De l'Amour

 De l'Amour

Max and I sat sipping wine in my conservatory as the light slowly faded.

"So," I asked, "what do you say when your girlfriend says she loves you and asks if you love her?'"

"Huh!" he shrugged, "Of course I murmur something about me loving her too. But in truth I am thrown into confusion."

"Even panic" I volunteered.  "What is love, anyway? I was never sure that I had ever experienced love. Fondness, liking, friendship, familiarity; I know all these. And wanting something, desperately; like a boy for a bicycle, or a girl for a pet.  I rotated my glass by its stem, tilted it and sniffed the heavy vapour. "How would I know love if I had it? Is love the same for everyone?  etc, etc."

"Is love perhaps a female thing?" Max asked.

"Now there you are!  I can see why a girl might want to know the level of her man's commitment, as it is she who might have to carry the consequences.  Fair enough, but how on earth can our merely claiming to be in love convince anyone of anything?"  

Max agreed. 

"Surely there are some reliable, visible, objective signs. Perhaps a distracted air, dilated pupils, or something in the gait, or carriage? Perhaps someone could devise a test kit; a colour-changing dip-stick. I am sure there would be a market for that."  

"You might think", continued Max, "that bringing a bunch of flowers should be enough; if they are red ones."

"Come on Max, you are being frivolous, as you often are. I am being serious about this, as I usually am. Some sixty years ago I read Stendhal's 'De l'Amour', but I never got much into it, nor much out of it. All I remember at this distance is his concept of 'Crystallisation'; the way additional virtues accrue spontaneously to the 'love-object'; as salt crystals grow in the saturated atmosphere of a salt-mine."

"All the great essayists treat of 'Friendship'; do not some also consider love?". I believe I have read Montaigne on 'Friendship', and Emerson, and Francis Bacon."

"We can soon test that idea", I said, getting up. I returned in 2 minutes with those three authors, as well at Marcus Aurelius's 'Thoughts', Stendhal's 'De l'Amour', and Plato's 'Symposium' . 

"After a quick glance of the contents of the essayists you mentioned, only Bacon explicitly treats of love. And he does not rate it very highly. He quotes someone as saying "that it is impossible to be in love and wise".  I waved Plato's 'Symposium' at Max, saying "I think Aristophanes gets as close to my understanding about love as any of them. He covered both the aspect of looking for your soul-mate, and Nature's canny trick of so positioning the genitalia that procreation is the often unintended consequence. 

"Then what is left for us to discover?" asked Max. "Stendhal covers the progressive distortion of perception as the lover succumbs to his obsession. And Aristophanes propounds the truth that the two fundamental rôles of love are to promote conception, and to improve childcare; at least for a sufficient portion of the population to maintain the species."

"I was coming to a similar conclusion myself," I said. "But, in addition, I had decided that a common characteristic of love is its lack of reason; so much so that to call an emotion 'love' almost requires the presence of folly. My friend writes to me from Colombia that she will fly back to sit at my bedside while I recover from my operation. 'No, no,' I protest, 'you were here only a month ago; when I am fit I shall come to Bogota.' What, I ask you, could be sillier than that exchange?". 

"Would you really go to Bogota?"

     "Yes I would. And that is how, for once, I feel I can honestly tell her that I love her. No need to mumble anything." 

Dear Nick Robinson

 Dear Nick Robinson, 

    Re interview with David Mencer at 08:15, 2025-7-25

    You started off quite well: "Let us agree the undeniable fact of starvation."  But then your desire to embarrass Mencer blew up in your face. Your tiff prevented us learning what is the the cause of the blockage. 

    I think there was a crucial point in David Mencer's argument that you did not address. It is a point important in understanding the Israeli attitude and in interpreting Israeli statements. It seems that the Netanyahu line is that Hamas is illegal and can be ignored because it is a terrorist organisation. They seem to regard the whole population as in support of the Hamas fighters, and therefore legitimate military targets. Hamas is, of course, also the democratically elected government of Gaza, which seems to be a point that Netanyahu does not accept.

    I think it could be argued that Israel is also a terrorist organization. They have murdered many more non-combatants than Hamas has, and with the deliberate intention of intimidating the crowd; and that comes very close to what I understand by the term 'terrorist'. (Pouring paint into an aero-engine does not terrify anyone!)  Of course, Hamas zealots started this round of violence. But there seems to have been plenty of unprovoked aggression by Israeli settlers on the Left Bank. I do not think it profitable to use the term 'terrorist' regarding either party. 

    I think we would like to know, from the relatively impartial UN operatives, what the hold-up is really due to. Perhaps UN aid workers refuse to carry food when they get shot at by Israeli soldiers; which seems understandable. Perhaps the UN authorities take the view that Hamas should be the distributors as they are the legal authority, and Israel therefore refuses to allow the UN access to the food. Also understandable, given the two mindsets.

    As I said above, you started off quite well: "Let us agree the undeniable fact of starvation."  But then your desire to embarrass Mencer blew up in your face. Your tiff prevented us learning what is the the cause of the blockage. 

    I think it is time to debate publicly and explain more fully why Britain has not recognised the state of Palestine – an area under British 'protection' until it became ungovernable in 1948. I do not think that Israel has shown itself to be a sufficiently grown-up authority to have jurisdiction over so many other human beings; beings which the rest of the world regard as human, but which the Israeli State does not accept as equal. 

Yours sincerely, Cawstein, 
Middleton Cheney,  Banbury,
OX17 2NB  

The Terrorist

The Terrorist.

"Awake, awake", the watchman cried, "fire, fire",

 As out into the night he stared with anxious eyes.

 His colleague turned to him, bade "Hush!   

 "They sleep within; and haply dream of profit; and of love."

 "You scare me, friend, your talk of fire. If, waking now, 

 They heeded well your words, abandoned jobs,  

 Laid down their tools, and started for the hills, 

 We'd starve; with five billion hungry others.

"Let us plan ahead, devise a scheme to shrink twofold 

 In twenty years our number and our wealth; 

 Shrink our cars, our appetites, our needs and wants 

 In little steps, each step being made by choice."

                                                            Ian West, Banbury, July 2025

The Passing of the Adverb

 The Passing of the Adverb

 Dear Editor of the London Review of Books,

I understand that literary prose enjoys seven kinds of ambiguity; scientific prose (in which I have schooled myself) enjoys none. Your reviewer writes of Syliva Plath,

" – the last line of her probable last poem,"

I do not think Plath's last poem was more probable than any of the others, but I understand that it was probably her last. The rule (that adjectives are qualified by adverbs) enables the reader to know what is being qualified. I regret the vanishing of the adverb. 

I also regret the passing of the conditional tense in sentences like: "Were X to participate, the Red Socks might win". I recently challenged an American editor, who thought his "may win" superior, on the grounds that victory was quite probable. But for me there must always be some doubt about future events, and the "might win" is always to be preferred, in order to make clear what is being asserted, and when. 

    (Similarly with 'can' and 'could'. "If..(whatever hypothetical)......he could win". )

In phrases like "we're convinced", or  "he'd abstain", the replacement of the verb (are?, were?, would?, could?, had?) with an apostrophe removes clarity, albeit transiently. I regret this use of the lazy apostrophe (except when reporting lazy speech). 

I accept that language evolves. But I do not think that educated people should imitate the uneducated merely because the latter are more numerous. 

Yours sincerely, Cawstein.

See also:
[1]  https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2010/06/lazy-apostrophe_7926.html
[2]  https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2016/02/slovenly-apostrophes.html 
[3]  https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-evolving-english-language.html

On Standard Screw Threads

 On Standard Screw Threads

(Part 3 of Nuts & Bolts)

I am still pursuing the question "Do modern metric nuts and bolts come loose spontaneously with greater facility than the nuts and bolts of my childhood; and, if that is the case, why are the modern nuts worse than the British Standard Whitworth nuts of my youth?". 

When I raised the question 15 years ago (See ref. [1])  I baulked at the problem of calculating the effect of 'groove-angle' on (a) friction, and (b) the the force causing the nut to unwind. But I pointed my finger at the increased groove-angle as possible culprit for the present casecade of falling nuts. However, buoyed by my success 4 years ago in calcultaing the packing density of uniform spheres [2], I now venture to tackle the 3-dimensional mathematics of the bolt, and its helical thread [3]. 

I suppose a bolt could have a helical groove with a square section, and indeed there may be some special applications in which such threads are cut. However, the groove of the standard bolt of 19th and early 20th century British engineering had a symmetrical, v-shaped profile, where the angle between the upward-facing surface and the downward-facing surface was 55º. Now, in the 21st century, internationally, that angle is 60º. 

90º⊐  55º (>  60º (> 

(Image from boltscience.com)

Once tightening is complete, there will be a tension in the bolt along its axis related (by Hook's law) to the elastic stretching of the bolt. That tension (F, in the sketches below) will be countered by pressure on the surface of the (upper) bolthead and the surface of the nut in contact with the lower plate contact area. But F will also be felt by the entire surface area of the bolt thread that is in contact with the mating surface of the nut, where it will generate friction. It is that friction, proportional to the surface area in contact and to the force pressing them together, that stops the nut from unwinding. 

Let me consider first the square-sectioned groove (sketched in Fig. 2 below.)  In the middle-top sketch I have tried to draw a square-bottomed grove on the right side of a right-handed bolt, trying to show that, as the thread comes towards us, it dips by a small amount below the horizontal; I have suggested 5º (A pitch of 1.27mm in circumference of 19.95mm gives a 'lead-angle' of 3.65º). In the middle-bottom sketch I have tried to draw the more normal v-bottomed groove, with a similar small dip of 5º. 

(Fig. 2)

In the left-top I have suggested that the Hook's law tension (F) operates along the axis of the bolt. It is met, of course, by the nut. I have supposed that the friction that develops between bolt and nut is proportional to the area of the two mated surfaces, and to the force between them that acts normal to the mated surfaces. I have likewise supposed that the force that unwinds the nut operates in the plane of the nut. 

From the sketch in the left-top, it would seem plausible that, in the case of the square-bottomed groove, the normal to the bearing surface is only 5º off vertical; leaving most of the force (85/90) remaining to generate friction (and a residual 5/90 of the force to unwind the nut). In the case of the v-bottomed groove it would seem that a large portion of the of the force F operates at the wrong angle to cause friction, 27.5/90 in the case of the BSW nut, 30/90 in the case of the modern ISOmetric nut. (I have not managed to see what that tangental force does; does it stretch the nut? )

Thinking along the above lines I have managed to convince myself that the v-bottomed groove does not maximise the friction between nut and bolt, because the tension in the bolt is not normal to the mated surfaces. And in this regards the modern bolts of the ISOmetric series with a 60º groove are worse than the British Standard Whitworth (BSW) with 55º groove. Incidentally the American UTS series also uses the 60º groove. 

Perhaps a more significant difference between the BSW groove and the shallower ISOmetric groove is the smaller area of the mated surfaces in the latter. To show how this could be significant, I have sketched (Fig. 3) an equilateral triangle (sides 2, 2, 2; angles 60º, 60º, 60º), and a second isosceles triangle where one of the angles has been narrowed to 55º. You will see that the friction-generating surface of the latter is 8% larger.

(Fig. 3)

These two effects combined might explain my conviction that the nuts of today are more inclined to come loose than the nuts of the 'Whitworth' era. 

(I have also shown that a small element of the elastic tension in the bolt is directed towards un-twisting (loosening) the nut. It is dependent on the ratio of the pitch to the circumference. But in that regard the nuts of the ISOmetric series are very similar to those of the BS Whitworth series, and are occasionally 'finer' (See my Nuts and Bolts1). I have not yet managed to clarify whether the tension in the bolt applied to the sloping side of the groove could have a resultant component that un-twists the nut, like the progress of a sailing boat with a beam wind. I would urge engineers like those at  boltscience.com  to investigate these questions. )

REFERENCES

[1]  https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2010/06/nuts-and-bolts.html 

[2]  https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2021/09/excluded-volume-between-close-packed.html

[3]  https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2025/06/on-helices.html

Iran

 Iran

I went to Iran once. Thirty three years ago, so back in the early nineteen nineties. I was invited to give a series of lectures at the Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, jointly with a postdoctoral scientist from Oxford. A fascinating country, and a charming and worthy people. 

Why do I bring this up now, you may ask. Though I fear I may have left it too late, I feel it is my duty to share my experience. I suspect most people in Britain will be as near to totally ignorant of Iran as I was before my trip; ignorant of both the geography and the history of the country, and of the people. 

        I was invited, I suspect, in an attempt to forge links between our universities; more that I might learn about Iran than that their students might learn about 'Transport across Biomembranes'.  I returned to the University of Newcastle conscious that I was meant to be an advocate for closer relations between my university and an equivalent university in Tehran. I tried, but found that our pro-vice chancellor for overseas students had got it into his head that Islamic countries tended to default on paying fees. Some past problem with Libya, I think; possibly related to the Lockerbie bombing. But how stupid to confuse Maghreb arabism with Aryan Iran; as though Islam taught commercial duplicity, which is pretty rich coming from 'Perfidious Albion'. I indignantly protested that Iran had a very good reputation for business probity, but to no avail. I was in any case pretty sick of my university, and life generally at that time; and I left it at that; a dozen lovely memories, and as many photos. 

The Iran Air plane, an enormous Jumbo-Jet,  gradually filled up with well-dressed Europeans, much like any other international airliner, the only oddity being signs announcing the times for prayer, and the direction of Mecca. However, no sooner had we taken off than the women all produced and donned head-scarves from their handbags. How would I recognise my fellow lecturer, whom I knew was on the plane somewhere? It turned out not to be a problem for, after touring around the giant plane for 5 minute, I saw coming towards me a figure who could only be the Dr. Saira Malik I was looking for, a bright young Oxford biophysicist of Pakistani heritage, albeit wearing a headscarf. She seemed as confident as I was, that she had found her fellow lecturer: a British biochemist/biophysicist in mid-career. 

After chatting awhile and making a plan to link up on arrival, we returned to our seats; in my case to read the highly relevant book I had bought at Heathrow airport – "What is Islam?" [1]. That brought me swiftly from bottom of the class to a midway position; able, in rural UK, to pontificate on  the 114 surahs of the Qur'an, Fatima, Ali and the Shi'ah, the role of the Jewish bible, relationship between Islam and Christianity, the Assassins, the Whirling Dervishes, and Sufi mystics. I looked nervously about me as I read of the Satanic verses, and the murderous, 1300-year-old, vendetta between Sunni and Shia sects. I marvelled at the enthusiasm these people bring to their beliefs. 

Our Hotel was the old Hyatt Hotel, lying just off the Chamran Highway in the extreme northern part of Tehran city. It had been commandeered and renamed the Azadi Grand Hotel in 1979, along with other American assets. I cannot remember how we were met at the airport. But the morning after our arrival we were taken by car a mile or two south to Tarbiat Modares University. Saira and I gave our lectures alternately; she on membrane fluidity, I on the bioenergetics of solute uptake.  We lectured on a raised stage to an audience of postgraduates; our slides projected onto a screen behind us. After the lecture, cups of sweet tea were handed round to all, starting of course with the lecturer, who then took questions. 

We had free time. I made cautious scouting trips round the blocks near the hotel, enchanted by early April almond blossom in the quieter streets, a little artisan bakery making the flat-bread discs that are their starchy staple, and the astonished stares of the few people I met. Gazing northward I could admire the majestic, snow-covered, Elburz mountains where the Shah had built a ski resort, before he hurried off to the States in 1979. 

        On one of our free afternoons, academic colleagues took us walking into the city; on leafy streets, with a runnel of clear water next to the pavement, and a welcome paucity of cars. (The revolution of 1979 had interrupted the import of new cars. However, the traffic down in the lower city was admittedly rather polluting.) 

On another free afternoon we were taken up above the snow-line on the ski-lift to the Shah's chalet. There we slid down a snowy slope sitting on an inflated truck-tyre. 

(Teheran, from the south. Image by WorldAtlas.com)

Most enjoyable for me was a walk by myself from the hotel out into the foothills of the Elburz Mountains. There were well made stoney tracks following up the river valleys. The terrain was extremely rocky. There was no cultivation, and no sign of grazing animals; scarcely a green leaf, except for some poplar trees down by the rushing water.  The only business was recreation.There was a sprinkling of walkers, including women clad in black from head to heel. It was idyllically peaceful. Every now and then I saw a laden mule carrying provisions to a restaurant further up the valley. The Iranians drank quantities of what looked like 'Coco-Cola' but was presumably made locally to their own recipe. The restaurants offered neither tables nor chairs, but a low carpeted platform on which, after removing your shoes, you could sit and eat, enjoying the dappled shade of the trees. (I learned some years later from an Iranian student that, for an ordinary Iranian at home, it is perfectly normal to sit on the floor to eat.)  I found it wonderful to be able to walk straight out from my hotel deep into the wilderness, and back, in an afternoon. The almond blossom, the rugged path, the rushing water, the mules, the women clad in hijab – I had never felt so close to Omar Khayyam.

One of my tutees in the Biochemistry honours course at Newcastle was from Tehran. She had asked her parents to call for me at my hotel and show me round Tehran. Neither speaking English nor owning a car, her parents had nevertheless taken the trouble to hire a car with an English speaking driver. I saw some lovely views of the city, and for a few miles out on the road northwards, towards the mountains and the Caspian Sea. But I was also invited to their home, where I was offered some hospitality. I greatly appreciated their kindness, and this brief opportunity to meet another culture, at home.

Sixteen months later I was able to repay their kindness for the mother of my student came over to see her daughter receive her degree. I do hope mother and daughter enjoyed the  coast and castles of Northumberland as much as I had enjoyed my week in Tehran. 

REFERENCES

[1] "What is Islam?" By Horrie & Chippindale, 1990, Virgin Publishing, London

My Funny Turn

My Funny Turn

       I had a funny turn the other day; on Thursday evening, at half past six.

    I was bustling from a pre-opening Private Show at the Museum ("Photographer of the Year") the short half mile to the Writers' Café on Parson's Street. So, across the canal, through the car-park, down the snicket and round into Parson's Street. I was nearly there, when I noticed that the ground immediately in front of me had begun to sway around. Not just the ground. The corner of 'The Old Auctioneer' pub was also swirling around. A bollard-thing, guarding the corner, lurched towards me and  I grabbed onto it. Just as well, for I believe I would otherwise have tumbled over in the street. 

     There I clung for 10 or 20 seconds, as thing gradually calmed down. Then, letting go, I tentative walked the last few yards to the Café. Never, in my life, before or since (it is now 10 weeks since) have I felt anything like it. 

       Reason tells me that it was I, and in particular my head, that was swaying around, and not the world. But I want to emphasise the subjective experience, the ego-centric, eye-centred, feeling of stasis. It seemed as though, for the space of 10 or 20 seconds the information from my vestibular systems of the inner ear was switched off. My eyes told me that the road was approaching my face. My vestibular systems should have detected an acceleration of my head towards the road, but detected nothing, reporting,  instead, the condition of being stationery. 

      Was I fainting from cerebral anoxia, or hypoglycaemia? I noticed absolutely no 'greying' of the visual field that I associate with fainting. I normally eat at 6.30 but, having enjoyed a beer at 5.00, I had skipped dinner. I reckon I could live off fat reserves for days or weeks. But I realise that the automatic maintenance of blood sugar, might get faulty with age; everything else does. I am not sure that I have ever been hypoglycaemic and do not know what that feels like. So I asked an acquaintance with type 1 diabetes melitus, and found that I had none of the symptoms.

      When I got to the café, I had a coffee and a flapjack. I felt fine, completely normal; and now (ten weeks later) have never had a recurrence of that 'funny turn'.

Should I be concerned? Should I give up driving?