Visitors in the side yard, 30 October 2022 (15 October 2022)

 Bobcats, I think.

There are three, perhaps a small family unit on the prowl.  

Original image: 15 October 2002 in the middle of the afternoon.

ETA: formatting.

In the balance on Twitter, 30 October 2022

Elon Musk completed his takeover of Twitter on Thursday, 27 October 2022.  There has been a lot of speculation about what this means, especially for free speech and civility.  So far, Musk has repeatedly said that there are no changes as of yet, and he has appointed a committee to review current policies and recommend changes.  Musk declares himself to be a "free-speech absolutist" which most people seem to believe is a statement that the Nazis and nut-cases will be allowed free reign.  I have been trying to withhold judgement to see where Musk takes Twitter.  I am not optimistic, but neither am I at the panic-and-run stage.  

Then, today, this report surfaced.  It seems that Musk replied to a tweet by Hillary Clinton about the attack on Paul Pelosi and cited an article in a newspaper declaring that Pelosi is gay and the attacker is a prostitute, the attack was about a lovers dispute, and that Pelosi was in his underwear.  The FOX station that reported the underwear has since withdrawn their report, and the newspaper turns out to be a Qanon-aligned craphole of a news site.  Musk defended the tweet with weaselwords about "it seems", but he eventually deleted the tweet after the condemnations grew.  This is not sufficient.  Musk is an adult and should know better than to spew unsubstantiated drivel to his millions of (Twitter) followers.  

The point of this note is two-fold.  First, Musk needs to have an adult nearby at all times to supervise him (that is advice based on prudence; I am not proposing any sort of law).  Musk's failure to heed this idea will contribute to his $42 Billion collapse, and that will be penalty enough.  Second, I am concerned that Twitter will indeed become a cesspool of drivel.  This suggests that I will not be using Twitter a year from now.

Halloween is approaching, so I have attached a photo of a neighbor's decorations.  Happy Halloween!

When in Nantes, 28 October 2022 (9 September 2022)

Distractions kept me from posting photos from our recent travels.  I shall take steps to remedy this oversight.

In September, 2022, we traveled to France and Greece for long planned and long postponed vacations.  After repeated delays and changes, the travel followed a three-part structure.  The first part was a week of vacation in France near Bordeau and Perigord, a week of being in the "delegation" in Nantes, and a week of sailing in Greece.  

On our first night in Nantes, we had dinner that featured the local tradition of crepes made of buckwheat, dining al fresco.  We stayed in an unusual hotel - Micr'Home - and took in art throughout the town.  The walking was good and helped us fight the insidious tendrils of jetlag.

The destinations of the first week required that we pick up a rental car at the Nantes airport.  We traveled with our son, A, to Les Epesses, home of the famed Puy du Fou historical theme park.  Puy du Fou is an interesting place.  On the one hand, it is a bit schmaltzy (campy) for Americans, but it is extremely well done and a lot of fun.  Various bits of history have passed by or near a chateau near Les Epesses, and these historical facts are turned into spectacles.  For example, there is evidence that Romans were nearby and so there is a colloseum with a spectacular show that involves chariot races, wild animals, and gladiators.  There is evidence that Vikings raided in the area, so there is a spectacular show that involves a Viking longship and burning barns.  Laperouse, a famous explorer, is featured in an exhibit about his explorations because he was born in the nearby town. 

I seem to be having trouble with the blogging tool, so I will stop (albeit abruptly) and continue in the next post.

It took me a couple minutes, 28 October 2022

Reading bumperstickers is an old hobby of mine.  I have been reading them for years.  I do not know why as most are pretty boring.  "My child is the honor student of the week", or someone's favorite politician, or "Wall Drugs".  So when I run across an interesting one, it is a secret pleasure.

In the parking lot of a nearby grocery store, an unusual bumpersticker was found.  It took me a few minutes to work it out, so I will delay the reveal to give you, dear reader, a chance to read the secret message.

Another odd hobby of mine is to read license plates.  Well, not merely read them, but interpret them.  Today, personalized license plates are common and "reading" a plate is a common game.  However, at one point, license plates were not personalized and they all seemed to use a single format:  AAA NNN, or three letters and three numbers.  I suspect this simple rule was the result of sample bias, but it held true for many years in my experience.  I used to interpret the AAA letters as computer instructions.  "BRA 565" became 'BRAnch", "BNE 354" became "Branch if Not Equal", "ADC 757" became "ADd with Carry", "LDA 324" became "LoaD Accumulator", and so.  Not all three-letter groups had actual instructions that correspond to anything I had seen or used, so part of the game was to make up instructions that fit.  A famous example would have been "HCF 523" for "Halt and Catch Fire".  A silly little game that kept me alert on many long highway trips.

In my first reading of the curious bumpersticker, I thought about convenient substitutions that might resolve into something, and that thought is partially right.  I finally realized the entire expression does not resolve into one thing, rather there are independent pieces that resolve into separate things that, in turn, combine into the meaning.  The key was to realize that there is nothing one can do to reduce the square root of minus one except i.  Yes, one could stick in Euler's formula (e^(i*pi)+1=0), but that is more complex rather than simpler.  So we have, potentially, three tokens and the middle one is "i".  (As an engineer, I might try to put in a j rather than an i, but let us put that aside.)  That leaves the E/c^2 and the PV/nR.

Well, the first E that comes to mind is Einstein's - E=mc^2.  This immediately reduces to mc^2/c^2, or m.  This give us "mi" plus a third token.

By inspection, it is clear the third token is a play on the ideal gas law: PV=nRT.  If you take the ideal gas law and rearrange it to put the P, V, n, and R terms on one side, we are left with T.

Our solution is: miT, normally written MIT, and that is consistent with the playful spirit of the puzzle.  Do you have an alternative solution?

Jibe 1 - sloppy use of cases, and an educated person would use formulae that have uppercase M and I.

Jibe 2 - a graduate of a proper engineering university would know that j is the correct terminology for imaginary numbers and this was clearly created by a mathematician rather than an engineer.

Smoke 5, 23 October 2022

Although we are celebratinig the return of the rainy season and clear air, the recent past has something to teach us.  

Smoke is in our future.  

Since 2000, the four smokiest summers have been in the last six years.  Prior to 2017, Zero was the typical number of unhealthy summer days.  Keep those N95 masks handy.

Smoke 4, 19 October 2022

According to KIRO-7, a Seattle TV station (emphasis added), Seattle has the worst air quality in the world at this time.  This source did not quote numbers, but other sources quote ratings at 300 and above.  From IQAir, the Seattle Eastside is generally above 300 (hazardous), as illustrated after the quote from KIRO-7.  Our neighborhood is reporting 296 or 366, depending on the sampling station one selects.  The air has been distinctly amber or brown all day.  To be honest, I have been to Delhi and Beijing when the air quality was worse, but this is bad today.

Heavy smoke from wildfires continues to reduce air quality in Seattle and Western Washington, and an air quality alert has been extended for a second time.

The poor air quality landed Seattle the top spot for the worst air quality in the world, according to IQAir’s air quality and pollution city ranking, as of 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday.

After starting the day in the top 5, Seattle fluctuated up and down the top 15 before taking the top spot in the afternoon.

The cities that ranked below Seattle were Kolkata, India, at #5; Chengdu, China, at #4; Delhi, India, at #3; and Lahore, Pakistan, at #2.

Portland, Oregon came in at #6. 

Smoke 3 - 18 October 2022

While we were traveling in September and early October, we read reports of continuing smoke in metro Seattle coming from the forest fires east of here.  One featured in the news was around Route 2 and the town of Skykomish.  We have been back for a week, and the smoke continues.  I posted a couple days ago about the intensity of the smoke, but it was clearing in the days since.  Today, the smoke has returned.  In the morning hours, there is a distinct haze and color cast in the air, visibility has dropped dramatically from the norm, and there is a scent of woodsmoke in the air.

Photo taken soon after sunrise.

Smoke 2 - 15 October 2022

 How bad is the air quality, I hear you ask.  Well, this bad.

Smoke - 15 October 2022

We have returned from travels to France, Greece, and Canada, only to find that the fire season continues and air quality is getting bad.  When we returned yesterday from Canada, the air was hazy but did not smell.  Today, the air is much hazier, smoky looking, and there is a clear scent of burnt wood in the air.  An odd thing we noticed that that there were air quality alerts for metropolitan Seattle but no such alerts for metropolitan Vancouver (BC) - yet the air quality seemed about the same.  I conclude that Canadian authorities have lax requirements, either for air quality or for reporting of air quality.

We flew to France via Amsterdam.  I masked the entire trip as I was spending time in a small aluminum tube with a couple hundred strangers.  It only takes one or two hoseheads to make an entire airplane sick (I debated using a different phrase, a more sympathetic tag, but I cannot imagine why an intelligent person knowingly ill or feeling ill with COVID symptoms would intentionally travel on an airplane, but I digress).  We staved off some jet lag by wandering around Nantes (FR) and settled on a small crepe restaurant for dinner.   The next day or so, we picked up a car at the airport and headed out for some tourism.  There were three prongs to our travels: Puy du Fou, Cognac, and cave paintings.  I will give particulars later; for now, it was a great leg of the trip.

For the second leg, we were in Nantes and environs as members of the "delegation" from the Seattle-Nantes Sister City Association (SNSCA).  Originally scheduled for 2020, the trip was to celebrate the 40th anniversity of the twinning of Seattle and Nantes.  COVID changed the world, so the 40th became the 41st and then the 42nd anniversary.  With any luck, the 45th anniversary will be celebrated in 2025.

For the third leg, we flew to Greece to go sailing.  We met up with six friends to sail a 48-foot catamaran among the Saronic islands, including Ydra (Hydra) and Poros.

Shortly after returning home, we went to the cabin in Canada to do the annual burn.  This was to be for the Canadian Thanksgiving, a long weekend (3-day) in October that is the traditional weekend when the holiday is celebrated and the cabins are closed down for the winter.  The winter rains have usually settled in by now, making it safe to burn the accumulated prunings and tree cuttings down on the beach.  This year, we are in a continuing drought and the days remain clear and warm.  The burn ban remains in place, so we hope to return in mid-November to burn.  We could wait until Spring for the burn, but that gives the brush piles a lot of time to build up thick growths of mold and mildew that will give my sinus passages a rough ride.  We have burned in the Spring in the past, and it was no fun.

Now back at home and looking forward to the rains and the end of the fire season.