Tensegrity [ii].

Up, Down. 

---

Ha-ha-ha ... the joke's on me (again). Who knew the knuckleheads had gone so far astray? How far in can Hansel & Gretel go before they are coming out again?

It's the Alzheimer's :-)    I forgot Kenneth Snelson's name and so searched for 'Tensegrity' to find it, and among the usual Bucky bollocks some new nonsense: 'Carlos Castaneda' with a 'Tensegrity®' (and all of this before Snelson). So I tried Google just to see and got 'God's geometry' as a bonus. Made me laugh. All good.

There is a dot net which doesn't seem to work except for this part.

Figgured out this morning that Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco are in the same zone. And where San Luis Obispo is relative to that - a place I have actually visited. Those dumb-ass k-k-Canadians eh? Don't know sheeit about any geography beyond their parish.    Be well gentle reader.          {<150} 

---

Down.

A Perfect Moral Storm: [II]

(They wept like anything to see such quantities of sand.)
Up, Down, Clues. 

---

[AHA! Naming anchors in the HTML of this blog worked in Firefox but not in IE. Reason: the <A tag cannot be empty in IE. Solution: put an &nbsp; in the anchor like this <A NAME="xxx">&nbsp;</A> - introducing a redundant and annoying line-feed but otherwise Like a charm!   :-)]

---

Contents: Explanation, Book-keeping The UN, Reality Check What to do?, Clues.

---

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

[From The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll.] 

---

What this is:

This ... is a blow-by-blow of an encounter with a book - nothing more. The first instalment was a few weeks ago (here). I have still not finished reading the book (being now somewhat past the mid-point) so there may be more.

An indulgence then, along the lines of some evangelical magazine I remember seeing on someone's shelf entitled 'What to do until the saviour comes.' (or some such bosh).

The section on the UN is an attempt to do something useful in response (beyond finding typos). 

---

Book-keeping: (pardon the pun)

It turns out that Oxford University Press is in the US now, as well as the UK. And their catalogues are different, check this out: The Mirror of the Gods is on the US site but not the UK site at all (?) What's that about?

'A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change' is up at Google Books (some pages omitted); you can find the preface, a short excerpt from Chapter 5: A Fairy Tale, and final conclusion; and himself.

---

Reviews:
     What is the rational response? by Malcolm Bull, May 2012.
     Reviewed by Holmes Rolston III, July 2011.
     Reviewed by Ole Pedersen, May 2012.
     Saving the world - Dashwood style by Steve Yearley, July 2011.
     The Page 99 Test (by himself) June 2011.
     Reviewed (p44ff) by Andrew Winters, May 2012.
     Reviewed (briefly) by Megan Blomfield, no date.
     Reviewed by Karmen Marguč, 2011 (locked).
     Reviewed by Robin Whitlock, October 2011.

---

Background: (the 2006 essay)

A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption, and a summary by Joshua Kurdys from 2009 (of about the same length as the original).

Still looking for a copy of Climate Ethics: Essential Readings by Steve Gardiner, Simon Caney, Dale Jamieson, and Henry Shue, August 2010; and for an essay titled 'are we deadbeats?' or something like that ...

---

Small mysteries resolved: (and not)

Steve Gardiner's remarkable accent is explained in Steve Yearley's review; and the 'M' is for Mark.

Malcolm Bull's cattiness is still only a surmise but ... I wonder if he had a bad reaction to 'The Fairy Tale' (see here). Is he a boomer? (They can be touchy and that would explain it but he doesn't seem to be.) In any event the fact that he simply doesn't get it is entirely evidenced in the title of his review. And yet he is an Oxford lecturer in art and apparently a serious writer (?)

One way or the other Bull is misled (mīsl'd); but this little parable, 'The Fairy Tale', could be an unexpected entrée I thinks, into the relatively well-concealed emotional side of our Steve. Completely different from all that comes before it. When I have finished the book (to be able to say 'and all that comes after') there may be more about it.

"Aha!" (looking at the Table of Contents some weeks ago) "Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, something to look forward to." Then I watched this video 'Climate Change and Intergenerational Equity and Ethics' from the Three Degrees Conference at the University of Washington School of Law in May of 2009. Instead of using the text he shows video clips. Not strictly speaking literary then; films as well, and this is not a bad thing; his discussion of Sense and Sensibility in the book does focus on the text (and he has read lots more of Austen) - but something is off. He calls Austen's treatment 'subtle' (?); seems to mistake "and for many days successively, and he did not repent," for solidity (?); and then there is the limp in the gitalong of his little allegorical parable already mentioned ... fits, begins to fit ... (and there is a strange use of 'presumably' near the top of p335.) 

---

The UN: (Not!)

1962: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.

 

1968: Economic and Social Council resolution 1346 (XLV) recommends 'a conference'.

 

   -: General Assembly resolution 2398 (XXIII) 'convenes' the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment.

 

1972: United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm establishes United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

 

1973: science of CFCs understood, published 1974.

 

1978: the United States bans nonessential use of CFCs.

 

1985: Vienna Conference 'Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer' (led by the US and at second-hand by UNEP).

 

1987: 'Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer'.

 

1988: General Assembly resolution 44/228 convenes the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development aka 'Rio Conference' & 'Earth Summit'.

 

1992: Montreal Protocol strengthened - see The Evolution of Policy Responses to Stratospheric Ozone Depletion by Peter Morisette (1989); and The Fourth Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol: Report and Reflection, Ian Rowlands (1993).

 

   -: [Sadly, using the Montreal Protocol as a shining example of global cooperation doesn't quite wash. Like herding cats, nailing a blob of mercury, sweeping water &etc. the situation is profoundly problematic. Some general background on refrigeration is useful (the 'traditional' gas is now consisdered to be CFCs - when I was a boy it was ammonia); and this recent spread in the NYT gives some perspective as well.]

 

1995: COP 1, Berlin - COP is Conference of the Parties signing on to the UNFCCC Framework Climate Convention.

 

1996: COP 2, Geneva.

 

1997: (March, August & October) Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI)/Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) in Bonn; &

 

   -: (December) COP 3, Kyoto - Kyoto Protocol 'adopted' (to come into force in 2005).

 

1998: (June & November) SBI/SBSTA in Bonn; &

 

   -: COP 4, Buenos Aires.

 

1999: (June) SBI/SBSTA in Bonn; &

 

   -: (October/November) COP 5, Bonn.

 

2000: (June & August) SBI/SBSTA in Bonn & Lyon; &

 

   -: COP 6, The Hague.

 

2001: (June) COP 6 continued in Bonn; &

 

   -: (November) COP 7, Marrakech.

 

2002: (June) SBI/SBSTA in Bonn; &

 

   -: (October/November) COP 8, New Delhi.

 

2003: (June) SBI/SBSTA in Bonn; &

 

   -: (December) COP 9, Milan.

 

2004: (December) COP 10, Buenos Aires.

 

2005: (May) SBI/SBSTA in Bonn; &

 

   -: (December) COP 11/MOP 1, Montreal - MOP is Meeting of the Parties signed on to Kyoto.

 

2006: (May) SBI/SBSTA/Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) in Bonn; &

 

   -: (November) COP 12/MOP 2, Nairobi.

 

2007: (May) SBI/SBSTA/AWG-KP in Bonn; &

 

   -: (December) COP 13/MOP 3, Bali - Yvo de Boer weeps.

 

2008: (April, June & August) AWG-KP/Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA)/SBI/SBSTA/AWG-LCA in Bangkok, Bonn & Accra; &

 

   -: (December) COP 14/MOP 4, Poznań.

 

2009: (April, June, August, September/October, November) SBI/SBSTA/AWG-KP/AWG-LCA in Bonn, Bangkok & Barcelona; &

 

   -: (December) COP 15/MOP 5, Copenhagen - Yvo de Boer weeps again, quits soon after.

 

2010: (April, May/June, August, October) SBI/SBSTA/AWG-KP/AWG-LCA in Bonn & Tianjin; &

 

   -: (December) COP 16/MOP 6, Cancún.

 

2011: (April, June, October) SBI/SBSTA/AWG-KP/AWG-LCA in Bangkok, Bonn & Panama City; &

 

   -: (November/December) COP 17/MOP 7, Durban; &

 

   -: Canada officially withdraws from Kyoto.

 

2012: UNCSD PREPCOM I - 17-19 May 2010, New York; First Intersessional Meeting - 10-11 January 2011, New York; UNCSD PREPCOM II - 7-8 March 2011, New York; numerous Regional and Sub-Regional meetings here and there (always somewhere exotic); Second Intersessional Meeting - 15-16 December 2011, New York; Initial Discussions of the Zero Draft - 25-27 January 2012, New York; First “Informal Informal” Consultations and Third Intersessional Meeting - 19-27 March 2012, New York; Stockholm+40 - 23-25 April 2012, Stockholm; Second “Informal Informal” Consultations - 23 April to 4 May 2012, New York; Third “Informal Informal” Consultations - 29 May to 2 June 2012, New York; PrepCom III - 13-15 June, Rio de Janeiro; &

 

   -: (June) Rio+20; &

 

   -: (May/June) SBI/SBSTA/AWG-KP/AWG-LCA in Bonn; &

 

   -: COP 18/MOP 8, Qatar.

 

So, the cluster-fuck grows like Topsy (no disrespect intended to Topsy), fifty years squandered ... blah blah blah ... nice work if you can get it I guess.

['2011 Oil consumption per capita' from BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2012; '2012 Participation in Kyoto Protocol' from Wikipedia. Comparing these statistics 'begs a question' as they say.]

---

Getting the news: (good from far but far from good)

One doesn't want to look, wants to boycott the thing with the only vector available - stifling of interest - but this is very hard to actually do, moth to the flame and all that. So then, how to cut through the mass media nonsense to get a shape of what is happening? The UNFCCC and UNCSD put it all out there, including videos & webcasts but all becomes too much, becomes a full-time job since it is not very well organized - more like a blizzard. So one turns to the green politicians (who have flown over to wherever it is natürlich), to their blogs and so on - for the likes of this: "There’s a sense of awe, wonder and exhaustion in the air. There’s a lot of work ahead to bring all this together. But if humanity can agree on this much here, it give me profound hope.[sic]" (Adriana Mugnatto on Cancun.)

There are pros and semi-pros too - examples of naïve viewpoints from the well-embedded on the Durban outcome:

IISD: "After the frustrations at the Copenhagen conference and the struggle to rescue the multilateral climate regime in Cancun, negotiators in Durban turned a corner and not only resuscitated the Kyoto Protocol but, in doing so, adopted a decision that will lead to negotiations on a more inclusive 21st century climate regime. There was a strong sense that elements of the Durban package, guided by a need to fulfill long overdue commitments that go back to the Bali Roadmap, restored sufficient momentum for a new negotiation process, one that will continue to witness a ..." Tuesday, 13 December 2011.

ECO: "Durban was a critical turning point for the future of the climate regime. While it resulted in what negotiators called a delicate balance, it left much for the Parties to do afterwards, in particular the need to tackle the glaring gap in reducing global emissions and providing climate finance. ECO was relieved that after hard fought battles, a sense of responsibility and leadership prevailed in Durban. Parties were willing to set aside their hardline positions in the interest of reaching an agreement ..." Friday, 25 May 2012.

It is only years later, when someone like Steve Gardiner lays it out plain that you can even feel hesitantly, tentatively, justified in mooting, more-or-less privately, such an outlandish opinion as, "This is utter nonsense!".

[And whispering quietly, like Pynchon's Slothrop, "Fuck you."]

---

Rio Earth Summit & Rio+20:

Two editorials from Nature (twenty years apart, somewhat more sublime nonsense): Two successful weeks at Rio, 8 June 1992; and, Back to Earth, 7 June 2012.

Some of what is said on the web about Maurice Strong is so scurrilous you have to laugh. He fucked up? Well, we all fucked up, didn't we eh?

---

There is a leaked draft of the Rio+20 outcome floating around on the web (a horrible copy at Scribd is the ony one with a decent link: The Future We Want, June 2 draft - you have to get the .pdf downloaded somehow and then use the (priceless) Adobe 'Find' feature to look for 'Canada' - quite a bit of jiggery-pokery and reading, but Canada's objectives become clearer with the exercise - scumdog shit heads! (Oops, sorry, getting 'negative' again.)

Here, try making sense of this gobbledegook:

In the January draft there is this:
126. We support the eventual phase out of market distorting and environmentally harmful subsidies that impede the transition to sustainable development, including those on fossil fuels, agriculture and fisheries, with safeguards to protect vulnerable groups.

In the leaked draft it seems to have become:
Energy 6. We [recognize / stress - New Zealand; Russian Federation delete / call for –EU; Russian Federation delete] [the need – EU delete; New Zealand retain] [for -New Zealand] [to consider, as appropriate, - Switzerland, New Zealand, EU delete; Canada, Russian Federation retain] [reforms –New Zealand / measures - Russian Federation] that [would – Switzerland, New Zealand] lead[s – Switzerland, New Zealand] to the rationalisation and phasing out over the medium term of environmentally or economically harmful [fossil fuel –US] [energy - New Zealand, Australia, Russian Federation] subsidies[, including [energy subsidies such as for - New Zealand, Australia delete] [inefficient - Australia] fossil fuels [subsidies - New Zealand, Australia], that inhibit sustainable development, - US, Russian Federation delete] [taking fully into account the specific conditions and different levels of development of individual countries, and – Switzerland, New Zealand delete] in a manner that [takes into account specific conditions, - Switzerland, New Zealand] protects the poor and eases the transition for the affected vulnerable communities. [G77 delete entire paragraph; Norway retain]

Next paragraph is on 'Sustainable tourism', go figgure. 

---

Canada's Reality Check: (k-k-k-Canada!)



The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) is on the budget block which adds a certain poignancy to their: Reality Check: The State of Climate Progress in Canada (with a link there to download the report).

Tbe NRTEE Vice-Chair, Robert Slater (also an Adjunct Professor in Environmental Policy at Carleton University), and President and CEO, David McLaughlin, are ex-Deputy Ministers & ex- Assistant Deputy Ministers in various ex-Governments &etc. - on a political career path by the looks of it.

I have not read every line of this report, so if you want to dismiss what I have to say on that basis then please, fill yer boots!

The more I look at their first graph ... (keeping in mind that the first graph is about all most people - among the very few who take an interest at all - will look at in a 180 page report)

... so I played around with it a bit - added red targets (from numbers in the report itself), added 2010 emissions and 1011-12 estimates from Environment Canada: Canada’s Emissions Levels from 2008 to 2012 (from May 2011 but still ...) and the impression is quite different.

The original is incomplete and subtly misleading: at first glance the big round black spots with numbers look like targets, but they are perfectly upon the blue line so they can't be (?); the 'Turning the Corner' text makes it seem as if ... a corner has been turned (?) which it certainly has not; an arrow buried in the last target as if it could be hit.

What truely mystifies me is why, when they have already been shown the door, the authors and their masters still seem to be pandering to the Conservative playbook: that there is some remote possibility that the thing can be turned around in this way; that 2020 is a reasonable place to start ... and so on. It could have been a perfect opportunity to stand up - I guess there are other appointments coming down the trough for them.

The table of numbers I used is at the right.

It is also disheartening to see them waving the economic growth banner so unself-consciously: "... struggled to find the right formula that reduces GHG emissions within their jurisdiction while maintaining - indeed advancing - economic growth." Do they not see by now that continued growth on a finite planet is dooming every civilization on it? Most unsettling is their caveat, "Similarly it is important to note what the report is not ..." (though they don't quite say); and the absence in Kent's instructions of any reason for pursuing reductions in GHG emissions in the first place.

How one evaluates a policy, without making the least reference to the ultimate objective of that policy, or the possibility that the policy will achieve the objective, is something I simply do not understand.

Even a footnote on the 607Mt 2020 target saying, "This ambition, if fairly extended globally, is NOT sufficient to provide a reasonable probabilility of keeping average global temperature rise to 2°C, would have been ... kind. (Not that temperature is the only effect either - acid oceans, loss of species & relationships, poverty, wealth ... all of it; '2°C' is just quick to say.)

Instead their bottom line is polite, bureaucratic, milquetoast blancmange: "We recommend that advances in future Canadian climate policy meet three tests: they should be collaborative, coherent, and considered. We call it 3C." (Do they mean 3°C then? Is that it?)

But 'test' - there's that word again.

Steve Gardiner's global test is a much better one: A "... global test for social and political institutions and theories: if either does not respect the claim that failure to address a serious global threat is a criticism of it, and a potentially fatal one, then it is inadequate and must be rejected. [A perfect Moral Storm p 217-18] The sentence carries no fewer than three footnotes - might be worth looking up and reading for yourself.

The report uses the phrase "a hard reality' only once, but it is enough to remind me of Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men shouting, "The truth?! You can't HANDLE the truth!"

This Reality Check is ... not. In the case of the specific institution responsible for the report there has indeed been a recent rejection; I think it was made on other grounds, but from what I can see NRTEE fails the test described by Gardiner as well. 

---

What to do? (speaking as an oyster y'unnerstan' ...)

There don't seem to be many adults left in the room. The fail-safe trump is played at any hint of judgement or 'negativity' - Pollyanna-ism, the ideology of positive thinking, no distinctions made, no humanity understood (no compassion), no prisoners taken. Too many who can't spell (and don't care), and can't read (and don't notice).

There could be such a thing as Leonard Cohen's "mighty judgement coming," no doubt; but there is also finding your child in a puddle with mud running into her diaper and helping her get sorted onto very slightly higher ground. (Still musing on The Fairy Tale.)

Still an' all it's mostly shades of The Emperor's New Clothes around here. I have no idea what to do gentle reader. "Keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew," is about the best of it.

Like my colleague at Swedish Meatballs Confidential I find that a little T&A helps, palliative porn placebo. For medicinal purposes only though, eh?








"... and the only sound that’s left, after the ambulances go ..."

Be well. 

---

Clues:

1. Not sure if this maybe isn't a clue (?) coming on the heels of witnessing an annual miracle the Guardian presents me with Brazil's blueprint for reforestation.

(I had to doctor the map a bit: Icaraí & Queimados didn't show up properly at that scale, and they had to be there.)

Something less than a 'blueprint' in fact ... the nut seems to be that the Instituto Terra de Preservação Ambiental (iTPA) "é uma organização privada, sem fins lucrativos" / is a private non-profit organization. Not government (though they apparently take some money from it), not the UN; ~200,000 acres so far (and not a eucalyptus plantation either). Also a story about a very specific father & son, Calico & Maurício Ruiz. So not a blueprint, no, not a recipe.

Miguel Pereira? Never heard of it, but ... yup: there it is on Wikipedia; at their own website (click the 'História' tab); on Google Maps.

This landscape is familiar. I know these places. Oh sure, the Guardian may just be trying to help save face for Rio+20 - but yeah, 90% of Brasilians (despite being 50%⁺ illiterate) are well-informed and care about the environment (somewhere in the old blog I think I clipped a Jornal do Brasil headline on the subject (if Google were any good at searching I could find it in a snap).

And more recently, fossicking about in this cumbersome Internet book around the Código Florestal, here ... Vila do Pesqueiro, Ilha de Marajó, just across the river from Belém (that only took 15 minutes to find), somewhere appeared a good map (another half-hour) yeah, there it is from the University of Texas International Map of the World 1:1,000,000, with a clickable index and all - SA 22 Para ... and I think sometimes, "Just grab the last of the cash and go there."

Not gonna happen though. Stumped by having read Handful of Dust at too early an age, or having taken it up so securely into the back cupboards, or something ...

"Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust." 

---

2. Who are these people? Really?!

For quite some time it's been authors, a veritable constellation of them: Simon Critchley, Andrew Weaver, Peter Sale, Steve Gardiner, Peter Victor, Tim Jackson (Chimamanda Adichie, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Arundhati Roy) ... and before that: Thomas Pynchon, Northrop Frye, Charles Taylor (Hannah Arendt) ... I read (and re-read) their books, try to see what they look like, hear what they sound like ... but often (too often, and this is uncomfortable to say) I wonder ... (Bob Dylan too I guess)

There seems to be a clue in Ole Pedersen's review of A Perfect Moral Storm, near the end; he says:

Elsewhere, Richard Posner alerts us to the argument that lawyers are often guilty of ‘lawyers’ hubris’, thinking that lawyers are somehow better placed at making important decisions and balance competing values (Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy 2003). There is a similar line of thought in Gardiner’s argument (albeit in the form of political philosophers’ hubris) that an enterprise of clarificatory political and moral philosophy will be particularly advantageous.

This is not exactly what I wonder about - but it is sorta getting there ... Two years after Northrop Frye's Helen dies in 1984, he marries another (this is not being critical, this is wonderment), and not so long before he dies himself in 1991. He's not the only one - I knew another United Church minister who did about the same - maybe it is no more than a small current in that particular cultural zone.

That is not what I meant at all. ... I picked up something of what Pederson is referring to in Gardiner's book - a certain exclusivity, speaking to those who know the language and accept certain of its structures implicitly in a certain mode (thus making certain questions ridiculous, un-askable).

Seems to be getting into Parzival territory. (?) 

---

3. Tensegrity almost languishes ... but not quite:

It was a struggle to get more struts made but they are finally arrived (made by a lad whose birth I remember). In the meantime the elastics have deteriorated to the point that some of the models are falling apart ('falling' is not quite the correct term in this case :-). And in the meantime the energy has ... dissipated, lost inertia, embers.

I wish I knew for certain ... If rubber bands ever lasted any longer? (But memory is suspect.) If something has changed in the latex formulation? If it is the tobacco smoke? (But I always smoked. Is there something new in the cigarettes?) Is it a leak of some kind from the refrigerator? Did a previous tenant leave a strong alpha/gamma emitter hidden somewhere? What?

I know that getting AutoCad and learning to use it will be an order of magnitude more distracting, but the stainless steel laser-cutting machine needs such drawings; and anyway, calculating the metrics needs a computer model. All there is here is Paint:


Love knot negentropy - endorphins leaping up the waterfall on shiny springs. Maybe something will change with the solstice. 

---

4. Riding the streetcar:

On the 506 over to the UofT bookstore to pick up A Perfect Moral Storm, a long ride, a sunny day; humming Caetano's Terra inside somewhere and thinking of writing one of those 'tiny texts', along the lines of David Gaffney's flash-fiction, micro-fiction - one hundred and fifty words or less; an ultra-short essay (maybe 200 words on one side of one piece of 8½" x 11" paper):

'Is it possible to have a sexual relationship with a planet?'

Listening to two middle-aged asian women in front of me gabble away ... until I begin to think I am understanding something of the story they are telling (just from the inflections).

The driver is not using his (more-or-less friendly) bell - he is on the big horn, again and again. A skinny old man is intermittently talking out loud - baseball stats from some past in which the number 62 recurrs; no one hears and no one takes the seat beside him; but when he gets off the driver says, "Take care." 

---

5. ¡Ya basta! Neanderthals in Northern Spain (Cro-Magnon antecedents y'unnerstan'), Basque country ~40,000 years ago.

The pigment is blown somehow (the scientists surmise) - done with the mouth then, and breath, pneuma, spiritus.

---

You got the silver. You got the gold.       
You got the diamonds, from the mine.   
Well that's all right, it'll buy some time.

---

[Ah, there is balance in the universe and it ends as it began. No way get to generic Google.com anymore (it was possible until June 15). So if you are in Canada (according to your IP address) you now see exactly what Google wants Canadians to see. Sorta something the way things work in ... China.] 

---

Down.

Tensegrity [i].

(... for he was a tidy pachyderm.)
Up, Down, References, Addenda.

---

What this is:

Thought experiment: Put some toothpicks in a baloon with some white glue, blow it up, shake it around so the toothpicks stick to the inside surface of the baloon, let out the air. What happens?

The 'Love Knot' tensegrity, which takes a pentagon (sometimes thought of as a symbol of humanity) into another pentagon and whose fifteen struts form one continuous circuit ... has fascinated me for many years. Recently I was dreaming of a model formed of curved chrome tubes joined with tiny chrome springs. Maybe I will get around to it ... and maybe not. This post is just to document some of the initial design stages (on the umpteenth reiteration).

[Dedicated to two sisters, Phoebe and Tanaquil (and to their father who had passed before I got a chance to meet him).]

---

Contents:
Prisms:
          Triangular Prism with 1 layer
          Modified Triangular Prism (O Minimo)
Capturing the imagination:
          Expanded Octahedron
          Truncated Tetrahedron
Odd-numbered Prisms (with continuous circuits):
          Pentagonal Prism with 2 layers
          Pentagonal Prism with 3 layers (Love Knot)
          Heptagonal Prism with 2 layers (7 sided)
          Hendecagonal Prism with 3 layers (Loonie) (11 sided)

---

Triangular Prism with 1 layer:



There is a 'twist angle', a rotational displacement in the two polygons at the ends of the prism - which can be computed - the arithmetic involved is described near the end of 'Geodesic Math and How To Use It'.

---

Modified Triangular Prism (O Minimo):



A triangular prism with an additional strut through the centre - four struts held by nine tendons, or 2¼ tendons supporting each strut. Consider the minimum number of guy-wires necessary to hold up a pole ...

---

Expanded Octahedron:



You can also think of it as a 2 layer triangular prism.

There is a transformation that takes this tensegrity into the truncated tetrahedron. I had hoped to do a bit of an animation ... but I don't know how, so words will have to do - there is a description in 'Introduction to Tensegrity'.

The divine proportion turns into 1:2 in the process.

---

Truncated Tetrahedron:





The only model to survive all of the travels and upheavals is this truncated tetrahedron. It lived on the dashboard of my van for some years, got banged around, hung in there somehow. Pugh calls this configuration the 'zig zag' - got that right.

---

Pentagonal Prism with 2 layers:

---

Pentagonal Prism with 3 layers (Love Knot):



The notion took root in the late 70's - from a single comment in 'Introduction to Tensegrity': "The struts form one continuous circuit." It turns out there is a family of such structures. Knowing how to tie a Turk's Head led to experiments with rope as well, though it was difficult to join the end to the beginning neatly.

The atomic number of (good old polymorphic) Phosphorus is 15. The Phosphorus molecule P₄ (in the white forms) is a tetrahedron and in red is approximately so. I am working at determining what the standard Phosphorus allotropes look like: α is body centered cubic, and β is triclinic - but of course the Internet is not that useful at this level.

Hanging in the window of an apartment in Ipanema is the beginning, in 2002, of a love knot to be made with (possibly) curved & coloured florescent neon tubes - the ballast concealed in clever hubs - for the centre of the arch at Canecão. Didn't get very far (distracted by oil) ... Nor in 2005 with soda straws - a single elastic band serving as the four tendons of each diamond.

---

No struts to be had in Toronto, so it goes. The carpenters are all too busy except one guy who says, "Sorry, not keen to do this," duh. Oh well. ... The only problem with soda straw models is that the elastics soon turn to dust. Ai ai ai.

Prisms with odd numbers of layers tend to be pretty close to actual prisms (where the end polygons align) - with even numbers of layers they are closer to anti-prisms (where the end polygons are rotated half an edge).







Being odd, the circuit pattern love knot is close to a prism, and joining the ends of the struts makes it just about exactly so. This will simplify the metrics since it will not be difficult to compute coordinates for all the joints, and hence angles, radii &etc. The difficulty will be finding a 3D modeller to hold it - AutoCad I guess. Bleah! Expensive and hard to use ... maybe there is something else out there by now. (?)

When the diamond becomes the chord of a curve ... my son quickly saw that it will be not be the chord of a circle but will be twisted - have to watch for that capability in the modelling software.

A tool that would compute a minimal static system is probably too much to ask. (?)

Back in the 70's we stuck a tensegrity into Stardyne and it just went berserkers - infinite displacements with zero loads and so on :-) The smart guys I worked with in those days have cashed out and vanished - and I am wishing I had done the same.

143 mm,107,81,57 - 1:.75:.57:.42 (Happy Birthday Babe!):

---

Heptagonal Prism with 2 layers: (7 sided)



If you look closely at that last image you can see squares emerging from the murk.

---

Hendecagonal Prism with 3 layers (Loonie): (11 sided)



If it looks somewhat cone shaped it is because I was shrinking one of the 11-gons to see what would happen - more on that later.

One thing you can see in this model is how the ends of the struts come closer together as the frequency increases.

---

Stories:

Just after my son was born (and a few weeks after I started architecture school) a mathematician friend of mine told me about a figure constructed of three intersecting rectangles. If the sides of the rectangles were in the divine proportion the corners would form a regular icosahedron. So I made one with paper and sticky tape, connected the corners with a needle and thread - sure enough, there was the icosahedron. I hung it up high in the corner of the room.

In the other corner of the room was the bed. I used to lie there sometimes and doze with my new son on my chest, pretending to match our heartbeats as he fell asleep; and one day I thought I saw another figure there - one with the long edges of the rectangles as sticks - and when I made that one (with chop sticks and string and clove hitches) I found that six of the strings seemed to be unnecesssary. (?) So I replaced the strings with rubber bands, removed the redundant ones, and ... Presto Whiffo! There was the Expanded Octahedron. Eureka!

When I ran to show my prof the next day, he gave a glance, said, "Yup, the six-strut tensegrity," and carried on past me down the stairs. ... Someone had been there first. ... Euclid maybe - not Kenneth Snelson though some pawits think so (and definitely not our Bucky).

And that was about as close as I ever got to an original idea (and a good time to abandon jealousy as well, envy, property - intellectual and otherwise ... other things).

---

Some thirty years later, as we sat in a sidewalk barzinho a little south of the Tropic of Capricorn one evening (that same son of mine and I), we decided to solve the pesky climate change crisis once and for all.

How to get maximum bang for a policy buck?

After many Antartica's, first prize went to establishing no-car zones a dozen or so miles in diameter around all substantial city centres. Success would depend upon citizen satisfaction & uptake - so: secure parking at the perimeter, effective public transit within the zone, and set the planners to re-allocate the streetspace.

Runner-up was diverting and separating urban sewage at neighbourhood scale to generate methane for fuel, street lights and the like; and fertilizer and water for urban farming (possibly in those re-planned streets).


Which brings me to an upcoming event here in Toronto - hopefully worth the fifty buck ticket: An Evening with the Pembina Institute: Help “fuel” transportation progress, Wednesday 30 May 2012 from 5:30-8:00 PM - more about the Pembina Institute on their website.

It would be fine to see you there gentle reader. Be well.

---

References:
Kenneth Snelson, and here.
Geodesic Math and How To Use It, Hugh Kenner, 1976.
Introduction to Tensegrity, Anthony Pugh, 1976.

Building Models:

In the event that you decide to make some of these models, a word of caution: WEAR SAFETY GLASSES ... because, as you assemble models with elastic bands they will inevitably slip from time to time and the struts will suddenly come flying at you, and if you are not wearing protection you may put one of your beautiful eyes out.

Then again, in all the years I have been making these things I only began to wear glasses, nevermind safety lenses, when I could no longer see to do the work without them, so ... fatuous phatic flatulence (aka ignis fatuus) with phallic undertones.

A Note on Tools:
If someone offers you an Olympus Stylus pocket camera - JUST SAY NO! ... On the other hand, there is no way to appreciate these structures through photographs, you have to make and handle them (like it says in the communion hymn, "touch and handle things unseen").

Brass wire is not ideal - it is very difficult to get it tight enough to take out the kinks - but for some reason elastic bands these days deteriorate quite quickly, in this apartment at least. Someone said to me that it is my smoking - that could be - or maybe a slow Freon leak in the fridge.

Do not underestimate simplicity - making the struts for example: putting the finishing nails into the ends requires a punch and a drill-press. Really (I had these ones made for me and it was too complicated to explain this step to the cabinet maker), it is better to put the blanks into a pencil sharpener after the holes are drilled and before the nails are driven ... &etc. (Thanks again Glen.)

---

Addenda & Ruminations: I ran myself out of struts and now I'm stuck finding someone to make some more, and it's Toronto so ... an hiatus ...for the best maybe. My son came and made some space to hang up the models. Trying to visualize the love knot as an actual knot-knot is difficult, frustrating even, and being able to hang the model just above the screen of this computer makes it easier to look at. These kinds of things used to just leap into my head - now they sort of stumble & crouch :-)

Eschenbach and his Parzifal/Parzival/Percival/Percy is on my mind. I remember the first time I read it and visions came of my young wife's gracious innocence ... a cynic might call it a 'sexual connection' with the text, and there is some truth in that - but not the whole truth.

The point on which the story really hangs, sticks, and persists, is Percy's question, his two last chances at finding the grail: "What ails thee?" And the huge dramatic inertia that surrounds not asking the question, and then maybe not asking it again, and then, finally, asking it - and all the lights come on.

You could easily reformulate it as simply: How are you? Such a ubiquitous phrase and so often repeated that it might (going back to the top of the post) be merely phatic. Surely it must have been about the same in the 13th century? People greeting each other with "Hi. How's it goin'?"   "Good day and how are you?"

So ... how to imagine that the warp-speed cosmic worm hole leading to ultimate spiritual fulfilment is nothing more than one of the commonest of human exchanges? (?)

Going along the Queen Street East sidewalk on a sunny Sunday afternoon in May, crowded with all the good burghers walking their children and dogs, each other, and lots of brown girls with white babies in the most expensive strollers available. What if Percy in his armour and the glistening grail are right here in the middle of it?

There is an implicit irony in the movies and TV programs when they portray religious rituals these days, or there seems to be. Priests and rabbis and the like, repeating prayers; choirs of schoolboys singing well worn hymns, the chestnuts that we all remember, or at least that those of my generation remember: "Bring me my chariot of fire."   "All ye who hear, now to his temple draw near."

What if all the sanctimony and doctrine and holy writ (and the irony as well), however "ful of hy senténce" it may be, is ... fol-de-rol and unnecessary nonsense, and it, the shekinah, is all right here in all of our hands all of the time - as I have quoted from Northrop Frye so often: "In the double vision of a spiritual and a physical world simultaneously present ... our life in the resurrection is already here, and waiting to be recognized." [Slightly changed from the original which is here.]

---

Back in the day there was a gig at Place des Artes, a Jazz Festival - Murray was doing some kind of radio reportage and I was running him around on my motorcycle - and somehow I found myself 'in the wings' with this remarkable noise.

Many years later when Cynthia the shrink thought she had me pinned I would pull out something like "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds" and she would mutter in frustration, "Damned transcendence!" Eventually she kicked me out. :-)

There he is, our Pierrot le Fou on the hill in his red-yellow-and-blue 'nitramite' outfit, also muttering ... and then the last whispered (transcendental?) exchange, it might be: "We found it again. What? Eternity. That's the sea moving, with the sunlight."

---

Another dipthong or two, logorrhœa, prolixity:

1. The mid-year round of UNFCCC gum flapping is on at the Marlim hotel in Bonn. Climate Action Network International puts out a daily newsletter. Reading it carefully is an exercise, almost an archæological dig, into layers upon layers of detritus ... psychopathy. My heart goes out to the editor, Kyle Gracey.

He muses on what 'deep concern' might mean (in a blizzard of non-meaning which he does not, probably cannot, acknowledge): Quantified Emission Limitation and Reduction Objective (QELRO), Adaptation Fund (AF), Board of the Adaptation Fund (AFB), Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), 'key demanders', 'accreditation process', Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), Measuring Reporting and Verification (MRV), Mechanism for Monitoring and Reporting (MMR) - all buffered with fluffy-puff collectible fast facts.

What a joke. Fuct! But you have to do something, so I read carefully, look up the acronyms, try to understand, comiserate ... He could write about what the AF budget looks like - how many additional bureaucrat maggots are suckling in that sector of the trough.

The best news is that Saudi Arabia is making renewable noises - that could work - setting an excellent example for tar sand billionaires in, say, k-k-Canada. (Eh?)

2. The global economic foofaraw goes on and on. Individuals suffer greatly but we focus on the aggregate, easier that way. The orthodox liberal views seem to cluster around: "... austerity ... is putting the already-weak recovery in the United States at risk and is fueling instability and extremism in Europe," "a euro-zone growth package," "stimulus to spur growth, employment and development," and "a program to promote growth across recession-racked Europe" (from a NYT Editorial and here). Just how did 'austerity' and 'growth' get into the same category? How did they become something like opposites? And then there is Paul Krugman alternately promoting growth and wringing his Apocalypse Fairly Soon bells like a knee-socks altar boy at mass.

3. Invisible Children send me an email titled 'LRA Top Commander Captured Alive', but it's Caesar Achellam not Joseph Kony. Their transparent self-promoting rhetoric just reminds me of the way they sold out Jason Russell - another facet sparkling on their fundamentalist jewellery. The package with the t-shirt and posters is still unopened on my hall table with the bushels of paper flyers from Ikea & Loblaws & tanning salons and all the rest. Bound for use as absorvente at the bottom of a garbage bag.

4. Austerity is certainly an engine of extremism. The raw (uncooked that is) fuel of the disenfranchised & disentitled - AND - the innate knowledge of waste, incompetence, squandering, stupidity (the 'official' kind).

Ideas (like the one at the right) work, exercise 'traction', because everyone knows what the trough is - government does need a haircut, a para-dig-em shift, a bowel movement.

5. Almost no one speaks to me so when they do, I listen and consider. Someone says, "The alienation that you feel is directly attributed to your attitude towards your own life," and, "It doesn't turn me off to hear how you have given up." I am deeply moved that someone has spoken to me ... but I am soon wondering who has given up on whom? Knowing (imagining?) that amidst total confusion a mirror reflection, 180° backwards, may look like an explanation, an 'answer'.

We make principles of our incapacities and carry on. (Eh?)

---

Down.