The Last Flight

I am Dick's daughter, Deborah.

With great sadness, I am putting up the final post for this blog.

My father died last Sunday. My Uncle Bob learned earlier last week that Dad hadn't been feeling well, and several attempts to contact him by e-mail and phone went unanswered. On Sunday, my husband and I decided to drive down to Fullerton yesterday to check on him. We found him dead.

He passed away in his bedroom, of natural causes. He lived the last several years of his life exactly as he wanted: safe at home, with his books, his computer, his cats. He had few relationships, but those he had were strong and lasting. I last saw him on Christmas Day, and he was cheerful and optimistic. The encroachment of Parkinson's disease was obvious, and to me his death means that he escaped the worst that disease can do. Though his circumstances were much reduced, he felt a sense of plenty most of us would not have maintained in the face of similar challenges. I grieve his loss, but I am glad for him that he did not live to see that sense diminished.

My brother and I are going to have him cremated as soon as possible, and we're not having a viewing or a service at this time. Later we may decide to hold some kind of private memorial.

Thanks to all of his blog readers for their virtual companionship with him over the last couple of years. As you all know, we are all on this flight together.

I'd like to close this final post by relating an observation I posted on Facebook on Tuesday, when I was musing about what impression I would offer by way of explaining my father. This one came to mind:

Through the entire duration of the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, every week my father would carefully read the names and the biographies published in the L.A. Times of the Americans who died there. The important fact about this observation is that he did so apolitically. He read each entry with great concentration, respect, interest and sorrow. Though his critics might conclude that he was looking for evidence of the legitimacy of his political beliefs , they would be wrong. He was simply paying attention, something he thought was the obligation of a thoughtful human being and a responsible citizen.

I can't think of anything my father did in his life that speaks better of him than than the quiet attention he paid to the value of human life when no one was looking, and the curious way he maintained his optimism despite what he read in the newspaper.

Look at the photo and you'll know how I've been feeling for past few days. I think the problem is I refuse to accept getting old.
Getting old is proof that we're all on this flight together.

Dick

A few physics jokes.

A few physics jokes from the Internet:

A hydrogen atom lost its electron and went to the police station to file a missing electron report. He was questioned by the police: "Haven't you just misplaced it somewhere? Are you sure that your electron is really lost?"
"I'm positive." replied the atom.

Heisenberg was driving down the Autobahn whereupon he was pulled over by a policeman. The policeman asked, "Do you know how fast you were going back there? Heisenberg replied, "No, but I know where I am."

What's the difference between an auto mechanic and a quantum mechanic?
The quantum mechanic can get the car inside the garage without opening the door.

Now doesn't that beat a weather report on my morning walk?
Good jokes are proof that we're all on this flight together.

Dick

Pythagoras music and planetary orbits

Pythagoras' philosophy, music and planetary orbits are all based on the same mathematics. Invented by Sir Isaac Newton to solve the riddle of planetary orbits. Although greatly varied in scale, each is relativistically consistent within itself. It even holds true for orbits of electrons about a nucleus. Each has what we call musically a chord. Relative frequencies can be scaled up or down as desired but they're all 'chords'.
Or not.
Perfect chords are proof that we're all on this flight together.

Dick

Ear lobes are what?

There is an apparent connection between heart attacks and a crease in ones ear lobes. The existence of a small crease in an earlobe is an indication of a possible heart attack. Not imminent but a distinct possibility. A connection between the crease and and a heart attack has been shown to be true over and over again. Something about chi going on here. Nothing quantum shown to be inherent in this concatenation.
Or not.
Ear lobe creases are proof that we're all on this flight together.
Dick

Oh when will they ever learn?

The last few weeks I have been reading Howard Zinn's book "A Peoples History of the United States" for my morning read. I had started to read this impressive book about 15 years ago but never picked up a copy to replace it after giving the book to an inquiring mind. Thanks to son-in-law Rick Testa for unknowingly giving me a much needed new copy on my most recent birthday.
The following quote fairly well summarizes Zinn's belief in the value of war. This was written by a former U.S. Lt. Col. who had flown 101 combat missions over Vietnam commenting on the 'situation' in the Middle East three years before 9/11. Following his military service he had become a Catholic Bishop when he wrote this.
"We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries where resources are coveted by multi-national corporations... Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sands, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water and feed starving children."
Over and over polls in the U.S. show 80% of American people generally agree with this statement although our government doesn't act in accordance.
Democracy indeed! RIP Ruth Bang.
Quoting the Pete Seeger song. "Oh when will they ever learn, Oh when will they ever learn?"

Third World countries will prove that we're all on this flight together.

Dick

Prime numbers and me.

Prime numbers are a fascinating part of the Universe. The are numbers divisible by the number 1 and the number itself. One of the mystical searches regarding to these numbers is when and where they occur. Periodically one used to see a reference to someone who has discovered one more prime number using a pencil and paper. Today they are found with the use of Matrix-like electronic black boxes called algorithms which search on their own and notify the world when it had found another.
On a similar tack recently while surfing the Internet I stumbled across a demonstration of prime numbers called Ulams Spiral. You-lam or oo-lam... the correct pronunciation I know not. But contnuing on...
The prime spiral, also known as Ulam's spiral, is a plot in which the positive integers are arranged in a spiral, with primes indicated in some way along the spiral. There was an accompanying plot of the spiral but it wouldn't copy into the blog. But it should brighten anyone's day just to know there is a thing called Ulams Spiral out there.
Or not.
Ulams Spiral is proof that were all on this flight together.

Dick

Does this make sense?

From the internet:

Can I Smite My Neighbor?
An open letter illustrating the need for discretion in the the application of "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." [Matt. 5:17-19 NIV]

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

Some people are smarter than others proving that we're al on this flihgt together.

R

More on dark flow.

This is copied from an English newspaper.

Something lurks beyond the edge of the observable universe, drawing unimaginable numbers of stars towards it.

Distant clusters of galaxies are all shifting inexorably towards the same spot in the sky, beyond the boundary of what we can see, a baffling discovery by Nasa scientists that seems to challenge our understanding of the Big Bang.

A survey of hundreds of moving galaxy clusters, each of which contains hundreds of millions of stars, shows that they are defying expectations by moving at roughly two million miles per hour towards a particular location that may lie beyond the horizon of our observable universe.

The universe is approximately 14 billion years old and the "cosmological horizon" is defined by the distance from where the light emitted at the moment of the big bang reaches us today - roughly 14 billion light years.

The spot is a patch of sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela and the strange finding flies in the face of the current theories of the universe which would predict such motions as decreasing at ever greater distances.

There are already two giant cosmic mysteries, sources of hard-to-account for anti-gravity and gravity, called dark energy and dark matter, respectively, which are ubiquitous in the universe.

In honour of this, and because the flow cannot be accounted for by the observed distribution of matter in the universe, the Nasa team that found the cosmic drift calls it "dark flow".

The find was made using data from Nasa's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which maps out changes (anisotropy) in the microwave (heat) radiation left over from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, when the universe was born.

This energy can be used to chart galaxy movements by measuring a minute shift of the microwave background's temperature, which astronomers call the "kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect."

The Nasa team, with colleagues at the University of California, Davis, University of Salamanca, Spain, and University of Hawaii, used this effect to track 700 clusters.

"The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe's expansion and does not change as distances increase," says lead researcher Dr Alexander Kashlinsky at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland. "We never expected to find anything like this."

The astronomers detected bulk cluster motions of nearly two million miles per hour. The clusters are heading toward one spot in the sky.

"We find that the entire cluster sample moves coherently (within the measurement errors) in the direction of the sky between Centaurus and Vela constellations. (The patch width of 20º represents the error in the direction determination)."

What's more, this motion is constant out to at least a billion light years and "likely extends across the visible universe," Dr Kashlinsky says. "The distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for this motion," he says.

"We ruled out every possible systematic artifact that can mimic these results and it is not clear what the remaining suspect systematics could be that could contribute to our measurements".

"We conjecture that it likely extends across the entire visible Universe (horizon). This can be explained by the pull from the far-out inhomogeneities, well outside the current horizon of about 14 billion light years."

Cosmologists view the microwave background - the remnant of the flash of light emitted 380,000 years after the Big Bang - as the universe's ultimate reference frame, which scientists describe in a blend of space and time, called spacetime. Relative to it, all large-scale motion should show no preferred direction.

Big-bang models that include a feature called inflation offer one possible explanation for the flow. Inflation is a brief hyper-expansion early in the universe's history.

Dr Kashlinsky and his team suggest that their clusters are responding to the gravitational attraction of matter - the "far-out inhomogeneities" - and were pushed far beyond the observable universe by inflation.

"This measurement may give us a way to explore the state of the cosmos before inflation occurred," he says. "Such structures are expected to be there from pre-inflationary epochs, if indeed our observable homogeneous Universe formed as a result of inflationary expansion in the first moments of the Big Bang."

He likens the observation to one made in a calm ocean. "As far as you can see to the horizon, the ocean seems smooth and isotropic (the same in every direction) and you may conclude that the entire cosmos is like that you see. But then you find a small flow in some direction extending across the entire field of view.

"The flow would then indicate the existence of other very different structures (say ravines to sink to, or mountains to flow from) from your local part of space-time (ocean). In other words, the ocean (locally observed space-time) is just a part of the larger and very different world (cosmos)."

Or not.

Dark flow is a indicator that we're all on this flight together.

Dick

Rain rain go away and don't come back some other day.

Rain rain go away and don't come back some other day. Enough already. East Coast or West. Enough. Stop. Cease and desist. Dry out you're all wet. No more. You win....
Daughter Deb left me a stack of National Geographic magazines. Always fascinating. Replacing my quantum physics reading with Nat Geo mags I can go through them at about three days per magazine. Pretty intense material. But the rate is more casual.
Watching the Science channel on the electric TV, I a coming to a better understanding of dark matter and dark energy. But whatever they are they remain hidden in the extra dimensions. Perhaps the LHC will give us better hints allowing better understanding of what they are.
Seven hidden dimensions are proof that we're all on this flight together.


Dick

What's going on?

On the right is a memorial to Tigger.
Happy New Year! Boy that one sure came fast. Last night I went to bed and everything was 2010, a nice round number. I awoke this am too 2011 what an unusual number. I did some reading and fell asleep during the meditation. And I slept right through the Saturday morning music. I didn't realize I had missed the morning music until 9 am. And I missed my morning walk. And my Prop 215 medication. I'll have to fix that. It's been over a week as I ramp up the anti-Parkinson's medication and nothing is happening. Shake, Shake, Shake. Is there no end? Just to prove that Patience is a Virtue. But Budda hasn't changed.
I recently had a reason to review some of the entries that are over a year old.There is a striking difference between the entries over a year old and the more recent entries which have turned into rather boring weather reports. I guess I'll have to try harder.
One more for those who (whom?) may have missed it:
Happy New Year.
The constancy of Budda is proof that we're all on this flight together.

Dick