I ran into an amusing site today, Goatism, in which the author maintains that the main principle of the life, the universe, and everything is that everything is a goat. That's right, a goat. You're a goat, I'm a goat. Ba-a-a-a. Bleat, bleat. The whole world's a goat. He has devoted some pages to the consequences of this. But his most interesting parts are when he proves that everything is a goat. His first proof has some obvious non-sequitors in it, so I will present a revision of his proof, and show that indeed, everything is a goat:
Theorem: Everything's a goat.
Lemma: If a set X contains a goat, then all elements of X are goats.
Proof: by induction on X = n. If n = 1, then if X contains a goat, then the only x in X is a goat, and since x is the only element of X, all elements of X are goats.
Suppose that for all Y with Y <= n, that if Y contains a goat, then all y in Y are goats. Let Zbe an n+1-element set with at least one goat g. Pick an h in Z<> g, and pull it out; i.e., consider Z- {h}. This set has n elements and it has g in it, so all elements of Z- {h} are goats.Remove another element k from the set, not g, and replace it with h. That is, consider Z - {k} union {h}. This set also has n elements, and contains g, so all elements in it are goats. This means that h is a goat also, so all elements of Z are goats.
There exists a goat g. I can take you to the zoo and prove that for you, or click here. Let a be anything, and consider {a,g}. This set has at least one goat in it, so it is all goats. Hence a is a goat. So anything is a goat. This completes the proof.
Note that I can also use this proof to prove everything is a leprechaun, since leprechauns do exist. I can use it to prove everyone's an orange, everyone's a genius, and everyone's anything. So where is the flaw in the proof? I say to remove another element k from the set, and that it can't be g. Of course not, since then I could not guarantee that there is a goat in the resulting set. But it also isn't h, since h has been pulled out. So the set out of which I pull my k has two elements less than the overall set, so it has number n - 1. However, when n+ 1 = 2, then n - 1 = 0. So the set out of which I have to pull my k has nothing in it, so I can't pull anything out of it. That destroys the entire proof, since we can't even proceed to n = 2 in the induction.
There are lots of neat little tricks on the site, such as a proof that if there is a goat, then there are not two goats, so the Entire Universe is One Big Goat. It's good for a laugh, but watch the math. There are traps ahead that will get your goat.
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2004/08/17
Hurricanes and the Coyote
This has been an active hurricane year, and already we have had A, B, and C storms come by our way in Virginia. I want to know about these monsters well in advance, so I go to the Internet to find information on upcoming hurricanes, such as Weather Underground, the Weather Channel, Terrapin, and others. But this is information processed either by news organizations or by NOAA. The Internet provides raw data now, so you can look at it and make up your mind. This data consists of results of weather simulations such as NOGAPS, ETA, GEM (a Canadian model), and GFS. The last one stands for Global Forecasting System and is an amalgam of the former MRF (Medium Range Forecast) and AVN (Aviation) models. As of late, GFS has been somewhat of a clown on the hurricane scene. In fact, it has been a trickster, the Coyote of weather models.
In early July, GFS models suggested that a hurricane would strike the Carolinas in the week of July 18-24, which for me is SUUSI week. The worst thing that could happen at SUUSI is a hurricane. Even though it is inland, a sufficiently powerful one would produce another Isabel. The fun and renewal that we would get at SUUSI would have ended abruptly with the first power outage. But a few runs after the one suggesting such a SUUSI hurricane, the hurricane simply vanished. Poof. Gone. No trace of it any more and we had good weather for SUUSI with only one rainy day.
GFS could not track Alex until he became a fully-grown hurricane. It had some problems with Bonnie and Charley, too, although eventually it got on track. But it is now that it is clowning around. First of all, it said that Tropical Depression 5, then Tropical Storm Earl, would not do much of anything. It would peter out in the Gulf of Mexico. The meteorologists said that it was wrong, that it would intensify instead and become a major storm, and one run of NOGAPS suggested a monster storm striking Louisiana, causing oil prices to hit the roof before the hurricane could blow it off. But guess what? It petered out and became a mere tropical wave. GFS was right, and the meteorologists were wrong!
Then there was Danielle. It looped to the north and east well before it could get close to North America. But one run of GFS suggested it would escape from the Bermuda high and head for the Canadian Maritimes. It is clear now that this won't happen. And now there is Frances. Yesterday evening, GFS was calling for Frances (now an unnamed wave in the eastern Atlantic) to strike the Carolinas and go up to SUUSI land, just like the SUUSI hurricane threatened to do. Then it showed it wimping out near Florida today So now they are all saying this wave won't amount to much. But the latest run (2004 Aug 17 18Z) shows that it's back now, and it is turning away from land in the western Atlantic. So it's off again, on again with this storm, and it says another one may be following it, either Gaston or Hermine.
So keep a watch of the hurricane and weather reports, and also the GFS (which now has loops or movies, which are interesting to watch at high speed), NOGAPS, and other computer models, brought to you courtesy of the Internet.
In early July, GFS models suggested that a hurricane would strike the Carolinas in the week of July 18-24, which for me is SUUSI week. The worst thing that could happen at SUUSI is a hurricane. Even though it is inland, a sufficiently powerful one would produce another Isabel. The fun and renewal that we would get at SUUSI would have ended abruptly with the first power outage. But a few runs after the one suggesting such a SUUSI hurricane, the hurricane simply vanished. Poof. Gone. No trace of it any more and we had good weather for SUUSI with only one rainy day.
GFS could not track Alex until he became a fully-grown hurricane. It had some problems with Bonnie and Charley, too, although eventually it got on track. But it is now that it is clowning around. First of all, it said that Tropical Depression 5, then Tropical Storm Earl, would not do much of anything. It would peter out in the Gulf of Mexico. The meteorologists said that it was wrong, that it would intensify instead and become a major storm, and one run of NOGAPS suggested a monster storm striking Louisiana, causing oil prices to hit the roof before the hurricane could blow it off. But guess what? It petered out and became a mere tropical wave. GFS was right, and the meteorologists were wrong!
Then there was Danielle. It looped to the north and east well before it could get close to North America. But one run of GFS suggested it would escape from the Bermuda high and head for the Canadian Maritimes. It is clear now that this won't happen. And now there is Frances. Yesterday evening, GFS was calling for Frances (now an unnamed wave in the eastern Atlantic) to strike the Carolinas and go up to SUUSI land, just like the SUUSI hurricane threatened to do. Then it showed it wimping out near Florida today So now they are all saying this wave won't amount to much. But the latest run (2004 Aug 17 18Z) shows that it's back now, and it is turning away from land in the western Atlantic. So it's off again, on again with this storm, and it says another one may be following it, either Gaston or Hermine.
So keep a watch of the hurricane and weather reports, and also the GFS (which now has loops or movies, which are interesting to watch at high speed), NOGAPS, and other computer models, brought to you courtesy of the Internet.
2004/08/15
Hurricane Coincidences
This hurricane season is producing a number of interesting coincidences, including some that are nostalgic. This week two hurricanes hit the US mainland. Their names were Bonnie and Clyde. Yes, it's just like in the movies. Except that Clyde was Charley, instead. Sorry, Charley. Only the best hurricanes … er, we don't want the best hurricanes here. These hurricanes arrived on or about my 58th birthday, 2004 August 13.
On this date 49 years ago, I celebrated my 9th birthday. There was a hurricane that day too, Hurricane Connie. That's right, in 1955, it was Connie, and in 2004, it was Bonnie. Connie and Bonnie. I was in Rochester, New York then, and I remember that it poured rain and was windy all day long. My father took me to swimming lessons at the Y in the morning. Both Bonnie and Connie had devastating follow-on storms after them. In Connie's case, it was Hurricane Diane, which caused major flooding all over the Northeast, when it poured its rain on soil that was saturated with Connie. In Bonnie's case, it was Charley, which pounded Punta Gorda and other Florida communities into the ground.
And yet another storm is coming. This is Tropical Storm Earl. The Global Forecasting System (GFS) shows it fizzling out, or maybe wimping into Mexico, but the Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System (NOGAPS) shows it increasing in strength and headed towards the oil platforms of Louisiana. If that occurs, the price of crude oil will skyrocket. In fact, it will probably top $50/barrel. It's interesting that this storm will do that, because Earl sounds like Oil. Hurricane Oil. In fact, Earl is pronounced almost the same as the German Öl, which means oil. Let's hope Hurricane Oil stays away from the oil.
On this date 49 years ago, I celebrated my 9th birthday. There was a hurricane that day too, Hurricane Connie. That's right, in 1955, it was Connie, and in 2004, it was Bonnie. Connie and Bonnie. I was in Rochester, New York then, and I remember that it poured rain and was windy all day long. My father took me to swimming lessons at the Y in the morning. Both Bonnie and Connie had devastating follow-on storms after them. In Connie's case, it was Hurricane Diane, which caused major flooding all over the Northeast, when it poured its rain on soil that was saturated with Connie. In Bonnie's case, it was Charley, which pounded Punta Gorda and other Florida communities into the ground.
And yet another storm is coming. This is Tropical Storm Earl. The Global Forecasting System (GFS) shows it fizzling out, or maybe wimping into Mexico, but the Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System (NOGAPS) shows it increasing in strength and headed towards the oil platforms of Louisiana. If that occurs, the price of crude oil will skyrocket. In fact, it will probably top $50/barrel. It's interesting that this storm will do that, because Earl sounds like Oil. Hurricane Oil. In fact, Earl is pronounced almost the same as the German Öl, which means oil. Let's hope Hurricane Oil stays away from the oil.
2004/08/11
Bonnie and Charley
Well this week it's Bonnie and Clyde! A pair of outlaw storms on the run from the meteorological law. Well actually it's Bonnie and Charley. Talk about hurricanes. This one's a 1-2 punch. They are calling for Bonnie to come up to Richmond, VA, on Friday, and then the very next day, Charlie arrives. Both will have the wind pounded out of them by the time they get here (hopefully! Hope they don't get a refresher in the Atlantic.) but they will still pour all kinds of rain here. It will be raining. It will be raining. It will be raining. And this is no ordinary rain. It will rain cats, dogs, pitchforks, potatoes, oil, kitchen sinks, condoms, SUV carburetors, terror alert levels, political campaigns, and ordinary differential equations, as well as all kinds of strangled salamanders and frogs. A total of 4 inches will fall here, and when that's over, I will need a canoe to go to work. If you live on the East Coast, better outfit your ark now. The Great Deluge is coming. And not only that. After Bonnie and Charley, the Global Forecasting System's runs suggests that there are two or three more tropical storms or hurricanes coming. Fortunately, a cold front will push Danielle and her buddies out to sea.
But yes, it's time to prepare for hurricanes again. These two storms will not harm Richmond too much, although they will give trouble to two areas in Florida. They are forecasting more hurricanes than usual this year. Let's just hope we don't have another Isabel.
But yes, it's time to prepare for hurricanes again. These two storms will not harm Richmond too much, although they will give trouble to two areas in Florida. They are forecasting more hurricanes than usual this year. Let's just hope we don't have another Isabel.
2004/07/28
The Green Flower
During SUUSI on 2004 July 18-24, I wrote a song about a green flower. I have not completed the song and have not settled on a melody except that it is probably going to contain major 7ths. But it is interesting to look at the ideas which led me to write a song about a green flower.
My workshop leader, singer johnsmith, asked us all to do a free-association exerecise to come up with some kind of song that involved compassion. I thought about this and came up with the idea of giving my love something for her birthday. Right away I thought of a flower. But this was too conventional. All men give their significant women flowers of some sort at times. What's so special about giving her a flower? What's so special about giving her a purple iris, or a red rose, or a yellow daisy? I thought of all the different colors of flowers, then I found one that almost no one gives; in fact, there are hardly any flowers of this color, namely a green flower.
And so I wrote the song about trying to get a gift for my beloved. I said that I could give her an iris, but I have already given her the iris of love. I could give her a daisy, but I have already given her the daisy of happiness. And so forth. Then I concluded by giving her the green flower, because that is not any of those, but it expresses my love for her that is beyond rose passion, happy daisies, and serene bluebells. I give her a flower that is so rare that it expresses my rare love for her.
And that brings us to the concept of a green flower in the first place. When I mentioned the green flower to my group, they said that flowers aren't green. They were being literal. johnsmith said that it was a left-brain concept. I thought about that a moment, and realized that to some extent it was. I mentally listed all the flowers there were and found that there were no green flowers.
And why aren't there green flowers? The purpose of a flower is to attract bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other animals to them so that the pollen from one flower can pollinate another. It is nature's aboriginal advertising gaud. The flower therefore has to stand out from the green vegetation, so it has to be a bright color that isn't green. A green flower would not attract insects because it would be indistinguishable from the leaves. If there was a green flower, the leaves would be some other color, such as orange or red.
So the flower is built to stand out beyond mere vegetation. Well, I created the green flower to stand out among flowers. It is the one unique gift that I had not given yet. And as such it represents the concept of "beyond"; that is, one can go beyond any concept that that one conceives. The green flower is beyond flowers. So the green flower represents the ability to go beyond where one happens to be in life to go to the next stage, as in the memes of Ken Wilber's theories (e.g., the Theory of Everything).
There is one other color of flower that I never see, and that is the black flower. To me, the black flower represents either sexy sophistication or the mourning of the loss of a loved one, depending on the context. But I was looking for neither sexiness or mourning in looking for my flower beyond flowers.
So to this woman in my life, I give her the green flower. I will have the song written soon.
My workshop leader, singer johnsmith, asked us all to do a free-association exerecise to come up with some kind of song that involved compassion. I thought about this and came up with the idea of giving my love something for her birthday. Right away I thought of a flower. But this was too conventional. All men give their significant women flowers of some sort at times. What's so special about giving her a flower? What's so special about giving her a purple iris, or a red rose, or a yellow daisy? I thought of all the different colors of flowers, then I found one that almost no one gives; in fact, there are hardly any flowers of this color, namely a green flower.
And so I wrote the song about trying to get a gift for my beloved. I said that I could give her an iris, but I have already given her the iris of love. I could give her a daisy, but I have already given her the daisy of happiness. And so forth. Then I concluded by giving her the green flower, because that is not any of those, but it expresses my love for her that is beyond rose passion, happy daisies, and serene bluebells. I give her a flower that is so rare that it expresses my rare love for her.
And that brings us to the concept of a green flower in the first place. When I mentioned the green flower to my group, they said that flowers aren't green. They were being literal. johnsmith said that it was a left-brain concept. I thought about that a moment, and realized that to some extent it was. I mentally listed all the flowers there were and found that there were no green flowers.
And why aren't there green flowers? The purpose of a flower is to attract bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other animals to them so that the pollen from one flower can pollinate another. It is nature's aboriginal advertising gaud. The flower therefore has to stand out from the green vegetation, so it has to be a bright color that isn't green. A green flower would not attract insects because it would be indistinguishable from the leaves. If there was a green flower, the leaves would be some other color, such as orange or red.
So the flower is built to stand out beyond mere vegetation. Well, I created the green flower to stand out among flowers. It is the one unique gift that I had not given yet. And as such it represents the concept of "beyond"; that is, one can go beyond any concept that that one conceives. The green flower is beyond flowers. So the green flower represents the ability to go beyond where one happens to be in life to go to the next stage, as in the memes of Ken Wilber's theories (e.g., the Theory of Everything).
There is one other color of flower that I never see, and that is the black flower. To me, the black flower represents either sexy sophistication or the mourning of the loss of a loved one, depending on the context. But I was looking for neither sexiness or mourning in looking for my flower beyond flowers.
So to this woman in my life, I give her the green flower. I will have the song written soon.
2004/07/27
A Blogellation of Bloglets
Here are a few bloglets that I have come up recently. It's been busy and I haven't had the chance to blog much.
Last week I went to SUUSI, that wonderful Unitarian Universalist camp and conference in the Blue Ridge mountains, in Hokieland, where anything seems possible. I wrote a song about giving my love a green flower, in a songwriting workshop given by singer johnsmith. I have not finished it yet, but like "Dancing under the Rainbow", this one is about a woman friend of mine, and like with Rainbow, I will let you guess who it is, except that the two women are different. The service on Friday with its dancing Jewish rabbi was one of the best I have attended. I feel that you need to move around to feel religious or spiritual things; there is more religion in dancing to "Brick House" than in all of the Catholic liturgies in the world.
My most favorite quote from SUUSI 2004: "The God that I am talking about is not the God that you don't believe in." This indicates that the speaker, when he says "God", is not referring to the Jehovah or God of the Christian Bible, but to a higher-order concept. To me this is a miscommunication on the part of both speaker and listener. The speaker makes the unwarranted assumption that he knows what the God of the listener is like. The listener makes the unwarranted assumption that the God that the speaker is talking about is the Christian God, which I sometimes now call the Blue God, after Ken Wilber's hierarchy. (The Allah of Islam is also the Blue God.) What Unitarian Universalists need is a course in interpersonal communication.
Ouch! I know that mirages can be deceiving, but sometimes they can be smashing, as some pelicans in the Arizona desert found.
Last week I went to SUUSI, that wonderful Unitarian Universalist camp and conference in the Blue Ridge mountains, in Hokieland, where anything seems possible. I wrote a song about giving my love a green flower, in a songwriting workshop given by singer johnsmith. I have not finished it yet, but like "Dancing under the Rainbow", this one is about a woman friend of mine, and like with Rainbow, I will let you guess who it is, except that the two women are different. The service on Friday with its dancing Jewish rabbi was one of the best I have attended. I feel that you need to move around to feel religious or spiritual things; there is more religion in dancing to "Brick House" than in all of the Catholic liturgies in the world.
My most favorite quote from SUUSI 2004: "The God that I am talking about is not the God that you don't believe in." This indicates that the speaker, when he says "God", is not referring to the Jehovah or God of the Christian Bible, but to a higher-order concept. To me this is a miscommunication on the part of both speaker and listener. The speaker makes the unwarranted assumption that he knows what the God of the listener is like. The listener makes the unwarranted assumption that the God that the speaker is talking about is the Christian God, which I sometimes now call the Blue God, after Ken Wilber's hierarchy. (The Allah of Islam is also the Blue God.) What Unitarian Universalists need is a course in interpersonal communication.
Ouch! I know that mirages can be deceiving, but sometimes they can be smashing, as some pelicans in the Arizona desert found.
2004/07/11
Fawn among the Lies
Every once in a while I look at What Really Happened to find alternative stories about current events, things that never appear on ABC, NBC, the Washington Post and so forth. The site claims that it is anti-war and anti-lie. Over and over again, it features articles on the Web that claim that the Bush administration and others have lied to us about what has been going on; they claim to know what really happened. I realize that as I read these stories that there could be as many lies in these sites as there are in our current administration, and the entire site has a subversive, melancholy feel to it; it is definitely depressing.
So I find among the storm on the site a pretty flower, or rather, fawn. Featured on the site is a reference a site called Fawn and Dog . If you want to have your friends and associates go "awww…" and say how cute these creatures are, show them a printout of this site. My wife and the people at my church really liked the three pictures of the dog taking care of the fawn. This to me is a rare find. Not always do you find a Fawn among the Lies.
So I find among the storm on the site a pretty flower, or rather, fawn. Featured on the site is a reference a site called Fawn and Dog . If you want to have your friends and associates go "awww…" and say how cute these creatures are, show them a printout of this site. My wife and the people at my church really liked the three pictures of the dog taking care of the fawn. This to me is a rare find. Not always do you find a Fawn among the Lies.
2004/07/08
Some weather anomalies
I got alarmed a number of days ago when I looked at the Global Forecasting System (GFS) model runs. This weather prediction run goes the farthest of any of them, 16 days, but is not notoriously accurate past about day 7. I was surprised by what I saw. It clearly showed a storm now over Sierra Leone, Africa, moving off the African coast, moving and strengthening across the Atlantic ocean, riding up Puerto Rico to the Bahamas, then crashing into Myrtle Beach, heading to Charlotte, then hooking to the right towards Richmond, on 2004 July 21, Wednesday evening. It then hooks back to the left and hits Washington, DC. In other words, it calls for a hurricane to strike the US East Coast two weeks from now, and I figured it would be called Alex.
I thought, maybe this was a fluke of this run of the GFS. After all, this is two weeks away, and the next run of the model may show something different. So I looked at the 12Z run, one run before this one. That one shows Alex heading straight up the peninsula of Florida, then whipping around to hit Charlotte, finally exiting to sea somewhere near the Outer Banks. So there may be some reality to this one. I looked back one more, and there it nicked the Florida keys and hit Louisiana. The one before that had it turning north out to sea long before it approaches the mainland. Each run seems to get worse as far as the East Coast was concerned.
I am going to SUUSI that week, and so I got concerned that Alex (or Bonnie; a storm is developing southeast of Bermuda) would either strike SUUSI or strike my home.So I looked at subsequent runs. One of these showed it missing the coast and going out to sea, but the last two runs don't show any hurricane much at all; what there is peters out over the open waters of the Atlantic and don't show much motion at all. So much for this storm.
In fact, the weather is going to be great the next few days in central Virginia. Here a local TV station, WWBT-TV, Channel 12, predicts that there will be a chance of storms each day, and showed a 7-day pictorial forecast with a rain symbol on each day of the week. However, the official NOAA forecast, as seen for example on Weather Underground, does not show any rain at all. In fact, after two days, it gets monotonous in predicting partly cloudy with high of 90 and low of 70 each day. One or the other of these two contradictory forecasts is right and one is wrong. We will see the next few days which it is.
Goes to show that weather sometimes plays a fickle tune.
I thought, maybe this was a fluke of this run of the GFS. After all, this is two weeks away, and the next run of the model may show something different. So I looked at the 12Z run, one run before this one. That one shows Alex heading straight up the peninsula of Florida, then whipping around to hit Charlotte, finally exiting to sea somewhere near the Outer Banks. So there may be some reality to this one. I looked back one more, and there it nicked the Florida keys and hit Louisiana. The one before that had it turning north out to sea long before it approaches the mainland. Each run seems to get worse as far as the East Coast was concerned.
I am going to SUUSI that week, and so I got concerned that Alex (or Bonnie; a storm is developing southeast of Bermuda) would either strike SUUSI or strike my home.So I looked at subsequent runs. One of these showed it missing the coast and going out to sea, but the last two runs don't show any hurricane much at all; what there is peters out over the open waters of the Atlantic and don't show much motion at all. So much for this storm.
In fact, the weather is going to be great the next few days in central Virginia. Here a local TV station, WWBT-TV, Channel 12, predicts that there will be a chance of storms each day, and showed a 7-day pictorial forecast with a rain symbol on each day of the week. However, the official NOAA forecast, as seen for example on Weather Underground, does not show any rain at all. In fact, after two days, it gets monotonous in predicting partly cloudy with high of 90 and low of 70 each day. One or the other of these two contradictory forecasts is right and one is wrong. We will see the next few days which it is.
Goes to show that weather sometimes plays a fickle tune.
2004/07/05
Saturn and Titan
1991 was the year for eclipses. 2001 was Meteor Shower Year. 2003 was the Year of Mars, with its close approach and the two Rovers. It looks like now that 2004 will be the Year of Saturn, for the Cassini spacecraft has just arrived.
As usual, it gives its host of interesting images. The rings show up as a set of parallel lines etched in space, closer than we have ever seen them. The biggest interest point for me now is Titan. The probe is not supposed to eject a probe onto the Titanian surface until this (Northern) winter, but already Titan has given us some interesting images. Finally the surface of Titan has been seen! I remember long ago, in 1981 or something, when Pioneer 11 approached Saturn. It was to take a temperature of the cloud tops of Titan, but a Soviet satellite interfered. I immediately printed out a headline: "The Temperature of Titan is Sputnik." Since then astronomers have been wondering about the surface of Titan. It gives a solid orange to optical telescopes. But with an infrared and other cameras and some photo work, pictures showing the features of Titan have just come out; check out the NASA web site, which, by the way, frequently throws 404s in your face. But once in a while you get the site and you can check out the Titan photos.
The surface, like anything else, is raising more questions than answering them. The features look like Mars' canyons, but what kind of oceans could produce these? Water? Too cold. How about carbon dioxide or nitrogen? But it has a nitrogen atmosphere. So we await the answers and look with awe at Saturn's image in a telescope.
As usual, it gives its host of interesting images. The rings show up as a set of parallel lines etched in space, closer than we have ever seen them. The biggest interest point for me now is Titan. The probe is not supposed to eject a probe onto the Titanian surface until this (Northern) winter, but already Titan has given us some interesting images. Finally the surface of Titan has been seen! I remember long ago, in 1981 or something, when Pioneer 11 approached Saturn. It was to take a temperature of the cloud tops of Titan, but a Soviet satellite interfered. I immediately printed out a headline: "The Temperature of Titan is Sputnik." Since then astronomers have been wondering about the surface of Titan. It gives a solid orange to optical telescopes. But with an infrared and other cameras and some photo work, pictures showing the features of Titan have just come out; check out the NASA web site, which, by the way, frequently throws 404s in your face. But once in a while you get the site and you can check out the Titan photos.
The surface, like anything else, is raising more questions than answering them. The features look like Mars' canyons, but what kind of oceans could produce these? Water? Too cold. How about carbon dioxide or nitrogen? But it has a nitrogen atmosphere. So we await the answers and look with awe at Saturn's image in a telescope.
Fireworks 2004
Yesterday I went out to see the fireworks, and saw one of the best fireworks displays of my life. Usually I go out running on July 4, running to all the fireworks displays that I can find. Last year I did not see much in my neighborhood. But yesterday, I saw three good displays, including one that would have rivaled the local community's official display, and further, the displays were enhanced by lightning flashing in the distance.
I walked this year rather than ran, because Anne was with me. We went down one street to a dead end bulb, and saw some sparklers and some shooting fireworks, which fizzled when they exploded. But then we went to another display that shot sets of fireworks three or four times. These fireworks produced colorful and bright bursts in the sky, causing the ground to seem like it was lit by a strobe light. This effect was enhanced from lightning strobing up the sky from about 30-40 miles away. The combination of flashing and bright colored lights was one of the most impressive I have seen, and it beats battling huge traffic jams to go to a public display. There were even a few fireflies around. We also went to a third display, which featured two fireworks trees and several high-flying fireworks with bursts.
Later on that evening, the storm producing the lightning struck and gave us some rain and thunder. It was fortunate that the clouds and rain cleared enough for all the fireworks displays to go on OK. An excellent display, which will be tough for 2005 to beat.
I walked this year rather than ran, because Anne was with me. We went down one street to a dead end bulb, and saw some sparklers and some shooting fireworks, which fizzled when they exploded. But then we went to another display that shot sets of fireworks three or four times. These fireworks produced colorful and bright bursts in the sky, causing the ground to seem like it was lit by a strobe light. This effect was enhanced from lightning strobing up the sky from about 30-40 miles away. The combination of flashing and bright colored lights was one of the most impressive I have seen, and it beats battling huge traffic jams to go to a public display. There were even a few fireflies around. We also went to a third display, which featured two fireworks trees and several high-flying fireworks with bursts.
Later on that evening, the storm producing the lightning struck and gave us some rain and thunder. It was fortunate that the clouds and rain cleared enough for all the fireworks displays to go on OK. An excellent display, which will be tough for 2005 to beat.
2004/06/24
Summer's Flashing Lights
A Table Topic at a Toastmasters meeting that I went to tonight asked the speaker what is a prominent sign of summer was to him. She thought that bugs were the most prominent feature of summer. Yes, summer has a lot of bugs, but to me summer means blinking or flickering light. These come from various sources.
Fireworks characterize summer. They come on July 4, the American day of independence. Fireworks come in many forms, including spinning pinwheels of light, sparklers, roman candles, and rockets exploding high above into sparkling floral designs that fade out and fall to the ground. I usually don't go to public fireworks displays because of the enormous traffic jams they cause, but I do run at night on July 4 to try to find private fireworks parties near my house. Every year I find something.
Fireflies are another light of summer. When the late, mild summer nights come, the blinking bugs show up under our trees and around our yard. They signal summer to me and are somewhat nostalgic, as they remind me of the summer of 1960, when my family, passing through Virginia, stopped one night there and my brother and I caught two jars of fireflies.
Summer brings thunderstorms with their own blinking lights - lightning. Lightning is frightful, but I like to lie in bed at night when a storm comes, flashing its lightning in my window, blinking all the windows on and off. Distant lightning in an otherwise warm clear night is definitely a sign of summer for me, as are majestic thunderheads in the sunset.
There are also the stars of summer. The Summer Triangle of Vega, Deneb, and Altair rise overhead on late summer nights, and Antares and the Scorpion dangle their stinger to the horizon in the south. It's too bad we can't see many of the stars on these short, warm nights because humankind has chosen to light up the night with lights of its own, most of which are unattractive: blaring auto dealership and ballpark metal halide lights, garish high pressure sodium peaches on stalks along the highway, and neighbors who are so inconsiderate that they light up your house with their lights. These prevent me from seeing the Ultimate Lights in the Sky. So please turn off your lights. I want to see the lights of summer instead.
Fireworks characterize summer. They come on July 4, the American day of independence. Fireworks come in many forms, including spinning pinwheels of light, sparklers, roman candles, and rockets exploding high above into sparkling floral designs that fade out and fall to the ground. I usually don't go to public fireworks displays because of the enormous traffic jams they cause, but I do run at night on July 4 to try to find private fireworks parties near my house. Every year I find something.
Fireflies are another light of summer. When the late, mild summer nights come, the blinking bugs show up under our trees and around our yard. They signal summer to me and are somewhat nostalgic, as they remind me of the summer of 1960, when my family, passing through Virginia, stopped one night there and my brother and I caught two jars of fireflies.
Summer brings thunderstorms with their own blinking lights - lightning. Lightning is frightful, but I like to lie in bed at night when a storm comes, flashing its lightning in my window, blinking all the windows on and off. Distant lightning in an otherwise warm clear night is definitely a sign of summer for me, as are majestic thunderheads in the sunset.
There are also the stars of summer. The Summer Triangle of Vega, Deneb, and Altair rise overhead on late summer nights, and Antares and the Scorpion dangle their stinger to the horizon in the south. It's too bad we can't see many of the stars on these short, warm nights because humankind has chosen to light up the night with lights of its own, most of which are unattractive: blaring auto dealership and ballpark metal halide lights, garish high pressure sodium peaches on stalks along the highway, and neighbors who are so inconsiderate that they light up your house with their lights. These prevent me from seeing the Ultimate Lights in the Sky. So please turn off your lights. I want to see the lights of summer instead.
2004/06/16
A workplace gone weird
Today was a wacky day at my workplace. It featured visitors from Finland, lightning with eyes, email in stereo, and some of the people becoming all of the people.
I ran at lunchtime, like I usually do. When I came back to the exercise room, with its shower room for changing and bathing, I noticed a sign that said "If you clean up the shower room after you are finnished, the locker room will stay clean for the next time.", or something like that. Someone scribbled underneath it, "Are we all Finnish?" I would have liked to answer that one with "Yes.", or maybe even "Kyllä".
Later in the day, my computer thundered. Then it thundered again. This may sound like Alice in Wonderland, but I instructed my Outlook to sound thunder.wav whenever an email is received with "weather" or "lightning" or even "lightening" or "lighting" in the subject. There was an approaching storm, and our local operations center sent us all an email saying that the lightning watch has turned into a lightning warning, because lighting was sighting. Weird. This meant that instead of someone looking at the lightning stroke, instead the lightning stroke sprouted eyes and was looking at that someone instead. I stayed inside. I did not want to be stared at in the face by a lightning bolt. The second bolt was caused by my local division secretary resending that email out to all of us.
Which brings me to the next topic, duplicate emails. No less than eight times today, I got the same emails twice. An agency at my site would send out a message to everyone, including high level chiefs and secretaries, and including individual analysts like me. Then the secretary would send it out again, so that I got two emails. It's like emails in stereo. Next time it happens, I may tell the second sender that I have already seen it. There is a problem with the mailing or distribution lists.
Then finally was the ruling that all soldiers where I work (which is an Army post) must see a certain safety video or movie. It got emailed all over the place, and by the time it got to me, it read that everyone must see it. Somehow "all soldiers" transmogrified into "everyone". Further, we were asked to go to a certain computer server and find the tape of the movie there. Since when do you find tapes in a computer directory, unless perhaps they are backup tapes. Watch a movie on a backup tape? Not likely.
Then I attended a Toastmasters meeting in which Distinguished Toastmasters called a lectern a podium. A podium is a raised area for the feet (pod- means foot). A lectern is a stand on which you can place notes on.
And so ended a weird, weird day.
I ran at lunchtime, like I usually do. When I came back to the exercise room, with its shower room for changing and bathing, I noticed a sign that said "If you clean up the shower room after you are finnished, the locker room will stay clean for the next time.", or something like that. Someone scribbled underneath it, "Are we all Finnish?" I would have liked to answer that one with "Yes.", or maybe even "Kyllä".
Later in the day, my computer thundered. Then it thundered again. This may sound like Alice in Wonderland, but I instructed my Outlook to sound thunder.wav whenever an email is received with "weather" or "lightning" or even "lightening" or "lighting" in the subject. There was an approaching storm, and our local operations center sent us all an email saying that the lightning watch has turned into a lightning warning, because lighting was sighting. Weird. This meant that instead of someone looking at the lightning stroke, instead the lightning stroke sprouted eyes and was looking at that someone instead. I stayed inside. I did not want to be stared at in the face by a lightning bolt. The second bolt was caused by my local division secretary resending that email out to all of us.
Which brings me to the next topic, duplicate emails. No less than eight times today, I got the same emails twice. An agency at my site would send out a message to everyone, including high level chiefs and secretaries, and including individual analysts like me. Then the secretary would send it out again, so that I got two emails. It's like emails in stereo. Next time it happens, I may tell the second sender that I have already seen it. There is a problem with the mailing or distribution lists.
Then finally was the ruling that all soldiers where I work (which is an Army post) must see a certain safety video or movie. It got emailed all over the place, and by the time it got to me, it read that everyone must see it. Somehow "all soldiers" transmogrified into "everyone". Further, we were asked to go to a certain computer server and find the tape of the movie there. Since when do you find tapes in a computer directory, unless perhaps they are backup tapes. Watch a movie on a backup tape? Not likely.
Then I attended a Toastmasters meeting in which Distinguished Toastmasters called a lectern a podium. A podium is a raised area for the feet (pod- means foot). A lectern is a stand on which you can place notes on.
And so ended a weird, weird day.
2004/06/14
The Transit of Venus
On 2004 June 8, an event so rare that it occurs at most twice in a lifetime occurred. The planet Venus crossed directly in front of the Sun. I had first read about it in the 1950s in a library book that I checked out from the grammar school that I was going to as a boy. During this transit, which lasts six hours, Venus appears as a dot in front of the Sun. I went to the Science Museum of Virginia to observe the event, which was televised on Channel 12. It was one of the most ethereal events I have seen. There was fog that morning, heavy enough to interfere with driving in some places. The sun rose, husklike and dull, above a building in the distance. We could see the sun and notice with the naked eye a dot on one side, but I could not get it in the telescope, because that requires a filter so dark that it renders the brightness of the Sun viewable through a telescope. Later, it began to shine after the fog and clouds cleared a bit and I was able to get it into the telescope. It was quite a sight. I took pictures of it, one of which is on my Astronomy Scrapbook web page. We observed it until Venus reached the edge of the Sun. Then the clouds became so thick that we could not see the Sun at all. By the time my neighbor got it back in his telescope, Venus was gone.
If you missed it the past week, you have another chance in 2012, at about the same date, June 6. This is 8 Earth years or 13 Venus years from now, almost exactly. Therefore, Venus and Earth are nearly back to where they were, but this time the planet crosses the top of the disk, not the bottom. They come back in 2020, but by this time Venus' orbit has wandered so much that it does not cross the Sun any more, so no transit occurs. Then we have to wait until December of 2117. So this is truly a rare event, and I was glad that I saw it.
If you missed it the past week, you have another chance in 2012, at about the same date, June 6. This is 8 Earth years or 13 Venus years from now, almost exactly. Therefore, Venus and Earth are nearly back to where they were, but this time the planet crosses the top of the disk, not the bottom. They come back in 2020, but by this time Venus' orbit has wandered so much that it does not cross the Sun any more, so no transit occurs. Then we have to wait until December of 2117. So this is truly a rare event, and I was glad that I saw it.
2004/06/05
Smarty Horse meets his Birdstone
Today, 2004 June 5, was a sad day for fans of the wonderful race horse Smarty Jones. So many people expected him to win that he had odds of 1-5, meaning that there was an 80% chance of winning. His winning by 10 horse lengths in the Kentucky Derby may be a reason for this. So I watched what happened. Smarty also won the Preakness, so if he could win the Belmont Stakes today, he wins something called the "Triple Crown", which no horse has won since 1976 or so.
The race prebegan with a conniption on the part of Rock Hard Ten. He refused to get into the starting gate, delaying the race and causing the other horses to chafe at their bits. But he eventually got into the stall and then the race began. Smarty took a huge lead, but he quickly lost it to a combination of Purge, Eddington, Rock Hard Ten, and maybe another horse. Purge took the lead briefly. But these other horses tired out and Smarty was able to eke out another lead. Then I saw it on the TV set. A horse with a yellow number pad came up fourth, and seemed to go faster than the others. I wondered if this horse was going to win it. I wonder who he was. I found out soon he was number 4, Birdstone. There were heavy odds against him before the race, a real dark horse. Smarty extended his lead as Eddington and the other horses started to tire and go back. Then I saw number 4 gaining on him. It was an exciting and interesting finish as Birdstone kept on coming and eventually nosed out Smarty for the win. Many people were disappointed. No triple crown.
But then again, what does a Triple Crown mean? It means the same horse wins over and over again. It is like the same thing happening in your life over and over again. Do you have a Triple Crown in your life? Neuro-Linguistic Programming teaches us that if something does not work, try something else. Birdstone was something else. He was an unknown until today, and he seemed fresh, whereas all the other horses tired, including Smarty Jones. It also means that maybe the best path to success is not to try to fight the Smarty Jones pyramid. Don't try to keep up with the Smarty Joneses. Go around and establish your own Birdstone. Perhaps you may win your own personal Belmont if you do.
The race prebegan with a conniption on the part of Rock Hard Ten. He refused to get into the starting gate, delaying the race and causing the other horses to chafe at their bits. But he eventually got into the stall and then the race began. Smarty took a huge lead, but he quickly lost it to a combination of Purge, Eddington, Rock Hard Ten, and maybe another horse. Purge took the lead briefly. But these other horses tired out and Smarty was able to eke out another lead. Then I saw it on the TV set. A horse with a yellow number pad came up fourth, and seemed to go faster than the others. I wondered if this horse was going to win it. I wonder who he was. I found out soon he was number 4, Birdstone. There were heavy odds against him before the race, a real dark horse. Smarty extended his lead as Eddington and the other horses started to tire and go back. Then I saw number 4 gaining on him. It was an exciting and interesting finish as Birdstone kept on coming and eventually nosed out Smarty for the win. Many people were disappointed. No triple crown.
But then again, what does a Triple Crown mean? It means the same horse wins over and over again. It is like the same thing happening in your life over and over again. Do you have a Triple Crown in your life? Neuro-Linguistic Programming teaches us that if something does not work, try something else. Birdstone was something else. He was an unknown until today, and he seemed fresh, whereas all the other horses tired, including Smarty Jones. It also means that maybe the best path to success is not to try to fight the Smarty Jones pyramid. Don't try to keep up with the Smarty Joneses. Go around and establish your own Birdstone. Perhaps you may win your own personal Belmont if you do.
2004/06/01
Blogtrek will now be facts and impressions
Today I started a new blog, for I was mixing opinions, say of the Bush-Kerry campaign or of the Pledge of Allegiance, with experiental things such as firefly counts and skywatches. So today I started a new blog, Beyond Opinion for these opinions. Visit the site to see what it's like. From now on, I will post current event issues and opinions to the new Beyond Opinion blog, and the other, usually more pleasant and enjoyable things, will go into Blogtrek.
Hopefully, this will create a better pair of blogs for all you blog readers out there.
Today I started a new blog, for I was mixing opinions, say of the Bush-Kerry campaign or of the Pledge of Allegiance, with experiental things such as firefly counts and skywatches. So today I started a new blog, Beyond Opinion for these opinions. Visit the site to see what it's like. From now on, I will post current event issues and opinions to the new Beyond Opinion blog, and the other, usually more pleasant and enjoyable things, will go into Blogtrek.
Hopefully, this will create a better pair of blogs for all you blog readers out there.
2004/05/21
The Upcoming Oil Crisis
I am going to start a new series of blogs on this subject and may even start a new blog on it. I am really getting concerned to the point of having it shadow everything else to do. Our civilization is slowly running out of oil. I just hope that this current runup of gasoline prices is not the start of what the oil experts call the "Big Rollover", the point at which demand for oil exceeds supply.
Today I will summarize the problem and show a scale from 0-10 on which people who talk about the oil situation can be rated in terms of optimism and pessimism. The first thing to note is that there is only a finite amount of oil on this planet, and that it is not renewable, since it takes a million times as long for this planet to develop oil as it takes for humans to use it up at our current rates. Further, the development of our current standard of living seems to be mainly a product of oil; so much so that we may want to call the period from 1900-2050 the Oil Age. This age will contain my entire lifetime.
Now for some figures. According to the World Almanac, which gets its figures from oil companies and oil-producing nations, there are one trillion barrels of oil on this planet right now; a barrel is 42 gallons. The world is currently using oil at the rate of 80,000,000 barrels of oil per day, or 30,000,000,000 barrels per year. A simple division yields 33 years. It's not that simple. As oil is taken out of the ground it gets harder and harder to get the remaining oil. The amount of oil that a well is capable of getting out in fact goes down exponentially with time. For this reason, production of oil can increase only to a certain point, and then it must decline, even with plenty of oil in the ground. The point at which this is reached is called "Hubbert's Peak". The United States reached its Hubbert's Peak in 1970, and after that we had to import oil. At the same time, demand is rising exponentially, currently at about 2 percent a year. Sooner or later, supply will fall behind demand, and then prices will go up hyperbolically, an event called the Big Rollover. This will cause a severe jolt to our civilization, and the pessimists are predicting no more driving, political upheavals including possible catastrophic wars, starvation, blackouts, and possibly up to 4 billion people dying off.
So we go to other fuels. The problem is that this may be difficult or expensive, despite the fact that more energy hits the Earth from the Sun each day than is in all the oil that ever was, is, or shall be on this planet. Natural gas will peak shortly after oil. Coal will last a while but its use will seriously pollute the planet. Going nuclear will increase the chances of nuclear weapons getting into the hands of terrorists. Hydrogen seems a way out. It is like fossil fuels such as gasoline, but without the carbon. Already we can make a hydrogen or fuel-cell powered vehicle. But where do you get the hydrogen? Getting it from a fossil fuel would defeat the purpose of using hydrogen. It will have to be obtained from water by electrolysis, and that requires energy, which will need to come from the Sun. Already there are solar-powered electrolysis plants built, but this still remains a method with a lot of problems. The optimists are saying that we will convert to these and this will ease our transition from oil. The pessimists are saying that all of these will fail.
So which is it? I will write about this for a few days, but I am going to provide here a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being the most pessimistic and 10 the most optimistic. Here are my guidelines:
10 - Oil is a renewable resource.
9 - We will run out of cheap oil well after 2050 and we should be on other fuels by then
8 - We will run out of cheap oil around 2035 or so and with some effort we should get through OK
7- We will run out of cheap oil around 2015-2020 and this will cause a serious crisis, but we will get through OK with other fuels
6 - We will run out of cheap oil next decade, causing a serious crisis, and it is probable, but not certain, that we can develop other fuels
5 - We will run out of cheap oil next decade, causing a serious crisis, and it is not certain if we will get through it.
4. - We will run out of cheap oil within about 10 years or so, causing a severe crisis, and it's probable that we will not be able to get through it.
3 - We will run out of cheap oil in about 10 years, and we will probably wind up with a serious deterioration of our style of living
2 - We will run out of cheap oil in about 10 years, and this will cause many calamities, such as famines, wars, and blackouts.
1 - We will run out of cheap oil in about ten years, bringing us back to the 1700s and causing 4 billion people to starve or be destroyed by nuclear war.
0 - We will run out of cheap oil soon, causing the human species to become extinct.
I feel that I am a 6 on this scale. So I think we are headed for a serious crisis. One thing working in our favor is that we will be entering a Fourth Turning, the time in which people take on crises and solve them. Here is how I rate other authors: Vijay Vaithyswaran, 8; Kenneth Deffeyes, 3; Colin Campbell, 2; www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net , 1; http://www.dieoff.org , 1; Paul Roberts, 5; Jeremy Rifkin, 7 (although he sounds like 3 in the beginning of Hydrogen Economy), Goodstein ("The Party's Over"), 4; Heinberg, 2; the US Government, 8; Kiplinger (letter and magazine), 8. In future blogs, I will go in to more detail on these items. What I would like to empathise, though, is that this will be a crisis, and like the Chinese ideogram for this word says, it will be a time of danger and opportunity.
I am going to start a new series of blogs on this subject and may even start a new blog on it. I am really getting concerned to the point of having it shadow everything else to do. Our civilization is slowly running out of oil. I just hope that this current runup of gasoline prices is not the start of what the oil experts call the "Big Rollover", the point at which demand for oil exceeds supply.
Today I will summarize the problem and show a scale from 0-10 on which people who talk about the oil situation can be rated in terms of optimism and pessimism. The first thing to note is that there is only a finite amount of oil on this planet, and that it is not renewable, since it takes a million times as long for this planet to develop oil as it takes for humans to use it up at our current rates. Further, the development of our current standard of living seems to be mainly a product of oil; so much so that we may want to call the period from 1900-2050 the Oil Age. This age will contain my entire lifetime.
Now for some figures. According to the World Almanac, which gets its figures from oil companies and oil-producing nations, there are one trillion barrels of oil on this planet right now; a barrel is 42 gallons. The world is currently using oil at the rate of 80,000,000 barrels of oil per day, or 30,000,000,000 barrels per year. A simple division yields 33 years. It's not that simple. As oil is taken out of the ground it gets harder and harder to get the remaining oil. The amount of oil that a well is capable of getting out in fact goes down exponentially with time. For this reason, production of oil can increase only to a certain point, and then it must decline, even with plenty of oil in the ground. The point at which this is reached is called "Hubbert's Peak". The United States reached its Hubbert's Peak in 1970, and after that we had to import oil. At the same time, demand is rising exponentially, currently at about 2 percent a year. Sooner or later, supply will fall behind demand, and then prices will go up hyperbolically, an event called the Big Rollover. This will cause a severe jolt to our civilization, and the pessimists are predicting no more driving, political upheavals including possible catastrophic wars, starvation, blackouts, and possibly up to 4 billion people dying off.
So we go to other fuels. The problem is that this may be difficult or expensive, despite the fact that more energy hits the Earth from the Sun each day than is in all the oil that ever was, is, or shall be on this planet. Natural gas will peak shortly after oil. Coal will last a while but its use will seriously pollute the planet. Going nuclear will increase the chances of nuclear weapons getting into the hands of terrorists. Hydrogen seems a way out. It is like fossil fuels such as gasoline, but without the carbon. Already we can make a hydrogen or fuel-cell powered vehicle. But where do you get the hydrogen? Getting it from a fossil fuel would defeat the purpose of using hydrogen. It will have to be obtained from water by electrolysis, and that requires energy, which will need to come from the Sun. Already there are solar-powered electrolysis plants built, but this still remains a method with a lot of problems. The optimists are saying that we will convert to these and this will ease our transition from oil. The pessimists are saying that all of these will fail.
So which is it? I will write about this for a few days, but I am going to provide here a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being the most pessimistic and 10 the most optimistic. Here are my guidelines:
10 - Oil is a renewable resource.
9 - We will run out of cheap oil well after 2050 and we should be on other fuels by then
8 - We will run out of cheap oil around 2035 or so and with some effort we should get through OK
7- We will run out of cheap oil around 2015-2020 and this will cause a serious crisis, but we will get through OK with other fuels
6 - We will run out of cheap oil next decade, causing a serious crisis, and it is probable, but not certain, that we can develop other fuels
5 - We will run out of cheap oil next decade, causing a serious crisis, and it is not certain if we will get through it.
4. - We will run out of cheap oil within about 10 years or so, causing a severe crisis, and it's probable that we will not be able to get through it.
3 - We will run out of cheap oil in about 10 years, and we will probably wind up with a serious deterioration of our style of living
2 - We will run out of cheap oil in about 10 years, and this will cause many calamities, such as famines, wars, and blackouts.
1 - We will run out of cheap oil in about ten years, bringing us back to the 1700s and causing 4 billion people to starve or be destroyed by nuclear war.
0 - We will run out of cheap oil soon, causing the human species to become extinct.
I feel that I am a 6 on this scale. So I think we are headed for a serious crisis. One thing working in our favor is that we will be entering a Fourth Turning, the time in which people take on crises and solve them. Here is how I rate other authors: Vijay Vaithyswaran, 8; Kenneth Deffeyes, 3; Colin Campbell, 2; www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net , 1; http://www.dieoff.org , 1; Paul Roberts, 5; Jeremy Rifkin, 7 (although he sounds like 3 in the beginning of Hydrogen Economy), Goodstein ("The Party's Over"), 4; Heinberg, 2; the US Government, 8; Kiplinger (letter and magazine), 8. In future blogs, I will go in to more detail on these items. What I would like to empathise, though, is that this will be a crisis, and like the Chinese ideogram for this word says, it will be a time of danger and opportunity.
It is now too close to call
Up to now I have been saying that Bush will probably win election this fall because he has lost only 4 Lichtman keys. A while back I said that Bush may lose Key 9 (Scandal) but he probably would still be re-elected, since he still will have lost only 5 keys.
I now say the election is too close to call. It has been behaving that way for a while. A look at Rasmussen Reports shows that for the past few months, Bush and Kerry have been running neck and neck. The graphs of their percentages intertwine with each other like a braid. But it is not the polls primarily that make me say that it is too close to call; they are almost meaningless at this time anyway. No, what's happened is that three of the keys are so shaky that is probable that one or more of them will fall by Election Day, and if two or three of them fall, Bush will be defeated. These are the Short Term Economy Key 5; the Scandal Key 9; and the Foreign or Military Success Key 11.
Short Term Economy. The economy has been perking up as of late. The stock market has been going up and companies are earning more on their bottom lines up front. It seems now that the employment rates are picking up. However, a Rasmussen poll shows that a substantial portion of the American electorate think that we are in or about to head into a recession. If that's the case, the key falls, since what people perceive, not what is in some table of statistics, is what matters with respect to the economics keys. Further, there are trouble signs ahead. The price of gasoline keeps going up and up and up, and I feel that it will go up until people stop demanding it. Since people feel they have to go to work and so forth, and since they feel that $2 and $3 /gallon gasoline won't bother them, the price is likely to exceed $4/gallon. That will certainly hurt the economy. And there is the threat of higher interest rates and the ballooning federal deficit. To me this points to a possible setback in the economy, one which may cause Key 5 to fail.
Scandal. The pictures keep coming and coming and coming. Each new prison abuse scandal picture raises questions and keeps the scandal alive like twigs being added to a fire. A few down the line are being punished, but it seems to me that this scandal is going to affect the higher-ups. Sen. McCain says that the administration should not let it dribble out like this and should come clean with it all. But the clincher is Lichtman himself saying in El País that "Rumsfeld…is a political corpse." I.e., we may have bi-partisan criticism of the scandal and high officials about to leave. This would constitute scandal as far as Key 9 is concerned and would cause the key to fall. I said earlier that it has fallen, but I now see that people need to perceive of it as a major scandal, and this may not have happened yet. But if things continue like they are, it will.
Foreign or Military Success. It seemed at first that Bush earned this. He got rid of a cruel dictator and was going to make it easier for 112 billion Iraqi barrels of oil to get onto the market. But now the perception is that we have gotten into a quagmire instead. This together with the prison scandal may take away this key; Lichtman has expressed some hesitation now as to whether he has this key.
In summary, all three of these keys are shaky indeed, and it seems probable that Key 9 will fall. To me it now seems possible, but not certain, that two or three of these keys will have fallen by Election Day, and if that happens, Bush will lose. Of course if only one of these keys fall, Bush will win. So it is my opinion now that the election is too close to call. Further deterioration of these key's positions may lead to my calling the election for Kerry.
Up to now I have been saying that Bush will probably win election this fall because he has lost only 4 Lichtman keys. A while back I said that Bush may lose Key 9 (Scandal) but he probably would still be re-elected, since he still will have lost only 5 keys.
I now say the election is too close to call. It has been behaving that way for a while. A look at Rasmussen Reports shows that for the past few months, Bush and Kerry have been running neck and neck. The graphs of their percentages intertwine with each other like a braid. But it is not the polls primarily that make me say that it is too close to call; they are almost meaningless at this time anyway. No, what's happened is that three of the keys are so shaky that is probable that one or more of them will fall by Election Day, and if two or three of them fall, Bush will be defeated. These are the Short Term Economy Key 5; the Scandal Key 9; and the Foreign or Military Success Key 11.
Short Term Economy. The economy has been perking up as of late. The stock market has been going up and companies are earning more on their bottom lines up front. It seems now that the employment rates are picking up. However, a Rasmussen poll shows that a substantial portion of the American electorate think that we are in or about to head into a recession. If that's the case, the key falls, since what people perceive, not what is in some table of statistics, is what matters with respect to the economics keys. Further, there are trouble signs ahead. The price of gasoline keeps going up and up and up, and I feel that it will go up until people stop demanding it. Since people feel they have to go to work and so forth, and since they feel that $2 and $3 /gallon gasoline won't bother them, the price is likely to exceed $4/gallon. That will certainly hurt the economy. And there is the threat of higher interest rates and the ballooning federal deficit. To me this points to a possible setback in the economy, one which may cause Key 5 to fail.
Scandal. The pictures keep coming and coming and coming. Each new prison abuse scandal picture raises questions and keeps the scandal alive like twigs being added to a fire. A few down the line are being punished, but it seems to me that this scandal is going to affect the higher-ups. Sen. McCain says that the administration should not let it dribble out like this and should come clean with it all. But the clincher is Lichtman himself saying in El País that "Rumsfeld…is a political corpse." I.e., we may have bi-partisan criticism of the scandal and high officials about to leave. This would constitute scandal as far as Key 9 is concerned and would cause the key to fall. I said earlier that it has fallen, but I now see that people need to perceive of it as a major scandal, and this may not have happened yet. But if things continue like they are, it will.
Foreign or Military Success. It seemed at first that Bush earned this. He got rid of a cruel dictator and was going to make it easier for 112 billion Iraqi barrels of oil to get onto the market. But now the perception is that we have gotten into a quagmire instead. This together with the prison scandal may take away this key; Lichtman has expressed some hesitation now as to whether he has this key.
In summary, all three of these keys are shaky indeed, and it seems probable that Key 9 will fall. To me it now seems possible, but not certain, that two or three of these keys will have fallen by Election Day, and if that happens, Bush will lose. Of course if only one of these keys fall, Bush will win. So it is my opinion now that the election is too close to call. Further deterioration of these key's positions may lead to my calling the election for Kerry.
2004/05/13
A comet and the International Space Station
It is not publicized much except in astronomical circles but there are two fairly bright comets out there, NEAT and LINEAR. They are named after satellites. It does not mean that they are nice clean easy-to-understand bodies. I went out to try to find comet NEAT tonight at about 2004 May 13 2132. I could not find it at first (a Sky and Tel map suggests it is at the intersection of parallel lines drawn through the Gemini twins and Procyon), but then I caught onto something else: a moving yellow star in the west. I thought plane at first, but the light was steady, yellow, and moving steady with no noise or huge increase in brightness. So I thought this was the International Space Station. I followed it across the sky, going through the bowl of the Big Dipper, and then it disappeared in trees to the east of Ursa Major. I looked it up in http://www.heavens-above.com and found this line:
Date Mag Starts Max. Altitude Ends
Time Alt. Az. Time Alt. Az. Time Alt. Az.
13 May -0.6 21:31:23 10 SW 21:34:20 74 NW 21:37:21 10 NE
Sure enough, this was the International Space Station pass. I looked at the diagram at this site,
and it matched what I saw perfectly. So I saw the Station tonight, and what made it interesting was that I was not specially planning on looking for it; I just happened to see it serendipitously when I was looking for something else.
Oh, yes. I looked a little harder and I did find a smidgeon of light which I believe was the comet. Interesting but not as spectacular as Hyakutake or Hale-Bopp.
By the way, be CAREFUL when going to the Heavens Above website. I superaccented the hyphen above. It is important. If you omit it and/or get the extension wrong, you may wind up with a window in your face asking if you would like to change your default web page to such and such, and then it may start doing other evil things. Apparently someone has set up a trap to some spyware. I took care of the problem by killing every browser window on the screen with the Task Manager. So be careful and make sure that hyphen is in there!
It is not publicized much except in astronomical circles but there are two fairly bright comets out there, NEAT and LINEAR. They are named after satellites. It does not mean that they are nice clean easy-to-understand bodies. I went out to try to find comet NEAT tonight at about 2004 May 13 2132. I could not find it at first (a Sky and Tel map suggests it is at the intersection of parallel lines drawn through the Gemini twins and Procyon), but then I caught onto something else: a moving yellow star in the west. I thought plane at first, but the light was steady, yellow, and moving steady with no noise or huge increase in brightness. So I thought this was the International Space Station. I followed it across the sky, going through the bowl of the Big Dipper, and then it disappeared in trees to the east of Ursa Major. I looked it up in http://www.heavens-above.com and found this line:
Date Mag Starts Max. Altitude Ends
Time Alt. Az. Time Alt. Az. Time Alt. Az.
13 May -0.6 21:31:23 10 SW 21:34:20 74 NW 21:37:21 10 NE
Sure enough, this was the International Space Station pass. I looked at the diagram at this site,
and it matched what I saw perfectly. So I saw the Station tonight, and what made it interesting was that I was not specially planning on looking for it; I just happened to see it serendipitously when I was looking for something else.
Oh, yes. I looked a little harder and I did find a smidgeon of light which I believe was the comet. Interesting but not as spectacular as Hyakutake or Hale-Bopp.
By the way, be CAREFUL when going to the Heavens Above website. I superaccented the hyphen above. It is important. If you omit it and/or get the extension wrong, you may wind up with a window in your face asking if you would like to change your default web page to such and such, and then it may start doing other evil things. Apparently someone has set up a trap to some spyware. I took care of the problem by killing every browser window on the screen with the Task Manager. So be careful and make sure that hyphen is in there!
2004/05/12
Disturbing phone call from the Kerry camp?
Today at 2004 May 12 1915 EDT, I received a call from "unavailable" and answered it, so I could get off the phone list of this varmint telemarketer. It turned out to be purportedly from the John Kerry for President campaign. I hope this is not the real Kerry for President campaign doing this, for I find the technique unacceptable. I routinely vote against candidates who throw computer solicitation calls on my telephone. In this case, I can't say that I would vote against Kerry, because I feel that his opponent, Bush, needs to leave office this January, and up to now, I had been supportive of the Kerry campaign. It is quite possible that this is not from the Kerry campaign; after all, it does not end with "I am John Kerry, and I approve of this computer solicitation call". If I had heard that, I would be seriously considering a vote for Ralph Nader instead, and further, urging my Democratic and liberal friends to vote for Nader as well. But no such comment was in the call. I was given the option of 1 for contributing money, 2 for volunteering time, and 3 for neither but willing to vote for Kerry. My response was none of these; I was going to tell them I am now seriously considering voting for Nader. I tried pressing 4, and it said that it was an invalid response. Sorry, call. You are an invalid call, as far as I am concerned. I waited instead and eventually it said goodbye. I then emailed this to the Kerry campaign:
Just now, at 2004 May 12 1915, I received a computer call saying it was from your campaign. It was from an "unavailable" telephone number. It asked if I wanted to contribute, volunteer, or just simply vote for Kerry. I am in favor of Kerry for this election; in fact, I want Bush out of the White House after this year. However, this campaign tactic was unacceptable to me. It is the behavior of a telemarketer; especially disturbing to me was that it came from an unavailable number. I hope that it was not from your campaign, and that it was a telephone spammer purporting to come from your campaign. Please confirm or deny to me that it was not from your campaign. For if it was from your campaign, and I continue to receive such calls, I may very well vote for Nader instead and urge my friends to do so also.
Of course the election campaign is still early, and the Bush camp may also throw computer calls on my telephone, as may Nader. I will keep score on this and report it on this blog. Right now, it is Kerry 1, Bush 0. If Bush leads this score in November, I will certainly vote against him, as I would anyway. If Kerry leads it instead, and Nader hasn't been throwing computer calls on my telephone, I will seriously consider voting for Nader instead. I hope I don't have to do this, but campaigners need to understand that it is not OK for them to put computer calls on my telephone. I just hope it was a spammer instead.
Today at 2004 May 12 1915 EDT, I received a call from "unavailable" and answered it, so I could get off the phone list of this varmint telemarketer. It turned out to be purportedly from the John Kerry for President campaign. I hope this is not the real Kerry for President campaign doing this, for I find the technique unacceptable. I routinely vote against candidates who throw computer solicitation calls on my telephone. In this case, I can't say that I would vote against Kerry, because I feel that his opponent, Bush, needs to leave office this January, and up to now, I had been supportive of the Kerry campaign. It is quite possible that this is not from the Kerry campaign; after all, it does not end with "I am John Kerry, and I approve of this computer solicitation call". If I had heard that, I would be seriously considering a vote for Ralph Nader instead, and further, urging my Democratic and liberal friends to vote for Nader as well. But no such comment was in the call. I was given the option of 1 for contributing money, 2 for volunteering time, and 3 for neither but willing to vote for Kerry. My response was none of these; I was going to tell them I am now seriously considering voting for Nader. I tried pressing 4, and it said that it was an invalid response. Sorry, call. You are an invalid call, as far as I am concerned. I waited instead and eventually it said goodbye. I then emailed this to the Kerry campaign:
Just now, at 2004 May 12 1915, I received a computer call saying it was from your campaign. It was from an "unavailable" telephone number. It asked if I wanted to contribute, volunteer, or just simply vote for Kerry. I am in favor of Kerry for this election; in fact, I want Bush out of the White House after this year. However, this campaign tactic was unacceptable to me. It is the behavior of a telemarketer; especially disturbing to me was that it came from an unavailable number. I hope that it was not from your campaign, and that it was a telephone spammer purporting to come from your campaign. Please confirm or deny to me that it was not from your campaign. For if it was from your campaign, and I continue to receive such calls, I may very well vote for Nader instead and urge my friends to do so also.
Of course the election campaign is still early, and the Bush camp may also throw computer calls on my telephone, as may Nader. I will keep score on this and report it on this blog. Right now, it is Kerry 1, Bush 0. If Bush leads this score in November, I will certainly vote against him, as I would anyway. If Kerry leads it instead, and Nader hasn't been throwing computer calls on my telephone, I will seriously consider voting for Nader instead. I hope I don't have to do this, but campaigners need to understand that it is not OK for them to put computer calls on my telephone. I just hope it was a spammer instead.
2004/05/09
Carly Simon again
On 2003 August 5, I posted a blog about Carly Simon, as the identity of her mystery lover in "You're So Vain" was going to be revealed for $50,000. At that time the speculaion was on Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger, Kris Kristofferson, and Cat Stevens. She has had affairs with all of these. In the song "You're So Vain", Carly says that this man was dressed in an apricot scarf and was looking around to see all the women admire him. Then she describes how he goes gavotting all over the place and how he has affairs with the wife of a close friend. In 30 years, she has never disclosed the identity of this vain man.
The question came about again recently, when a compendium album of her works came out recently, within the week, followed by a CNN story about her. The story said she grew up in difficult circumstances as the youngest child, and described her marriage and divorce to James and later, her struggle with breast cancer. During the program she gave a hint. There is an "e" in his last name. Great help that is. All four possibilities have an "e" in his last name. Then she gave another clue. There is an "a" in his name. This is beginning to sound like Jeopardy now. That does eliminate Kris Kristofferson. and probably Cat Stevens, although I don't know whether she said "last" or not. That leaves Warren Beatty and Mick Jagger. Apparently neither of these two people want to reveal who it is. Maybe he is just a figment of her imagination.
It still is the case that the song is as contradictory as "This sentence is false", saying of itself that it is about this mystery man, but indicating that the man is so vain that he thinks it is about him, indicating that it isn't, causing a contradiction. It is a good background song for mathematics talks, especially those dealing with logic and foundations, because of its antinomy. It is also a good one for astronomy talks, because she sings about an eclipse. So every once in a while I play it.
Back in 2003 I also mentioned that I wrote a song, of which some of the lyrics are at jimvb.home.mindspring.com/music2002.htm . The song refers to meeting a woman between a fire and a storm under a rainbow. I said at that time that it is about someone, and I will tell when Carly Simon tells. That still holds.
On 2003 August 5, I posted a blog about Carly Simon, as the identity of her mystery lover in "You're So Vain" was going to be revealed for $50,000. At that time the speculaion was on Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger, Kris Kristofferson, and Cat Stevens. She has had affairs with all of these. In the song "You're So Vain", Carly says that this man was dressed in an apricot scarf and was looking around to see all the women admire him. Then she describes how he goes gavotting all over the place and how he has affairs with the wife of a close friend. In 30 years, she has never disclosed the identity of this vain man.
The question came about again recently, when a compendium album of her works came out recently, within the week, followed by a CNN story about her. The story said she grew up in difficult circumstances as the youngest child, and described her marriage and divorce to James and later, her struggle with breast cancer. During the program she gave a hint. There is an "e" in his last name. Great help that is. All four possibilities have an "e" in his last name. Then she gave another clue. There is an "a" in his name. This is beginning to sound like Jeopardy now. That does eliminate Kris Kristofferson. and probably Cat Stevens, although I don't know whether she said "last" or not. That leaves Warren Beatty and Mick Jagger. Apparently neither of these two people want to reveal who it is. Maybe he is just a figment of her imagination.
It still is the case that the song is as contradictory as "This sentence is false", saying of itself that it is about this mystery man, but indicating that the man is so vain that he thinks it is about him, indicating that it isn't, causing a contradiction. It is a good background song for mathematics talks, especially those dealing with logic and foundations, because of its antinomy. It is also a good one for astronomy talks, because she sings about an eclipse. So every once in a while I play it.
Back in 2003 I also mentioned that I wrote a song, of which some of the lyrics are at jimvb.home.mindspring.com/music2002.htm . The song refers to meeting a woman between a fire and a storm under a rainbow. I said at that time that it is about someone, and I will tell when Carly Simon tells. That still holds.
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