Nicholas-Fourikis

"Hypatia's Feud" - Book launch photos

2011-09-06T06:11:00.000-07:00

Dr Jane Lomax Smith launching the book

Attendees of the book launch at the Barr-Smith Library

Drs Jane Lomax-Smith & Nicholas Fourikis

Nicholas signing a book

Attendees of the book launch

Nicholas responding to Dr Jane Lomax-Smith

My book launch speech

2011-08-04T16:26:00.001-07:00

“Hypatia’s Feud”
Book Launch Speech
3rd August 2011
Barr-Smith Library, Adelaide University

Hello everyone.
I’m elated to see so many friends and colleagues. We should have these cultural evenings more often.

Most of you would know that Hypatia was an ardent supporter of Libraries because Libraries are stepping stones to new knowledge. I’m therefore elated that we are celebrating Hypatia’s book in a University Library. In that regard I would like to thank Ray Choate, and Paul Wilkins who availed the Barr-Smith Library for such a cultural event.
I decided to chronicle the life and times of Hypatia for many reasons. According to her contemporaries she had the mind of Plato and the figure of Aphrodite. I don’t disagree with that description but Hypatia of Alexandria was much more interesting. At 400 AD, for instance she led the Alexandrian groups of philosophers and astronomers. Hypatia’s career path, as you can understand, wasn’t what was expected of a lady.
More importantly however she was the philosopher humanist who clashed with monks possessed by religious fervor. It was a monumental feud between reason and dogma that unfolded in Roman Alexandria, the Pearl of the Mediterranean.

Alexandria deserved that accolade for three reasons. The Pharos, the most famous lighthouse of Antiquity and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world symbolized the commercial power of the city. Young men, bursting with talent and ambition came to Alexandria to join either the School of Alexandria, or the Royal Alexandrian Library. St Mark you’d recall founded the School of Alexandrian, the first Christian Institution of the Empire and the Ptolemies founded the famous Royal Alexandrian Library.
“The Royal Library of Alexandria,” wrote Ferdinand Gregorovius, “diffused a splendor over the civilized world which lasted longer than any other university, whether Paris, Bologna, or Padua.”

And the late Professor Carl Sagan, was more specific.
“In the Alexandrian Library,” he told 600 million television viewers, “lived a community of scientists who discovered the sciences of physics, linguistics, medicine, astronomy, geography, philosophy, mathematics, biology, and geology. In that Library studies reached adulthood. Here genius flourished. Here in the Library of Alexandria were the first serious attempts to understand the world.”

After the Romans succeeded the Ptolemies, research in the Library declined because the Romans did not support research as much as the Ptolemies. Moreover Alexandria witnessed endless tit for tat clashes between Pagans, Christians, and Jews because the Alexandrians took religion seriously.

That is the mileu in which Hypatia’s Feud, a fictional work, unfolds.

Theon the last Librarian of the Royal Alexandrian Library tutors his daughter Hypatia in astronomy, mathematics and philosophy. Her eloquence, modesty, and beauty, combined with her remarkable intellectual gifts, attract a large number of pupils and by 400AD she leads the Alexandrian group of philosophers and the Hipparchus group of astronomers.

Hypatia researches the heavens and explores the everlasting questions of our existence when the Church preaches there is no need to probe into the nature of things.

She imparts new knowledge to the world when the churchmen counsel women to seek knowledge from their husbands.

She tutors Jews, Christians and Pagans while men of different religions wage wars.

Her dazzling career as researcher, teacher and humanist convinces every conservative in the Empire that women are not only intellectually equal to men but can also lead philosophers and astronomers.

Her feud with the Church reaches a climax during a debate with the Patriarch of Alexandria who believes the half a million pagan scrolls of the Royal Alexandrian Library prevent the populace from accepting Christianity.
“If we torch the pagan scrolls of the Library,” the Patriarch proclaims during the debate, “we would uproot the weeds of confusion in God’s New Jerusalem.”

“In the Elysian Fields,” Hypatia retorts, “myriad
flowers bloom and Truth, like the flowers, is registered in the
scrolls of the library.”

This is how the debate started and Kate Hawtin a fellow writer and poet will elaborate on how Hypatia defended the half a million scrolls of the Alexandrian Library.

Pls welcome Kate to the podium.

“At the dawn of history,” my fellow Alexandrians, “the poets unveiled that Zeus ruled the
heavens, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld. The gods were
powerful, looked like us, and shared all our foibles. In the Homeric
poems, you’ll recall, the squabbling gods backed their favorite mortals.
Besides, the gods with a keen eye for beauty seduced queens and
princesses — they even fathered demigods.

“The mortals continued to appease the gods by sacrifices a long
time after the Homeric times, but Aesop struck a dissonant note to our
cozy relationship with the gods.

“A wealthy Athenian, he wrote, was making a sea voyage with some
companions when a terrible storm blew up and their ship capsized. All
the other passengers started swimming but the Athenian kept praying
to Pallas Athena, making all kinds of promises if only she would save
him. Then one of the other shipwrecked passengers swam past him
and shouted,

“‘While you pray to Athena, start moving your arms!’

“That was, my fellow Alexandrians, the first call in history for
mortals to take charge of their lives. Not many paid heed to Aesop’s
message and the gods continued to play significant roles in the lives
of mortals until the Ionian philosophers entered the center stage of
history.

“‘If we ask an ox to draw God, the ox will draw an ox,’

Xenophanes dared to tell us, and more dissent from the prevailing
beliefs followed.

“‘We don’t need to attribute the fall of a sparrow
to the intervention of Zeus.’

“That was the light-hearted sentence the daredevils of Ionia used to
demolish the dungeons of poetic superstition where men and women
lived since the beginning of time. And in the light of day, they edited
the gods out of their daily lives.

“It matters not, my fellow Alexandrians, whether you prefer to
take charge of your lives or lead your lives according to the revelations
of a religion. In either case, the scrolls in the Royal Library will guide you along your journey. The scrolls therefore offer us the freedoms we dearly love
everyone to enjoy.”

Kate Hawtin ladies and gentlemen.

My book chronicles the life and times of Hypatia through the eyes of Aristos, a twenty two year old philosopher but the narration continues after Hypatia’s assassination through the Dark Ages up to the Dawn of the Renaissance when Reason once more prevailed.

From history we know that thousands of Christians perished during the Dark Ages because they did not adhere to the church’s dogma. Millions perished because they opposed the Fascist’s doctrine. Thousands disappeared in Gulags because they opposed the Communist ideology. And during our times we witness the carnage caused by this or that Holly War or Jihad. Lastly we all know what ethnic cleansing means.

For these and many other reasons it is always rewarding to re-visit Hypatia’s life. She was after all the quintessential philosopher-hero who not only proved that women can lead philosophy and astronomy groups but lived as a humanist in a world possessed by religious fervor.

It took me three years to write the book and during that time young women attacked me because I, a man, had no right to write a book about their hero. I wanted to tell them I had a classical education, that I spent many summers in Alexandria, I was an astronomer, and studied philosophy but didn’t, because Hypatia is now a citizen of the world. She came to this world an Alexandrian Greek but is now a citizen of the world

I hope that you will enjoy reading my book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

And thank you for coming along to celebrate Hypatia’s life.

"Hypatia's Feud" - Book Launch

2011-07-05T01:58:00.000-07:00

Ray Choate, University Librarian
Invites you and your guest to the launch by

Dr Jane Lomax- Smith

Royal Institution of Austalia
of

Hypatia's Feud

By Dr Nicholas Fourikis

Wednesday 3 August 2011 - 5.30 for 6.00 pm
Ira Raymond Exhibition Room - Barr-Smith Library

RSVP by Monday 1 August to patricia.hawke@adelaide.edu.au 8303 4064

One fable and three quotations that define Humanism to me

2011-06-04T00:36:00.000-07:00

1 - ‘We don’t need to attribute the fall of a sparrow to the intervention of Zeus.’

That was the light-hearted sentence the daredevils of Ionia used to
demolish the dungeons of poetic superstition where men and women
lived since the beginning of time.

2 - And Aesop corroborated this sentiment in one of his fables
‘A wealthy Athenian, he wrote, was making a sea voyage with some
companions when a terrible storm blew up and their ship capsized. All
the other passengers started swimming but the Athenian kept praying
to Pallas Athena, making all kinds of promises if only she would save
him. Then one of the other shipwrecked passengers swam past him
and shouted,
‘While you pray to Athena, start moving your arms!’
That was the first call in history for mortals to take charge of their lives.

3 - A couple of centuries later the Sophist Protagoras (490-420 BCE) declared that:

‘Man is the measure of everything.’

4 - Many centuries later Robert G Ingersoll (1833-99) articulated what it means to be a Humanist.
‘When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave.
There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space,
I was free-free to think, to express my thoughts - free to live my own ideal, free to live for myself and those I loved, free to use all my faculties all my senses, free to spread imagination’s wings, free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope, free to judge and determine for myself . . . I was free! I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously faced all worlds.’

Thank you to my benefactors I cited in this short expose.

Hypatia lived and died as a Humanist among religious zealots

2011-05-29T22:49:00.000-07:00

Reference (1) is a collection of significant film clips dedicated to Hypatia of Alexandria.
The film clips offer us glimpses of modern Alexandria, interviews with several scholars, visits to several museums, archeological sites, drawings of the ancient Alexandria and accounts of Hypatia’s achievements in Philosophy, Astronomy and Mathematics.
Some of the highlights are:
• The late Carl Sagan told 600 million television viewers, "here in the Library of Alexandria, were the first trials to understand the world (1,2)."
• Bettany Hughes (3) made the point that Alexandria was more famous than Athens and Rome.
• In her film clips Bettany included: (i) segments from Amenabar’s film “Agora”; and visits to: (a) The Bibliotheca Alexandrina. (b) the Temple of Apis in Saqqara; and (c) the archeological site of the Royal Alexandrian Library at the Kom-el-Dika.
A Polish team of archeologists discovered the ruins of the Royal Alexandrian Library and its Mouseion, the research centre of the Royal Library.

Hypatia lived and died in Alexandria as a Humanist among religious zealots

(1) http://wn.com/Hypatia_of_Alexandria.
(2) “Cosmos”- The popular television series.
(3) Oxford scholar / archeologist / BBC presenter / author of "Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore."

The Publishing Revolution - P.S. Thank You Amazon

2011-05-18T04:31:00.000-07:00

Two traditional publishers published my two university textbooks because I had a long list of publications in the field of Radio Astronomy; in their language I had a platform.

After I wrote my first literary novel I spent many months trying to find a publisher to no avail mainly because I didn’t have a platform in the literary circles. I therefore, like many authors, have a dossier of rejection letters from traditional publishers.

As I was keen to get my work out there, I approached a local publisher in Adelaide who published my first literary novel Hollywood Amarroo – a chronicle about two young lovers who ignored the prejudices of the sixties in Australia to defend an Aboriginal mother accused of manslaughter.
I organized a successful book launch but after that happening, I didn’t sell many copies of my book because no one advertised and / or marketed my book.

Outskirts Press published Hypatia’s Feud, my second literary book, because I didn’t want to go for another merry go round with the traditional publishers. The time it took Outskirts Press to convert my manuscript, MS, as a WORD doc to a book and e-book was about six months. Amazon now advertises and markets my book but it was a costly experiment.

Thanks to the publishing revolution authors now have a third alternative: Amazon’s CreatSpace. An author sends the finished MS to Amazon’s CreateSpace where it is converted into an e-book and presto the author’s book is out there in the virtual world! Parenthetically I’ll add that the cost of converting the MS as a WORD doc to an e-book is less than$100. With this approach the author has absolute control of every aspect of production and earns royalties worth 70% of the book’s purchase price. The royalties offered by CreatSpace therefore compare favourably with the 15% (of the book’s purchase price) I earn from my university text books. It is simply brilliant!

Royalties aside imagine how many trees authors would save using Amazon’s CreateSpace to put their work out there. Many readers would simply visit the virtual Amazon bookshop before they can buy any e-books, costing less, say, $6.00. E-books are simply transmitted to the reader via the Internet, almost instantly, so no one pays packaging or postal charges. And more importantly no more merry go rounds for authors dealing with traditional publishers. Lastly non- English authors can also use Amazon’s CreateSpace to get their work out there.

I’m already working toward re-issuing my Hollywood Amarroo book as an e-book. Now you know the route I’ll pursue to publish all my future books.

My book "Hypatia's Feud" is in Amazon

2011-05-09T00:15:00.000-07:00

The publication of my book “Hypatia’s Feud” marks the end of a three year project during which I researched, wrote and edited the manuscript.

During that period I had many interesting conversations with friends and colleagues. Some women who graduated from various courses broadly labeled as Women Studies were not happy hearing that I was writing a book based on the life and times of Hypatia. The insinuation was that Hypatia belonged to them and I, a man, had no right to write a literary novel about their hero and idol.

The fact that I had a classical education didn’t matter to them. I reminded them that as an astronomer, qualified in Science and Mathematics I understood her achievement in these branches of science. Lastly I mentioned that I spent several summers in Alexandria and took a number of philosophy courses but could not change their minds. Eventually we agree to disagree.

An astrophysicist, I respect, insisted that Hypatia was just a mathematician. In vain I tried to convince him she was the quintessential philosopher-hero who lived and died as a Humanist among religious zealots. Sensing I could not change his mind I mentioned she was the conduit of ancient wisdom to the modern world but failed again to change his mind.

To my religious friends I stressed that Hypatia’s Feud at the dawn of the fifth century CE with all dogmatic religions and political creeds, is our feud too because her foes under different names are ever-present.

The moral of my experiences is that no matter what we choose to do or write we will always have detractors. What is important to me is to explore universal issues and put my work out there.

“Hypatia’s Feud” is now available as a book and as e-book from Amazon.

Nicholas Fourikis, another portrait

2009-04-11T02:58:00.001-07:00

Nicholas Fourikis, another portrait.

Sue Heinemann painted my portrait in March 2009
Adelaide the City of Churches

Thank you Sue

Desalination plants utilizing solar / wind power

2009-03-24T01:30:00.000-07:00

Desalination plants utilizing solar / wind power

Q & A Inputs for the ABC Program chaired by Tony Jones

Preamble
We are now experiencing a global economic downturn and serious environmental concerns about the future of the planet. The obvious solution to both problems is to invest in the construction of minimal cost Green Projects that yield everlasting benefits.

The question
In that context why do we spend money toward cleaning coal (a pie in the sky project) and insulating homes when we could be spending money constructing Green Desalination Plants that utilize wind and / or solar energy?

Background information
The Kwinana desalination plant located just south of Perth yields 140,000m3 of drinking water per day and is powered by 48 wind turbines located in the Emu Downs Wind farm. The attractive features of this Green Desalination Plant are:
(i) The technology is available NOW.
(ii) The energy is renewable
(iii) The construction of several Green Desalination Plants would employ thousands of construction workers / engineers / scientists.
(iv) The water can be utilized for irrigating large areas of land also, thus producing more crops.
(v) The benefits are everlasting and very visible – Such projects can easily be the Snowy Mountain Schemes of the 21st century
(vi) Additional benefits are the generation of electricity. The Emu Downs Wind Farms for instance generates 270 GWh/year but the Kwinana Green Desalination Plant uses only 180 GWh/year.

A proposal for the construction of the Point Paterson Green Desalination Plant utilizing solar energy near Port Augusta, in South Australia is in the planning stage but capital for its construction (estimated about 450million$ ) is not forthcoming. The plant is to produce 5.5 gigalitres of water per year.

Australia, the sunburn country, has cheap coal and abundant sunshine. Wind power is also available for harnessing in many parts of the country. Cleaning coal is not a technology we possess now while the technologies for harnessing solar / wind power are available now.

Creative use of cliches

2009-03-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

To cliché or not to cliché, that is not the question.
An essay

Nicholas Fourikis

‘I’m a Nazi when I see clichés,’ Helen told me the other day. Is she right or should I assume she has a blind spot?
Helen is a long standing friend. She is also an interesting writer with a degree in creative writing under her belt. I admire her in many ways but she can’t stand anyone using clichés.
In many ways she is right because clichés express something that has become overly familiar or common place, stale, stereotypical and timeworn. Writers are supposed to be creative, and we are expected not to use words that have a timeworn ring to them.
As John Simon notes in Paradigms Lost, Vanity of a peacock is to imagery what a twenty-times-used blade is to shaving.
‘I love the twinkle in your eyes.’ Is a tired cliché that is too generic to be useful? It could apply to a cockatoo, for instance.
The trouble is that we all use clichés in our conversations. It’s natural therefore to allow our characters to use clichés. Moreover the clichés our characters use define their socioeconomic milieu, their frustrations or exhilarations. In many ways clichés reveal character.
Writing a novel without using clichés would be like describing a world that has no cultural resonances. In a less abstract way our book would be like a beautiful empty house waiting for carpets and pictures. It would have all possibilities. It could become a palace or a brothel.
If there was a way we can use clichés creatively we will have the best of all possible worlds. No one could accuse us of not being creative and we would be mining the cultural treasures clichés offer. Is this quest a pie in the sky misadventure? The answer is a firm and unequivocal “No.”
In passing, and it’s only in passing, did you notice how creative Simon was with the title of his book Paradigms Lost? (Remember Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost?)
If this example is too literary try the following:
She is the cow in the ointment.
It was lust at first bite.
He is a legend in his soup.
These are clichés that some creative writer tweaked – twichés. Here are some more from reference [1]
A media guru described Madonna’s latest diet Footloose and Fat-Free.
George W Bush has gone from abject wealth to riches, Jon Stewart quipped.
A legend in his own mind
‘A good tweak,’ the author of reference [1] writes, ‘leads readers one way, then jerks them into the delight-giving realm of surprise.’
Is that all we can do to infuse life into timeworn clichés? Definetely “Not” because creativity knows no bounds.
Tom Skinner an Australian author wrote Round Fish, Square Bowl - a children’s book full of clichés [2]. It’s OK to be different was the message of Tom’s book.
As you can imagine I cannot reproduce all his clichés in this essay but here are some samples that would elate you.
If you are as slow as a tortoise don’t worry because the tortoise often beats the hare.
If you are mad as a hatter, the madder the merrier.
If you are an ugly duckling, remember ugly ducklings turn into beautiful swans.
I’m sure you get the drift of Tom’s beautifully illustrated book. Parenthetically it is worth noting Tom abandoned his boring day job, sold his house, and educated himself to become a great writer. He dedicated his book

To Mum
For the immovable belief that being different was my virtue rather than my millstone.

Thank you Tom and Helen. Nazi or not I owe her a lot for inspiring me to take time off and reflect on clichés.

[1] A. Plotnik. Twist worn expressions into winners. The Writer. Aug 2006. p15
[2] T. Skinner. Round fish, square bowl. 2006. New Frontier Publishing

The 8th International Conference on Greek Research

2009-03-17T02:36:00.000-07:00

The abstract of a paper I am to present to the 8th International Conference on Greek Research. To be held at Frinders University in South Australia from the 2nd to the 5th July 2009.

Aristarchus and Hipparchus

Nicholas Fourikis PhD

Aristarchus the Samian (310-230 BCE) proposed the Heliocentric System because he could not conceive that the Sun, a massive star, rotates around tiny Earth. Cleanthes, a philosopher, thought the Greeks ought to prosecute Aristarchus for setting the Earth in motion.

Hipparchus of Nicaea (190-120 BCE) assembled the first catalogue of 1000 stars with their magnitudes and calculated the distance between Earth and the Sun.
His crowning achievement was the calculation of the precession of the Earth’s axis using his observations, the observations of Timocharis & Aristillus taken 150 years before his time and the observations of the Babylonians taken over 2000 years.
His calculation of the precession was astonishingly close to the correct value of 50.26 arc seconds.

Aristarchus pursued high risk / high yield research while Hipparchus pursued low risk / high yield research.

2009 is the Year of Astronomy

Nicholas Fourikis Portrait

2009-03-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

Sue Heinemann, a recent friend, organised five painters to "do" me in March 2009. I sat in front of them for a total of five hours with short intervals.All portraits were excellent but I could only afford the portrait done by Michael Hocking.
Apart from being an excellent portrait painter Michael is also a phychologist. A very gifted young man. indeed.

Thank you Sue and Michael

Molecular Radioastronomy Conference photo

2009-02-15T16:06:00.000-08:00

With Professor HF Weaver of Berkeley University at an International Conference on Molecular Radioastronomy held in Australia in 1973

Hypatia of Alexandria

2009-02-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

Hypatia of Alexandria was the foremost lady with significant contributions to Science and Philosophy. She was killed at the dawn of the fifth century CE by Christian monks.

"Hollywood Amarroo" Book Launch

2009-02-13T22:01:00.000-08:00

With Kate Ellis Federal Member for Adelaide and Minister for Sports and Recreation during the launch of my book

Hollywood Amarroo

The book can be purchased from

Mostly Books

Mitcham Square

119 Belair Road

SA 5062

Tel (08) 8373 5190

mostlybooks@internode.on.net

My Beloved

2009-02-13T21:22:00.000-08:00

My Beloved

I want to tell you.
I want to tell the world
Of my beloved but I can’t

How can I capture
The Spring of her smile
Or the Christmas
Of our love
Using words made up
Of letters from a dead alphabet?

But I can tell you.
I can tell the world that
When we talk,
The petty world we know
Does not exist and
The boundaries between us
Are blurred.

We are free as if in a dream
But we are bonded
By the wireless wires of our love

The quest for quality writing

2009-02-13T01:51:00.000-08:00

The quest for quality writing

Some writers believe that PR and PR alone, is enough to propel them to success, but I doubt it. Quality is and will always be what readers and editors seek but let me digress a little.
Many moons ago commercial enterprises learned that quality is:
(i) What beats the competition; and
(ii) The costs related to attaining quality are minimal.
That is how the Quality Movement started. The CEO of an enterprise sets the benchmarks for quality and all employees strive to reach these benchmarks. As soon as the enterprise reaches the benchmarks, the CEO raises the bar and this happens continually. The tacit assumption here is that PR alone is not enough to bust the competition but it helps.
Is there a limit beyond which an enterprise cannot improve the quality of its services / products? Of course there is for many enterprises but not for the Learning Enterprises. Because in a learning enterprise the employees gain new skills along the way. And armed with these extra skills they reach the benchmarks set by the CEO. Conversely enterprises that do not increase the skills of their employees can hit a glass wall or a plateau in their quest for quality improvements.
Quality in writing is easily recognized and appreciated. Editors / readers for instance recognize quality of a manuscript by reading the first two to three paragraphs. Borrowing from the quality movement only the learning writer is destined to succeed.
How do we improve the quality of our writing skills? That is a question of interest for all of us.
Experiental learning is great. You learn the writing skills by writing and by subjecting your work to critique sessions. You invite everyone to critique your work. You don’t have to accept everything they suggest but the bits you accept are manna from the gods. More importantly critique sessions keep you humble.
In more general terms experiental writing helps you find your voice. One of my friends claims that you find your voice only after you have written a million words. It might be an exaggeration but it is a view worth remembering.
Reading novels can be rewarding too if you ask the following questions:
(i) What did I learn from the first and last Chapters? After reading the first chapter did the writer convince me to suspend disbelief? Did the last chapter help me decide the book was a great read?
(ii) Did the writer achieve a balance between telling and showing? Here it is worth remembering that if the writer shows everything her book would have 1000 pages!
(iii) How about descriptions? Before the television era, descriptions were mandatory, long and detailed. After many years of television, descriptions are succinct. So succinct in fact that many writers weave descriptive passages into the plot. Was the book full of memorable descriptions but the plot tenuous?
(iv) Am I happy with the length of her sentences? Did she mix short and long sentences or did she use long and longer sentences? Or short and shorter sentences? Short sentences are ideal to describe action i.e. a fight, a love scene, or a chase but if you use short sentences only you would end up with pages and pages of telegraphic English. For narrative a mixture of long and short sentences is appealing and revise sentences longer than say 30 words. One of my tutors told me: One sentence can do one job only not 500 jobs! It’s an exaggeration I’ll never forget.
(v) Did the writer expose you to pages and pages of dialog? Dialogs are windows to the inner world of heroes and villains. Pages and pages of dialog however can be tedious.
We can learn lots from experiental writing but is it the only way of mastering writing skills? Hardly, but it’s a good start.
How about writing courses?
Let us assume that writing skills are likened to islands. One tutor of creative writing can take you to the Bahamas. Another to the Aegean or Canary islands . . etc. One course of creative writing is therefore hardly enough for a writer. Many courses would enrich you.
Books on How to write descriptive passages, How to plot etc are also great. The talented writers of these books would coach you how to lie for fun and profit. Lastly periodicals like The Writer contain a wealth of articles that would tickle your fancy and answer many questions you might have.
Is that all we need to do? No! Because we need to master many computer programs that help us increase the quality of our work. In particular I would like to mention the editing programs that are worth having in your computer. Here I’m assuming that you already have dictionaries and at least one thesaurus in your computer because the era when writers flicked the pages of a thesaurus or a dictionary is behind us.
Is that all? No, it is not but I’d better stop here in case I’d leave you with the impression that it is all too difficult and you give up.

The Discovery of Interstellar Thioformaldehyde, Acetaldehyde, Methylamine, Deuterated water vapor and the Trans Ethyl Alcohol

2009-02-13T01:46:00.000-08:00

The Discovery of Interstellar Thioformaldehyde, Acetaldehyde, Methylamine, Deuterated water vapor and the Trans Ethyl Alcohol

Dr Nicholas Fourikis

Introduction

I was a member of a team that discovered interstellar thioformaldehyde [1], acetaldedyde [2] and methylamine [3] using the 64m Parkes Radiotelescope in the early seventies.
The advantages we had over other teams searching for interstellar molecules were:
(i) The Parkes Radiotelescope has a respectable collecting area.
(ii) From Parkes, a small country town about 360 km West of Sydney, Australia, the Galactic Centre, a prolific source of interstellar molecules, is visible for more than six hours; and
(iii) My association with Japanese spectroscopists through Dr Masaki Morimoto of the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory. Masaki and I were members of a larger team that designed and realized the Culgoora Solar Radioheliograph in the late sixties [4].
Against these advantages, we had the following disadvantages:
(i) The microwave industry in Australia was at an embryonic state [5]; furthermore, the budgets we had for instrumentation at the Parkes Radiotelescope were proportional to our comparatively low population. Consequently, we could only explore narrow windows of the microwave spectrum.
(ii) The installation of receivers at the Parkes Radiotelescope, for each observing period was tedious and time consuming.

Our search strategy was based on two assumptions: (a) The rotational state populations for several molecules do not follow a thermal law; and (b) No one had a detailed knowledge of the excitation processes, related to undetected molecules.

Given our instrumentation constraints, we decided to search the K-doublet transitions of the molecules that were chemically related to the molecules already discovered, assuming cosmic abundance ratios for the elements; the transition frequencies of the K-doublets however had to be within the bandwidth of the receivers available at the Parkes Radiotelescope facility.

Morale among us was low before our successes but after our successes it was possible for me to get observing periods at the NRAO radiotelescopes at Green Bank and Kitt Peak and at the Mitaka, Japan.

The Discovery of Interstellar Thioformaldehyde.

The prospect of detecting the 2-2 transition of thioformaldehyde during our five day observing period was not good for the following reasons: (a) Two groups before us failed to detect the 1-1 transition of the molecule [6&7]; and (c) The phase-lock subsystem of the 9cm receiver we used was inoperative. Without phase-locking of the receiver’s local oscillator it was impossible to attain long integration times toward sources of interest.

As neither M. W. Sinclair who was the engineer in charge for the receiver, nor the local technical staff could restore the subsystem, I stepped in to investigate the problem. Tests I performed indicated that the fault was with the circuitry situated at the prime focus cabin of the 64m Parkes Radiotelescope. With the aid of a multimeter and a portable cathode ray oscilloscope I proceeded exploring the circuitry associated with the subsystem. Without any familiarity of the subsystem, it took me some time to locate the fault, a shorted resistor. After I replaced it, the subsystem worked and we were able to detect the 2-2 transition of thioformaldehyde during the remaining one and a half days of our allocated observing time.

After we returned to our Sydney base, we communicated the discovery to the participants of the NRAO Workshop on Interstellar Molecules in Charlottsville, Virginia.

The Detection of the 2-2 Transition of Interstellar Acetaldehyde.

We already knew of the discovery of interstellar acetaldehyde by its 1-1 transition [8] but decided to search for the 2-2 transition to increase our knowledge of the excitation process related to the molecule. Since our detection [2], several papers confirmed our hypothesis that the 2-2 transition required maser amplification.

The Discovery of Interstellar Methylamine.

Knowing that Japan had several world-class spectroscopists, I sent the frequency coverage of the Parkes Radiotelescope receivers to Dr Masaki Morimoto and asked him to consult with them. I was specifically interested in transitions of methylamine that fell within the bandwidth of our receivers. Methylamine is the terminal product of the hydrogenation series based on the cyanide radical, hydrogen cyanide and methanimine, interstellar species already discovered.

During a brief visit to Australia, Masaki and I decided to search for the 2-1 transition of methylamine after consultations he had with Dr Kojiro Takagi of Toyama University. In March 1974 I detected the transition we were interested in during an observing period I had at Parkes [9]. The detection was possible because the two states of the molecule, 202 and 110, are inverted.

When I communicated our discovery to Masaki, he informed me that members of the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory detected two mm-wave transitions of methylamine using the Mitaka 6m radiotelescope and the 11m Kitt Peak radiotelescope. After many considerations, we decided that they publish their detections in one paper [10] and we publish our detection in another [9]. Naturally I insisted that K Takagi who was at the time at Rice University, Houston Texas be my co-author together with M Morimoto and the two papers appeared back to back in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. In our paper [9] we sited paper [10] but the authors of the latter paper did not cite our paper although M Morimoto and K Takagi were co-authors of both papers.

The Detection of Interstellar Deuterated Water Vapor and Trans ethyl alcohol

Soon after the detection of interstellar methylamine, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science awarded me a Fellowship and an attachment to the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory for a year - 1975-6. I decided to take up the fellowship after a detour to the US, where I had an observing period with the 11m Kitt Peak mm-wave radiotelescope to search for interstellar HNO. To maximize the chances of detecting new interstellar molecules during my session, I decided to join forces with Ben Zuckerman and Barry Turner.

That observing session offered us a chance to explore the mm-wave spectrum using a new super sensitive receiver engineered by A Kerr, a fellow Australian working at NRAO.
During that observing session we did not detect interstellar HNO but detected interstellar deteurated water vapor [11] and a number of unknown emission lines. Other observing teams after us established that one of the emission lines we detected was due to the trans ethyl alcohol species and they detected two more lines of the molecule [12]. While I was in the US, I contributed to the writing of the two papers, before I headed to Tokyo to take up my fellowship.
Soon after I arrived in Japan, I took the train to Toyama, where Dr Kojiro Takagi met me at the station. From there he took me to the Physics Department of Toyama University and showed me the spectrum of the methylamine transition, I detected from Parkes displayed on a cathode ray oscilloscope. His students worked all morning to re-measure the spectrum of methylamine for my benefit. Seeing the spectrum of the transition of methylamine with its hyperfine components, I shook hands with Kojiro and the members of his team.

References
[1] Sinclair MW, Fourikis N, Ribes JC, Robinson BJ, Brown RD and Godfrey PD. Detection of interstellar thioformaldehyde. Aust J Phys , Vol 26, 1973.
[2] Fourikis N, Sinclair MW, Robinson BJ, Godfrey PD and Brown RD. Microwave emission of the 211-212 rotational transition in interstellar acetaldehyde. Aust J Phys , Vol 27. No 3, 1974.
[3] Fourikis N, Takagi K and Morimoto M. detection of interstellar methylamine by its 202-110 AA- state transition. Astrophys Lett 191. No3 Part 2, 1974.
[4] Special Edition on the Culgoora Radioheliograph, Proc IREE (Aust), Vol28. No9, Sep 1967.
[5] Fourikis N. Microwave engineering education in Australia. Invited paper IEEE Trans Micr Theory & Tech, Vol 41, No6, June 1993.
[6] Davies RD, Booth RS and Pedlar A. Mon Nt R Astr Soc 152, 7P, 1971.
[7] Evans NJ, Townes CH, Weaver HF and Williams DR. Science NY 169, 680, 1970.
[8] Gottlieb CA. In Molecules in the Galactic Environment. Edit by MA Gordon and LE Snyder. P182, Wiley Interscience, New York, 1973.
[9] Fourikis N, Takagi K and Morimoto M. Detection of interstellar methylamine by its 202-110 AA-state transition. Astrophys J Lett, L139-141, 191, 1974.
[10] Kaifu N, Morimoto M, Nagane K, Akabane K, Iguchi T, Takagi K. Detection of interstellar methylamine. Astrophys J Lett, L135-137, 191, 1974.
[11] Turner BE, Zuckerman B, Fourikis N, Morris M and Palmer P. Microwave detection of interstellar HDO. Astrophys J Lett, Vol198. No 3, 15 June 1975.
[12] Zuckerman B, Turner BE, Johnson DR, Clark FO, Lovas FJ, Fourikis N, Palmer P, Lilley AE, Ball JA, Gottlieb CA. Litvak MM and Penfield. Detection of interstellar trans ethyl alcohol. Astrophys J Lett, Vol196, No 3, March 15 1975.

Helen

2008-02-17T18:36:00.000-08:00

Helen
We were ready to merge but she stopped me.
‘I haven’t finished looking at you,’ she said.

Dazed in her aura
She saw her image stamped deep
On my molten heart.

Caught licking my dry upper lip
She caressed my burning cheeks.
I was like a rock in the sea beaten
By the waves of desire from every side.

Defenceless I was thinking that
All things are susceptible to Love:
Fire, water even the polar caps.

You might think I’m weak but am not.
Because no one ever has and no one ever will
Escape love not while there is beauty
And not while eyes can see.

She kissed me and in her arms
I tasted the honey of her soul.

Sansrkrit poems

2008-02-17T18:20:00.001-08:00

H A L F A D O Z E N S A N S K R I T P O E M S

Surely the god of love became her willing slave,
Obedient to the orders that her glances gave.
*
If the forest of her hair
Calls you to explore the land,
And her breasts, those mountains fair,
Tempt that mountaineer, your hand-
Stop! Before it is too late:
Love, the brigand, lies in wait.

` *
A hundred times I learnt from my philosophy
To think no more of love, this vanity,
This dream, this source of all regret,
This emptiness.
But no philosophy can make my heart forget
Her loveliness.

*

No, but look here now, this is just absurd,
The way our famous poets talk of girls
As weak and winsome. Weak ? Is this a word
To use of those who, with a shake of curls
And with the triumph of a modest glance
Can lead the very gods a merry dance?

*
Blow, wind, to where my loved one is,
Touch her, and come and touch me soon:
I’ll feel her gentle touch through you,
And meet her beauty in the moon.
These things are much for one who loves –
A man can live by them alone –That she and I breathe the same air,
And that the earth we tread is one.

*

The moon tries every month in vain
To paint a picture of your face;
And having failed to catch its grace
Destroys the work, and starts again.

Helen II

2008-02-17T18:20:00.000-08:00

Helen II

I was a sphinx gazing at
The desert of my discontent
Before I tasted your lips.

After you kissed me
Everything changed:
The desert is a savanna now
And I sing the fandangos of our love.

Only the written kisses
Survive the brief
Incandescent alchemy
Of human passion,
The poets wrote

But that is not true
Cause when you look at me I burn,
You touch me and I’m caught.

Poets, what would they know
About love.

But I can excuse them
Because they cannot hear
The fandangos of our love.

And never tasted
The nectar of your soul.

Nicholas Fourikis- 14th Feb 08

Still training

2007-10-07T00:13:00.000-07:00

My familiarisation exercise continues. What follows is one of my short stories
______________________________________________________

Would you share a dream with me?

Nicholas Fourikis

This is the perennial invitation writers issue to readers because deep down writers want to be read. If readers accept the invitation to share a dream, the writers would move mountains to engage the readers from the first page of the book to the last.

How do writers keep the dream alive? What induces the readers to abandon the dream? These are natural questions that arise.

Hooks and interesting plots with intriguing subplots are the prerequisites to keep the dream alive. Readers fall in love with heroes who take risks to free the world from the forces of Evil. Subtle subtexts for the reader to discern establish a bond between the writer and the reader. And symbolism leaves the readers elated a longtime after they reach the end of a novel.

What about the dream killers?
Just imagine that our hero enters the Castle where the Nemesis of all humans lives. The reader senses that the mother of all battles is about to begin. On the edge of her seat she wonders whether the hero is up to the task when she comes across a five-page description of the Castle. The description is eloquent but is not what she craves for. She therefore skips the five pages and continues reading. She reaches the stage where the two men clash. She is distressed because the hero is wounded. Would he survive? She wonders. Instead of an answer the writer offers her a two-page description of the wound. Would she skip the two pages or abandon the dream? I think you know the answer.

Descriptions are however necessary because they define the where and when of the story. So what should the writer do? Shorten the descriptions but how short is short? In general the descriptions should be long enough to convince the reader that she is witnessing the action. Do you believe that a descriptive paragraph of five sentences can kill the dream? It could, so what should the writer do? One solution is to implant the five descriptive sentences among the sentences that describe action.

Suppose the reader comes across some long sentences that consist of long, unfamiliar words. What would the reader do? Would she abandon the dream to look up the meaning of these unfamiliar words in her dictionary? Here I assume that the readers are not professors of the English language; they don’t even have a tertiary education. I guess she would persevere for a while but would eventually abandon the dream because the text is hard to read.

I accept this scenario, but do we have any readability criteria? Fortunately Flesch and Kincaid came to our aid and the MS WORD programs have readability tests the users can easily install [1]. Personally, I wouldn’t use sentences having more than thirty words but there are further considerations. While short sentences are clearer than long sentences, I wouldn’t use short sentences through the book because my prose would read like a telegram. I use short sentences in dialog or whenever I describe a race or a match. On all other occasions I mix short and long sentences.

Should I prefer short words on all occasions? I don’t think so. While ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ are shorter that ‘doggy’ and ‘moggy’ a writer might prefer the latter set of words to express affection for the animals. In a similar vein an unusual character in a novel might use the words ‘canine’ and ‘feline.’ The hero of the story might use the verbs ‘liberate’ or ‘reside’ rather than ‘free’ or ‘live.’ So I follow the guidelines related to the length of words, judiciously.

My tutors taught me that adverbs and adjectives suck the life out of any sentence. And I follow this guideline most of the time. Occasionally and only occasionally I use an adjective.

Many writers hold strong views about cliqués. ‘Only lazy writers use them,’ they pontificate! And they are right but I’m not sure. Because people use clichés in dialog and I love tweaked clichés or twichés. I offer the following samples of twichés from reference [2]
A media guru described Madonna’s latest diet ‘Footloose and Fat-Free.’ Creative? You bet.
‘A cow in the ointment,’ that is how some unkind person might describe an unpopular woman.
I’m sure you’ve heard the twiché, ‘a legend in his own mind.’
‘George W. Bush has gone from abject wealth to riches,’ Jon Stewart quipped.

In you like examples of twichés, head for reference [2].

I’d like to leave you with a sentence the author of the same reference [2] wrote.
‘A good tweak leads readers one way, then jerks them into the delight-giving realm of the surprise.’
Keep on writing, my friends.

References
1 For the installation of the readability statistics, click: Tools, Options, Spelling & Grammar and Show Readability Statistics. Select a text or a file. Click: Tools, Spelling & Grammar. After the program checks the Spelling & Grammar, it will display the readability statistics: Number of Passive Sentences, Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.
2 A Plotnik. ‘Twist worn expressions into winners.’ The Writer. August 2006, page 15.