Places to see

If I ever visit Tokyo, I want to tour this place: It is called G-Cans and it is composed of tunnels, pumps and tanks for the storage of excess water in the rainy season.

I would have taken a picture, but was too hungry

After getting back from Costco early this afternoon, I was ready for lunch. An avocado I had gotten a few days ago got ripe prematurely and so I had to eat it now or it would end up being thrown out. We always keep corn tortillas on hand and we had a small amount of roasted chicken and a little bit of cheddar cheese.

I layed-out three tortillas on an oven safe plate, then added shredded cheese and then chicken. The oven was baking and so I let the plate bake for a bit and then switched it to broil. Once it was all melty, I put on the slices of avocado, some tomatoes, scallions, then a dollop of sour cream and finally a lot of Tabasco sauce

It was a colorful and pretty dish but hunger overcame me and so there is no photographic evidence.

Twittered but not posted

I ran a horrible pace for the 2nd half. The first leg--south on 27 down to 225 took 30 minutes. The second leg--from 225 to Lowell Road in Concord took 54 minutes. Then North to Carlisle center took another 40 minutes. The final leg took about 47 minutes. I got passed by a woman in the final leg, but found that I had it in me to go faster and stayed with her for half a mile till our paths diverged. Then I slowed right back down. I think after a dozen miles or thereabouts, one just looses the will to push hard.

Icicle

A pile of ice below a big icicle.

Sunshine + Ice

The Icicle of Damocles.

The mirror-immage of Cassandra

The Goracle

Once Al Gore was a mere vice president, but now he is a Nobel laureate and climate-change prophet. He repeats phrases such as "unified national smart grid" the way he once did "no controlling legal authority" -- and the ridicule has been replaced by worship, even by his political foes.

Cassandra had the power to tell the future, but the curse that nobody would believe her. Gore is cursed with always being wrong about the future but he has the power to make everybody believe his wrong predictions.

Sunday Marathon training

86 minutes a couple of Wednesdays ago and 85 minutes today, so that is progress however slight. Last October I was able to run this route in 78:30 but that was ideal conditions--not the 20F of today.

Not sure if I should be pleased or disappointed...

Yesterday I was musing on radiocarbon dating. (Yeah, well what do you daydream about in the shower?)

The idea behind the technique is that carbon 14 is constantly made in the atmosphere and decays at a known rate. So the ratio of carbon 14 and carbon 12 in living things will be about the same as in air. But things which are dead will slowly loose their carbon 14 and so you can see how long they have been dead from how much carbon 14 is left.

The thought I had was that if the concentration of CO2 varies over time, then either depleted carbon is being added to the system or enriched carbon is being taken out of the system. So, assumptions about the past ratios of 12C/14C could be wrong. Just as an example: If we add carbon to the atmosphere by burning coal, we are adding exclusively 12C since coal is very old and all the 14C has disintegrated.

It turns out that someone has thought of this already: Hans Suess. So, this can be looked at in one or two ways. If nobody had thought of it already then either the idea has no merit (I didn't consider something important) or it is genius. Since it has already been thought of, it does have merit but is unremarkable since others have already come up with the same idea.

Karate Girl

Dahlia has been practicing her Karate lately, since she has her yellow belt test today.

She will have already passed or failed by now. Hopefully, passed as she is very sensitive and will take it hard.

She practiced moves by having me pretend to choke her. And then she would escape with a series of hits. It is too cute: She looks so harmless, but her little hits were really effective.

Update: She passed! Yellow belt karate girl! High Ja!

Thank you Mr. President

It would have been so easy in the dark-days of 2006 to have pulled the plug on Iraq. The Iraq Study Group Report gave plenty of bipartisan cover, the Democrats held Congress etc. President Bush doubled-down and found a way to win the thing.

--Now 28 million Iraqi citizens have a chance at freedom and democracy.

--Our military has shown itself as unbeaten and unbeatable.

--Our enemies have seen that our days of giving-up are over.

This one thing has shown what true leadership is: Doing what is right even when all the panjandrums, pundits and public disagree.

Thank You Mr. President

You were right.

I Pledge...

To take celebrities even less seriously than I already do (if that is possible).

For a full deconstruction see iowahawk.

Skiing on the bike path

Happy birthday Jemma!

A few minutes old.

Last Summer on the Seattle monorail.

Andrew Wyeth

I never knew the background of Christina's world. I didn't know she was 55 at the time of the painting or that she was crippled.

The impression it gave me was more along the lines of this other painting...

Wyeth often had a reputation for a grim view of life, but he could be playful too...

20, 10, 0...

Wednesday I went for a 10-mile run in 20F. I wore proper gear, but I won't lie--it was pretty unpleasant.

Thursday was a work day, so I only did 3.5 miles in 10F. I forgot my supplemental stuff at home and it was only bearable because it was so brief.

Today, I remembered the extra clothes and was reasonably comfortable on a 4.25 miler in zero frick'in degrees Fahrenheit.

One nice side-benefit--I never run slow when it is that cold! So this is good solid training.

Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III

Hi did something that hasn't been done before. He landed his jetliner on water and there were no fatalities. Evidently, he didn't have the power or altitude to make it back to the airport and NYC doesn't have a lot of large flat areas other than water.

All of this got me to thinking about the nature of potential. Captain Sullenberger, could have done this feat 20 years ago, or 5 years from now, but he was called upon to do it yesterday. He might have never had to do this kind of flying--most pilots never have to crash-land a plane. Chesley Sullenberger is a hero, but in some sense, he has been one for years.

Quietly waiting for reserves of strength to be called upon.

There are a lot more like him out there, I would bet.

Wednesday training...

I took 86 minutes, so this comes to about 8:20/mile. Eh, it is okay considering the conditions. Not so much the cold or the wind, but that on many of the roads there was snow and ice. This causes a little bit of loss on each step from sliding.

I saw a good number of other runners along the way. You can tell it is cold when runners are so bundled-up that you cannot tell if they are a man or woman until you see their face. I guess if it is really cold, you wouldn't even be able to tell then, since face masks would be de rigeur.

He made some mistakes--but you know, bad luck favors the unprepared

Article and pictures from FoxNews

What did he do wrong, besides the whole financial fraud, cheating on his wife & etc. which necessitated this stunt?

1. He called an emergency while in flight. The problem with this is that authorities will be looking for you if you do that. In fact, Air Force pilots saw the empty plane with the door open--so they would have doubted his death even if the crash site was never found.

2. The plane made it another 200 miles on autopilot and landed in the Florida panhandle. Maybe the autopilot malfunctioned, or was unable to cope with aerodynamic stresses of having an open door in the plane. One would expect that Marcus Schrenker would have had the sense to set it so that the plane would run out of fuel over the Gulf of Mexico and never be found.

Update: It looks as if the plane did crash due South of where he bailed-out.

Update 2: The plane this joker trashed was worth about 1.5 million! Maybe he could have helped his financial situation better by just selling it rather than letting it fly into the ground.

Just need to move the ticker by one.

Looking at the dashboard today I noticed Six Hundred and Sixty Six posts. Yikes! Need to just add one and stop tempting fate.

Global Warming News

According to the AP:

Anticipation is growing for the "Elfstedentocht" or "11 Cities Tour," a national event where speed skaters race along a 200-km (120-mile) course beginning and ending in the northern city of Leeuwarden. This year marks the 100th year since the race began and if held, the tour would be the first in over a decade.

If it happens a bit more in the next few years, maybe instead of saying it is becoming more rare for temperatures to be cold enough, they will say it used to be rare. It has only been cold enough for the tour 15 times in the last 100 years and this year is one of them.

The shin bone is connected to the knee bone...

On Friday I took a spill while jogging and skinned my knee. Now, on Sunday my lower back hurts.

My question is: Did I actually hurt my back when I fell? Or is it just that my hurt knee has been keeping me from bending at the knee and so I have strained my back by bending at the waist in the last couple of days?

I think it is the latter of these options. My neck and shoulders on one side were sore on Saturday, but not my back, so any fall-related wrenching was showing itself by one day later.

This would all be very academic, but it snowed last night and I am going into a shoveling with some concern.