I knew going to bed last night something was going on in Boston .. and sure enough, it was related to the bombings and the two suspects. This morning the country woke up to the news : the suspects are two Kyrgyzstan-born brothers Tamerlan Tsarnaev (26) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (19). The older brother reported dead this morning and his younger brother on the run. They have been in the Boston area for a number of years. Their dad is in Kyrgyzstan. They have an uncle in Boston, but he has not seen them for many years and had no good words for them during a brief interview. So right now we have close to 1 million people in the Boston area on lock-down, the streets there deserted, Black hawk helicopters overhead. How will this all end?
Here’s a map from CNN’s website showing the locations and events of Thursday night. The two suspects have obviously no regard for human life, but they did let the person who’s car they hijacked, go free.
There was a lot in the news on Wednesday! Ready? 1. The FBI announces a break-through with surveillance video for the Boston bombings. CNN ends up with egg on its face, first saying arrests have been made, then retracting that ‘Breaking News’ announcement a hour later. 2. A gun control bill (for universal background checks) fails in the Senate. This for something that 90% of the citizenry supports. A big boo! – BOO! – to the US senators that voted no. Go home! 3. Huge explosion at a fertilizer factory in Texas, probably killing 15 people, hurting scores, and decimating homes and buildings in the little town of West. 4. The wife of a former justice of the peace (I guess that’s similar to a sheriff), confesses her role to the killings of a District Attorney and his wife AND a deputy district attorney, ending a nationally publicized man-hunt. Her husband had been convicted of stealing public property, and he was the trigger-man. Her bail was set at $10 million. 5. A 45-yr old Elvis impersonator with paranoia and delusions of government gets arrested for sending ricin-laced letters to the President and a US senator. The mail did not make it to the US Capitol building.
Here is an explanation of ricin’s effects on the human body published in the USA Today. It’s not a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ such as anthrax, though .. and handling a ricin-tainted letter is unlikely to be a lethal dose to the recipient.
Illustration of the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment from the book ‘Paradoxes – The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics’ by Jim al-Kalili.
I bought a book this weekend, called ‘Paradox – The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics (byJim al-Khalili)’. One of the ‘paradoxes’ is the famous thought experiment by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, devised in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of an interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects, resulting in a contradiction with common sense. In a nutshell : the cat’s destiny is subject to a completely random event (the decay of atoms). The observer does not know if the cat is dead or alive before he opens the box and looks. Therefore the state of the cat is ‘dead and alive at the same time’ : exactly what quantum mechanics says the state of sub-atomic particles are. They exist and they do not. They are here – and there – at the same time. Whoah.
My favorite Afrikaans poet happened to write a poem about the cat as well, using it as a metaphor for loss and for life and death. I also came up with a rough translation to English – even though one can argue that poems cannot (and therefore should not) be translated.
Schrödinger se kat
† Gunar, 1 Junie 2003
Johann de Lange
1
In die nanag het ek opgeskrik
& meteens geweet jy’s dood:
eindelik met die heelal kiets,
my ligvoetse geesgenoot.
Volgens wette van die wetenskap
verdwyn jy in geen vergetelgat,
maar is gelyktydig hiér én weg:
’n opperste kwantumkat.
Schrödinger was reg: verseël
in geheue se tydlose kis –
oë soos nuutgemunte pennings –
bly jou uiteinde helend onbeslis.
2
Hoe om oor verlies te skryf:
die regte woord te soek
vir iets wat my onverwoord-
baar klink. Ek stuit steeds
stom voor jou vertrek:
grepe en momente sal
moet deug vir tyd en wyl.
Uit hierdie penpunt huil
vanaand net gitswart ink.
Schrödinger’s Cat (my own rough translation to English)
† Gunar, 1 June 2003
Johann de Lange
1
In the after-night I frightened up
& at once knew you’re dead:
at last with the universe as one,
my light-footed mate.
Subject to the laws of science
you disappear in no oblivious hole,
but is at the same time here and gone:
an utter quantum cat.
Schrödinger was right: sealed
in memory’s timeless chest –
eyes as newly minted pennies –
your end stays healingly undefined.
2
How to write about loss:
to search for the right word
for something that sounds me un-
wordable. I still stop dead
mute at your departure:
bytes and moments will have to
make do for now and longer.
Out of this pen’s nib weeps
just pitch black ink tonight.
It was a dark Monday here in the USA with the events that unfolded in Boston. There was blanket coverage on the major networks all evening following the bomb explosions at the finish line of the Boston marathon today. At this point it seems any person or group could be responsible. Commentators today mentioned ‘that we live in a 9/11 world now’ several times .. but others pointed out that we have had these kinds of attacks from home-grown terrorists/ extremists as far back as 1995 with the Oklahoma City bombing, and in 1996 with the Atlanta Olympics bombing.
Here’s an aerial view of the locations of the bomb blasts at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, from the on-line edition of the USA Today.
It’s tax day on Monday April 15. US Federal Income taxes for 2012 are due OR the tax payer has to pay an estimated tax and file a 6-month extension request. Check out the nice graphic design from the Wall Street Journal with all the numbers that come with a really big country such as the USA. We ‘celebrate’ (cry in our beer?) a 100 years of paying Federal Taxes to Uncle Sam this year. There are about 7,000 millionaires that didn’t pay any income taxes in 2011 and for the rest the percentage of Adjusted Gross Income paid is less than 12%. If you earn a nice salary, there no getting away and you could easily pay 20% or more. I think millionaires should pay a little more, and I also wonder if it’s a good thing that 46.4% of households pay no federal income tax at all. (It’s complicated : 22% of them are retirees, and the ‘Earned Income Tax Credit’ brings the taxes due by many families to zero).
It was a turbulent weather day here in central Puget Sound with thunderstorms and hail. Heavy snow also fell near Snoqualmie Pass (53 miles east of Seattle on I-90). This mountain pass saw two avalanches as a result. In the one, a 12-person snow-shoeing party got hit, but all were accounted for without serious injuries by end of day Saturday. In the other avalanche three experienced hikers were carried more than 1,200 feet. By Saturday night one still had not been found, with hopes now dimming that he is still alive.
The view from my front door late Saturday afternoon .. but it’s fine hail, not snow.
Google has just announced Austin, Texas is the second city (after Kansas City) to get a Google Fiber network. Google Fiber is some 100 times faster than typical broadband access in the USA. The project is demonstrating that cable companies are too stingy or too greedy to improve their infrastructure. With a gigabit connection, downloads are instantaneous, and there is no buffering of HD video for education (or entertainment), and the much-touted cloud services will run smoothly.
I wanted to post this around April Fools Day : Sergey Brin’s Tesla that was given quite a (Batman motif) makeover by his co-workers. Apparently the pink is not permanent and can be removed !
Here’s 14-year old (!) Tianlang Guan from Guangzhou, China making Augusta Masters history as the youngest player to start. He finished Thursday with a 75 (he was handed an one-stroke penalty for slow play). He is right at the mark for making the cut after Friday (when the field of players is reduced for the last two days of play on Saturday and Sunday). CBS sports has done a great job with the website for the Masters (at www.cbssports.com/masterslive). The webcast is sprinkled with commercials, of course, and one does needs a fast internet connection.
14-year old Tianlang Guan at the 11th hole on the first day of play at the Masters.
Is this a missile launcher? No, a vacuum truck. And it may not look like it – but boy, when they start up this machine, it makes A LOT OF NOISE ! (That house behind it looks a little like the south portico of the White House, does it not?).
Sometimes I cannot tell if a noise near my house comes from the back alley or from the street in front of the house. So when it sounded like a Boeing airplane was about to take off from right in front of my house, I had to go outside to check out the source of all the commotion. It was a vacuum truck, apparently cleaning out a blockage in the water drain (water main?) on the sidewalk.
‘Balanced and nutty’ all in the same package. Can I be balanced and nutty at the same time as well?The Wall Street Journal shows six ways to make coffee. There’s one more that I use (I guess it doesn’t count as ‘brewing’) : packets of microground coffee bean that you empty in the cup and pour water on. Voila! No mess, no fuss.
There are so many ways to make one’s cup of joe in the morning – or at any other time of day. I like the medium roast from Starbucks and I have a drip coffee maker, but it’s really difficult to make exactly one cup of drip coffee (which is of course why some of the other methods were invented. See Wall Street Journal’s diagram that explains it all). Starbucks CEO and coffee czar Howard Schultz uses a French press for his coffee.
The ‘Save Vanishing Species’ stamps with Amul tiger cubs on.And here’s a neat picture I found on Facebook (looks like it was originally from Galera News Agency) .. see if you can spot the cat in the picture. Hint : it is a leopard.
(The heading is a play on the 1970s advertising hall-of-fame slogan from the Esso gasoline commercials that said ‘there’s a tiger in my tank’). The stamps to save some vanishing species such as the tiger are not new; they were issued in 2011 already. But they were the nicest ones the post office had when I sent out something in a bubble envelope, and I couldn’t resist. (The tiger figure is part of my very limited animal figure collection). Scientists are closing in on their ability to bring extinct species back, though – even ice age mammals like the woolly mammoth. I fear the way it’s going now the poor creatures will have no ice, of course.
‘I’d like to have some sushi for dinner’ said my brother on Saturday night, and Yelp.com came to the rescue with two restaurants near Pike Place Market. The plan was to eat, and go check out the market with the remaining time that we had.
My brother had the sushi chef’s combination of items. I steered clear of the sushi and had gyoza (Japanese pot stickers), and tempura vegetables (deep-fried in a light batter), with a Sapporo beer. Very nice! So a very Japanese dinner!* The restaurant is cozy, with a nice vibe and a sushi bar.
*Can I call myself a Japanophile if I don’t eat sushi, though? Some people will say no! you cannot!
The Lake Washington Ship Canal connects Puget Sound to Lake Union and Lake Washington. If you’re on your boat, you need to go through the locks, though — and if you have a tall sailing boat, there are several bridges that you will have to buzz the bridge master for to open for you as well !Why are the Locks needed? To keep the salt water of Puget Sound out, and the fresh water of Lake Union in .. and to serve as a ‘boat elevator’.
My brother and I and friends went out to the Museum of History and Industry in South Lake Union neighborhood (yes, I was there a few weeks ago as well), grabbed a bite to eat nearby, and went on to check out the Ballard Locks (official name : Hiram M. Chittenden Locks). The locks are part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, a large project that was started in 1911 and officially completed only in 1934. The system of locks separate the fresh water body of Lake Union that is on average 20 ft higher than the salt water of Puget Sound (depending on the tides). The locks also have a ‘fish ladder’ .. a set of boxes and weirs that allow salmon to migrate into Lake Union and Lake Washington to spawn. I see fish like salmon that do this salt water-fresh water migration, are called diadromous fish.
Boating season has not opened (it’s only on Memorial Day weekend in May), so there were no boats in the locks on Saturday. Check out the high water level of Lake Union on the right of the lock, and the much lower level of Puget Sound on the left.
This is fresh water from Lake Union ‘overflowing’ into Puget Sound through the sluice gates of the lock system.Here is a single (lost?) little fish that we saw in the view window for the fish ladder. I am not even sure if it is a salmon. The best viewing times for the salmon run every year depend on the species of salmon. Sockeye – June, July; Chinook and Coho – Sept, Oct; Steelhead – late fall and winter.My brother and I posing at the cool outdoor artwork at the locks.
My brother from California is visiting just for a day or so, and Friday night we went to the waterfront even though the weather was a little rainy. Why not try out the ‘Great Wheel’? I suggested. The Ferris wheel has enclosed gondolas, 42 of them – exactly because of Seattle’s weather. We got to sit in gondola no 1. It says up to 8 people can fit into a gondola, but that would be a tight fit, was our impression. The ride is not for people with vertigo, or with claustrophobia !
The view from the pier.We’re almost at the top, and here is the view from inside the gondola of the Ferris Wheel. Look for the Space Needle, a white sliver .. and the days of the Alaskan viaduct (double decker highway in the foreground) are counted. The tunnel boring machine for its replacement with a tunnel, has just arrived in the port of Seattle from Japan, and the boring of the tunnel will soon start.This is a view of the wheel from the ground.
A view towards the center of the wheel, while we’re in the gondola.This is the view towards the south. The blue is the stadium of the Seahawks (foot ball). The baseball stadium is close by. The plans for a THIRD stadium, for the proposed buyout of the Sacramento Kings basket ball team, is in front of the NBA commissioner. Sacramento has plans of their own to build a new stadium for the team, so they may not come to Seattle after all.
(Wednesday) I was waiting at the doctor’s office yesterday when someone came in with a cute mid-size dog in tow. What breed of dog is he? I asked. I couldn’t make out what the man was saying, but did not want to ask again. And at home my on-line searches for dog breeds called cay-son or kashun produced nothing.
(Today, Thursday) I find myself in another office building and purely by coincidence there is a dog book on the coffee table. Alright! Let me see if I can spot the dog I saw yesterday, I thought. And there it was : a keeshond. What threw me completely off the scent was the Dutch pronunciation of ‘kayz-hond’. In my native Afrikaans we say ‘keeshond’ as in ‘leery’.
The keeshond is a very cute dog.Read over my shoulder to learn more of the keeshond.
From Up On Poppy Hill is set in Japan in the 1960s. The film was released only recently in the USA; it premiered on July 16, 2011 in Japan.
This poster for a new animated movie From Up On Poppy Hill is from a lamp post here on 15th Ave in Capitol Hill. Hmm, I thought, those little faces look awfully like those of the characters in the animated series Heidi* that we had in South Africa in the 70s, I thought. Sure enough, this is a ‘Goro Miyazaki’ film .. and he is the son of Hayao Miyazaki that produced the original Heidi series. The elder Miyazaki is one of Japan’s greatest animation directors.
*At the time, one of my colleagues at work told us that his daughter started crying when one of the Heidi episodes started on the TV. Why are you sad when Heidi is so happy? he asked her. Well, she knew that episode would soon end, and then she would have to wait a whole long week for the next one. Aww.
I’m happy that April 1 has come and gone, so that all the technical tomfoolery is now out of the way. Google released an April Fools video announcing ‘Google Blue’, a version of Google Mail that has been ‘years in the works’ (but it turns out all it does is be blue). Some commentators point out they are probably poking fun at a version of Windows 8 called Windows Blue that’s slated for release later this year. Google also offered a ‘Treasure’ mode of their maps and its new odor service called ‘Google Nose Beta’, with which you could search for odors or smells which would appear through your computer so that you could smell it. On Sunday, Twitter announced it will no longer allow the use of vowels in tweets, and that users will have to buy them. (Not true). Check out Joan Rivers’ creative response below.
Sunday was another blue sky day here on Easter weekend, and I felt compelled to get out of the house on Sunday afternoon. I walked down to the Japanese Garden and the Arboretum to check out the blossoms on the trees.
Mono no aware is a Japanese phrase associated with cherry blossoms. It literally means ‘the pathos of things’, or could also be translated as ‘an empathy toward things’ or ‘a sensitivity to ephemera’ (source: Wikipedia). So it is a term for the awareness of the impermanance or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness or wistfulness at their passing.
The Japanese Garden that is located here in Seattle’s Arboretum on Sunday. There is a cherry tree on the left of the pond .... with these blossoms on. The tree is a propagation from the Mt Fuji cherry tree planted by Japanese Crown Prince Akihito* in 1960, to celebrate the friendship between Japan and Seattle. *Since 1989 he has been the reigning Emperor of Japan.This is the foot path across from the Japanese Garden, leading into the rest of the Washington Park Arboretum. I really don’t know what kind of trees those are with the spectacular white blossoms!
Happy Easter! Yes, I know that 1. the Easter bunny is a very secular symbol for Easter, and 2. that I should not buy m&m candies to play with, because I will end up eating them all .. but hey, we all need a little fun and color in our lives, do we not?
See, I found the dark Lindt chocolate bunny after all, the one with the brown ribbon. (Previously I only had the milk chocolate one with the red ribbon).
Map of the area on Whidbey Island where there was a massive landslide [Graphic by Mark Nowlin, for the Seattle Times]
Early on Wednesday morning, a 1000-foot-wide section of the hillside on the west side of central Whidbey Island here in the greater Seattle area fell off into Admiralty Bay. Check out the link below from the Seattle Times for a full report and an amazing split-screen before-and-after picture. Only one house was completely destroyed, with thankfully no injuries or loss of life – but 17 others have been evacuated .. and of course there is concern now about the stability of the whole area immediately around the slide site as well.
Also from the Seattle Times, an aerial view of the landslide. It looks like the ‘end of the world’ said one news reporter on the ground there, looking out toward the newly created ‘cliff’.
