What are under Troubled Bridges

Last Updated (Monday, 23 June 2008 14:14) Written by Raymond Nakamura

The fiftieth anniversary of the collapse of the bridge now (as of 1994) known as the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing got me thinking about Disney musicals.
I mean no disrespect. Here's what happened.

I read about how the two engineers responsible for the design of the bridge, made a fatal miscalculation resulting in a total of 23 deaths, including their own.
Such an awesome responsibility. I mean, when I make a mistake in this blog, nobody even comments...

I'd heard that Canadian engineers wear an iron ring to remind them of a collapsed bridge and their responsibility to public safety. So I asked some engineers about theirs. They receive the ring through a secret ceremony, so I won't use their full names, in case they told me more then they were supposed to...

Mike told me the rings being made from bits of a collapsed bridge is a myth and that they are steel, not iron. Paul stopped wearing his because it scratched the dishes he washed, but said, "When I hear any stories about bridges collapsing or such it still strikes a cord.  It is central to the Iron Ring and the obligation of an engineer." The Iron Ring was first developed for Canadian engineers, although some American engineers also receive a ring, of a slightly different design. According to Bruce, who received one even though he entered engineering through physics, "It's normally worn on the little finger of your working hand, so Sherlock Holmes might have seen one and said, 'I see you are a left-handed Canadian engineer!''

An engineering professor at the University of Toronto seeking a way to unify engineering contacted Rudyard Kipling, who had written some poems related to engineering. His being a Freemason probably influenced him in creating a secretive medieval kind of ceremony called "The RItual of the Calling of an Engineer." The Corporation of the Seven Wardens Inc. originally consisting of seven past-presidents of the Engineering Institute of Canada first administered it in 1922.

Rudyard Kipling is perhaps best known (at least to me) for Jungle Book. I'm not even sure I've actually seen all of the Disney version of that story, released over forty years ago, but now I have "The Bare Necessities" playing through my head. I'll have to see if it's in the new show.

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The Nature of Fathers

Last Updated (Monday, 29 November 1999 16:00) Written by Raymond Nakamura

Here's a slightly belated Father's Day shout out to my Dad, my Dad-in-law, and all the other Dads out there.

You don't often hear much about exemplary fathers in the animal kingdom, other than the seahorse Dad who gets pregnant or the Emperor penguin Dad who freezes his butt off guarding the egg in the Antarctic. But here are a few others to add to the list. For whatever the reasons, I don't know many other stay-at-home Dads, so I need to find inspiration where I can.

Here are some with nice pictures.
http://animal.discovery.com/tv/a-list/creature-countdowns/dads/dads.html

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On a Pterosaur

Last Updated (Monday, 09 June 2008 14:06) Written by Raymond Nakamura

When I saw this article about giant pterosaurs, I loved the image of the baby dinosaur being picked off like some worm. Today I'm going to peck at whatever subjects pop up.

Arts
Mark Witton, one of the scientists studying these creatures, also did the illustrations. And his colleague Darren Naish has also co-authored a book on the background of Walking with Dinosaurs. I love how that program looks like a regular natural history show using computer-animated dinosaurs.

Cultural Learnings
I'd never heard of Azhdarchids before, a group including the largest known pterosaurs, which were about four times as tall as a person. The name Azhdarchid comes from the Uzbek word for "dragon." I was intrigued to think of other countries and cultures having a matching word for an imaginary thing like a dragon, though I realize Chinese and English dragons are not the same things. Uzbek is what is spoken in Uzbekistan, not to be confused with the place where Borat is supposed to be from, though I loved that wicked movie.

History
The discussions of functional anatomy reminded me of Cuvier, a French biologist in the 1800s considered the father of this sort of study. One of his students dressed up like a devil and woke up him in the middle of the night, chanting "Cuvier, Cuvier — I have come to eat you!" Cuvier opened his eyes, and supposedly said, "All creatures with horns and hooves are herbivores. You can't eat me," then went back to sleep.

Film Studies
Naish and Witton look at four different hypotheses on how Azhdarchids fed in relation to understanding the structure of the skull, which looks like a spaceship to me. One of these models compared the behaviour to a Marabou stork, which may have been in the living room of the family in the French movie I saw at the film festival on my first date with the woman who is now my wife.

Semiotics
The best studied Azhdarchid has the genus name Quetzalcoatlus, from the Aztec version of the Mayan supreme god Kukulcan the feathered serpent to which the famous pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico is dedicated. I didn't see that when I was there, but I did get print made of my birthday using the Mayan symbols.

Fantasy

Philosophy

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Here Comes the Sun

Last Updated (Wednesday, 25 November 2009 14:34) Written by Raymond Nakamura

We are now heading into sunblock season, thanks to the tilt of the Earth and the way we orbit around the sun.

To explore some of the mysteries of ultraviolet radiation and its blockage, I picked up some uv-sensitive jewelry, a must-have accessory for every aspiring style-conscious scientist.

Here are two videos documenting our preliminary studies.

If these inspire your own uv experiments, please enjoy the sun sensibly. I don't want to hear about your peeling skin or weeping blisters. But I would like to know if you find some other interesting results.

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