsetting a glass,
and swore: "No more" (for the tin rooms stank of flyspray)
are sending word that the mastery of silence
alone is empire. What is God, they say,
but a man unwounded in his loneliness?
And the question (applauded, derided) falls like dust
on veranda and bar; and in pauses, when thinking ceases,
the footprints of the recently departed
march to the mind's horizons, and endure.
And often enough as we turn again, and laugh,
cloud, hide away the tracks with an acid word,
there is one or more gone past the door to stand
(wondering, debating) in the iron street,
and toss a coin, and pass, to the township's end,
where one-eyed 'Mat, eternal dealer in camels,
grins in his dusty yard like a split fruit.
But one who has returned, his eyes blurred maps
of landscapes still unmapped, gives this account:
"The third day, cockatoos dropped dead in the air.
Then the crows turned back, the camels knelt down and
stayed there,
and a skin-coloured surf of sandhills jumped the horizon
and swamped me. I was bushed for forty years.
"And I came to a bloke all alone like a kurrajong tree.
And I said to him: 'Mate - I don't need to know your name -
Let me camp in your shade, let me sleep, till the sun goes
down.'"
LANDFALL
And indeed I shall anchor, one day - some summer morningof sunflowers and bougainvillea and arid wind-and smoking a black cigar, one hand on the mast,turn, and unlade my eyes of all their cargo;and the parrot will speed from my shoulder, and white yachts glidewelcoming out from the shore on the turquoise tide.And when they ask me where I have been, I shall sayI do not remember.And when they ask me what I have seen, I shall sayI remember nothing.And if they should ever tempt me to speak again,I shall smile, and refrain.
(Both in A Counterfeit Silence. Angus and Robertson, 1969. And I do wish Typepad would leave my spaces where I bloody put them.)
Age and Sydney Morning Herald
My magnificent agent died last week. The barest facts of her life are in a New York Times obituary this morning. Her name was Emilie Jacobson, but her colleagues called her Emmy. She found me in a slush pile.
via www.themillions.com
I simply had to blog this before I marked the feeds all read today.
Following up on last Saturday's La Bloga post, comes this from the Los Angeles Times, Wed., 3/31/10:
OBITUARY by Elaine Woo
"Jaime Escalante, the charismatic former East Los Angeles high school teacher who taught the nation that inner-city students could master subjects as demanding as calculus, died Tuesday. He was 79.
"The subject of the 1988 film Stand and Deliver, Escalante died at his son's home in Roseville, Calif., said actor Edward James Olmos, who portrayed the teacher in the film. Escalante had bladder cancer."
To read the entire L.A. Times article, go here.
You can leave a testimonial or message for the family here.
A Memorial is scheduled for Sat. April 17th. Time and location TBD. Info should be available soon here.
To hear a very well-done audio biography of Escalante from NPR's All Things Considered, go here and click on the Olmos/Escalante photo.
For those interested in Escalante's major article on his teaching philosophy and methodology, go here.
As described in last week's post, there are at least three books you can check on Jaime Escalante and his students' achievements. No matter which button you click, video you watch or how you learn more, if you are ever lacking some inspiration--and I don't mean only about teaching--hearing, reading or thinking about his work will serve you well. Especially if a little ganas would make all the difference.
-------------------
Larry Roibal alerted me this morning with this post on his blog to the death of Don Ivan Punchatz. Its always sad when a legendary illustrator pass away… but this passing is especially unfortunate when we learn that Punchatz’s widow is now burdened with massive health care bills due to the artist not having had health insurance.
For those who are unfamiliar with the name Don Ivan Punchatz, you may have seen his work for Playboy, Esquire, National Lampoon, Time, Newsweek, and a host of other magazines, countless paperback book covers, the first Star Wars film poster, the cover of the Doom video game… truly a giant. We will miss him.
Punchatz’s obituary at Spectrum
Posted by Leif Peng on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Don Ivan Punchatz, fantasy, obituary, R.I.P., science fiction
There has been a lot of wild speculation afoot regarding the potential release of an Apple product which might (gasp!) combine e-reading with other things. Mitch Ratcliffe of Booksahead is trying to put out some of the flames before there's a fire. Bookseller.com has more information here.
The Guardian has a great interview with Shaun Tan, as well as news of the discovery of some previously unseen letters of Flaubert's in a British stash.
I have been following this guy so I can find out things like this quickly. Richard Nash speaks to Publishers' Weekly about his past at Soft Skull and his newest venture, Cursor.
I have enjoyed reading Kris Hemensley's correspondence with his brother in Dorset this week. And I am very fond of the Australian Ballet's excellent blog, Behind Ballet. Here is their tribute to the late Merce Cunningham, by Martyn Pedler, complete with video.
There's a fabulous post here from Adrian McKinty, an Irish crime writer living in St Kilda, on the passing of Frank McCourt.
And another from Andrew Burke at Hi Spirits, probably the best thing I've read about McCourt all week:
His book humbly and gently painted a picture of a hard life growing up in Limerick in Ireland, before taking off for USA as a young man. It took him many decades to come to the right stance toward his material, but when he let the story tell itself, without anger, self-pity or any self-aggrandisement - just the details - it spoke volumes. A warm sense of humanity lifted the book above the pack and made it a modern classic among other Irish classics.
The profile Andrew links to, by Malcolm Jones in Newsweek, finishes plaintively. I would have thought McCourt had earned his right to leave us, having survived to write his book 'that had to be written' and the acrimony that ensued, and lived fairly happily ever after to boot, but Jones thinks otherwise:
After the appearance of each of his three memoirs ('Tis describes his immigrant experience in the United States, Teacher Man
details his teaching career), I always hoped he would write even more,
because that would mean that I might interview him again. Now that
possibility is gone. There will be no more books and no more talk from
Frank McCourt. I know that any time I want, I can go to the shelf and
pull down Angela's Ashes or one of the other books, and there
he'll be, almost as good as in the room. Very few people got their
voices onto the page as well as he did. But "almost" isn't the same as
the full Frank. There won't be that sense of amazement at the ease with
which he could coin a quip on the fly. There will be no shock at the
endlessly articulate talk that poured out at the dinner table. He was a
fine writer, but he was perhaps an even greater talker. It was the kind
of talk that no one has figured out how to get between the pages of a
book, not even Frank McCourt.
As many of you might already know, Lou Dorfsman, director of design and, later, senior VP at CBS for more than 40 years, died last Wednesday at the age of 90. From his NY Times obit:
Mr. Dorfsman’s work became a model for corporate communications, in the marketing discipline now called branding. In 1946, when he joined CBS as art director for its successful radio networks, the company was already a leader in both advertising and the relatively new field of corporate identity. Frank Stanton, then CBS’s president, understood the business value of sophisticated design and had earlier hired William Golden as the overall art director; in 1951 Golden designed the emblematic CBS eye, among the most identifiable logos in the world.
Mr. Dorfsman not only extended Golden’s aesthetic by combining conceptual clarity and provocative visual presentation, but developed his own signature style of graphic design.
Besides being in charge of the look & design for all of CBS, he also played a major role in the network’s headquarters on 52nd and Sixth Avenue in New York, the CBS Building. Along with architect Eero Saarinen, Lou was responsible for all of the “building’s graphics, designating the type, design and spacing for wall clocks, elevator buttons, and elevator inspection stickers.”
One interesting aspect of the building that Lou designed was a 35 ft. wide by 8 1/2 ft. tall wall for the building’s cafeteria, titled “Gastrotypographicalassemblage”. The wall has since been taken down, but there have been recent efforts to restore the wall to its original splendor by the non-profit organization The Center for Design Study. For more information on the wall and its restoration (as well as how you can donate) check the links:
Speak Up: The Wall That Lou Dorfsman Built
Honor the Legacy: Gastrotypographicalassemblage
The Center for Design Study’s Flickr showcases photos of the restoration in progress.
John Alvin, who created memorable images for movie posters, billboards and advertisements, including the two fingers touching above the Earth’s surface for “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” died on Wednesday at his home in Rhinebeck, N.Y. He was 59.
Mr. Alvin painted striking images for more than 135 films in a 35-year career, working on projects for directors like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas,
From Our Friends at The Border Book Festival
Dear BBF Friends,
Raul Salinas, known as raulsalinas, that great human being, transformed by
life and fire, has died. Raul was a featured poet at the Border Book
Festival in 2000. It was a memorable performance as Raul danced, sang and
gyrated through the power of his words his English, Spanish and Xicanindio.
His life was hard, yes, as he was incarcerated for many years in U.S.
prisons, but those who knew and loved him saw his transformation into a
light indescribable--beatific, really. We celebrate his great beauty and
his gifts of spirit and words.
We will display his portrait taken by Daniel Zolinsky starting this
Saturday, February 16 at 7:00 p.m. at a reception at the Cultural Center de
Mesilla for The Love of Arts Month. The evening will feature the portraits
of 14 BBF Artists taken by Zolinsky.
In addition, we will offer a program of poetry by Multilingual poets of the
Ages with readings in English, French, Spanish, Urdu and Bengali by featured
readers: Dr. Richard Rundell, Dr. Jan Hampton, Jorge Robles, Denise Chavez,
Sudeshna Sengupta and Ayesha Farfaraz. Musicians Bugs Salcido on guitar and
Debarshi Roy on sitar will also join us.
Please join us as Raul has made his way to the Ancestors.
This message comes to us from our friends in San Antonio:
"Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thought, fears and emotions, - time -
all related...all made from one..all made in one" - John Coltrane
Elder statesmen, Xicanindio leader, poet of the people, giver of hope to the
oppressed and incarcerated, Raul Salinas passed away last night in Austin,
Tejaztlan.
Raul will be greatly missed. His work, poetry, and philosophy will live on
in the good works of poets, artists, musicians and cultural centros
throughout America. His spirit we lead us all and help us to survive and
thrive in difficult times.
His words/poems should serve as maps for us all in our quest to keep
culture, heritage and tradition alive in our barrios, cul de sacs, suburbs,
ranchos...wherever you/we live.
Thank you, Raul. You have blessed us all.
Manuel Diosdado Castillo, Jr.
San Anto Cultural Arts
A BIO OF RAUL SALINAS
Raúl Roy “Tapon” Salinas was born in San Antonio, Texas on March 17,
1934. He was raised in Austin, Texas from 1936 to 1956, when he moved to Los
Angeles. In 1957 he was sentenced to prison in Soleded State Prison in
California. Over the span of the next 15 years, Salinas spent 11 years
behind the walls of state and federal penitentiaries. It was during his
incarceration in some of the nation’s most brutal prison systems, that
Salinas’ social and political consciousness were intensified, and so it is
with keen insight into the subhuman conditions of prisons and an inhuman
world that the pinto aesthetics that inform his poetry were formulated.
His prison years were prolific ones, including creative, political, and
legal writings, as well as an abundance of correspondence. In 1963, while in
Huntsville, he began writing a jazz column entitled “The Quarter Note”
which ran consistently for 1-1/2 years. In Leavenworth he played a key role
in founding and producing two important prison journals, Aztlán de
Leavenworth and New Era Prison Magazine, through which his poetry first
circulated and gained recognition within and outside of the walls. As a
spokesperson, ideologue, educator, and jailhouse lawyer of the Prisoner
Rights Movement, Salinas also became an internationalist who saw the
necessity of making alliances with others. This vision continues to inform
his political and poetic practice. Initially published in the inaugural
issue of Aztlán de Leavernworth, “Trip through a Mind Jail” (1970)
became the title piece for a book of poetry published by Editorial Pocho-Che
in 1980.
With the assistance of several professors and students at the University of
Washington - Seattle, Salinas gained early release from Marion Federal
Penitentiary in 1972. As a student at the University of Washington, Salinas
was involved with community empowerment projects and began making alliances
with Native American groups in the Northwest, a relationship that was to
intensify over the next 15 years. Although Salinas writes of his experiences
as a participant in the Native American Movement, it is a dimension of his
life that has received scant attention. In the 22 years since his release
from Marion, Salinas’ involvement with various political movements has
earned him an international reputation as an eloquent spokesperson for
justice. Along the way he has continued to refine and produce his unique
blend of poetry and politics.
Salinas’ literary reputation in Austin earned him recognition as the poet
laureate of the East Side and the title of “maestro” from emerging poets
who seek his advice and a mentor. While his literary work is probably most
widely known for his street aesthetics and sensibility, which document the
interactions, hardships, and intra- and intercultural strife of barrio life
and prison in vernacular, bilingual language, few people have examined the
influence of Jazz in his obra that make him part of the Beat Generation of
poets, musicians, and songwriters. His poetry collections included
dedications, references, and responses to Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac,
Charles Bukowski, Charlie Parker, Herschel Evans, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles
Davis, for example. Academics have primarily classified Salinas as an
important formative poet of the Chicano Movement; yet, while he may have
received initial wide-scale recognition during the era, it would be unfair
to limit a reading of his style, content, and literary influence to the
Movement.
There were many dimensions to Salinas’ literary and political life.
Though, at times, some are perplexed at the multiple foci of Salinas’
life, the different strands of his life perhaps best exemplify what it means
to be mestizo, in a society whose official national culture suppresses
difference: his life’s work is testimony to the uneasy, sometimes violent,
sometimes blessed synthesis of Indigenous, Mexican, African, and
Euro-American cultures. Salinas currently resides in Austin, Texas, were he
is the proprietor of Resistencia Bookstore and Red Salmon Press, located in
South Austin. Arte Público Press reissued Salinas’ classic poetry
collection, Un Trip through the Mind Jail y otras Excursiones (1999), as
part of its Pioneers of Modern U.S. Hispanic Literature Series. He is also
the author of another collection of poetry, East of the Freeway: Reflections
de Mi Pueblo (1994).
Salinas resided in Austin, Texas, were he was the proprietor of Resistencia
Bookstore and Red Salmon Press, located in South Austin. Arte Público Press
reissued Salinas’ classic poetry collection, Un Trip through the Mind Jail
y otras Excursiones (1999), as part of its Pioneers of Modern U.S. Hispanic
Literature Series. He is also the author of another collection of poetry,
East of the Freeway: Reflections de Mi Pueblo (1994).
En paz descanse. May he rest in peace.
Lisa Alvarado
Celeste West’s obituary is up on the SFGate website with a link about who to contact about the memorial, noting “If you cannot donate, no worries, you can creatively agitate for peace and justice, and follow your bliss.”
I was saddened today to hear of the death of Celeste West; my sincere apologies if you are hearing about it here first. Celeste, no relation to me, was one of the two fiesty authors of the original Revolting Librarians back in 1971. She wrote the introduction to our follow-up, Revolting Librarians Redux and really pushed us to think about ideas such as copyright and the whole idea of publishing through another company as opposed to doing it ourselves. Her answering machine, which I frequently spoke to in those days said something to the effect of “Send me a sunbeam” and though I’d like to think our back and forth conversations about licensing and releases fit the bill, I suspect they may not have.
In addition to her library writing with dry titles such as The Public Library Mission Statement and Its Imperatives for Service, she also wrote Lesbian Love Advisor and Lesbian Polyfidelity. She was also the first editor of Synergy a newsletter for SFPL’s experimental Bay Area Reference Center. Celeste discussed the relationship between the city’s transforming culture and the local library activities.
She described the city as “a trend-mecca–whether it be communal living, campus riots, gay liberation, independent film making … you name it and we’ve got it.” But what San Francisco had, she argued, was not reflected in library collections unless somebody took the time to pull together “the elusive printed material.” Thus, Synergy began examining the nature of library card catalogs, indexes, and selecting tools because its staff believed that such tools were mostly “rear-view mirrors” that provided little or no bibliographic access to the public’s current information needs. [library juice]
And, like any activist, her accomplishments expand well beyond this brief list of specifics. As her friend Judy said in her email to me “I hope someone will do a piece on her pirate queen life and what she has done to make libraries a little bit freer.” and I hope the same. There is a brief piece on the SF Zen Center blog, where she was a librarian from 1986-2006, with a grinning photo of her and a bit more information about an upcoming memorial service, should you be in the Bay Area and want to pay your respects.
Boston lead singer Brad Delp has died unexpectedly at age 55. Boston is one of those bands whose sound was ubiquitous during my teen years thanks to classic rock radio stations (they're still mainstays of the one classic rock station left in Philly, actually), and no less a rock god than Kurt Cobain saw fit to rip off the churning riff of "More Than A Feeling" for "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Still, I'm sad to say I never knew Delp's name -- or indeed the names of any member of Boston -- until today. Although I heard them everywhere, all the time, they were not the kind of band that inspired slavish fandom in me, and yet, I know every word to their big singles.
I'm sure there are legions of Boston fans who are really & truly gutted by this news (don't get me wrong, I'm saddened, but not to the degree that tears are welling up), and they are the ones we should cater to. Haul out your Boston CDs and display them with his obituary. While you're at it, why not put together a display of CDs by other critically reviled, sometimes geographically named 70s bands of Boston's ilk? Here's a list to get you started:
- Asia
- Europe
- Journey
- Foreigner (okay, now I have "I Want To Know What Love Is" stuck in my head. Gah!)
- Toto
- Styx
- Free
- Yes
- Rush (a shout-out to my friends Carlie & Patrick, who don't know each other but who are huge Rush fans, for which I mock them without a shred of pity, but they know I love them, right? And hey, if Stephen Malkmus gives Geddy Lee some love, I guess they can't be all totally unlistenable dreck, she said super-graciously)
I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Commenters, fill in the blanks!
Meanwhile, here's Boston's All Music profile.
Thank you--even "little" points like his reminder to bring humor to the classroom is so helpful to me.
What a wise man! Peter