Accidental Blogger

Looking For The Resurrection (Norman Costa)

Looking for the Resurrection

by Norman Costa

I'm thinking of taking a train into NYC on Sunday, 9/11/2011. I won't get anywhere near Ground Zero to see the commemorative ceremonies, and certainly not be able to approach the Memorial. I was there over a year ago. The site was cleaned up and looked like one of those old movie sets for filming a story about building the Great Pyramid with ramps descending into a cavernous foundation.

Imagine Cecil B. DeMille's stage directors placing heavy blocks to be moved up and down the ramp. Hundreds of extras are dispersed around the set. Scaffolding, ropes, cranes, shovels, wheel barrows, and hammers are specs of stage props in a huge open air theatre.

I'm hoping to see, for the first time, a materialization from the ashes of obliterated people and structures. I would really like to see a rejuvenation of pride and confidence in New Yorkers and in everyone. I'm still wondering if I'll feel that way. I think that's the real reason I want to go to Ground Zero - why I want to place myself midst the others who will make the pilgrimage and pay their respects.

I was there when the Twin Towers were going up. I followed news stories of the progress, and interesting copy on the engineering and construction of these monoliths. Critics went up one side and down the other of the edifices and the architechs. To hell with the critics, I loved the Twin Towers from the beginning. I don't know how many times I was at Windows on the World having a drink or something to eat. The view of the East River was my favorite. You could see the FDR Drive, the jigsaw puzzle of Federal, City, and State buildings, the BMW bridges (Oh, yeah!), and the reflected sunset from the West, courtesy of the people of New Jersey. 

Today, as then, my favorite view of Manhattan is from Queens, driving on the highway leading to the Queens-Midtown tunnel. It was breath taking for me, and for anyone I took on a visit to New York City. I am not being sentimental when I say that, for me, I grieve when I see that monstrous vacuum in the skyline at the southern tip of Manhattan. If I didn't have to attend to driving, I would pull over and sit and look, as I would at the graveside of a friend or family. There is a big hole in the sky, and it will never be the same. 

By sheer accident, three of my family members who worked at the WTC survived the horror: My cousin received a last minute change in assignment from his supervisor; My son-in-law was late for a Path train from New Jersey into lower Manhattan; my daughter's father-in-law had a scheduled off-site meeting. I and my family were lucky and we are very grateful. 

Three-thousand human beings perished; family and friends by the tens of thousands were grieving; our country, and most of the world, were in shock. Now, we have many hundreds of responders who survived the first horror, but were harmed in the process of rescue, recovery, and demolition. Their families are now added to the list of collateral damage from the original devastation

I hope I can take that train into Grand Central Terminal on Sunday morning, 9/11. I think I will regret it if I don't. A Resurrection is meant for all of us.

My Live Blog for Hurricane Irene (Norman Costa)

My Live blog for Hurrican Irene (Norman Costa)

by Norman Costa

 

1:01 PM, Monday, August 29, 2011

The clouds have gone,

The sun is shining,

Goddess is in her Heaven,

And all is right with the world.

 

4:34 PM, Sunday, August 28, 2011

Sunday	3pm	4pm	5pm	6pm	7pm	8pm	9pm	10pm
Forecast	Cloudy	Cloudy	Rain	Rain	Cloudy	Cloudy	Cloudy	Cloudy
Wind mph	22 W	39 W	46 W	45 W	44 W	42 W	40 W	34 W

I'll be honest. I was looking for some excitement from Irene. What a disappointing date. The kitchen window is not leaking. I don't see any downed trees, or even limbs. There are some scattered leaves. The sidewalks and streets almost dry. Big friggin deal!

My friend in Connecticut called to say they have trees down and no power. Her cell phone battery is going dead. She won't be going to work, tomorrow. At least they have some bragging rights.

The remaining stats on rain and wind, above, say we will have a little rain and maybe the wind will blow. Well, whoop di doo!

I think it's summed up by a headline on CNN.com: "New Yorkers unimpressed by Irene." I live in Poughkeepsie, now. But, I'm a New Yorker. I'm not impressed by Irene. 

Wait a minute. The trees are swaying. There's a wind. Really. Let's see what happens.

3 Quarks Daily Annual Philosophy Prize

Details here. Philosopher Patricia Smith Churchland will judge the competition. Please nominate a deserving blog post in philosophy that you have come across in the last 12 months.

 
 

 

Ladakh: Shangri La on the Silk Route

Shangri La commonly evokes images of easy utopia that don't quite describe the barren and rocky desert like character of Ladakh and the hardscrabble life of its cheerful inhabitants. Nevertheless, the awesomeness of its rugged terrain is breathtakingly beautiful and amidst the solitude and thin air, peace prevails. The amazing sky, the eerie silence on the high mountains and the shock of stumbling upon a green valley beside a sparkling stream and the changing colors of its pristine lakes glistening beneath giant bald mountain peaks are experiences that stun, charm and soothe. Hugging the sides of intimidating, crumpled mountain ranges are numerous ancient Buddhist monasteries whose architecture blends seamlessly with that of the land itself. Ladakhis belong to a colorful sprinkling of many ethnicities (Tibetan, Indian, Central Asian and Indo-European tribes like the Hunzas) with people of Tibetan ancestry constituting the vast majority. They are divided nearly equally between Buddhists and Muslims (along with a tiny Christian community around Leh) with the former inhabiting the central and eastern regions and the latter mostly concentrated in the northwestern parts.

Ladakh was once upon a time an important way station along the ancient Silk Route, a vibrant trading network  involving China, India, Central Asia and Europe. Known as "Little Tibet," Ladakh saw a steady traffic of traders bearing varied exotic goods during the mild summers as well as its brutal winters (when traders used the frozen rivers as roads) crisscrossing the region. Around the middle of the last century for political and security reasons Ladakh, which shares its borders with China and Pakistan near the disputed territory of Kashmir, became inaccessible to both Indian and foreign civilians. (The invasion of Kashmir by Pakistan in 1948 and the China-India war in 1962 resulted in the sealing of the borders) Only the Indian army could travel there, as also domestic business travelers with permits. The place could only be reached via arduous land routes. The already remote land connected to a couple of Indian states by crude roads over rough terrains and very high mountain passes was mostly forgotten by the rest of the world. Ladakh remained isolated until the mid 1970s when the Indian government opened it up to civilians. But travel remained difficult and only the most adventurous or those with business interests ventured out by cars or buses. The bolder thrill seekers often opted for a more dangerous and strenuous motorcycle ride. For some years past, Leh, the biggest city in Ladakh has become connected to Delhi and Srinagar by air, resulting in a sharp rise in tourist and business traffic, both Indian and foreign. Ladakh once more has become a meeting place of people from different parts of the world, passing through.     

I won't go into further details of the history, geography and geology of Ladakh which you can check out in the Wiki link I have provided above. Instead, let me treat this post mostly as a photo-blog and share some pictures of this amazing place that we took during our travels recently during July-August. It was very gratifying that I experienced very little physical discomfort (not even a nose-bleed) in a place of rarefied air where our travels sometimes took us as high up into the Himalayas as nearly 18,000 feet and where my husband convinced me to go up the mountainous roads on the back of a motorcycle. I am glad that we decided to make the trip to Ladakh. A few years from now, we may not have had the confidence to test our strength and endurance in its unforgiving climate and stark landscape of spectacular beauty.

It's a Numbers Game (Norman Costa)

 
It's a Numbers Game

by Norman Costa

As a child, arithmetic came easily to me. My father, though not well educated, had a facility with numbers. He had a fascination for tricks and short-cuts to computations. One day he brought home a book, "The Trachtenburg Speed System of Basic Mathematics," by Jakov Trachtenberg. He is a survivor of The Holocaust, who worked out his system in the camps, and saved his sanity in the process. 

I tried some of the techniques. They worked very nicely, except that I lost interest, quickly. His system was great for very fast arithmetic calculations, but it did nothing to convey an understanding of numbers. That was the 8th grade. From another source I learned how to speed multiply, mentally, 2 numbers ending in 5. I still use it today because I developed an understanding of how the numbers worked.

"Anybody got a calculator? I need to know how much is 165 times 35." People are looking for a calculator or pencil and paper. About 15 to 20 seconds pass. I am quiet and unconcerned with finding anything. "Fifty-seven seventy five." I say. Silence. A few moments later the one in need of emergency calculation asks, "You sure." As I smile at him I tap my right temple with my right index finger. Someone finds a calculator, enters the information, and says, "Wow! You're good."

Another speed trick is multiplying any arbitrarily long number by 25. As long as I can look at the number I can start reciting the answer, beginning with the left most digit. "OK, smarty pants. How about 9 billion, 880 million, 981 thousand, 445." I right down the number so I can see it. I reply, "2 4 7 0 2 4 5 3 6 1 2 5."

As a junior in high school I fell in love with the book, "One Two Three ... Infinity," by George Gamow, and first published in the 1940s. It has been updated and improved and still selling. It did two things for me. It gave me a feel for numbers including an introduction to infinity. Also, it was the beginning of a life-long interest in Einstein's theories of Special and General Relativity. That life-long interest expanded into Cosmology and Quantum Mechanics.

In high school I read a number of the popular books on Einstein. Understanding the Lorentz transformation formulas was a near spiritual experience. College was statistics and calculus. Graduate School brought me into advanced statistics and a start on Bayesian Statistics. For lack of a better way to say this, statistics gave me a love for number play.

This came to the forefront one day when Bill O'Reilly ("The Factor" on Fox) responded to an AAAS scientist who said that scientists do not regard present knowledge as absolute. O'Reilly smirked at the scientist and thought he 'owned' him by saying that, of course, there are absolutes. There are only 24 hours in a day (actually more and getting longer, I was thinking,) there are only 4 seasons in a year (arbitrary demarcations, I thought,) and 1 + 1 is always equal to 2 (not in Boolean math, and not in summation of near light speed velocities, I said to myself.) It was a wonderful moment. The man is an idiot.

Today I read the non-mathematical explanations of both Cosmology and Quantum Mechanics. My calculus is too old and too rusty to take me any further. Yet, I am intrigued by how much more I would understand if I took the time relearn and surpass my earlier mastery of calculus. Hmmm.

I guess this was inevitable

We have spoken about it before here. Now some tech savvy desis have made it official. More from Muneeza Naqvi of the Associated Press.

Hunting The Replicators: How Did Life Begin? (Norman Costa)

Hunting The Replicators: How Did Life Begin? (Norman Costa)

by Adam Frank, Astrophysicist, University of Rochester

"Amoebas are alive but rocks are not. What is the difference?

"For many people, one of the greatest difficulties in understanding the scientific narrative of cosmic evolution is how nature took the path from non-life to life. This question of "abiotic genesis" haunts many a science and religion debate with advocates of scriptural literalism unwilling to grant that natural processes, unmediated by a higher intelligence, could have taken "dead" matter and created living material.

"Now the path from "just" molecules to "something more" has gotten a bit more clear as researchers take a crucial step toward building the holy of holies: a self-replicating molecule.

"Part of this story, however, is the funny thing that happened to scientists studying the origin of life over the last 80 years. Their perspectives were profoundly rewired.

"In the 1950s, chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey performed a brilliant and brilliantly illustrative experiment. Miller and Urey created a simulated version of the early Earth in a test tube. An "atmosphere" of hydrogen, ammonia and methane was created in one flask. An "ocean" of liquid water was held in a separate flask. The two were connected and a high voltage discharge was set up in the atmospheric flask to act as lightening (and a source of UV light)."

Read more HERE.

 

"Four More Years" (Norman Costa)

"Four More Years" (Norman Costa)

This political cartoon by Clay Jones is one of the best I've seen. And "No," it is not an old cartoon.

"Meet Clay Jones

"Clay Jones was often sent to the principal's office as a child for making fun of his classmates. He discovered at a young age that he had a knack for poking fun at the flaws of others, and he decided later to make it a career. He went from drawing simple Crayola caricatures of his friends to full-sized comic books by the time he was in high school."

Read more HERE.

Midnight’s problem child (Omar)

 First publishted on 3Quarksdaily.com

Pakistan and India are celebrating the 64^th anniversary of “Freedom at midnight” with their usual mix of nationalism and jingoism (Bangladesh seems to ignore this nightmarish dream anniversary and will be mostly ignored in this article). The fashionable opinion about India (within and without, though perhaps less on the Indian left) seems fairly positive; about Pakistan, decidedly muddled if not outright negative. Is this asymmetry another manifestation of the unfair assessments of an Islamophobic world? Or does this difference in perception have a basis in fact?

Headlines: Student Tiger Tamer Gets Mauled (Norman Costa)

Headlines: Student Tiger Tamer Gets Mauled (Norman Costa)

Barack Obama reminds me of Woodrow Wilson after WWI. Wilson and Obama are interesting contrasts. Wilson had a great deal to do with getting the League of Nations off the ground. The League was never really effective, but it paved the way for the United Nations. Wilson was unable to get the US Congress to ratify America's membership in the League. Why? Because he was totally unwilling to compromise with the opposition. 

Obama, on the other hand, seemed totally unwilling to take the reins in his own hands and act decisively - perhaps acting unilaterally to raise the debt ceiling under the 14th Amendment. Bill Clinton advised as such. Raise the debt ceiling and let the courts catch up with him later, if they can.

Wilson was inflexible because he considered a charter and organization for peace to be a moral imperative and an inviolable principle. Obama was inflexible in wanting compromise and compelling Congress (and both parties) to take responsibility for the state of the Nation's economy. It was his honor bound duty to change the ugly stripes of the dysfunctional tiger.

The 1919 Treaty of Versailles, with the help of an enabling League of Nations, led directly to WWII and the continuation of a 130 year war that started in 1870 (Franco-Prussian) and ended in 1999 with the final disposition of the Baltic States. It rolled over Wilson as if he were not there. 

The political system in Congress is rolling over Obama. It will make a political irrelevancy of the highly principled Obama just as it did to the highly principled Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson. Obama doesn't have to disown his principles. He just has to add a few, like taking names, kicking ass, taking no prisoners, and shooting the ones he has.

Wouldn't it be interesting if Obama could integrate his ideals with the master politician of a Bill Clinton and the tough as nails, Bad-ass of a Rohm Emmanuel? Well, we don't have a Lyndon Johnson any more, but we have the next best thing. Hillary Clinton. Trouble is, I do not think she is up for another shot at it.

Paul Weiner has some interesting thoughts on Barack Obama's state of mind. Read more HERE.

A Not So Brilliant Britain (Sujatha)

Having just gotten back from Across the Pond, and been visiting there, albeit in non-hotspots,  while rampaging hordes managed to destroy the fragile sense of peace that hovers over the United Kingdom, it seems almost mandatory that I proffer an opinion regarding what brought them to this bind.

For a people who like to utter "That's brilliant" to just about anything they agree and assent to, it's quite evident that this recent train of incidents has left them shocked, angered and ashamed that such should still occur in this day and age.

Britain is no stranger to blackened smouldering ruins destroyed by internecine warfare, just not too many in recent years. With a social safety net and welfare system that is arguably one of the best in the world, there ought to be little that might persuade the average Brit to turn from law-abiding subject of HRM Queen Elizabeth II  into rioter and looter. Yet that is precisely what happened last week. The rioters smashed into stores large and small, indulging in petty thievery and arson, while the police watched on in deliberate (or was it unwilling?) inaction.

The root cause was ostensibly the shooting of a gentleman(?) named Mark Duggan, which evoked cries of 'police brutality', and turned into an opportunity for mobs to form, well guided by the cell phones and social networks, if we are to go by the talking heads of TV and politicians ascribing blame for the lovely coordination of the attacks.

I had only free copies of the Daily Mail to read: dreck, like the US' National Enquirer, but smarter  and wittier.The articles were all about 'National Shame' , "Millionaire's daughter part of rioters' mob, sob-stories by unemployed moms "I lost my apartment in one of the fires"), what I got to see in this paper was the conservative attitude towards the rioters. Article after article pushed the viewpoint that it was time for the Nanny State to feed the rioters some bitter medicine, taking away privileges ('Evict them from the tax-payer funded homes that they now enjoy', 'Dismiss those with government jobs', etc.)  Other voices, mostly on TV, pleaded for a more lenient approach, advocating soul-searching. "We must address the malaise that pervades our culture, not make things worse by punishing those already alienated by the disconnect between what they see the haves enjoy in comparison with them, the have-nots."

While the Land of Milk and Honey has brought plenty to its people, it has failed to give them the sense of purpose that would deter such acts of random violence. Spectacles and grand pomp like Will and Kate's wedding cast an aura and extend the national sense of pride for only so long. While no one would wish for a calamity like the tsunami and nuclear disaster that visited Japan recently, it forced a land of Lotus-Eaters to seriously reconsider and retool their attitudes toward life, waking the dormant spirit of national unity and cooperation in face of tragedy.

For Britain, with her aging holy cows, and a new disspirited younger generation, one wonders if the worst is yet to come, or whether these recent events will have served as an effective wake-up call.

Photos of the recent damage

British PM Cameron blames 'social media' for riots

Brit techies blame TV for riots too

BBC blames the English as a whole

 

Partition documentary

India Pakistan Partition BBC Special Presentation 1 of 6‬‏ - YouTube.

I have only seen a little of it and I can tell you that the usual BBC political correctness and xanthognostisicm does creep in (at the very least, it is "balanced", which means the heroes and villains are equally responsible for all events, except White villians, who may be blamed for some of their villainy)....still, it looks like its worth watching.

Quantum Relativity (Norman Costa)

Quantum Relativity (Norman Costa)

Spouse arrives home: Honey, my wave function just collapsed.

Beginning of a poem: I shot an arrow into the future.

Q. Where will you be?
A. Here, there, and everywhere.

Mr. Time: What are you trying to do? You know you cannot reach the speed of light.
Mr. Velocity: Just slow down, will you.

Mr. Length: Hey! You are never going to get to the speed of light.
Mr. Velocity: Don't get short with me.

Mother and daughter speak simultaneously.
Mother: I know you took my best silk blouse to wear tonight, so put it back in my closet.
Daughter: I hate you. You are always entangling me. That's not fair.

Angry impatient Mom:
Listen Mister, I want straight answers from you. You tell me where you are going, but you do not tell who will be with you. Or else you tell me you are going out with Darnell, but you do not tell me where you are going. The most I ever get from you is a vague idea of where you are going and a vague idea who is going with you.

I cannot be in two places at the same time.
Liar, I know you can.

Q. Come on, tell me. I'd like to know. Are we going to have sex tonight or are you going to have another head ache?
A. I really do not know. You will know, tonight, when you open the door to our bedroom.

Photon, listen to me. I said go though the slot on the right. You are all over the place.

Q. What is your favorite romantic song?
A. "Chances Are," sung by Johnny Mathis.

Q. Time, what is the matter with you?
A. Oh, it is one thing after another.
Q. Time, why don't you take the weekend off?
A. I can't. Otherwise, everything happens all at once.

String theory is the best. 
You have to prove it to me.
I don't have to prove it to you.
Yes, you have to.
Have not.
Have to.
Have not.
Have to.

Cookery Carousel (Sujatha)

Why do we watch food shows on TV?  For a variety of reasons, as varied as the different offerings on the likes of The Food Network and The Learning Channel, analyzed to exhaustion by Akim Reinhardt on 3QD.

I've come to the conclusion that I hate cooking, and would be entirely happy if I never had to lift a finger in the kitchen. Why then does my remote-clicking finger seep into paralysis when it reaches the Food Network?

There's no dearth of gorgeous, tastefully arranged plates of food, faux drama, foodie discussions with lines read straight off the teleprompter. These are all actors purveying a story and concept to the TV audience. "You too can get off the couches and start cooking like the Great Chefs, or the Bounteous Babushkas, or the Bulimic Bombshells."

It's less of Buon Appetito, and more of the triumph of Mindless over Matter.