The Ionia Sanction by Gary Corby

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The Ionia Sanc­tion is a sequel to The Pericles Com­mis­sion. It fea­tures Nic­ol­aos, the young Athenian who has inven­ted the job of agent in order to learn polit­ics to avoid becom­ing a sculptor like his father.

I liked The Pericles Com­mis­sion and the only quibble I had was that Athens wasn’t as grim in Gary Corby’s book as I thought it might be. That’s no bad thing because I thought the ancient world could be an unpleas­ant place. Pretty much as unpleas­ant as in The Ionia Sanc­tion, which is slightly darker and more viol­ent than the first book.

The book opens with the appar­ent sui­cide of Thor­ion, a prox­enos. A prox­enos was someone who would help with the interests of a for­eign city. Thor­ion was an Athenian cit­izen with con­nec­tions to Eph­esus, so when his sui­cide note sug­gests he’s com­mit­ted treason Pericles decides someone needs to find out what has happened. He sends Nic­ol­aos to invest­ig­ate. It quickly becomes clear Thor­ion was murdered, and events lead to Nic­ol­aos leav­ing the safety of Athens and trav­el­ling to Ionia, inside the Per­sian empire.

Like the first book, The Ionia Sanc­tion is based around a his­tor­ical fact. In this case it’s the life of Themistocles. Themistocles was the gen­eral respons­ible for the defeat of the Per­sians at Sala­mis. How­ever, Themistocles was not a mod­est man and with some Spartan help he was framed for treason and ostra­cised. To flee to safety Themistocles sur­rendered him­self to the Per­sian king and became sat­rap of Mag­ne­sia, on the coast of what is now Turkey.

The text runs smoothly. The only jar­ring note for me is that these are edited for the Amer­ican mar­ket. It means Themistocles talks about assholes, which looks odd. Assholes fea­ture in a sec­tion of the book due to a method of exe­cu­tion that uses a sharp wooden stake, tip­toes and a slow death through exhaus­tion. Gary Corby also had to find a sexual vice that a man had that could be used for black­mail. This man was an ancient Greek, so a small round of applause is due for find­ing one.

A com­mon prob­lem for any book like this is that there were some things known in ancient Greece that the reader doesn’t know. How do you get this inform­a­tion in? Fantasy authors have that well-used standby “As you know your father, the king…” before launch­ing on five pages of expos­i­tion. Here the source of know­ledge is Diotima, the (ex)girlfriend of Nic­ol­aos who left for Eph­esus a few months before and a female slave, Asia. It’s not stretch­ing cred­ib­il­ity for Nic­ol­aos to know very little about the Per­sian empire, so it works without the sound of nar­rat­ive gears crunching.

For­tu­nately the amount of expos­i­tion needed wasn’t too much. The book is a story, not a his­tory les­son. As a story it works. Not everything was obvi­ous, I didn’t work out any of the murders before they were revealed, but there was noth­ing that seemed too contrived. 

It’s taken me a while to read it. I didn’t want to read it while work­ing on any­thing ancient because I didn’t want it to feel like work. I’ll prob­ably make a point of get­ting Sac­red Games when it comes out and buy­ing an authors next book is prob­ably a pretty good indic­a­tion of how his last one went.

The thing I’ll grouch about this time is the cover. As art I like it, but it doesn’t fit well with the book. It looks a bit YA, and I think The Ionia Sanc­tion is more 18+. The first two books will be out shortly in paper­back, with the Aus­tralian cov­ers. After a couple more books I’ll com­plain if the cov­ers aren’t in the same style, so this isn’t a major gripe.

If you enjoyed The Pericles Com­mis­sion then the The Ionia Sanc­tion is worth your money. If you’ve read neither then start­ing with the first book is the bet­ter bet.

#blog #twt #books #Ancient­Greece

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Senna versus Prost by Malcolm Folley

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This past sea­son of For­mula One has been the best since 1993. The next sea­son, I think, will be the first where no one on the grid has driven against Senna. Depend­ing on how you feel about Schu­macher, it’s pos­sible Senna was the last great driver in For­mula One. He wasn’t the most suc­cess­ful, but Senna raced in era when other drivers had access to poten­tially race-winning cars. His biggest rival, Prost, was in the same car for a couple of seasons.

It’s easy to fix­ate on one of the drivers, but the book cov­ers the devel­op­ment both of the. Prost’s tale starts with his first spell with McLaren of that rivalry from Prost’s arrival at McLaren in 1980. Fol­ley doesn’t simply take Prost’s recol­lec­tions. He also draws on other people around at the time, such as Tony Jardine. Senna’s early career is covered with his time in For­mula Ford in the UK. Mar­tin Brundle gives an hon­est view of how it was like to race Senna at the time.

Jo Ramirez, who worked at McLaren dur­ing the Senna/Prost era is another source of mater­ial for their time in the team. Other drivers gave brief accounts to fill out the story. There are inter­views with Hill and Wil­li­ams too. Senna’s time before his death at Wil­li­ams was brief, but it was Wil­li­ams who gave Senna his first F1 drive as a part of a test session.

Obvi­ously the two title char­ac­ters dom­in­ate the book, but it is a taste of what For­mula One was like in the 1980s. The extra back­ground adds more con­text to what was going on. For example, the clas­sic clip of Senna first com­ing to threaten Prost is from Monaco 1984 where an irres­ist­ible Senna in a poor car chased down Alain Prost in almost undrive­able con­di­tions. Prost’s hand wav­ing in the down­pour is eas­ily mis­taken for someone appeal­ing to be given the win (1984 Monaco Grand Prix — part 7). How­ever it is clear from the book that Prost was deeply affected his acci­dent in prac­tice for the 1982 Ger­man Grand Prix where Didier Pironi came out of heavy rain­spray to smash into the back of Prost’s Renault. Pironi never raced in For­mula One again. (Didier Pironi — Hock­en­heim ’82, crash and recov­ery)

1982 was a black year for For­mula One. Along with Pironi’s career-ending acci­dent, Vil­len­euve and Paletti died in races. Paletti’s death would be the last at a For­mula One race till the week­end in 1994 when Roland Ratzen­ber­ger and Ayr­ton Senna died. Prost was aware that F1 was a dan­ger­ous career. Ayr­ton Senna didn’t start in F1 till 1984. His faith was a worry for some other drivers, espe­cially in his later years, when some thought Senna  believed he had divine protection.

There is a prob­lem with any book like this. Prost is alive to give his side of the story. Senna is not. It’s hard to judge now if Senna really thought he was invul­ner­able. If you’re already a fan of one over the other I don’t think you’ll find any­thing here to change your mind. But the other drivers come well out of this. Derek War­wick in par­tic­u­lar could have been bit­ter after Senna effect­ively ended Warwick’s hopes of get­ting in a race-winning car.

The close of the book is inev­it­able, but even here Fol­ley is able to add some­thing, like the pres­sure Senna felt from Schu­macher. Everything Senna had thrown at Prost was now com­ing back at him from Schu­macher. A sur­prise in the book is how is seems Senna appre­ci­ated what a rival he had lost after Prost’s retire­ment. It also emphas­ises the shadow left by claims over the Benetton team using trac­tion con­trol. Did Senna die chas­ing an illegal car? http://www1.skysports.com/formula-1/news/12433/7362401/Verstappen-Schuey-s-car-different–

With no Schu­macher or Bar­ri­chello on the grid for 2013, this will be the first sea­son in a long while where none of the drivers will have known a death at Grand Prix week­end. The massive advances in safety are due in part to the death of Senna. No other event could have shocked the sport into improv­ing safety by so much.

#blog   #f1  

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Tentative Astronomical World Heritage Sites

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I’m mak­ing a note for myself here, but other might be inter­ested. It’s occurred to me there’s a very easy way to list sites on the tent­at­ive world her­it­age lists with an expli­cit astro­nom­ical con­nec­tion. Just search for the word astro­nomy on the list. It’s not rocket science.

It’s not per­fect either. The list­ing for Herat is tan­gen­tial to astro­nom­ical her­it­age, but other entries are obvi­ously rel­ev­ant, like Astro­nom­ical Obser­vat­or­ies of Ukraine and The Cape Arc of Meridian, South Africa.

One or two are new to me, so I have some read­ing to do.

#blog   #Astro­nom­ic­al­Her­it­age  

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UNESCO World Her­it­age Centre — Tent­at­ive Lists
UNESCO World Her­it­age Centre

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Some splendid lunar animations

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I’m work­ing on a talk today. At one point it threatened to be inter­est­ing, but I think I’ve got that under con­trol. Some­thing that might spoil that plan though are some lunar anim­a­tions from NASA. You can Dial-A-Moon at their web­site and down­load anim­a­tions of lunar phases and libration.

Lib­ra­tion is inter­est­ing. It’s the wobble in the moon as it gets pulled around in orbit. The down­load­able anim­a­tions bring this out nicely and NASA has gone to some lengths to make them as usable as pos­sible for people. You can down­load the files in vari­ous formats from http://j.mp/dialamoon or watch them via YouTube.

#blog   #moon   #astro­nomy  

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CC licensing and open access

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Here’s an example of how lim­it­a­tions through CC licences can change what you do with a paper.

I’m look­ing at an image. At first I thought to use it in a blog post about organic bat­ter­ies. I thought I could do that because the paper is open access, but the licence of the paper is BY-NC-ND. Tak­ing an image from the paper and blog­ging about it is pretty much mak­ing a D of it. The ND for­bids deriv­at­ives, even if the point of the deriv­at­ive is to say “Hey go look at this paper!” The page for the image itself has no CC licence inform­a­tion, so it looks like the copy­right in the footer applies.

I can see why there’s the NC clause. This has its own prob­lems, like mak­ing it unus­able for things like Wiki­pe­dia, but I can see sense in it. But ND seems an odd clause for sci­entific papers. Surely (properly-credited) deriv­at­ive works are a good thing for sci­ent­ists? I can see there’s a reason for ND in artistic pro­tec­tion, but sci­ence papers gen­er­ally aren’t works of art. Are there good reas­ons for Nature to have the ND clause?

I’ve trimmed the image thumb­nail and descrip­tion from the link because they would be deriv­at­ive from ori­ginal paper.

#blog   #pub­lish­ing   #aca­demia  

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Lith­ium stor­age mech­an­isms in pur­purin based organic lith­ium ion bat­tery elec­trodes : Sci­entific Reports : Nature Pub­lish­ing Group

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The opposite of Open Access

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Here’s an inter­est­ing paper I found while look­ing for inform­a­tion on a topic: EVALUATING THE STATUS OF UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITES IN EGYPT. I’ve no idea if the con­tent is inter­est­ing. How­ever, the reason I don’t know that (and prob­ably never will) is what makes the paper so interesting.

It’s avail­able at -http://dx.doi.org/10.5848/APBJ.2012.00005– http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/apbj/ijmc/2012/00000014/00000001/art00005 . Actu­ally I prob­ably should have said it’s ‘avail­able’ with air quotes instead. The reason is obvi­ous when you try to down­load it. Like 90% of journ­als you can’t because you need a sub­scrip­tion, but usu­ally there’s an option to buy the paper at some high rate. Not here. You have to sub­scribe to the journal to get the paper.

To be clear to read this paper on UNESCO World Her­it­age Sites in Egypt, because I have an interest in archae­olo­gical her­it­age, I have to sub­scribe to a journal that pub­lishes in the same issue:
EARNINGS MANAGEMENT AND TRADE-OFF BETWEEN TAX SAVINGS AND REGULATORY SCRUTINY THE CASE OF SLOVENIAN PROPERTY INSURERS
-http://dx.doi.org/10.5848/APBJ.2012.00012–
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/apbj/ijmc/2012/00000014/00000001/art00012
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDUSTRY AND CAPITAL DETERMINANTS OF COMPULSIVE BUYERS’ BEHAVIOUR: THE CASE OF RETAIL CLOTHING MARKET IN LITHUANIA 
-http://dx.doi.org/10.5848/APBJ.2012.00034–
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/apbj/ijmc/2012/00000014/00000001/art00034
EXPERIENTIAL CONSUMPTION OF TIME: A CASE STUDY OF CONSUMING FREE TIME IN THE CONTEXT OF ENTHUSIASM FOR HORSES -http://dx.doi.org/10.5848/APBJ.2012.00037– 
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/apbj/ijmc/2012/00000014/00000001/art00037

I’m will­ing to believe these are all excel­lent papers in their field and well worth £150 as a bundle to the right per­son — but not to me. Pub­lish­ing this way really does lock away research to a nar­row audi­ence. The bar­ri­ers to get­ting the paper mean I won’t be includ­ing it in any research databases.

The punch­line? Check the name of the publisher.

#blog   #archae­ology   #her­it­age   

Edited due to a com­ment by +Rheza Rozendaal : I really should have checked the DOIs

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Why I spoiled my ballot paper

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It’s elec­tion day for the Dyfed and Powys Police and Crime Com­mis­sioner elec­tions. I think they mean Police Com­mis­sioner. I don’t think it’s Con­ser­vat­ive Party policy to have more people com­mis­sion­ing crimes too. I think if were to con­jure a scheme to ali­en­ate people from demo­cracy, the Dyfed and Powys Police and Crime Com­mis­sioner elec­tions would be an excel­lent model to follow.

Labour’s can­did­ate is a former agri­cul­ture min­is­ter who was cen­sured for fail­ing to deliver on prom­ises. The Labour gov­ern­ment removed her from office on the eve of the big agri­cul­tural show in Wales because they thought that would be less embar­rass­ing than hav­ing her con­tinue in office.

I can­not vote for the Labour can­did­ate. That leaves, and I’m pedantic enough to list every single party, the Conservatives.

That’s it.

To be fair to the Con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate, he does sound sane. He’s in favour of help­ing drug addicts with rehab­il­it­a­tion. I think a Con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate who favours things that work over dogma is a good thing and I’d like to sup­port him. And there’s the bonus that you’ll be able to say with con­fid­ence the police really are the para­mil­it­ary wing of the Con­ser­vat­ive Party. And that’s the prob­lem. I have com­plete con­tempt for the elec­tion and it’s the Con­ser­vat­ives who’ve fois­ted it on the coun­try. A vote for the Con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate is a vote of approval for the sys­tem and this is abso­lutely the wrong system.

Polit­ical rep­res­ent­a­tion to the police is not the thing I have a prob­lem with. There are issues that are polit­ical with a small p that need rep­res­ent­at­ives. My prob­lem with the elec­tion is that we already have them. We have a local coun­cil, we have a county coun­cil, we have a national assembly and we have the UK Par­lia­ment. There’s plenty that’s wrong with them, but as far as poli­cing goes they have a fant­astic advant­age. They’re plural.

The law should be impar­tial. Politi­cians often are not, and even those who are need to be seen to be impar­tial and it’s dif­fi­cult to do that with a party tag round your neck. How­ever with the lay­ers of gov­ern­ment even if I do think there’s polit­ical bias, I can find a rep­res­ent­at­ive who I can at least talk to. The local Con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate is clear that he will aim to rep­res­ent all people in the region. Great but why would the Con­ser­vat­ive Party want to bypass the demo­crat­ic­ally elec­ted bod­ies like the local coun­cil (no Con­ser­vat­ive major­ity), the county coun­cil (no Con­ser­vat­ive major­ity), the national assembly (no Con­ser­vat­ive major­ity), or the UK par­lia­ment (no Con­ser­vat­ive majority)?

If I can’t vote for either then not-voting makes sense. The prob­lem with not-voting is that it’s indis­tin­guish­able from apathy, which is a sig­nal to all parties that they can do whatever they like. That leaves spoil­ing the bal­lot paper.

Spoil­ing the bal­lot paper is futile in the UK. It makes no dif­fer­ence to the res­ult, but to me at least it’s an action. Police Min­is­ter Damien Green has con­tempt for people who don’t vote http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20257552 and you can see why when so much of the elect­or­ate has con­tempt for him. I can now at least com­plain I have tried to take part in the pro­cess and a lack of choice includ­ing the choice to re-open nom­in­a­tions is exclud­ing me from democracy.

If we were allowed to write in can­did­ates my choice would be Jackie Roberts. I think she has exper­i­ence, know­ledge of the local area and, see­ing as she’s Chief Con­stable of the Dyfed-Powys force, she’d have an office in the heart of the organisation.

The com­fort is that pre­sum­ably Damien Green will be out of his post tomor­row. His sin­cer­ity that Police and Crime Com­mis­sion­ers are a good idea must surely mean his own post of Police Min­is­ter is redundant?

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How much is Stonehenge worth?

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You can now use Eng­lish law to work out what Stone­henge is worth in this blog post from Ulla Rajala. Someone has been fined for des­troy­ing a quarter of one of the Priddy Circles in Somer­set and you can work out from the fine for that what the fine for bull­doz­ing Stone­henge would be — if Eng­lish law were consistent.

The bonus ques­tion What gets the biggest fine, bull­doz­ing a quarter of a pre­his­toric monu­ment or installing uPVC win­dows into a lis­ted farm­house? is easy to answer.

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Priddy Circle ver­dict: how much is a monu­ment worth?
This week brought the sen­ten­cing of the case of the par­tial destruc­tion of one of the Priddy Circles in the Mendips in Somer­set. A retired busi­ness­man who had bought the farm house near the Circles ha…

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