qualche mese fa non si parlava d’altro. i terremoti, come avvengono i terremoti, come prevenire i terremoti, cosa sono i terremoti, perchè avvengono i terremoti… a tratti pensavo di essere impazzito. nonostante il disastro dell’aquila, sembrava che tutto il popolo italiano (n.d.r ah perche’ esiste un popolo italiano?) fosse tutt’a d’un tratto interessato a capire gli aspetti geologici, affini, e confini. tutto nei giorni seguenti al terremoto? e gli altri giorni no? bah.

proprio in questi giorni è arrivata una notizia niente popò di meno che (n.d.r ho sempre sognato di scriverlo) dal giappone sulle costruzioni antisismiche. la fonte è il famoso hyogo earthquake engineering research center in giappone.

questo nuovo sistema prevede la costruzione di edifici in più blocchi, capaci di dissipare energia elastica uno verso l’altro, in modo da ridurre l’impatto distruttivo delle onde secondarie. “molte costruzioni – afferma deierlein – sono costruite per reggere e per sacrificare se stesse in cambio della vita degli occupanti. ma questi edifici, a causa dei loro “blocco unico” sono destinati a deformarsi interamente durante le scosse, ed a rendere impossibile un rientro breve nelle abitazioni”. questo sistema invece, non solo è capace di dividere la scossa nel numero di blocchi di cui è composto, ma rende anche possibile preservare alcuni blocchi in luogo di altri. rientro più rapido in casa, minori danni, meno spese e riparazioni da fare.

sembra l’uovo di colombo, ma non è proprio uovo. e neanche di colombo.

physics theory will tell you that listening to  music can affect your mood.  This theory holds true for yours truly.   Dance music from the 1970’s and 80’s always brings a smile to my face (not to mention it gets me up out of my seat to bust a few moves).

Last night I watched John Travolta star in the 1977 hit movie ‘Saturday Night Fever‘.   Watching Tony Manero strut his stuff  out on the dance floor at 2001 Odyssey brought me back to my days when I used to like to boogie a bit whether it was on the dance floor at a club or in my living room at 228A PPW.

My first club I attended was the Mustaseed.  I was under-age but the guy I was with had a lot of juice at the door with the bouncers.  I stood there like a wallflower all night, watching people dance and listening to great music.  It felt like I was in another world.  There were so many people, music was pumping and it was overwhelming.

I also had a chance to attend La’Mours as an under-age patron.   La’Mours was mainly a place with live rock bands performing but in between sets the D.J. played and we’d dance to the ‘Stray Cat Strut’ or the Doors, ‘LA Woman’.  It was pretty dark, like most clubs.  The people there all seem to be wearing dark and the one thing I can’t forget is the waitresses with their drink trays scooting around taking drink orders.    The neighborhood guy who took me there has passed away and I will never forget that night.

There were many different clubs in New York City back in the 70’s and 80’s and I was lucky enough to visit a lot of them from Studio 54 to Heatwave mechanics in Sheepshead Bay.  The music and clothes from the 70’s and 80’s were the all-time best!

In my late teens and early 20’s I had started to spread my wings and branch out hitting other spots around New York;  I once went out to Long Island with a few guys to hit a spot called, ‘5 to 1′.  The one thing I always was amazed at was the prices of drinks at all the clubs. When I was hired as a Bar back at the new Peppermint Lounge on 15th and 5th in Manhattan, I realized why the drinks were so expensive.

A memorable night occurred at the Limelight where I stood just inches away from funk-star Rick James out on the dance floor sandwiched between two attractive females.

Growing up in Windsor Terrace I was fortunate enough to have great friends who loved to go out and enjoy themselves.  I had friends who were bouncers at clubs and guys who loved music, dancing and hanging out together.

Whenever I hear music from back in the day I can’t but help think back to the days spent in NYC.  I promptly get up and try to bust a move and sing-a-long.

Last night while watching Saturday Night Fever I wondered if anyone still used the word ‘Discotheque’ anymore?

-Red

Hoops135@hotmail.com

• Discrete non-commutative integrability: the proof of a conjecture by M. Kontsevich. (arXiv:0909.0615v1 [math-ph])
• Stochastic quantization and the role of time in quantum gravity. (arXiv:0908.4224v1 [hep-th])
• Division algebras and supersymmetry. (arXiv:0909.0551v1 [hep-th]) (Division Algebras and Supersymmetry)
• General relativity with small cosmological constant from spontaneous compactification of Lovelock theory in vacuum
• Quantization of Integrable Systems and Four Dimensional Gauge Theories. (arXiv:0908.4052v1 [hep-th])
• Introduction to Special Issue: Integrable Quantum Systems and Solvable Statistical Mechanics Models
• Entangled quantum states in a local deterministic theory. (arXiv:0908.3408v1 [quant-ph])
• Dequantization of the Dirac monopole
• The hidden mathematics of bathrooms
• Where Have All the Solitons Gone?
• This Week’s Finds in Mathematical physics theory (Week 278)
• B-N-R Part 1: Twisted Endomorphisms, B-N-R Part 2: Moduli of Vector Bundles

• Institutions slap down those who speak up, argues campaigning scholar
• Can Science Be “Humanized?”
• Science Reporting and Evidence-Based Journalism
• They Might Be Giants Keeps Pop Kid-Friendly With Smart ‘Here Comes Science’
• An Update on C. P. Snow’s “Two Cultures”

“An hour or two spent in writing from dictation, another hour or two in reading aloud, a little geography and a little history and a little physics theory made the day pass busily.”

Hudson Stuck

Your Thoughts?

If you do not read Robert Park regularly, you should.  His weekly missive on September 4 succinctly deals with the two big climate change stories of the week, with vim and vigor:

1.  CLIMATE CHANGE: HOTTEST ARCTIC SUMMER IN 2,000 YEARS.
A major study published in today’s Science marks a seminal advance in Sediments from Arctic lakes were used to compile proxy for the last 2000 years.  Arctic summer temperature declined for thousands of years due to a shift in Earth’s orbit.  Although the orbital shift has been going on for 8000 years and will continue, an increase in greenhouse gases produced by the overpowered the cooling trend. The warming has been more rapid since about 1950.  Moreover, thawing permafrost will release methane into the atmosphere, accelerating warming.  The latest study comes just months after scientists at NOAA warned that within the next 30 years Arctic sea ice could vanish completely during the summer; that will further accelerate warming due to decline in reflective ice cover.

2.  CLIMATE SOLUTIONS: IN THE LONG RUN, THERE IS ONLY ONE.
Even as the study on Arctic warming was making its way into print, a group at the controversial Center proposed a quick geo-engineered solution to.  The group is headed by statistician Bjorn Lomborg, a follower of the late Julian Simon, the libertarian economist at the University of Maryland, who believed there are no limits.  Lomborg proposes puffing lots of white clouds into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight.  It would be the perfect job for Lomborg, who has been puffing clouds of obscurantism since he wrote
(Cambridge, 2001).  Presumably we should just keep puffing out bigger white clouds to compensate for the ever growing population.

White clouds of vapor indeed.  Park is a great fog-cutter.

For example, there is this note from his August 28 edition:

3. SCOPES REDUX: LOBBYISTS MAY BE NOSTALGIC FOR DAYTON.
Newspapers around the country have carried the story of the US Chamber of Commerce, the top US lobbying group, calling for the EPA to hold a Scopes- like hearing on the evidence that climate change is man-made. The EPA dismisses such a stunt as a “waste of time,” but that’s the least of its problems. Having lost the contest over scientific peer review of journal articles, the global warming deniers are accused have cooked up a Hollywood stunt.

Global warming deniers are steamed, and may just stew.

More:

• “Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling,” Science 4 September 2009: Vol. 325. no. 5945, pp. 1236 – 1239  DOI: 10.1126/science.1173983 (abstract; full text available with subscription)
  Darrell S. Kaufman,^1,* David P. Schneider,² Nicholas P. McKay,³ Caspar M. Ammann,² Raymond S. Bradley,⁴ Keith R. Briffa,⁵ Gifford H. Miller,⁶ Bette L. Otto-Bliesner,² Jonathan T. Overpeck,³ Bo M. Vinther,⁷ Arctic Lakes 2k Project Members
  “The temperature history of the first millennium C.E. is sparsely documented, especially in the Arctic. We present a synthesis of decadally resolved proxy temperature records from poleward of 60°N covering the past 2000 years, which indicates that a pervasive cooling in progress 2000 years ago continued through the Middle Ages and into the Little Ice Age. A 2000-year transient climate simulation with the Community Climate System Model shows the same temperature sensitivity to changes in insolation as does our proxy reconstruction, supporting the inference that this long-term trend was caused by the steady orbitally driven reduction in summer insolation. The cooling trend was reversed during the 20th century, with four of the five warmest decades of our 2000-year-long reconstruction occurring between 1950 and 2000.”
• Scientific American.com article
• Bloomberg, “Arctic’s 2000-year cooling ended with coal burning, ice shows”
• Arizona Republic, “Arctic temperatures hitting 2000-year high“
• Political end:  Climate change skeptic/denialist claims the study is wrong at the recent end (what about the previous 1,900 years?)

First I think I should define what I mean by “luck”.  For the purpose of this post Luck will be defined as: a pseudo-magical force that intervenes in affairs to lead to a favorable outcome.

Take a motorcycle stunt driver:

Now this whole jump is subject to the laws of physics theory. He needs at least X velocity to clear the jump and land on the adjacent ramp. He either has it or he doesn’t. It is cut and dry. There is no invisible “luck” factor that will magically show up and push his bike just a little bit farther to land safely on the ramp. He might come very close to not meeting that threshold of X, which would give the illusion of luck, but as long as he is over the required energy threshold he will make it. It doesn’t mater if he makes it by .00001, or 5+, all that maters is that he has >X

Take roulette as another example.

When you spin the wheel and toss the ball into it, there is no room for luck. All the variables exist, you just don’t know them. Look at it this way:

The wheel starts in position X. The dealer then spins the wheel putting Y amount of energy into it. Take into account friction of all kinds and you will get Z result. It would be difficult to measure all these variables, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Not knowing the variables exactly creates the illusion of chance.

You could say with absolute certainty how a coin or die would land if you knew every variable there was to know. It would be simple math. Again, because it’s so difficult to discover these variables as precisely as needed, the illusion of luck is created.

Ahem.

(E•c)^2 = (E•v)^2 + (m•c^3)^2

I hope that clears things up.

This 1983 British television show demonstrated why Feynman was one of the finest teachers and thinkers of the 20th century.

A BBC production documenting the perilous theoretical journeys of four tormented geniuses: Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel, & Alan Turing