Isabel and nautiluses

On 2003 September 17, Hurricane Isabel changed from its normal spiral galaxy-like shape to a spiral shape reminding me of a nautilus. It was interesting how the storm looked on radar when it was about 24 hours from landfall. The hurricane looked like a smaller copy of itself with a spiral tail coming from it. This means that the smaller copy looked like an even smaller copy of itself with a tail coming from it. A nautilus has a similar structure, and it is remarked that the ratio of the size of the nautilus to the smaller copy of itself is 1.618033989 or (sqrt(5)+1)/2, the golden ratio. However, Isabel's spiral did not fit that description. I used Paint Shop Pro to make an estimate of the sizes of the smaller copy of Isabel and its tail, and found the ratio to be somewhere between 1.29 and 1.35. This means that the tail is not in a square box, like it is for the nautilus. It is more of a rectangle, and one can build spirals with any kind of a winding ratio. I wonder if this ratio of about 1.32 is common among hurricanes or if anyone has studied it. I tried to estimate the rotation speed. I got first of all about one rotation every 12 hours and then a little while later, it was one every 6 hours. I tried to make a prediction of intensity levels based on this - it would get strong on Thursday afternoon, then weak later in the afternoon, then really strong at night in two separate bands. I was pretty much correct - I observed these things actually happening.

What caused the nautilus structure? I think that all spirals, including spiral galaxies and hurricanes, have this type of structure, although it may look like a disk. Most hurricanes and unbarred spiral galaxies have several spiral arms that make it look like a solid disk. Isabel caught a collection of cold, dry air in its western periphery, and this cold air got into it destroying some spiral arms. Only one was left, and this enables one to see the spiral structure easily. It looked like Isabel had several eyes at one point. In any case, it did not affect the predicted (which turned out to be actual) effects of Isabel, as one of the worst hurricanes of our lives.

Report 7: Isabel surprises

Just as it seems the models are in agreement and Isabel is headed right up the Chesapeake Bay straight towards the Washington Monument with 120 mph winds, Isabel pulls some surprises. They were talking about some shear affecting her progress. Today she got clobbered by it and her winds, despite an incredible tornado-like 236 mph gust in the clouds, dropped from 145 mph to 125 mph. Her huge eye, as if it suddenly looked into the bright sun, shrunk and shrunk until it vanished. She is predicted to hit another shear tomorrow and become even weaker, but she may grow stronger over the warm Atlantic, but then she may get weaker in coastal waters. It's a "good news, bad news" game. And now she has pulled another surprise tonight. The GFS, ETA, and all of the "SHIPS" runs now show Isabel hitting further south in North Carolina, like at Morehead City, then heading northwestward into western Virginia, Tennessee, and West Virginia. The Canadian GEM still shows her shooting up the Chesapeake but not as severe as before.

So what does it mean? Maybe Washington, Baltimore, and especially Hampton Roads are off the hook. It would be headed straight for Richmond, but go south of there and because of crossing over all that land, it weakens to tropical storm force with some hurricane winds over water. There would be no major catastrophic storm; as Gary Gray says, the Atlantic Coast won't fall off into the sea.

But keep alert, because more surprises may be coming. She may head to New England. She may hit South Carolina and produce floods there. She may even get into western Virginia, wheel around, and head back to Philadelphia and New York. Hurricanes are notoriously unpredictable and we should keep alert. Gov Warner was right in calling a state of emergency in Virginia. Hope he can deal with this emergency without the National Guard troops that can't help because they are in Iraq.

Predictable/Unpredictable

With situations of the kind that hurricanes posed, it seems that things are either in fine agreement or they are haywire all over the place. There is no middle ground. With Isabel, the first few runs were all over the place: sea, Florida, Baltimore, New England, Nova Scotia. But then after a few days they consistently pointed a finger at North Carolina and Virginia. There was no mildly unpredictable phase. It is either precise enough to predict accurately or you can say absolutely nothing about it.

Similar situations happen in mathematical systems. For example, in estimating a quantity, such as the length of the tropical year in solar days, 365.2422, the first three decimals are just about absolutely accurate. The fourth one is about right, the 2, but it is fuzzy and I have heard estimates that begin with 365.2421. After that the digits are totally unpredictable and depend on the irregular rotation of the earth. Another example would be to observe that if x is the square root of 2, then x = 1 + 1/(1+x) so if one guesses a value for x, substitute it into 1 + 1/(1+x) and make that your revised value of x, one may hope to obtain sqrt(2). If you set x = sqrt(2) you get sqrt(2) back, but if you are off by a little bit, say x = 1.414213562373, then the next few approximations are about this value but they lose a decimal place of accuracy each iteration. Still, it is good enough for practical purposes. When this gets back to the units digits, the whole thing becomes unpredictable. Try it out on a spreadsheet and you see what I mean.

Why does this happen? Both the hurricane and the iteration formula are unstable equilibria. If you are right on the money, you remain so, but if you are not, you eventually get thrown off the track. And that is what happened to the first few predictions for Isabel, 12 days ago.

Isabel Report 6: National Guard Shortage

I have seen all of the runs of GFS today and they all say pretty much the same thing: Isabel is going to just miss the Outer Banks, come ashore somewhere around Norfolk, ride up the Chesapeake to Baltimore, then head straight for Rochester, NY. The population potentially affected by hurricane force winds is huge: Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, maybe even New York, and then the upstate New York State cities, especially Rochester.

It is apparently not losing its maximum wind speed much, now about 155 mph. The weather forecast seems to say it will be 120 mph at landfall - a Category 3 hurricane. I am not sure what this will mean to places on the periphery of its clouds; I can't find the maps that show predicted wind speeds out to whichever radius. But they are powerful. If they hit the Outer Banks that powerful, it may redraw the geography. It may destroy the Oregon Inlet Bridge, but it may also fill in the inlet, meaning that they would simply pave an at-ground road instead of building a bridge. But another inlet will open up elsewhere, requiring the bridge there, perhaps somewhere on Pea or Hatteras island. That was open before at Pea Island and there is an abandoned bridge there which crossed that inlet.

After the hurricane, rebuilding will need to take place, and usually the National Guard is called out to help. But when we call on the National Guard this time, there may be no Guard we can call on, or inadequate Guard, because these troops are all in Iraq. They may have to borrow from Guards in other states, even though they are short too. It seems to me that we didn't need to pile all those troops in Iraq - they are needed in the states at times.

Isabel looks like Gloria: Report 5

Here are the past few runs' results:

September 12
0Z - Delmarva Peninsula
6Z - Skirting Delmarva, enter at New Jersey
12Z - Delmarva Peninsula, then towards Buffalo, NY
18Z - Delmarva, VA, then towards Buffalo, NY
September 13
0Z - New England
6Z - New Jersey and Long Island

Yesterday the runs were all alike, and they corresponded with other runs too. They imply a landfall somewhere in Eastern Virginia, which had me concerned. Isabel was going to come in at an unusual angle, headed northwest. Then this morning's runs come in saying that it is going to miss Virginia altogether and head to New England, and at 6Z, it came a little closer, heading to Long Island. The other models don't seem to go out far enough, and they are hard to find on the Internet. But I did find GEM, which is a Canadian model, and that one looked really interesting. Isabel would head to Norfolk, skim by Norfolk and Baltimore about 150 miles off shore, then make like it was going out to sea. Then it makes a subtle turn to the Northwest and scores a bulls-eye on New York City, on downtown Manhattan. Considering what happened two years ago, I think New York will be well prepared for this storm if that happens.

But where will it actually go? There is still some variance in the models. I looked at past history and found that Isabel is different from Fran, different from Hugo, different from Floyd. Hugo really concerned me. It hit Charlotte, NC with 85 mph winds, causing power outages to 95% of the city and covering some streets with downed trees, and this is as far inland as Richmond is.

I got a clue this morning from the track. It looks a lot like Gloria in 1985. The path is similar, going north of the Caribbean islands and then heading for the Outer Banks. Like Isabel, Gloria had high winds, up to 150 mph, and a really low pressure besides. As Gloria approached, the winds died down, as Isabel appears to be doing now. Further there was a weak tropical storm named Henri (this was 18 years ago and hurricanes repeat names every 6 years, and 6 divides 18 evenly) just like now that went up the coast before the big storm arrives. Like now, there was a front going across the mid part of the nation, from Wisconsin to eastern Texas.

So to determine where Isabel is going, look at how it differs from Gloria. Gloria's Henri, for instance, developed out of nowhere off South Carolina and then went up the coast in a straight line. 2003's Henri developed in the Gulf of Mexico instead, crossed Florida and petered apart a while in the Atlantic before moving west to hit the coast, then move northward. This does not tell much about where Isabel is going, but we need to look at differences between the storms to give us a clue.

It's the Economy, Sir

I think I may have a fix for what is going to happen in next year's Presidential election. It looks like Bush is going to be elected, but this is not certain. In fact, in 1991 September, a Lichtman key analysis would have yielded a probable George HW Bush (Daddy Bush?) win. In fact, the two Bushes are in quite similar positions.

Back to 1991. It looked like at this time that George HW Bush would win the election over which Democrat the Democrats could come up with - there were at least six candidates, or "dwarfs". Bush had the Foreign/Military Failure Key 10 (i.e., none happened), the Incumbency Key 3, the Mandate Key 1, the Challenger Charisma Key 13, and the Scandal Key 9. He had lost four keys: the Short Term Economy Key 5, the Policy Key 7, the Long Term Economy Key 6, and the Incumbent Charisma Key 12. There were 4 keys in play: the Short Term Economy Key 5, and a group of three keys I call the "Dissatisfaction" keys, because their falling represents public discontent with the President or his party. These are Social Unrest Key 8, Challenge to Party Nomination Key 2, and Third Party key 4. The economy was not going well at all, with high unemployment and stocks going flat. But it was beginning to pick up. It looked like Bush would win unless the economy stayed sour, losing Key 5, and this caused so much dissatisfaction that one of the Dissatisfaction Keys falls as well. But we all know that is indeed what happened. The economy stayed sour in perception; although the economy was growing again in 1992, the high unemployment rate made people think the economy was ailing. This led to an unknown rich blowhard named Ross Perot, when he entered the race, to get so many votes that he actually led at times. After he lost the lead, the Democratic challenger (Bill Clinton) took the lead and won the election.

In 2003, it looks like the same circumstances prevail. Dubya Bush has won the same keys and lost the same keys as his father in 1991, except that Daddy had Key 10 but not Key 1 and Dubya has Key 1 (result of Republican sweep of 2002 elections) but not Key 10 (because of Planeattack). Exactly the same keys are outstanding. The economy is weak, but starting to grow, as in 1991, and like 1991 has a high unemployment rate. The Democrats have to choose among 9 dwarfs. Like Daddy Bush, Dubya had won a war big in Iraq. So it would seem the same thing can be predicted here: Bush, unless the economy sags, taking another key down with it.

But the situation is not as favorable as 1991's. In 1991 we had Wallfall (1989 Nov 9); in 2003 we have Towerfall (2001 Sept 11). People were talking freedom, with all these countries getting free of dictatorial rule, in 1991, but were talking security out of fear of terrorist attacks in 2003. And the recession and stagnant stock prices have lasted longer now than they had in 1991. Both Bushes won big in Iraq, but after Gulf War I the soldiers went home, but after this year's Gulf War, the soldiers are staying in Iraq for an infinite amount of time. So to me if the economy continues to stay bad, dissatisfaction against Dubya would be greater than against Daddy in 1991-2. It will be amplified by the dissatisfaction caused by the extended tours of duty in Iraq. (When is my honey coming home?) And we know that Daddy lost Key 5 plus another key, namely 4 and lost the election. So it would follow that Dubya would lose the election even more badly; in fact, two dissatisfaction keys may fall. I know that there is nothing now that would turn the dissatisfaction keys, but if the economy continues to sour, I predict that some of these will fall, along with the short term economy key and that would do Dubya in. However, if the economy does perk up, the dissatisfaction keys will stand; with only 4 keys down, Dubya will win.

So it all depends on the economy now. If it gets substantially better, President Bush will win; if it continues to stagnate, he will lose. So watch the markets and the economy data; they are key to the election.

Where is it headed? Isabel report 4

This morning I got a jolt. For the past day or so, the GFS runs have been indicating that it would go by peninsular Florida, then head out to the northeast and hit the Carolinas, and Gary Gray came to that conclusion also. I looked at the GFS run this morning and found to my surprise that it was going to go to New Jersey instead! That would have meant hurricane force winds in New York City. The 12Z run took it to eastern Nova Scotia, and 18Z has it pounding the Canadian Maritimes and causing a major disaster there. So now what? Where is this thing going? It is starting to go east and pop all over the place again.

Tonight I took a look at Gary Gray's take on the storm. He says that the GFS tends to let go of ridges and troughs too soon, and in Isabel's case that would take it farther to the east. The maps indicate a huge high in the north Atlantic that blocks Isabel and makes it go west. He concentrated on other models, including one called ECMWF. So I took a look at that myself. It only goes 6 days and at that time, next Wednesday, it has it out in the middle of the Atlantic, but in a trajectory that would take it to New England. So it sort of agrees with GFS. Gary Gray winds up concluding that it is likely to hit either the Carolinas or New England. So both areas need to watch for this storm.

The other thing I notice about it is Wow!! It is up to 160 mph, making it a Category 5 hurricane. This has me concerned. Sustained 160 mph winds would really cause damage to an area. Even 140 mph winds would, if it should weaken a bit before hitting shore. So that has me concerned about hurricane force (75 mph) winds in my area, which would knock trees down everywhere and cause some roof damage. But it is not the most forceful tropical storm out there now. Typhoon Maemi had 175 mph winds gusting to 205 mph and is forecast to turn northeast and go between Korea and Japan; it is now down to 140 mph.

Isabel Report 3: Consistency Developing

Here are the runs since yesterday of GFS, showing where Isabel strikes:

0Z - Charleston, SC
6Z - hanging off the coast of central/southern Florida for 4 days, then head to Charleston, SC
12Z - grazes east coast of Florida, then hits NC and gets into Central Virginia, in one day
18Z - hits Miami, then turns north, scrapes the entire Florida coast, goes off the coast along the Carolinas and Virginia, giving them a deluge.

There is some agreement in these runs now. They aren't popping all over the place, Florida one hour, Nova Scotia the next, sea after that, and so forth. They are settling down on a path towards Florida, then coming up the Southeastern seaboard. So it seems that this is where Isabel is headed. The manner is still undecided; one run hangs it around Miami for 4 days, the others move it quickly. But they agree on Florida, Carolinas, and Virginia, and this is the area that needs to watch the most for Isabel. These areas need to keep abreast of the storm.

Further, I notice another storm coming. Unless some mess somewhere develops a wind and circulation, this will be called Juan. It is forming off the coast of Africa right now and will follow the path of Fabian and Isabel. However, it looks like this one will turn out to sea.

2003 September 10 2124. I just got Gary Gray's analysis. He is making a prediction. Yes, this is 10-12 days out, yet he is making a prediction. He agrees with me that the model runs are showing consistency from run to run and among the rather sparse set of models as well. He says the hurricane will move just north of the Bahamas, turn north, then northeast, then hit the Carolinas. He does not say that Florida will be hit, whereas I say it above. He mentions that the GFS has a solution that almost takes it into the Gulf of Mexico before a ridge catches it, pulls it up the Florida coast, then skirts it by the Carolinas. But other models call for it to be farther east, missing Florida. Apparently Isabel is headed our way; it's going to be like Floyd in 1999. I still say interests in Florida and the Carolinas should watch this storm carefully.

Square Root of an Acre

A long time ago I heard of a book with the title "The Square Root of Tuesday". It was a book about mathematics education, although I remember little else about it, except for the title, which is nonsensical. Square roots apply only to numbers, and only to non-negative real numbers at that, usually. The square root of 4 is 2, and the square root of 3 is 1.732. . . But such things as the square root of one of my cats or of a democratic state constitution or of Tuesday doesn't make sense, nor does, it seems, the square root of an acre.

But wait. Google has a great new service. It used to be that if you type 2 + 3 in Google, you get sites containing 2 + 3; usually mathematics sites but maybe a few others who are trying to demonstrate simple arithmetic. But now when you try it, you get 2 + 3 = 5, and a comment to click here to find sites containing "2 + 3". In other words, Google is now a calculator! If you have access to the Internet, you don't need a calculator. Just type in what you want to compute and get the answer. For example, try 3/7. You get 0.428571428 or something like that. sin(pi/6) gets you 0.5. Sqrt(2) gets you 1.41421356. Sqrt(-1) gets you i. That's right, Google does complex arithmetic. Now here it is on shaky ground. Minus one has two square roots which are negative of each other, and you can't tell which is which, but Google states unequivocally that it is i. This leads into trouble with other expressions as it makes unwarranted selections of answers in those cases where the answer is ambiguous. But Google has done it again!

It even works with units. For example, "1 inch in centimeters" yields "1 inch = 25.4 centimeters". "(60 mph) * (9 hours)" yields "540 miles". But sqrt(Tuesday) gets you a list of web sites containing sqrt and Tuesday. No, that does not make sense. Even "1/0" yields merely a list of sites containing 1/0; it does not show the calculator, for you can't divide by zero. But if you try sqrt(acre), you get "sqrt(acre) = 63.6149072 meters". Google can take the square root of an acre! But does it make sense? It sure does. An acre is a unit of area, 43,560 square feet. The square root of a square foot is a foot. Even though a foot is not a number, it can be squared to yield square feet, and so the square root of a square foot does make sense. And so does the square root of an acre. Further, you get results when you try "gallon^(1/3)" (i.e., the cube root of a gallon), "2 inches^3 in teaspoons", and even "(1 gallon)^(2/3)" as you can demonstrate by entering them in Google - the latter is an area.

So although many people don't recognize that it makes sense to talk about the square root of an acre, Google certainly does, and I will remember that every time I go to work and walk from my car to my building - that is about the square root of an acre.

Isabel Day 2: Deep Impact

Isabel is continuing to head north of west. Forecasters have been saying she should head due west, but so far it has not happened. She has reached 20 degrees north, and according to these forecasters, she should now turn west. We will see if she does so.

In the meantime, I have four more Isabel scenarios from GFS. The latest one takes it right into central Virginia, where it piles more rain than we ever need this year. Here is the Isabel summary, where the 0, 6, 12 and 18 are the hours of the runs in Universal Time:

2003 September 7
12 - New England
18 - sea

2003 September 8
0 - Maine
6 - S. Florida
12 - Nova Scotia
18 - Delmarva, Baltimore 2003 Sept 21 2 am EDT

2003 September 9
0 - sea, turning around on 2003 Sept 23 8 pm EDT
6 - Nova Scotia 2003 Sept 23 2 am EDT
12 - Myrtle Beach (another Floyd) 2003 Sept 23 8 pm EDT
18 - S. Florida, then heads up to Central Virginia 2003 September 23

That's the date it strikes Florida. It strikes Virginia a day later, and then heads towards New York City. This pattern of hitting some place on the East Coast has now come with about 75% of the runs. As Gary Gray says, "It remains way too early to say anything solid on that. Suffice it to say that the model trends and unanimity favor some sort of impact." You heard it folks. Deep Impact is coming. It's two weeks away. Where it will strike is anybody's guess - might as well play roulette. But it's likely to impact somewhere, so the entire East Coast should monitor this storm.

The Quarter War is Over

Earlier I said that I had declared "Quarter War" because I had yet to see a Maine quarter, even though it came out three months ago, and because I have seen Missouri quarters, so that Maine got outlapped. So I have been arranging my purchases to maximize the number of quarters I get. I continued to get older states and eagles until it finally happened. I got some cookies at 2 pm today from a vending machine, and it vended me a Maine quarter! It was a P for Philadelphia. I finally have it. It is now on my state quarter map at home. The Quarter War is now officially over. I am now awaiting the next coin, Arkansas, which should come out next month.

Isabel and the GFS

It's late summer and early autumn, so it's hurricane time. And sure enough, there are two hurricanes and two tropical depressions out there. Hurricanes are rather unpredictable creatures. For example, take Fabian. It looked like it was going to curve to the north and go out to sea, and so not harm any land areas. Well that it did, but it unexpectedly gave Bermuda a direct hit, and now they are cleaning up the mess there. It's gone but there is another storm out there, Isabel. It is following the path of Fabian. So where is Izzy going?

It is way to the east of the Leeward islands, and so it will take several days even to get there. After then, will it go out to sea or will it hit the US or somewhere else? This is way off in the future and so a weather prediction or model system is needed that will go out as far as possible. NOAA's Global Forecasting System or GFS goes out to a whopping 16 days! That is time enough to find out what happens to Isabel. For a while GFS was saying that it was going to go out to sea. Then Gary Gray pointed out that the 2003 September 7 12Z (Z means Greenwich Mean time or Universal time) run of GFS shows Isabel slamming into New England, creating a new version of the Great New England Hurricane of 1938. This would happen about two weeks from now, around September 21. Gary Gray points out that he has no confidence in this forecast, because it is so way out in the future.

Indeed, future runs show other things. The 2003 September 7 18Z run shows Isabel once again going out to sea, and the 2003 September 8 0Z run shows it slamming into Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. The 6Z run today says it will go to Ft Lauderdale, Florida, then head into Tennessee, join up with an ordinary low, and create the biggest floods this country has seen since Agnes in 1972. The 12Z run shows it hitting midway between Massachusetts and Maine, and the latest run, 18Z, is even more horrendous. First it heads into the Delmarva Peninsula, right into Baltimore's inner harbor. Then it goes up the Delaware River, into Pennsylvania and New Jersey, giving New York City a big whack. Then it curves into New England. If this happens it will be the most destructive hurricane in history, because this area is heavily populated with a lot of development.

The point here is that the forecast is all over the place. It could hit Florida, it could hit Virginia, it could hit New England or Nova Scotia, it could go out to sea or even hit Bermuda again. That is why we don't see this on the TV weather report. The TV weatherman's job is to predict, and watching a model go from here to there as newer editions go out is not predicting, which requires saying definitely where it will go.

But nevertheless it is interesting to watch the forecasts. In a sense there is a virtual storm out there, hanging in the future, hitting all these places as time goes by, and as the storm gets closer, its variations will damp out and become more consistent. Then we will know where the real storm will hit. Further, you can get some idea of where it will hit from these forecasts. The runs seem to center around the New England and New York City area, so I think this area is the most likely to get hit. Further, it is not coming in at a usual angle in any of these runs, except those that take it to sea. It looks like it goes out to sea, then it bends to the west or northwest. This makes striking Delmarva, New Jersey, or New York more likely than usual. This is therefore a storm to watch. By the end of the week, we may know just who Isabel is going to visit.

Dean for President

I think I know which candidate I want for President next year. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean.

I certainly don't want Bush for another four years. He has been bad news in a lot of ways: refusing to join with other nations in the Tokyo Environmental Accords; attacking Iraq against allies' advice and causing a quagmire; getting the 1984ian Patriot Act passed, and so forth. So I have been looking at the Democrats. Do I want someone who I think could get elected, like Sen. Tom Edwards of North Carolina or Sen. Kerry of Massachusetts, or do I want someone whose views resemble mine? Do I want to favor a front runner or a back runner? The Lichtman keys give me a clue to this.

According to Allan Lichtman, there are 13 keys, consisting of statements that are either true or false for a candidate from the incumbent party. The incumbent party candidate wins if and only if at most five of the keys are false. Right now Bush has two of the keys (that is, the keys are true) and has lost probably four of them (that is, the keys are false). Getting two more keys to fall will be hard. But one thing about them stands out: none of them pertain to the opposing candidate except for Key 13, which says that this candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. Neither Bush nor any of the Democratic hopefuls except possibly Hillary Clinton are charismatic.

This implies that it does not make any difference who the Democrats select as far as Bush's reelection chances are concerned. If Bush has the keys, he will be reelected no matter what. If Bush does not have the keys, he will be defeated no matter whom the Democrats select. Therefore, I want the Democrats to select someone who reflects my views, not someone who will compromise some of these views in order to get elected, for it does not make any difference as far as getting elected is concerned.

Hence I want Howard Dean for President, since he represents my views better than any of the other candidates do.

Maine Outlapped

One of the best things that has happened to our currency is the 50-state quarter program. It started in 1999. Every 1/5 of a year (about 73 days) a new quarter is minted commemorating another state. It started in early 1999 with the Delaware coin, which featured Cesar Rodney on a horse. Since then I have been collecting several sets of the coins as they came out. Some of the coins came fast and furious; for example, Virginia, while others were really slow in coming, such as South Carolina. Earlier in the year, I found the Alabama coin, which features Helen Keller and an inscription in Braille. The next two coins after that were Maine and Missouri. I waited for the Maine coin to come out. It would not. I kept getting quarter after quarter, getting mostly eagles with a few Connecticuts, North Carolina, Mississippis and New Hampshires and so forth, but never any Maine. I have been trying to buy things whose price end in a .05 to .25, so that I would get three quarters in change, but today when I tried that twice I got six eagles.

I therefore declared Quarter War and went out in an all out effort to get the Maines. Mid-August has already passed, so therefore the next coin to come out, Missouri, started getting minted. Up to today, I still have not seen a single Maine quarter. Then my wife came home with two coins she showed me. They were Missouri quarters! The first ones to come out. Maine has been outlapped by Missouri. It is the first coin not to come out before the coin after it. So now I have two Missouri quarters, and still no Maine quarter. I wonder what happened to it.

Next week if I still don't have a Maine quarter, I will go to the bank and ask for some. If that does not work, I will order some rolls of Maine quarters from the US Mint and that will settle it. Oh where oh where is Maine? Remember the Maine!

Updates: Taoism, mondegreens, and true north

Taoism principle: Since yesterday, when I came up with all these versions of one of the principles of Taoism (The tao that can be mentioned is not the Real Tao), I came up with some more that are interesting. For example, after hearing a song by Stephanie Corby called "True North", I came up with this one:

The north that is observed is not True North.

Which of course has this corollary:

The north that is found on a magnetic compass is not True North.

So from an Ultimate Principle of a major religion, I have derived a mundane fact that any Boy Scout knows. So it appears that we stumble through life, limited by our senses, not knowing what Reality is, while we experience magnetic reality.

Mondegreens: I remarked earlier on how mondegreens occur in Amy Carol Webb's songs; for example, I heard "tears" as "tease". I tried something else today. I listened to Stephanie Corby's song "True North" (the song I mentioned above) and found it hard to keep focused on it. It did have some interesting lines, such as "Sense of direction". I figured it was a song about how one needs to keep focused on a goal to achieve it. But I just found it hard to listen to. Could it be that it contains mondegreens? I tried this experiment. I listened to "True North" without looking at the lyrics of the song, and tried to transcribe to paper what I heard. Then I compared it to her intended lyrics that came with the CD. I found no less than 17 mondegreens! I also found an 18th one that I resolved: I heard "graves of" and on a second listening heard "great". I heard "inner" as "Hannah". This is another case where a singer tries to avoid the hard-to-listen-to "eerrrrr" and winds up creating a mondegreen, causing me to hear "inner" as "Hannah". Sometimes you must sing "errrr". Other mondegreens I heard were "there are parades" for "I always", "soame" for "zone" (her "n" was apparently not distinct), and "eh?" for "my".

I feel the main causes of these mondegreens were that her melody was not clear and easily heard above a too-loud accompaniment, and that she drawled her words so long that the endings of them tended to get lost, or the syllables became two or more syllables, and that to improve the song, I would make the singer louder and the accompaniment softer.

In addition, I feel the singer in this song shows dependency on her "true north". It is an oft-used theme that sells, but in this case I would have preferred a searching theme, where the singer realizes, as I have said before that the north she is seeking is good but is not the true North. As I said above, the north that can be sung is not the True North.

The Real Tao

Among the mainline religions on the Earth, to me one of the most valid is Taoism, because it manages to state truths without relying on faith. In fact, the concept of truth itself is shown to be faulty at the foundation, with an example being "What is the truth value of 'This Sentence is False.'?". But the truth that has impressed me so far in Taoism is this one:

"The tao that can be talked about is not the Real Tao."

In other words, if you have a concept of god, the ultimate reality, atah or the like, then you have conceived that concept, and for that reason, the concept you have conceived, limited to the confines of your finite brain, is not the Real God, Ultimate Reality, Allah, or the like. This is just another way of stating my "Just Add One." principle: if you have conceived of ultimate reality, then you can find more reality beyond your concept. This implies that the god that is talked about in Christian churches is not the Real God, if indeed there is one. The cosmic consciousness that you imagine envelopes all living creatures and all existence is not the Real Cosmic Consciousness, and so forth.

But these concern concepts that are "way out there". How about down to Earth concepts? It is true there too! This is because the only way you know an object in our universe is through your brain and your senses, and what these have for the object is not the real object. Therefore we can substitute many other concepts for Tao in the principle. Just about everything is a Tao. For example:

The tao that can be spoken of is not the Real Tao.
The decision you are about to make is not the Real Decision.
The job you currently have is not your Ideal Job.
The partner that you currently are married to or are living with is not your Ideal Partner.
The dog that you can pet is not the Real Dog.
The cat that you own and love is not your Ideal Cat.
The investments that you have made are not your Real Investments.
The fourth turning that can be predicted is not the Real Fourth Turning. (Strauss and Howe state in their book that the events of a Fourth Turning often can't be anticipated in advance.)
The axis of evil that is referred to in speeches by important government officials is not the Real Axis of Evil.
The stock market upturn (or downturn) that you see on the TV station or the newspaper is not the Real Stock Market Upturn (or Downturn).
The hubbert's peak that is observed (for example, the oil production peak of 2000) is not the Real Hubbert's Peak.
The function that can be integrated is not The Real Function. (But it can be approximated. Sarah Voss, creator of Pizine said once that God is a definite integral.)
The religion that is celebrated on the Sabbath is not the True Religion.
The duck that you just shot is not the Real Duck - it is only a decoy.

So duck hunters can learn something from the principles of Taoism - that since they can never catch The True Duck, they might as well give up and let these poor birds live. The Whatever that resulted in all of us being here saw fit to give life to them.

Hurricane Coming?

I heard on the news recently that a tropical wave way out in the Atlantic has become Tropical Storm Fabian, and just tonight it became Hurricane Fabian. It is way out to sea but I want to see if it would affect where I am living (in central Virginia). So I checked the hurricane sites such as Weather Underground's site. It shows the future track of the tropical storm for a few days and shows that it will skirt north of the Caribbean islands, such as the Leeward Islands. But that's not far enough. I want to know if it will hit the mainland United States, and if so, where. There are two sources of this. I tried the Global Forecasting System first. I checked it two days ago and it said that Fabian, which I suppose will become a major hurricane, will hit Miami, then go in the Gulf and hit Fort Walton Beach, Florida, then go off to the northwest and peter out and not affect central Virginia. I checked it again today. The forecast has changed. The 384-hour forecast shows that Fabian will approach Florida, turn up to the north, strike the Wilmington, NC area and make a direct hit on central Virginia. We hardly need this here in Virginia. We have had enough rain this year, and a 6-10 inch deluge, which is what this storm would produce, would cause massive flooding all over the place. I also checked Gary Gray's discussion and he says it may come up the Eastern seaboard, saying that the GFS scenario has Fabian first "taunting Florida" then "slamming hard into the Carolinas". But he notes that there are other models that take it out to sea, and still others that cause it to go poof midsea, sort of like Debby did near Hispaniola in 2001.

I will be monitoring this storm carefully. The local news media don't mention it much at all, and it could conceivably go another way. But it seems like it is going to become another Fran or Floyd. Watch out for those F storms, those storms that have an f-word for their name, such as Fabian. By the way, these links are likely going to become different or invalid in a few days.

If the other shoe fits. . .

I like mixing up slogans, such as "It's an ill wind that spoils the broth." Today I was thinking about shoes. I thought about the slogan, "If the shoe fits, wear it". So I decided to Googolize™ it. I Googled for "If the shoe fits, * it" -wear. I got for the asterisk such words as design, sell, buy, and even steal and f**k, the famous f-word which I don't spell in full to avoid getting this blog filtered out. One of the more interesting ones was If the shoe fits, bang it. Guess who that's attributed to? Former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, banging his really big shoe at the UN in 1960, that's who.

But then I thought of another slogan "waiting for the other shoe to drop".. So I tried "the other * to drop *quot; -shoe . Minusing out shoe eliminated 90% of the hits. I got things like the other contributors to drop, also side, end, and player. The most interesting ones were foot(If the shoe drops, why not drop the entire rest of the foot as well?) and bomb.

But I like best combining the two slogans to get "If the other shoe fits, drop it". It's perhaps a description of acquiring an unwanted skill, causing you to get deployed to an undesirable place or causing Dobson syndrome. This slogan then says when offered the opportunity to learn an unwanted skill, don't.

Mars

Well, here it is, folks. Mars comes closer to us than at any time in the past 60,000 years or so. This is going to attract a lot of people out to see the sky. The media have really hyped this one up. Sure, it comes closer than at any time in the past 60,000 years, but it came almost as close in 1971 and 1988. It came close in 1956, which I remember well, as my parents took me to a skywatch at my school then, when I was 10 years old. I saw several planets, including Mars, through telescopes. It is closer in 2003 but by only a few thousand miles. This is because Mars' perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) has been getting closer and closer to the Sun the past few years, probably because of perturbations from other planets, especially Earth and Jupiter. This can't go on forever; it has to oscillate, else Mars at one time would have been really far out; it would have been at Jupiter's orbit where it would have eventually gotten too close to Jupiter and thrown out of the solar system. So eventually the close approaches will get farther apart again.

Further, there is misinformation out there by the media. Tonight I see that in a side box on a CNN story, CNN says

WHERE IS MARS?
The red planet is now in the constellation Aquarius.
Most viewers can see it in the southeast in the hours after sunset.
By midnight, it will be high overhead.
Before sunrise, it will dip toward the southwestern horizon.

At midnight it will not be overhead, or anywhere near it, except for people in the Southern hemisphere. When Mars comes closest to us at perihelion, it is always in the southern sky, and so it does not get very high. It gets only halfway up in southern Florida, and it may not even clear the trees and houses in places to the north, such as Canada and Minnesota. This is unfortunate, because that makes it harder to see Mars. In any case, CNN should not be stating point blank that it is going to be high.

I have seen the planet several times, with the naked eye and with an 8-inch-aperture telescope, and I have taken a picture of it, which I will put on my astronomy page soon. I find the best way to take a picture of it is to use an extender that allows me to put an eyepiece between the camera and the telescope. I used a 9.7-inch Plössl eyepiece. I probably will take more pictures and view it more, now that it is easily visible in the evening sky; up to now it required waking up in the middle of the night.

The 1965 Principle

A lot of statements have been made about this blackout that the Northeast recently had. For example, this is the worst blackout this nation has ever had. This blackout disrupted the lives of 50 million (figure is hyped up; see my previous blog). The blackout is a sign of things that could come. And I myself said that this is a precursor to shortages of oil, electricity, and natural gas.

However, a lot of these claims are hyped up or are bogus. How can you tell? Apply the 1965 principle: Any statement that is made about the blackout that occurred this year must also be true about the 1965 November 9 blackout. These two blackouts were near twins of each other. A local problem happened somewhere, and it spread all over the place in the Northeast, causing the lack of electricity to between 20 and 30 million people, in both 1965 and 2003. So any statement that is true about one is likely to be true of the other.

For example, this blackout may not be a foreboding of things to come. Sure there is an oil shortage coming around 2010, a natural gas shortage next year, and an electrical shortage coming in 2005. But how can the blackout of 2003 be a precursor of these when the blackout of 1965 clearly was not? In 1965 there was plenty of electrical power, oil, and natural gas. Sure the 2003 blackout may cause people to take a look at these other problems; in that case, I am glad that it occurred. But the 2003 blackout has nothing to do with these problems, because otherwise the 1965 blackout would have been followed by the same problems.

People acted courteously and civilly at this blackout. That’s OK. They did in 1965 as well. But this can’t be said to be because of Planeattack on 2001 September 11 or the events that followed that awful day, because there was no such event before the 1965 blackout; I don’t think the Kennedy assassination qualifies. It is said that this blackout means that we have a Third World transmission system. Be careful when you say that. That implies that we had a Third World transmission system in 1965, which says that we have done absolutely nothing about it in the 38 years since then.

I think that one reason why people make these blithe statements without taking 1965 into account is that many people, including many of the hypermedia, were not even born in 1965, or were kids who were more concerned about Tinkertoys and Mickey Mouse than about power generation. Those of us who were adults in 1965 know what happened then, and can appreciate how similar this blackout was to that one.

I still think we have problems ahead. But don’t believe it when you hear hype in the media about the Great Blackout of 2003 that doesn’t take 1965 into account.