Through The Sandglass

Sand on TV in Europe: Le sable : enquête sur une disparition

Sand: an investigation into a disappearance. Shown last night on ARTE, the European culture channel, this superb documentary by Denis Delestrac has already made waves. It has also provided me with a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction – last year, Denis filmed a long piece of yours truly holding forth on the topic and extracted a number of choice selections for inclusion in the documentary. So, last night, for the first time, I sat and watched myself on TV…..

The film also includes wise words from, amongst others, Orrin Pilkey, Professor Emeritus of Geology at Duke University, whose work I have highlighted several times in this blog. The documentary can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/046598-000/le-sable-enquete-sur-une-disparition – in French, but it has been taken up by PBS in the US, so watch out for the English version being broadcast. Originally titled Sand Wars, it does a great job of raising awareness of an environmental issue rarely brought to the public’s attention – the way that we exploit our unsung hero is not sustainable.   

Thank you Denis!

 

Nikon’s Small World – and other images

 
Each year, Nikon holds its Small World microphotography competition and the results can always only be described as stunning. This year is no different – but with the added element of sand appearing as the 14th place winner, the image above by Yanping Wang of the Beijing Planetarium.

Browsing through the galleries of winners, Honorable Mentions, and “Images of Distinction,” one of the (many) things that is striking is the art of nature’s patterns and designs, a theme superbly covered in the books by Philip Ball, Nature’s Patterns – A Tapestry in Three Parts. Scale has little role in all this, and I found it entertaining (not to mention awe-inspiring) to flip between the microscopic and the huge – specifically, the glorious gallery published earlier this year by Time, “Our Beautiful Planet: Images from Space by an Astronaut Photographer.” The images were taken by Paolo Nespoli:

European Space Agency Astronaut Paolo Nespoli — who first traveled to space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 2007 — photographed a unique and stunning image of the space shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station on a recent Soyuz mission. During a 159-day mission aboard the International Space Station, Nespoli managed to find time, despite his full schedule of duties, to capture footage for a documentary film, First Orbit. Combining historic voice recordings of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first manned spaceflight, the documentary charts the view that Gagarin saw during his historic mission. In addition to this footage, Nespoli also took many still images of Earth. LightBox presents a selection of these photos that show our planet as a beautiful abstract canvas.

“A beautiful abstract canvas” indeed; but then put some of these images together with the Small World – the viewer can be hard-pressed to determine scale at all:

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, Mar 2, 2011; Douglas Moore, University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point, Agatized dinosaur bone cells, unpolished, ca. 150 million years old (42x)

 
Dr. Juan Carlos Izpisúa, CMRB - Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona, Neurons growing over astrocytes in a human stem cell embryo body (20x); Desert, Somalia, January 30, 2011

And then the “abstract canvas” is on display in quite extraordinary ways in the microscopic world:

Dr. Michael M. Raith, Steinmann Institut, University of Bonn, leucite crystal from volcanic rock showing polysynthetic lamellar twins formed by the cubic- tetrago (40x); Dennis Callahan, California Institute of Technology, Department of Applied Physics & Materials Science, Cracked gallium arsenide solar cell films (50x)

But, this being the blog that it is, I shall finish with the following image of sand dunes in Saudi Arabia – or is it actually a biological photomicrograph?

Fleeting Fame: "Sand" on "Fast Draw"

Amazon sales rankings are somewhat like Fermat's Last Theorem - what they're saying makes apparent sense, but discerning how they work is seemingly impossible. Nevertheless, the fact is that they are routinely (obsessively?) scrutinised by writers - and that includes me. At least, I tell myself, the relative movements of the ranking are indicative of something, even if they contain no absolute information. Earlier this year, Sand attained a heady rank in the 5000s of total book sales, an achievement that gave me some pleasure since I felt I could visualise a wall of shelves with 5000 books on them and, on the bottom shelf on the right, Sand. But most of the time the book inhabits the five-figure ranks, periodically wallowing in the quicksand of six figures.

And then, on August 2, I was startled by a strangled cry from my wife on the computer downstairs - I rushed down, desperately trying to focus poorly formed recollections of how to perform the Heimlich Maneuver (or Manoeuvre - I couldn't even remember how to spell it), to find her transfixed, pointing with a shaking finger at the monitor. My Amazon ranking was 572! No, that's not a typo, I was rubbing spines with the stars - well, not, of course, the Harry Potters, but a shelf of five hundred or so books is simply a small section in a chain bookstore. The book was number one in various "natural resources" and geology categories.

This was a complete mystery - what could it mean? Had Amazon been attacked, had their famous software finally gone haywire? Or (my fondest aspiration) had some far-sighted educational institution seen the value of Sand as a text for a "rocks for jocks" or "Environmental Studies 101" course? The publishers at the University of California Press were equally bemused - pleased but bemused.

Now I know what happened. Some time ago, I'd been contacted by Josh Landis. Together with Mitch Butler, he is co-creator of CBS News’ "The Fast Draw," an animated news series appearing on a number of CBS News broadcasts, including CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and CBS News Sunday Morning. He had told me that they were preparing a short segment (all of their pieces are just a few minutes in length) on sand - he wasn't sure when it would be broadcast. Having heard no more, I had forgotten about it, but we've now discovered that it went out on yes, August 2, and included a reference to the book. Wow. Of course, I have no idea whatsoever how many actual books were sold as a result, but it must have been this that caused the uplift, the orogeny, in the Amazon numbers. The Fast Draw segment, titled "Lessons of Sand" can be viewed online here - it's entertaining and only three minutes long.

The Amazon ranking as I write this? 21,239. The UK Oxford University Press edition is officially published on Thursday. It has a slightly different title - but that's another story. Amazon UK ranking? 109,085 - but my fingers are crossed.