The road that leads to you

[austin_dern]

Further updates on the Nicoll Highway collapse: the three missing are still missing. In one remarkable stroke of luck most of the workers who would have been underground were taking a tea break, and so missed the collapse and the Kallang river rushing in. And one contractor's employees were sent home five hours before because the manager on-site had a bad feeling about some noises he heard. Land Transport Authority officials are rather sure the explosion happened when gas pipelines were shattered by the collapse, and did not cause the collapse.

For now the understanding of what happened was a temporary wall to hold back sea water for Circle Line MRT digging gave way, letting dirt and then sea water in. Why that happened is unknown, but the interesting trivia point that the Nicoll Highway was the first highway in Singapore built entirely on reclaimed land does raise eyebrows. (It's several decades old. Singapore reclaims land like a SimCity 2000 player who used the double FUND trick, to the point Malaysia's suing over it.)

Meanwhile in west Singapore I finished grading Tuesday's final exams. I'd enter the grades except the blue books are designed that students can only enter their ID numbers, not their names, on the covers, unless they disregard the lines. Fine, right? No, because I've never had a roster listing students and student IDs. I can get lists of either, separately, but not together. There's an online gradebook I could almost use, to enter assignments by name or by number, but it does not, for whatever reason, let one calculate the course grade based on the entered numbers. I don't know who designed a system that lets one enter all one's grades and then not get a course average out again, and I would like to slap him silly. I have until Saturday to deduce whose exam is which for this class; till Monday for the exam I give tomorrow.

Trivia: 19th century Javanese court poet Raden Nganahi Ranggawarsita, assigned the task of writing a history of all time, composed three pages a day for thirty years, producing a book at least six million words long. Source: Krakatoa: The Day The World Exploded, Simon Winchester.

Currently Reading: Military Errors of World War II, Kenneth Macksey.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

In one remarkable stroke of luck most of the workers who would have been underground were taking a tea break

Egad.. that's remarkably fortuitous. So very close..

I also have to wonder, on a trivial note, whether that's a literal use of the phrase "tea break" - is that another British institution (well, okay, Indian, if you want to get technical, Asterix in Britain notwithstanding) that's remained proudly upstanding? ^_^

Though on that note, I've heard the remark that whilst the British may have invented bureaucracy, Indians perfected it. Though I'd have to consider America a late surger.. I recall one time I was obtaining a visa from a US embassy, which at the time was usually a same-day affair after dropping the paperwork off. Their system was having a grump session, and thus things were becoming backlogged.

Now, many people might consider it reasonable to swing by and enquire. No, that would be against protocol; such enquiries had to be conducted by phone.

So I left the building, walked across the street, and called them. They were most helpful.

Singapore reclaims land like a SimCity 2000 player who used the double FUND trick, to the point Malaysia's suing over it.

Hee! Really? That they'd reclaim land is no surprise - just look at the most recent international Japanese airport, entirely on reclaimed "land". Is Malaysia contending that the boundary's actually being shifted as a result of their actions? Now there'd be a fun case for the lawyers.. the two are so close that it seems there's no room for traditional "international waters".

Raden Nganahi Ranggawarsita, assigned the task of writing a history of all time, composed three pages a day for thirty years

Or about a third of Stephen King's output.

(Speaking of whom, I wish the mooted film adaptation of The Talisman had proceeded - I found that quite an entertaining book. Ah well. Maybe it'd simply seem hokey if I were to re-read it now)

Is said poet's work archived? One would certainly hope so, although that volume might mean it's only entirely accessible by those skilled in the language used, enlightening as it might be to see Time-Life offering a complete set for only $9.95 a month if you call with a credit card.

I still recall the cover of the Time-Life book on polymers, showing a kitten atop a thick sheet of some nameless plastic, beneath which a bunsen flame was shown in full force. Polymer chemistry would probably appeal to me, I think, but I'd more likely wind up in something closer to cellular microbiology - there's a certain scientific magic within each cell. So many complex processes, surprisingly robust, and on scales we can't even begin to match artificially, for now.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

(Splitting things for easier mental threading, here...)

I also have to wonder, on a trivial note, whether that's a literal use of the phrase "tea break" - is that another British institution [...] that's remained proudly upstanding?

As best as I can determine, yes, it was literally a tea break. I can't swear no worker anywhere was drinking coffee instead, but teo and teh tarik remain extremely popular, hot or iced. The range is staggering, too; I mean, apple tea? Peach tea? Chrysanthemum tea?

The bureaucracy in Singapore is a very curious mix. On the one paw, it's staggering. I've mentioned the abundant rules and regulations and procedures figured out for the giving of final exams. On the other, at least once you're in the system, it's about as seamless as could be made. Although I've had for various things situations where I'm sent downtown and have to pick a queue number that's disconcertingly in the five thousands, what actually happens is I submit my papers (and for whatever reason I'm skilled in filling out forms), I'm given a receipt and an estimated time to return (usually about two in the afternoon), and sure enough, I can go off and do something pleasant, return at the posted time and be done. I'm sure it's fearsome in the background there, but I've only had one really stupid bureaucratic hassle. That was an amusing one, though.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Is Malaysia contending that the boundary's actually being shifted as a result of their actions? Now there'd be a fun case for the lawyers..

As for the lawsuits, so far there's no contention that Singapore is exceeding its national waters. Malaysia's claims -- from what I understand -- are based on Singapore's land reclamation creating an environmental hazard and on it making more dangerous the navigation of the Straits. In the first round of battles in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled for Singapore, so work proceeds.

The real dispute I'm reading between the lines here; it sure looks to me like the point of the extensions -- basically a huge dogleg added to the west end of Singapore and a widening of an island to the east, shown in dark grey on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' map here (http://www.mfa.gov.sg/reclamation/img2.html) -- is to make it longer and thus more annoying for ships crossing south of Singapore to sweep around the island and maybe go to Malaysian ports instead. But that's harder to argue in court.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Is [ Raden Nganahi Ranggawarsita ]'s work archived? One would certainly hope so, although that volume might mean it's only entirely accessible by those skilled in the language used ...

That I don't know; unfortunately, Simon Winchester's book doesn't cite it directly in the bibliography and he doesn't acknowledge anyone's particular help for this book. The book was written in Court Javanese, so it seems likely to me Winchester read translations -- he points out that versions of the book were published in 1869 and in 1884 (the second edition embellishing some ancient accounts of earlier volcano eruptions, very likely aided by eyewitnesses of the then-recent Krakatoa explosion).

Fascinatingly, Raden seems to have done honest primary-source-checking research; unfortunately, the primary resource there would be court documents, admittedly reaching back 1500 years or more, but all written in a scattered variety of languages on palm leaves. I'd hate to be accountable for the possible transcription errors in that. Many of the palm leaf sources, though, are still intact and in museums now.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

> Krakatoa: The Day The World Exploded, Simon Winchester.

Can you give me a brief review of the book? I'm undecided if I want to buy it or not. Is it an objective history of the eruption and related events, or is it more the author's musing on the historical signifigance of the events?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

The book's principally a history. It's almost overwhelming, in fact; to discuss Krakatoa, he goes into (naturally enough) current theories of volcanism, which of course goes to continental drift, which of course goes to the scientific history of the struggle to propose and prove continental drift ... it also goes into the development of evolutionary theory, the Wallace Line (which runs close to Krakatoa's location), the evolution of species in the area ... and also into the history of Dutch colonization of the area, and evidence in written histories and in tree-ring and ice core examinations of earlier explosions -- and all this well before the volcano explodes.

It's a bit exhausting and one can suspect at times that Winchester forgot his goal, but it really does fit together.

The eruption and the explosion are rather well covered, locally and globally, in the political and the scientific environments, including the use of the new island forming where Krakatoa had been to the question of how life forms and spreads to new territories.

The one significant weakness I found was in a fascinating point mentioned and quite defensible but not explored in depth -- the claim that the explosion was the first moment in which the ``global village'' existed. That is, thanks to the telegraph cabling, nearly all the world was able to follow the progression of the disaster as it happened. Yes, the world could follow the Franco-Prussian War, but that happened at the center of Western Europe; this was almost at the edge of the world, and space was obliterated to cover it. Great idea, but the media response to it isn't explored, past the notes that people were justifiably scared of it -- there wasn't any good theory saying why a volcano should bubble up and explode at the time, much less one saying why a volcano wouldn't bubble up and explode on, say, London -- and that it was burned into the mass consciousness as the modern volcano explosion. (Mount Saint Helens? Mount Pinatubo? Mere trifles, and he's right.) I'd have liked more comparison of press reporting in Tokyo, Delhi, Paris, and Boston and less fussing over how the aberrant spelling Krakatoa came about. (It's apparently bad Javanese orthography and appears to be a telegraphy error breathed life by the press of events; Krakatau is more likely correct.)

Also its review of pop cultural depictions of the explosion completely overlooks the Mighty Mouse cartoon, the jingle from which (``Krakatoa Katie, she ain't no lady...'') has been running in my mind for about 27 years without pause. That's a very minor sin.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

> it was burned into the mass consciousness as the modern volcano explosion.

That it is, yes. Krakatoa's the one that everyone knows, even if they can't identify eruptions like Pelee or Tambora or Katmai.

IU had a copy of the Royal Society's report on the eruption that I spent many hours peering through. I was always impressed just by the sheer scale of the explosion. The idea of a mountain just spontaneously launching itself into the stratosphere appeals to my love of cartoonish violence, although it's something I'd rather watch from orbit, or though instrumentation.

Most of the world was still lit by gas at the time, and every gas company maintains a recording barograph, as it's important to know the atmospheric pressure in order to keep the gas flowing properly. You can see the pressure wave travelling around the world in the records of gas companies in Europe and America. Gas service was disrupted in some Pacific colonies as the initial pressure wave reversed the flow of gas and extinguished pilot lights. I'm quite sure that if it could have been watched from orbit, the atmosphere would have been seen to have 'splashed'.

The very magnitude of Krakatoa sometimes keeps me from taking it seriously. It probably killed even more people than Pelee, but where Pelee fills me with horror, I just feel amazement at Krakatoa. It doesn't seem possible. When Pinatubo was erupting, I was listening to the news on the radio one morning, and they remarked that the seat of the eruption (as measured by earthquake depth) was moving rapidly downward. My first reaction was one of gleeful anticipation - Pinatubo was getting ready to explode like Krakatoa, and this time there'd be modern instrumentation to record it. I was ashamed of myself a second later, of course, but it made me ponder the way that I viewed natural disasters. Beyond a certain level of violence, they just transcend understanding, and I have trouble imagining people being caught up in them. It's something so far beyond human scale that it just doesn't seem to apply.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

In fact -- the final explosion was at 10 a.m. local time -- so the minimally-filled tanks at gas works in the area turned out to be perfect impromptu barometers in a region that didn't then (or now, really) have the sort of weather stations that western Europe or the United States did.

Not that locality mattered much -- something Winchester pointed out that I had no idea was that barographs around the entire world recorded the pressure wave, which circled the world at least a half-dozen times before fading. There were also a host of other effects, some obvious -- some wave surges where islands didn't get in the way, obvious changes in the sunsets of the world, insight into the upper atmosphere gained by watching dust concentrations -- and some that just seem bizarre -- one of the Singapore phone lines was killed by it, leaving an overwhelming roar on the line that made individual voices unintelligible. (It's not said how long this effect lasted.)

I really like this book, if that's been in any way ambiguous.