The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Ralph Giles:

Michael I @ 728:

I saw some mentions of the calculation, and was sceptical based on intuition when I heard the 11,000 feet altitude after seeing a picture of the baloon.

Here's my go: wikipedia says Helium has a density (at 0C, sealevel) of 0.1786 g/L and air (at 25C, but never mind) 1.2 g/L. So the displaced mass of the balloon is about 1 g/L.

(If you don't have a reference handy, the back-of-the-envelope version involves remembering gas at standard temperature and pressure always takes up 22 L per mol. Helium has a molecular weight of 4 vs 28 for N₂ and 32 for O₂ so 1/7th or so. Which you can just neglect. Vacuum balloons let you go higher, but don't generate significantly more lift at sea level.)

If we assume a light six-year-old child, say 20 kg, we need 20000 litres just to get off the ground. 20000 L is 20 m³. A sphere of that volume would have a radius of (3*20/4π)^1/3 or 1.7 metres. So a sphere over three metres in diameter is a lower bound. The actual balloon was more like a flying saucer, though. A cylinder of that volume with a 4:1 aspect ratio needs to be 1.16 x 4.67 m.

The question is, was the balloon in the picture more than 5 metres in diameter? I think it's hard to tell, but we're in the right ballpark. So I'm left with scepticism, but no obvious conclusion either way. That's the thing with volume; it's not so hard to estimate a linear dimension, but any error is cubed, so it's easy to be off by a factor an order of magnitude. If I go to an aquarium store and try to guess the tank capacities, I'm usually quite wrong.

So maybe a reporter should have done that. But it wouldn't have been enough for a story paragraph when they finished; what they should have done is find out the actual dimensions of the balloon and work from there.* Presumedly the parents had some idea how big it was, having built it.

That no journalist appears to have done that, even to say it was inconclusive, given all the attention the story got, and that so simple a calculation could only be reported as something done by experts and not writers does reflect on the accepted level of scientific literacy, of course.

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* All of this is on wikipedia now, btw. It says "authorities" did measure the balloon after it landed and determined it couldn't have carried the boy.

Michael Roberts @ 632:

Garrett Lisi and others have suggested something similar for scientists. I don't know if your neighborhood qualifies as a nice place to spend a few months/years on the international scale, but it's a way to pursue philanthropic support if the start-up incubator idea doesn't appeal.

My invite took a full seven days to go through the system, so they've certainly slowed down the propagation. I'm now rillianbis@googlewave.com.

Was also really annoyed that it wouldn't let me have rillian, or giles or ralph.giles as my account id. Even when none of those are obviously taken. So I have a login I can't quite remember.

Now, I just have to be online at the same time as someone I know who also has an account and wants to chat that way and not in any of the other myriad ways we might talk...ah the embarrassment of wonders that surround us.

pnh @ 12: I've heard 24-48 hours for recent invites.

Dialect is an interesting example of the difficulties we've been talking about. For those who don't know, about a quarter of Iain M. Banks' novel Feersum Endjinn is in phonetic dialect.^* And dialect, especially in long narrative sections, is something a lot of people bounce off of regardless of the genre. It's hard to go back to sounding out words, like when we first learned to read. Doing it while getting sfnal clues about the invented world^† doesn't make it easier!

I think Banks does take some pleasure in this difficulty for its own sake. He certainly enjoys challenging his readers in other ways. But he doesn't use it pointlessly. The sections in dialect really do contribute to the characterization by their very medium. The ability to represent accent is used to delightful effect. And overall, it reinforces the theme of the outside path and the ways a society can make use of it—by making us walk it as we're reading—which is expressed more elegantly here than in any of Culture books, although it's a theme of that entire series.

And if one can get past the dialect, one is rewarded. Those sections are filled with character, and the generic 3rd person narration in the rest of the book feels stingy by comparison so that I was never quite sorry to come to new dialect chapter. I got used to reading it over the book, and my investment in that voice, in its essential uniqueness, grew through the story, building all the way to the end. I just got it down from the self and reread those few pages again. The climactic sentence is still amazing, with the awful majesty of what it does. And I don't think it would have half that impact if it weren't in that special voice. The view really is nice from up there.

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* This accounts for the tricky spelling of the title.
† And obscure architectural terms, in this particular case!

Harriet, momentarily delurking in 456:

I was amused by your comment on Consider Phlebas. I've been reading speculative fiction since I was a child, and only getting "about half of what was there" pretty much sums up my experience of reading Banks in general, and the early Culture novels in particular.

Not struggling with the technology, I suppose, but I really like having to piece together what's going on from scattered clues about the characters and the world they live in. Banks does this with the tech and with the plot. There's usually at least one massive reveal that recasts everything that's happened in a different light. I've reread most of the culture novels, and it's a different experience, seeing how everything points to the conclusion I missed the first time through.

I really like that about his work. I don't think about it as being difficult (although sometimes the thematic darkness is) but the challenge of putting the pieces together is part of what makes the books fun and, well, not work to read.

I hope you enjoy your next one.

Lisa L. Spangenberg @ 30:

There is nothing new under the sun, and of the making of books there is no end.

What a beautiful thought! Could we have it in Latin please? I'm sure I would find it much more profound, and certainly Improved, if rendered in a language I can't really read.

Clifton Royston @ 789: Thanks for the rec. I'll camp the local library's copy. :)

So, I've been reading Dan Simmon's The Fall of Hyperion. I quite liked the Canterbury-Tales-in-Space form of Hyperion, but was put off by the sudden ending. I read Illium and Olympos and was also put off by the latter, which didn't help, so it was some time before I was convinced to try the sequel.

It really does continue the story, but it's not just a second half because the themes are larger, and different. It about humanity's relationship to god, and, science fictionally, our relationship to our institutions. It's a singularity novel written before Vinge gave the genre a name. And many other things. I've been quite enjoying it.

But what most struck me is that it's Keats fanfic. The whole series. It's even more fanfic than one might naively imagine. Wow.

Daniel Martin @ 47:

I dunno, I could never understand what that character in the parka was saying!

More seriously, I did find Chef hard to understand sometimes (as a North American primarily from the west coast) and I could see how the high, fast, clipped voices the main characters speak in would be hard to follow if it was also a foreign accent.

Respet mah authorahtay!

When we lived in the UK it was generally the children who we had the most trouble understanding. Looser pronunciation combined with microdialects maybe. Like understanding someone else's two-year-old, it took a while to get the hang of it.

Leah @ 479: I really like the Snow Queen too, although it wasn't in any of my childhood books. At least not that I remember. The first version I saw was a BBC-ish television setting.

You know, of course, about the most excellent versions by Joan D. Vinge and Kelly Link.

KeithS @55: some? I'd go with "most" at least where fiction is concerned.

xeger @ 161:

A book conservator would of course tell you to take it to a book conservator. I'm not a book conservator though.

The best thing is to carefully peel back the paper or cloth on the cover and the spine, insert a piece of strong tissue (like japanese kozo, ideally painted to match) or, if there's likely to be a lot of use, fine linen or bookcloth, and then paste everything back together. That should leave it looking pretty much the way it does now, but the cover won't be falling off.

That's a bit finicky. If you want something easier, just glue a piece of cloth over the broken joint. It will obviously look patched, but will hold up better and do less permanent damage than using any kind of tape, which is most people's natural instinct. (Meaning you can fix it again/better later.) Water soluble (washable) white glue or starch paste are the best things to use for this. You can also reinforce it by openning the cover completely and gluing a strip of paper over the gap from the inside.

PurpleGirl (57): Given what I've seen of math book design, that would be almost the same as organizing them by colour!

I am reminded that I saw some gorgeous velvet (and otherwise) bindings at this exhibit last year.

The velvet was generally over wooden boards (a la guthrie @ 36) which looked horribly clunky and, well, overengineered to my modern eyes, but gosh were they pretty.

KeithS @ 22:

For those of us not in the know, what are some common and uncommon bookbinding materials?

Leather is what's survived, so it's what on thinks of as the traditional material. But there were other. We know embroidered cloth bindings were popular in the 19th century, and then as now there were a few bindings with wood and metal covers.

There were also many paperback-equivalents bound in, well, paper, or parchment. I have a book bound in half-parchment with paste paper covers. It's not a softcover: it has proper board covers, and the sewing and glue are still perfectly solid. The paste paper is doing ok, but the parchment covering the spine cracked at the hinge fell off long ago. It must have looked lovely when it was new, though, all red and white.

At least today, goat and calf skin are generally preferred. Adult cow leather is too thick, and most other leathers aren't as strong or are too elastic. I've done some books with garment lamb skin; it feels wonderful, but it's like tooling a sponge.

I understand pig skin was used a lot historically for cheaper bindings, and is the closest to human skin. I've never worked with it though.

Cloth used to be common, but today's hardbacks are all paper. Paper spine and paper-over-board covers under the paper dust jacket. So for common materials, I think we're down to paper (possibly glossy/plastic coated), leather, and cardboard.

abi @ 330: Sounds wonderful. I have a paperback copy of Wheelock I used in school, but I didn't get very far, and there's not much to be done for it. The rebinding project I found falling apart at a used bookstore much more recently. I hope it survives another 100 years too.

abi @ 230:

I went off and sewed the headbands on my Latin grammar, which has been sitting half-bound for over a year now.

Hey, I have one of those! Clendon and Vince, Oxford, 1931, reprinted 1954. Part one only, sadly. But hey, it's been from England to Australia to Canada in its short life.

In theory it's waiting for me to buy some matching tissue for section guards. Because more paper is always the answer.

Andrew @ 60: Occam's razor says an explanation should be the simplest one that fits the facts.* I read "complicated explanations are suspect" as avoiding that level of rationality entirely: facts should be ignored or discounted to fit a simpler explanation. Which is quite the opposite.

I guess you said that. But I think that's the important distinction.

I don't know that I've experienced doubt about atheism, either, but I've certainly experienced wishful thinking.

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* Wikipedia gives entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Or as Einstein put it, ""Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

What is really cool, is I've finally discovered how to do two more of the transliteration characters for transliteration of Egytian hieroglyphs.

There are four 'h' sounds: h, ḥ, ḫ, and ẖ. Likewise t and ṯ, d and ḏ (or ṯ, ḏ and ḫ for newer, single-character versions). Some older texts also use ı̉, but nowadays that's usually just j or i. Likewise ḳ has become q And the ayin is ʿ. So if only I knew how to do the 'aleph' that looks like a 3 broken in the middle, I'd be done. Last I heard that just wasn't encoded. :(

Well, that, and my browser doesn't space most of those correctly in italic.

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