Review of ‘Inferno’ by Dan Brown

I’ve read all of Dan Brown’s books, and consider this to be his best yet. It’s the fourth book to feature Robert Langdon, distinguished US academic and expert in symbology. This time most of the action in the first part of the book takes place in Florence, one of my favourite cities, so that’s a bonus!

The plot centres on Bertrand Zobrist, a geneticist and believer in transhumanism, the main principle of which is that humans must improve their race by becoming actively involved in the  evolutionary process. The less positive side of transhumanism  however, is that there needs to be a radical reduction in the population to enable the genetically improved cohort to survive and flourish. Zobrist has tried to get the World Health Organisation involved in his project, but not surprisingly they refused his approach. He subsequently commits suicide, but not before apparently leaving some kind of drug that he has created, to be released at a particular time, possibly threatening the future of the human race.

The book begins with Robert Langdon waking up with a head injury in a hospital in Florence. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there, and assumes that his short term memory loss is due to his injury. But it soon becomes apparent that he is being pursued, and he manages to escape from the hospital with help from a doctor, Sienna Brooks. He gradually realises that the vision that has been haunting him, of a silver haired woman, who instructs him to ‘seek, and ye shall find’, actually has some meaning, but what must he seek? He then finds an object sewn into his jacket, which turns out to be a laser pointer that has been configured to project a painting, an image of Boticelli’s Vision of Hell’, which has had some letters added to it. These letters are the first of a number of clues which he and Brooks must follow to try to find where Zobrist’s ‘object’ is hidden. Langdon knows Florence very well, and the search takes them all over the city. Finally the clues suggest that the search must move on to Venice, and finally to Istanbul. You will need to read the book to follow the chase and to find out if Zobrist’s ‘time bomb’ is recovered in time!

The action is non-stop and exciting, and the descriptions of Florence made me want to go there again! it was very difficult to put the book down; I read it over a Bank Holiday weekend. I recommend it totally, and will award it five stars on Amazon and Goodreads where this review will also be posted.

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Potato peeling and statistical thermodynamics

I mentioned the ‘potato peeling rule’ in a Tweet this morning, prompted by the second year Physical Chemistry exam which is actually taking place as I write this. I should start by acknowledging the originator of the term, my colleague John Staniforth (you can find his Facebook profile here). Many of the equations in statistical thermodynamics are quite complex and long-winded, and have terms in them like Planck’s constant (h) to the power 3 (or even 4). The type of calculators that our students have these days enable them to input complete calculations in one go (at least in principle), but even these wonderful gadgets can’t usually cope with numbers larger or smaller than 10 to the power plus or minus 99. So they happily try to calculate an entropy using the Sackur-Tetrode equation (for example), and get an answer of zero. The solution is of course to break the equation down into separate sections, and (horror of horrors) to cancel some powers of 10 by hand. Going back to John, he was helping me in a problem class a few years ago, and to explain the principle, came out with this (now) immortal phrase: ‘The champion potato peeler peels one potato at a time’. So, ever since, I have called this procedure the ‘potato peeling rule’. It remains to be seen whether it has been applied in today’s exam!

An eventful week for Manchester United

Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement has been on the cards for some time, so when the rumours started flying around on Tuesday night I was not particularly surprised. After all, he has served the club immensely well for over 26 years, and it made a lot of sense for him to retire on a high note, leaving the club in a strong position. So, as I have said on Twitter and Facebook this week, thank you, Sir Alex. Manchester United won’t be the same without you, but I do wish you the very best for your retirement, and I’m pleased that you will still be associated with the club.

Regarding Sir Alex’s successor, David Moyes, I am positive. He has been labelled as having insufficient experience, and no cup-winning pedigree, but I think that is less important than the fact that he will put the interests of the club first. He can (and will) learn the other skills quickly. Far better to have David Moyes than a mercenary managed like Jose Mourinho, who would be in it for himself first and the club second!

Finally, a word on Wayne Rooney. I think it is now time for him to go. This is the second time he has had an apparent attack of restlessness, and last time he probably only stayed because Sir Alex persuaded him to. Now he should move on; it will do him good to try his undoubted skill outside his immediate comfort zone.

There will be interesting times ahead for Manchester United, but I am confident that the club is in good hands, and that is the best that can be hoped for now.

An ugly and frustrating political landscape

I haven’t posted on politics for a while, but recent events have prompted me to now. As a Labour party member and supporter, there is little to be encouraged about, and much to be frustrated by. Meanwhile UKIP’s success in the council elections last week, and some of the knee-jerk reactions to this by the coalition government, makes for the ‘ugly’ part of the landscape referred to in the title.

Starting with the council elections, there was some boundary reorganisation leading up to these elections, and my area became part of a new constituency (Keele, Silverdale and Knutton). Previously Silverdale and Knutton had returned a UKIP councillor, and Keele was part of a constituency that was represented by a Conservative councillor. For last week’s elections, we had an excellent local Labour candidate, and it was to be hoped that he might be elected, given the composition of the electorate at Keele. However, the turnout was appalling (21%), and the UKIP candidate won by two votes. When I went to our polling station to vote, I was the only one there, and I heard similar accounts from others. I suspect that the turnout from Keele students wasn’t high, although I don’t have the figures. So now Keele is represented by UKIP on the County Council, which is a pretty unbelievable situation!

No doubt related to the election results, we now have a chorus of right wing Conservatives calling for a referendum on our membership of the European Union to be held before the next General Election in 2 years time, and we have people like Nigel Lawson declaring that he will vote for us to leave. Thankfully the coalition government look unlikely to give in to this. David Cameron has said that there will be a referendum if he is Prime Minister in the next government; that’s bad enough but at least we can hope that he won’t be! And then we have immigration being mentioned in the Queen’s Speech today, which must surely be connected with the election results.

Turning to the Labour party, the shadow cabinet haven’t been having an easy time recently. I wasn’t a supporter of Ed Miliband originally (see earlier posts), but recently I feel he is doing a good job, and that his shadow cabinet team are similarly performing well. But they are being attacked from both sides. Recently Len McCluskey attacked Ed for having too many ‘Blairites’ in the shadow cabinet, only for Blair himself to warn them of the dangers of appearing not to be sufficiently fiscally responsible! They truly can’t win. In my view they should be bolder in saying that yes, they will spend more, but that this is necessary for growth. But I’ve talked at length about my views before!

In conclusion the political landscape I see is bleak. And at the moment even my own party are not providing me with any optimism. Depressing times indeed.

Brief review of ‘The Spear of Destiny’ by Julian Noyce

This is Julian Noyce’s second book, following ‘Tomb of the Lost’, and once again features  the journalist Peter Dennis. It concerns the ‘Spear of Destiny’, which pierced Christ’s side when he was on the cross. The spear reputedly has miraculous properties, being capable of curing those who touch it of any injury and illness they might have.

The story starts with the Crucifixion, and explains how the spear got its properties. It then fast forwards to the present day, and describes how Count Otto von Werner (who appeared in the first book) tries to steal the spear from the British Museum, only to find that it is a copy. It is then a race against time for Peter Dennis, Natalie Feltham and Jim Hutchinson to recover the real spear before  von Werner does. This takes them to Rome, and then to Palestine, where they eventually recover the spear. As for what happens to von Werner, you’ll have to read the book, which I recommend as an exciting and absorbing read, and a worthy successor to Tomb of the Lost.

Thatcher – cutting through the hype

I’ve tried to resist posting on Margaret Thatcher’s death – lots has been written already from both sides of the political divide. But although I’ve tweeted about it, there are still things to be said that don’t fit into a series of 140 character statements! So, here goes.

Having been born in 1957, I was 22 when Thatcher came into power in 1979. I had just started my PhD at UCL and lived in inner London. I was, as now, a Labour supporter (although I wasn’t a member then). It’s really hard to express the feelings of sheer desperation that people in my position felt as she set about the systematic destruction of our industrial base, and the removal of much of what might be called a caring and responsible society. Add to that her allegiance with Reagan, and our misery and despair were complete. As a pro-European, I hated what she did in Europe, supposedly on our behalf. And it’s ironic now that her descendants are attacking what they call the ‘benefits culture’, when the existence of large numbers of people on benefit might never have happened but for her destruction of our heavy industries. As I said in one of my tweets yesterday, they were bad years that I would rather forget.

Finally, to expand on my tweets of yesterday, I was incensed by the sycophantic ‘tributes’ being paid by former political opponents. People that openly detested Thatcher when she was PM came out and said things like Paddy Ashdown, who claimed that she was ‘undoubtedly the greatest PM of our age’. Such people are displaying selective memory syndrome, at the best!

For those who have said that she was a wife and mother – yes she was, and her relatives and friends are entitled to mourn her passing. But for those of us that suffered from her policies, hopefully this marks the end of a era of British politics that is best forgotten.

What has happened to ‘my London’?

I love London. I was born there (well, in Ealing, which counts as Greater London), and I lived there as a student and postdoctoral researcher for 9 years. Since moving to North Staffordshire I have visited London regularly, both for leisure and work. In recent years I have noticed some changes which have particularly impacted on visits involving the West End, like theatre trips. For example, this weekend Angela and I have been in London, mainly to see ‘The Audience’, starring Helen Mirren, which we saw last night and really enjoyed. Staying in our usual hotel, hear Euston station, I made the mistake of assuming that we would be able to find somewhere to get a coffee, or any type of drink, near the theatre before the show. Of course there are lots of pubs, cafes, restaurants etc, but they were all packed!  My recollections of earlier visits didn’t have this problem, and there was always space in these places. It does seem as if the number of people visiting central London now far outweighs the available catering facilities, particularly at the weekend. This was reinforced by my last visit, in November, when I tried to find a pub in Central London where I could get a seat on a Saturday night (I failed)!

Sadly, the only obvious solution is to travel to the West End immediately before one’s event starts, and to get food, drink etc outside the centre, in less busy areas. Those of us who can only get to London on the weekend have become victims of its popularity as a tourist destination (although I suppose we are adding to it!). But London, at least at the weekend, is a far more manic place than it was when I lived there, and whether that is a good thing or not is open to debate!

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Comments on ‘The Great British Class Calculator’

The appearance earlier this week of ‘The Great British Class Calculator’ on the BBC website has been the subject of some discussion. Replacing 3 classes by 7 led me to wonder where I would be placed, so I thought I would give it a try. I had no particular expectations from this, but thought that as someone with a fairly senior university post, and an interest in culture (theatre, opera, classical music and art) as well as more modern social pursuits like social networking and blogging, I might score reasonably. Well, that was what I thought! As it was, I was in for a surprise.

The calculator consists of questions on your salary and savings, whether you own or rent your house, what your interests are, and who your friends are. Inevitably most of my friends are in professional jobs, and I’ve mentioned my interests above. Although university staff are not paid particularly well in the UK, my salary is reasonable, and I have some savings. Looking good so far? Well, maybe not, because it seems that the fact that I rent my flat (partly for convenience and partly because I see no point in tying up most of my resources in a house that I have no-one to inherit) is a serious issue.

So, having completed the calculation, it seems that I am an Emergent Services Worker. This class is characterised by being made up of mainly young people (I’m 56!); the fact that I rent seems to have been the deciding factor. But how can a University Reader, with 30 years experience and a reasonable international research reputation, be an Emergent Services Worker? I invite the designers of the calculator to review their algorithms!

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Professor Patrick W M Jacobs (15 September 1923-31 March 2013): Personal recollections

Professor Patrick Jacobs, who died on 31 March 2013, made many significant contributions to the field of Solid State Chemistry, and was one of the key players in the field of research on defects in solids.  I first met him when I was a postdoc at UCL in the early 1980s, and was privileged to get to know him and to learn from him. He remained a mentor, and one of my scientific heroes to whom I have looked up to throughout my career.

I first actually worked with Patrick in 1986 at Keele, when he made one of his regular visits to the Catlow group. At the time he was very interested in silver halides, along with Roger Baetzold and Yen Tan (from Kodak), and Sean Corish, who were also visiting then.  I helped them use the CASCADE code to calculate defect formation energies using various potentials they were deriving at the time. This particular visit was in late August, including the late summer Bank Holiday, and the weather was terrible with frequent torrential rain. I remember one day in particular, when things hadn’t gone well on the calculations front, and Patrick pronounced it the ‘second worst day of his life’ (although he never elaborated to me on which had been the worst day!). His zest for hard work was exemplified by the fact that although the tradition in the Catlow group was to go to the local pub (The Sneyd Arms) at 10 pm most nights, he was always keen to go back to the lab afterwards, although some of us were less keen!

I was privileged to attend a symposium organised in his honour at the University of Western Ontario in 1989, where the photograph below on the right was taken (with Alan Chadwick, Alan Allnatt and Sean Corish). This was followed in 1990 by a meeting at Mansfield College Oxford, also held to honour his contributions to our field. In fact Patrick was a regular attendee at the Mansfield College meetings organised by Richard Catlow, including the Mott anniversary meeting in 1988.

A regular conference fixture for Patrick was the ICDIM/EURODIM series, which I attended fairly regularly from 1984, and with full regularity from 1994. I would meet Patrick at those conferences, and was delighted that he came to EURODIM98, which I organised. Sadly that was the last time I saw him, in July 1998. The photograph on the left shows Patrick with other members of the organising committee of one of the early EURODIM conferences. You may recognise some of the others in the photograph!

Even though I didn’t see Patrick after my conference in 1998, we kept in touch, and I received an e-mail from him as recently as 22 March (2013) with some information about his new book on Thermodynamics, which has just been published. This book, his earlier book on Group Theory with Applications in Chemical Physics, and his very many publications and contributions to Solid State Chemistry will ensure that he lives on in our memories, and continues to inspire us.

 

Review of ‘The Larmenius Inheritance’ by John Paul Davis

The Larmenius Inheritance is the second book by John Paul Davis that I have read. You can find a review of his previous book here, as well as on Amazon. Once again I enjoyed the book immensely and have awarded it 5 stars on Amazon and Goodreads.

The book is concerned with events that might have occurred following the dissolution of the Knights Templar movement. Three organisations play an active role in the plot: the Knights of Arcadia, The Order of the Ancient Star, and The Order of Christ. The first two are largely fictional; the Knights of Arcadia being formed to protect the Knights Templar order’s most sacred possession, and the Order of the Ancient Star being made up of ‘dissident’ members of the order, who resented the formation of the Knights of Arcadia (who had fled to Scotland). There is also the suggestion that the Order of the Ancient Star had different values from the rest of the order, which contributed to the conflict. Finally, the Order of Christ was essentially the Templar order in Portugal, and is historically correct, with Vasco da Gama amongst its members.

The book starts with the death of William Anson, grandmaster of the Knights of Arcadia. His son, Matt Anson, and journalist Nicole Stocker separately set out to discover who killed William Anson, and their quest brings them into contact with present day members of the Order of the Ancient Star and the Order of Christ. they eventually uncover the forces behind his death, and the true aspirations of the Order of the Ancient Star.

The plot moves seamlessly between Scotland, London, Switzerland, Portugal and North America. I read it over a weekend and found it hard to put down. I recommend it and look forward to the next book by John Paul Davis!