Rodin

The Seduced exhibition of porn/art was all kinds of things from pretty to interesting to revolting to hilarious. The different cultural styles were well-presented: the drama of Ancient Greek sculpture; the surprising realism of Japanese paintings; the surprising non-realism and the richness of the Indian illustrations from the Kama Sutra; the serene and beautiful scenery of the Chinese silk paintings (marred a little by the bound feet of the women); the seedy humour of Victorian photography.

I did like the Indian and Chinese painting styles, but my favourite things in the exhibition were a couple of watercolour sketches by Rodin. They were simple, accomplished with sparse pencil strokes and a few brushfuls of colour, but they glowed. It may have been relief at seeing something which wasn't explicit, or even suggestive, but I think Rodin is a true artist.

The Museé Rodin in Paris is a lovely place on a warm spring day. Outside, statues are placed under the shade of newly-leafed beech trees, with scattered bluebells sprouting among them, or sheltered among box hedges. Inside, sunshine streams through the open windows of the house where Rodin himself lived in his final years, and the footfalls of the visitors echo sonorously on the bare floorboards in the white-painted rooms. It would be very hard not to fall in love with The Kiss in that place where the quiet airyness of the rooms makes you feel lighter. I think Rodin must have imagined this, as he bequeathed the majority of his works to the state on the condition that the Hôtel Biron was turned into a museum dedicated to his art.

I can never help being curious about the personality of people like Rodin. He certainly had a selfish streak, neglecting his own son for six years and flitting between two women; on the other hand, he seemed to have cared for his long-time partner (who he married two weeks before she died, and less than a year before his own death) and was distraught when he blamed himself for the death of his sister, almost giving up sculpture to join a Catholic order. I suppose he was no better or worse than most men, though with the strength of conviction to believe in his own work when it was criticized, and with an extraordinary talent.

Un Chien Andalou

I have no great love for the surrealist paintings of Salvador Dalí, but Tim wanted to see his short film at the Sleeping and Dreaming exhibition put on by the Wellcome Trust. I was curious as well since Debaser by Pixies, which is one of my favourite songs, is about Un chien Andalou. The exhibition as a whole was excellent, but I was frankly impressed at Dalí's film. It was totally weird, but in a way that somehow expressed the odd disjointedness and continuing themes of dreams very well.

Satellites

Every time I go to the Science Museum, there's something new to discover. This time, it was a video showing the trajectories of all the man-made satellites round Earth. I was stunned. I did not realise there were so many. It was like watching a cloud of dust in sunlight. I found it quite sad, because Earth looked so overwhelmed by the cloud of artifical debris. On the other hand, John thought it was great that we had managed to overcome gravity in such a spectacular way. The low earth orbit satellites formed a fairly even sphere, like a skin around the planet, but the geostationary ones were concentrated in a ring further out.

I found it quite thrilling when I saw a satellite pass in the night sky, but I wonder if I'll just feel sad next time I see one, that we've littered our atmosphere in this way.

A history of manned flight

Since John and Tim have been telling me all about aeroplanes, I'll write some of it down so I don't forget.

All the advances in manned flight seem to be made by brothers. The Montgolfier brothers managed the first hot air balloon flight in 1783, when they flew across Paris in a 25-minute flight. They had to use wet sponges to put out the fires as they went. The Wright brothers, who had a fairly stormy relationship, first managed to fly an aeroplane (heavier than air, powered by an internal combustion engine driving a propellor) in 1903. They developed a control which allowed them to tilt the wings of the aeroplane, and hence have all three dimensions of control necessary - roll, pitch and yaw.

Aeroplanes continued to be made of wood with fabric stretched over them throughout the World War I, and were almost all biplanes. The fabric wings were not structurally strong enough to allow a single wing to provide enough lift, so they stacked two wings up. The key plane for the British forces in WWI was the Sopwith Camel. German fame goes to the Fokker triplane, as flown by the Red Baron.

Before the War, zeppelins had been developed as passenger aircraft, and were used for military purposes. They experienced a renaissance after the war as passenger aircraft, although they had a nasty habit of exploding. Finally, the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 ("Oh, the humanity!") put a stop to zeppelins. Maybe they'll come back when they learn to use less volatile gases.

In the 1920s and 1930s, seaplanes were all the rage, since airfields were few and far between. R J Mitchell won the Schneider Trophy for Britain with his S.6B seaplane in 1931, by winning the race for the third year - any country who won the race three times in a row got to keep the trophy for good. I'm not quite sure why anyone would want to, as it is a most monstrously ugly thing. The S.6B was the base from which Mitchell went on to develop the Spitfire, and they look similar - metal, with curvy wings.

The Spitfire is, according to John, a slightly better plane than its brother, the Hurricane. The Spitfire has rounded wings, whereas the Hurricane has straight wings which are only curved at the tips. These were the planes which won the Battle of Britain in World War II. The War, like the previous one, caused massive development in aeronautics, and the jet engine was developed to supercede propellor planes.

Jet aircraft mostly use turbines to create thrust. The first passenger jet planes appeared after the War, in the 1950s, and the industry pretty much exploded from there. The Harrier Jump Jet, from the 1960s, had the modification that the nozzles providing the thrust could be swivelled to point downwards, and so they can take off and land vertically. In wartime, should an enemy bomb the airfields, these planes could take off and land anyway. They can also fly backwards, though I am unsure as to why that might be useful. Some jet aircraft, such as Concorde and various fighter jets, are capable of supersonic speeds. I have seen a Eurofighter, and wow! Those things go.

Rocket planes were also developed during WWII by the Germans, but are still being developed for real use. SpaceShipOne, the first privately-funded spaceplane, took a human being to space in 2004.

All planes take off and land facing into the wind. This means that they can take off and land safely at lower speeds, since the wind is travelling over the wings faster, and they get more lift. Hooray for the Bernoulli Effect, that's what I say!