Project Seatpost: victory!

I had already looked up on internet what you do if a seatpost is too small. I had started to believe in Murphy as the orchestrator of this project! But the bike shop punctually announced the arrival of a seatpost that turned out to fit like a glove. Mission accomplished! I made sure I used lots of lubricant to minimise the chance of this one instantly corroding into place as well. And as soon as I've returned it it's out of my hands, and I know things may well start deteriorating immediately. But at least not on my shift!

This looks better than the decapitated post...

And see! It can move! Do notice the white stuff, which is the amply applied lubricant, as well...

The day after I finished I rode it to the caving club committee meeting. And I made sure I rode many times the necessary distance. I can officially confirm it's now a very comfortable bike! So there was no need at all to testride it in the weekend. But I wasn't going to let the opportunity pass me by; just because I can I took it on a many-hour-bikeride along the Moors. A pleasure. Let's hope Jon will be taken by the new configuration as well!

Old lead

For modern, state-of-the-art science you need old church roofs. I didn't know that! We have a radionuclide lab here at university, and it can be used for things such as 137Caesium and 210Lead dating. Lead has lots and lots of isotopes, and most of them are unstable. The decay of 210Pb, which has a half-life of 22 years, is what we measure in the lab for dating purposes. If you try to measure the very weak signal you of course don't want background radiation to get in the way. And how do you shield something from radiation? With a big slab of lead. Lead? Didn't that have many isotopes, most of which unstable...

The gamma counter. Notice the thick slab of lead on top!

If you simply use lead to shield yourself from radiation that you use for something such as medical treatment you don't care if that lead sometimes emits a gamma "particle". But if that is exactly what you want to measure in your samples you do care! So how do they solve that? They use lead that's so old (many times the half-life of 22 years) it doesn't emit anything anymore. And that's where the church roofs come in! And there seems to be a company that does nothing other than sniff out old lead and sell it to the manufacturers of gamma counters and the likes! And church roofs seem to be their main source, but it seems one day the wreck of an old Spanish gallion that had been transporting, among other things, lead ingots was found... so they ended up in the laboratoria around the world! I thought that was a brilliant story.

Just a random find of a shipwreck with lead ingots. Source: http://www.culture.gouv.fr/fr/archeosm/archeosom/en/plouma-s.htm. Picture: Photos : Yves Gladu, Michel L'Hour and Gérard Réveillac.

A year of caving

Time flies when you're having fun! This week was my first anniversary of caving. That year ran past! I've had a lot of fun.

I came across caving by coincidence; being Dutch I had never heard of caving. And then, last autumn, I was talking with Rob the PhD student, and he mentioned caving. In a kind of sentence like "caving is for terrible, despicable people", but I just ignored the sentence and tasted the word "caving". That sounded like fun! I've always been attracted to the underground. So in spite of Rob's vigorous attempts to discourage me I googled "caving" and "Plymouth", and lo and behold, I found the Plymouth Caving Group. I phoned the chairman, which is Dave, asked if they took on new members, which they did, and the rest is history. And I must say, it changed my life.

It started with finding something fun and outdoorsish to do. I missed Norway, I missed getting physical, and caving is a physical thing to do in a hidden realm of England where the aspects of England I don't like very much don't reach. Underground things aren't overregulated and overcivilised, and the people are not overprotected, lazy, inert and scared! So that was bull's eye. And I love the scambling and the ropework and all that comes with it.

Second, it gave me a community to be a part of outside work. And deracinated as I am I could use that! The caving community is much broader than the scientific one. People of all sorts of ages, political convictions, and walks of life join in. Gives you a wider view on society!

In Norway I had the strong feeling I stepped into a bipolar world, half in the middle of, and half way outside, modern civilisation. I loved it! I need modern civilisation for my job, but I love to escape some of it in my spare time. In Norway, after the science, you vanish into the wilderness. Here there's much less wilderness, but I just get deeper into it. In Norway I made sure I could to dress to cold; now I've made sure I can dress to filthy and wet as well. And my equipment, such as camera, flash gun, and torch, can cope with that too. So now, if I find chest-deep mud, I just step in. And if I then feel filthy, I can just jump into the nearest river, fully clothed, in the middle of the night! It's very refreshing to get rid of your civilised reflexes that tell you not to do that. Why bloody not? There's a time for being tidy and representative, and there's a time for being inquisitive and adventurous! It's great if you can swap between these.

The caving trip that incidentally marked my anniversary visited Baker's pit; a nice, big system, where you can basically have as much fun as you want. I stayed true to my caving motto: when in doubt, follow Lionel, for he goes where the fun is. So that way I had some hours of old-fashioned clambering, slithering, squeezing, crawling fun, buggering off into all sorts of recesses of that cave, and coming out sweat-soaked and mud-coloured from head to toe. A splendid way of celebrating this festive date!

Out of the closet

I happily qualified myself as a "leftie" a few blog posts ago. But am I? I certainly look like one! But that's not what really matters. I certainly have all sorts of left-wing standpoints, but sometimes I surprise myself with thoughts that qualify more as right-wing. When the Greek took to the streets in order to protest against the governmental budget cuts I had no sympathy whatsoever. Yes, it sucks if your country goes bankrupt. Yes, it sucks if you have to bleed for it. But concluding that it sucks doesn't stop the country from being bankrupt. All carrying part of the burden will. So these people, protesting away, were effectively claiming that it should be other people, not them, who had to take the blow. Selfish, really. How many of them will have tried to actively influence the Greek policies on financial conduct? Not very many, I would guess. And letting the system go to hell as long as it doesn't directly affect you, but tearing the city down as soon as it does, that is not something I sympathise with.

In the UK the crisis is felt too. One thing that happened is that universities will get less governmental support. And they'll need to get money from somewhere, so they're forced to increase the student fees. Massively. And the students are not amused. And they made sure it did not go unnoticed they were not amused. They took to the streets of London and ran amok. The iconic picture of this event is that of a (supposed) student kicking in a window. I'm not entirely sure how a broken window will lower university fees, but that's beside the point. So the students think it should be somebody else, not them, who takes the blow of the financial situation. Are they right?

Source: BBC (evidently)

What is useful to know here is that quite some students may have voted Lib Dem. And Lib Dem promised to abolish tuition fees. And now they are trebling them. That is reason for feeling let down if you voted for them; especially if that specific promise had a hand in convincing you to vote such. But well, welcome to coalition politics: if your party doesn't get an absolute majority you know it will have to compromise. Sucks too, but again, that's how it works.

Another relevant piece of information is that these fees won't have to be paid beforehand. You pay them back after graduation. And you don't pay more per month than you can afford. And if it would so happen you never end up affording any of it the whole debt is annulled. So they protest against costs of which there is a guarantee they'll be able to pay them. And quite a lot of these kids will end up in jobs that allow them to pay back in a whiffy and lead a very comfortable life. So should they demand this will not happen, and it will be the other taxpayers who instead pay their fees? I think I can safely assume that counts as a rhetorical question...

So does that opinion make me a right wing bastard? Or a smug hypocrite who studied well before student fees went up (though, of course, UK fees had no bearing on my life whatsoever), and who was lavishly supported by daddy? Well maybe. But if so I'm not ashamed of it!

Autumn on Dartmoor

I have hardly visited Dartmoor lately! A few hours with my father and sister, and one round around Burrator after my knee didn't want to run around it twice (I don't count the running on asphalt with Neil: asphalt isn't real Dartmoor), and before that it had been the visit to Jitske and her hikers. In summer! So it was about time. And on a rainy Sunday morning I ventured in that direction. That I had my camera ready goes without saying...

Decorative droplets

The Plym, to which Plymouth owes its name

Where a tributary reaches the Plym

Impressive stone row

Remnants of Eylesbarrow tin mine, which was in production in the early 19th century

Even the sun honoured me with her unobstructed presence for a few minutes!

Project Seatpost: between the pain and the gain

Suddenly the sound changed. From the muffled sound of hard metal biting into softer metal it suddenly changed into a much hollower sound. A hollow sound! Excited I gave the screwdriver-working-as-chisel a few more hits. And then I heard "clinck!" and I knew my day was made. I had managed to chisel a part of the seatpost out, and it had fallen into the frame! And from then on it gets easier. Only minutes later I had the rest of the seatpost out too. How close I had been to success the last time I had a sawing session!
It wasn't all over, of course; I sandpapered the very rusty indide of the frame, and cleaned up. Then I pulled out the seatpost from my black bicycle (that's how matter-of-fact it should be!), shoved it in Jon's frame, hung the concomitant lock around it (Jon's lock could be gnawed through by the first passing shrew) and I could be off to buy a seatpost replacement. In theory, that is.

The guy in the bicycle shop asked what size seatpost it was I wanted, so I took out the specimen that was in place. He took a close look, and gained a very puzzled expression on his face. "Now that IS an odd size! That's what you get with these ancient bicycles. They used to have the funniest sizes back in the days. No, we don't have anything of the kind. I'll have to order one...". Ah yes. Of course. The story continues. Typical, by the way, that I liaise with such old bikes that the first seatpost I extract out of one of them is exactly the right outrageous size...

One should not let things go this far

It will be at least a few days before that bike is what it should be, but most of the mission is accomplished: I got it out! And now I'm confident I could get almost any stuck seatpost out. And in a perfect world I'd never need that skill, but the world isn't perfect, and who knows when this will come in handy again!

Flying scientist

In the previous blog post I mentioned that being a scientist means flying ruthlessly across the globe. And I was hardly exaggerating. I was reminded again of how much more than the average citizen I am used to flying when my sister came to visit, and she turned out to have no clue concerning modern day security procedures. I can dream them. I decided to quantify my own behaviour, starting with when I moved to Tromsø. It isn’t technically the moment I became a scientist; a PhD student already is one, but I cannot possibly remember my exact flying behaviour in that time. From my entrance into postdoc life I kept this most excellent blog, which makes it much easier to recall my past behaviour.

When I was living in Tromsø, which I did for 27 months, I flew 35 times (I count actual flights here, not trips), covering approximately 35000 km. That includes initially moving there. I flew slightly more for private reasons (53%) than business. During my time in Plymouth, which so far has been 15 months, I flew 24 times, coincidentally covering almost the same distance (that's what fieldwork in the USA does!). And 70% of that was business*.

The business flights are hard to avoid. Science demands the gathering of data, and places like Svalbard, Iceland and the USA are not easy to reach by other means than by plane. And we don’t always fly; we drove to Portugal, and Rob drove both to and from the fieldwork in Norway. That we didn’t fly to the Isle of Wight is less spectacular. NERC (the council than funds our project) demands we present the data at conferences, and is there any other practical way to go to San Francisco, for example?

The private flights reduce themselves: in my flight kilometers in my Norwegian time there's a big imprint from having a boyfriend in the Netherlands. But well, that 2000 km distance took care of the relationship, and behold the much lower percentage of private kilometers in my UK time, in which I was single! Can you imagine the carbon footprint if Floor wouldn't have called it a day after less than a year of separation...

Being single makes the private flights less numerous, but even single I flew 10000 private kilometers in the last 15 months. Most of that was visiting Tromsø, and only 20% was visiting the Netherlands. If science forces you to live in all sorts of different countries, and you still want to see your friends and family, you have to travel far.

Is something likely to change? Fieldwork will still have to be done in earth science, and often there would be no feasible way to travel to the field site involved beside flying. Conferences are not only good for listening to talks and watching posters, which could be done online, but also for having a beer with a specifically inspiring speaker and coming up with future collaboration plans. But perhaps the day may come that air travel becomes either so expensive or so frowned upon, or both, that not flying becomes the standard, unless unavoidable. And if that moment comes, funding agencies would probably no longer demand conference attendance, and allow more time for fieldwork (or rather, for the travel to and fro) in research proposals.

And the living abroad? I think that will not change. Perhaps science will simply become even more incompatible with a private life, and visiting relatives in your motherland will be something a mere scholar can only rarely afford.

Any sign of change yet? Yes, perhaps! I got both my foreign jobs through a job interview at distance. When I applied for my Norwegian job in 2007, I just used a phone. The job interview for my UK job was more sophisticated: that was done through video conferencing. And though it is a disadvantage (I noticed during the rounds of recruitment here at Plymouth University), my CV proves it’s not impossible to get a job without having to fly all over the world for it. And that’s at least a start!

But what would we conclude? Are climate scientists, who almost invariably fly all over the world, hypocrite bastards? Are they (we!) the victims of overpowering pressure from those who employ them? Should flying scientists be a sacrifice we have to make in return for understanding of the system? Should a conscientious person choose not be to a scientist, in order to be able to maintain a low carbon lifestyle? If you’re a good enough scientist, should you not be so damn good you can demand the right to not go to distant conferences and get away with it? But if you are that good, would that not be a waste? Are we all going to hell anyway, so why don’t we just fly as much as we can; that way we get to see as much of the spectacular damage we are causing as possible? Should scientists, like most other people, just wait until the political will to act on a larger scale comes into being? Questions!




*: these figures are approximations. I just took the distance as the crow flies between the cities I had flown to and from, and in my UK time there's a few trips of which I don't remember if I flew from Exeter or Bristol. The first approximation means I'm hopelessly optimistic, as airplanes don't fly like crows, but the latter would hardly influence the picture.