Four Strong Winds

"Four Strong Winds" by Neil Young from his album Comes A Time (1978):

I blew my chance to see Neil Young around this time at a small Madison venue called The Church Key because I was under 18 (I could have snuck in). I just love this song and the feeling it evokes. Young's version is a cover of Ian Tyson's song (another Canadian). I once read somewhere that Neil Young loved this song so much as a teen that he used to play it over and over on the jukebox while playing pinball.

Turn! Turn! Turn!

SCOTUS is like the New Testament

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. ~Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV)

The Supreme Court echoed Ecclesiastes' "new thing under the sun" language in a case concerning the patentabilty of oil-eating bacteria, i.e., a species of living things engineered by humans. The decision recited:

The Committee Reports accompanying the 1952 [Patent] Act inform us that Congress intended statutory subject matter to "include anything under the sun that is made by man."
~Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S., 303 (1980)

Compare "there is no new thing under the sun" with "anything under the sun that is made by man."  Novelty was inherent in the Supreme Court's phrase because they were construing 35 U.S.C. § 101, which provides:

Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.*

SCOTUS affirmed that micro-organisms constituted a composition of matter within the meaning of the statute.

Can we reconcile SCOTUS with the Old Testament?  Yes, if we consider Ecclesiastes to refer to matter per se and not to compositions of matter. New chemical compounds, even living organisms, are just old atoms put together in new ways.

On the other hand, SCOTUS was also saying that there was such a thing as something new under the sun, so long as it was made by man.
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*Emphasis added. The language came from Jefferson, but he originally used the term "art" for "process."

New York's Alright...

New York's alright

If you wanna get pushed in front of the subway 

New York's alright

If you like tuberculosis...

What do La Befana, Santa Claus, & Bronco Bama all have in common?

The answer is that they were all named by children. La Befana derives from l'epifania which means The Epiphany in Italian. The story is Italian folklore, and tells of an old woman who was visited by the Three Wise Men on their way to Bethlehem. She declined to go along when invited, but later changed her mind and now spends eternity seeking the Christ child. She is/was the traditional Italian Santa Claus, bringing gifts to good children on the evening of January 5th, the night before the Feast Of The Epiphany. Here is her story in a little video I made to accompany the vinyl LP I knew as a child:

There has been some hand wringing that American-style Halloween has co-opted La Befana's image:

La Befana was obsessed with sweeping, which explains the broomstick. Now I'm wondering where/how the Halloween witch/broomstick came into popular American culture. Anybody?

Santa Claus needs no introduction -- his name derived from Dutch as Sinterklaas which itself came from Saint Nikolaas. Dutch children believe that Sinterklaas brings gifts on December 5th, the night before St. Nicholas Day. If you say Saint Nicholas very quickly as a child might do, you get to Santa Claus. Curiously, the traditional Saint Nick was a rather slender individual and wore blue rather than red. Did Coca-Cola intentionally rebrand him as an obese flyover state type? Recall that red used to be the Democrat (Deep South) color.

"Bronco Bama" of course was coined by a six-year old during the 2012 Presidential election; I draw no intentional similarities between Barack Obama, La Befana, and Santa Claus.

Dank U Sinterklaasje!

The mean old network Grinches have blocked high quality YouTube versions of "The Miracle On 34th Street," an old TV staple around this time of year. I did find my favorite scene of the movie--it's the scene when a young Susie (Natalie Wood) overhears Kris Kringle (Edmund Gween) speaking Dutch to a young orphaned girl from Rotterdam. Susie had been skeptical up to that point, but this scene convinced her of his authenticity.  Gween won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor that year (1947).

The scene is rarely translated (at least when I've seen it, but I haven't seen it lately).

Kris: Hello! I'm glad you came.
Dutch Girl: Oh, you are Santa Claus!
Kris: But of course!
Dutch Girl: I knew, I knew for sure that you would understand!
Kris: Of course, just tell me what you would like to have from Sinterklaus.
Dutch Girl: Nothing, I already have a lot--I only want to be with this nice lady.
Kris: Will you sing a song for me? 

The video rudely cuts off here, but here's the rest, and a translation of the lyrics:

Sinterklaas kapoentje, 

Gooi wat in mijn schoentje, 

Gooi wat in mijn laarsje, 

Dank u, Sinterklaasje. 

Christmas capon,*

Throw something in my shoe,

Throw something in my boot,

Thank you, Sinterklaas.

link

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*The use of capon is interesting:  According to the Wiki:

In one way or another is the name of Klaas Capon transferred to Christmas capon. That a bishop celibate and no sexual life is like a capon, will have contributed to the association, but more important is probably that "shoe" rhymes with capon.

I Need A Little Christmas

The Californication of DC

Glenn Reynolds links to Megan McArdle on the crazy housing market in Washington, DC.  We lived through such housing value puffoonery out here in San Diego, ca. 2000 to 2007. Speculation based on what?

It's not just the housing prices, but the irreversible landscaping of the whole region; I noticed this back here: link

First New Day In The House Of The Rising Sun

The days are getting longer now--can you feel it or is it too soon? Temperature is a lagging indicator so it may be a while before the frigid days pass us by.

Another Quantum of Solstice...

Rutherford and Bohr

[this story continues in part from here.]

Ernest Rutherford discovered the atom's very kernel, the nucleus, but his tiny solar system model of the atom failed. It failed because it had a fatal flaw according to classical electromagnetic theory: Viewed side-on in the plane of the ecliptic, the orbiting electron oscillates charge from side to side and should behave like a miniature transmitter, broadcasting electromagnetic energy like a Marconi transmitter. Giving off energy, bit-by-bit, the electron should spiral into the nucleus. Rutherford never explained that away.

The Importance of Being Near Ernest

Luckily, Rutherford confided his 1909 experiments to young Niels Bohr prior to publishing them. Rutherford had invited Bohr to Manchester to study physics after a brief (and apparently unsuccessful) stint at Cambridge. Inspired,* Bohr spent the summer of 1910 and the subsequent spring (taking time off to marry and to honeymoon), devising his own theory which he published in 1913 (two years after Rutherford finally published his planetary model in 1911).

Bohr got around Rutherford's electron death spiral problem by postulating that it didn't happen! That may sound audacious and even glib, but he overcame "illogical leaps" by solving a bigger mystery which had puzzled generations of scientists: he explained the long-known but little-understood signature hydrogen lines observed in the spectra of stars (recall that stars are mostly hydrogen). According to Bohr, the lines represented quantum leaps in units of energy. He did the math for the hydrogen atom to prove it. The simplistic hope that atoms and the universe were fundamentally similar -- the too small to be seen and the too big to be noticed were whirling masses in motion or "turtles all the way down" -- shone briefly.

According to Bohr's new 1913 theory, electrons encircled a nucleus, but only in stable, fixed-distance orbits (shades of Bode's earlier but discredited planetary law?) but without the continuous death spiral energy radiation. Bohr called his quantized orbits "stationary orbits" (whence my title). A quantum of solstice or standing still.

Electrons in Bohr's stationary orbits still gained or lost energy -- but only by jumping from one orbit to a bigger orbit and vice verse. That was revolutionary. Bohr's math worked out too and depended on Planck's constant which was only 13 years old then.

Planck quantized radiation and Bohr quantized matter--viz, electrons. Scientists struggled in subsequent years with the question of whether electrons were waves or particles and whether light rays were waves or particles. They worried about the meanings of such apparent dichotomies until they gradually realized that they were fighting about language and not about science.
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*Inspired is an understatement

****

My inspiration for the "Quantum of Solstice" is here at Victoria's old blog, to whom I dedicate this blog post.

Scene At Althouse

We protect our mayors with men with guns; we protect our governors with men with guns; we protect the House and the Senate and the President, with men with guns; we protect our courts, our banks, our jewelry stores, our sports arenas, and our pawn shops, all with men with guns.
However, our most precious possessions, our children, we protect with a piece of paper and a sign (the Gun Free Zone law).
Now, in response to the slaughter of 20 innocents, we propose to punish those (gun owners) who are innocent, and protect our most cherished possession, our children, with a another piece of paper (a new gun law). Link

I hope it goes viral

Last Letters From Stalingrad: #31

...How many letters have I written up to now? Thirty-eight according to my calculations, today's included.  In August you wrote me that you keep a mail book, a real file of pen pals with their addresses and peculiarities, the dates you became acquainted with them, and how the friendships fared. It amused me greatly.  Did you add the picture which I sent you to your file?  My mail book is too inaccurate; your bookkeeping is probably better than the little marks I make in my pocket calendar. After all it doesn't really matter whether I wrote you 36 or 37 letters.  I am number five among your pen pals.  It must be very interesting to read all the letters you have received.  They come from all theaters of the war, don't they?  When the war is over, you will have a magnificent volume of memoirs in letter form. This year, at Christmas, we wanted to meet each other for the first time in Karlsruhe. Nothing came of it. The future also looks bleak to me, very bleak.  I see almost no hope. 

Thank God, I have gotten around to saying it. There won't be any meeting; even the date for the coming year can't be kept.  Dear girl, what a fizzle! The stupid thing is that all one can do is look on; that's what's slowly driving me crazy.  If only I had toddled off for home in September, when I caught that shrapnel in my arm.  But I wanted to be around when we captured Stalingrad, and I have often regretted this crazy idea since. 

They were pretty funny letters you received from me;  I have always been a joker, as you can testify.  But jokes won't help us along now; things are getting serious. 

What will you write down in column six of your mail book?  In any case, don't write "He died for Greater Germany," etc., for that wouldn't be true.  Write "for Hanna on such and such a date" for all I care.  I hope you won't find this tone frivolous.  I mentioned your other pen pals.  One of these days, a few of them will go out of commission too. But their circumstances are different.  They will just stop writing all of a sudden.  Their letters will just stop coming.  But I give you formal notice. Fräulein Hanna, this is more or less my last letter, as it were. Farewell. The hope of seeing each other some day is being sacrificed to this idiotic and totally one-sided struggle. Farewell, and as a good-bye, my thanks for the time which you have lovingly devoted to me. At first I meant to write "wasted," but I thought better of it. It was not a waste of time, I got a great deal of pleasure from your letters.

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A key to understanding this ongoing series is here, and here. Each letter (39 in all) was written by a different and anonymous German soldier who knew he was going to die. I associate these letters with Christmastime for reasons explained at the links.

Das Sturmgewehr!

(I haven't done a gun-related post in a while but there are ten of them here, all nested under the "guns" tag)

The assault rifle is under assault again, despite its minimal actual involvement in heinous domestic crime. I think I know why it's targeted: it's got a hellacious moniker which actually traces back to Adolf Hitler. He named the novel weapon das Sturmgewehr (the assault rifle). The original assault rifle had the defining characteristics: light weight, medium cartridge size, & short range. The original Sturmgewehr was both semi- and fully automatic.

Here's a short video on the history of das Sturmgewehr:

Automatic weapons are illegal in most states.  Not in Nevada.  I fired a Thompson (Tommy gun) in Las Vegas and my son shot an MP5 last year.

I Am Constant

I remember this one from early 1970's FM Radio in Madison:

Who Was In My Room Last Night?

I've linked this video a couple times on other blogs; it never goes out of style for me. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers is the chemist/barkeep, but who is the redhead?

Last Letters From Stalingrad: #27

The war came back to Germany

...What a misfortune that there had to be a war!  The beautiful villages fell victim to it and were destroyed. And the fields are not tilled anywhere. And the worst is that so many people have died. Now they lie buried in enemy country. What a great misfortune this is! But you should be glad that the war is in a country far away and not in our beloved German homeland. It must not ever come there and increase the misery!  You must be thankful for that and thank the Lord on your knees. We are standing here on the banks of the Volga and keep watch. For you and our home. If we did not stand here, the Russians would break through and demolish everything. They are very violent and many millions strong. They are not bothered by the cold. But we are terribly cold.

I am lying in a hole dug in snow, and it's only in the evening that I can slip into a cellar for a few hours. You wouldn't believe how good that is. We are on guard, so you don't have to be afraid. But we are getting fewer and fewer all the time, and if things continue this way, soon there won't be anyone here. But Germany has many more soldiers, and they will all fight for their country. We all wish that there will be peace soon and that we shall be victorious. That is the main thing. Keep your fingers crossed.

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A key to understanding this ongoing series is here, and here. Each letter (39 in all) was written by a different and anonymous German soldier who knew he was going to die. I associate these letters with Christmastime for reasons explained at the links.

Ecce LUMO

Ecce Homo, Caravaggio (1605)

Behold the HOMO (Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital), seeking reception;
Behold the LUMO (Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital), offering reception.

Chemical reactions are electronic transfers. I don't mean electronic transfers like PayPal is (although there are similarities between electricity and money). I mean electronic transfers like oxidations and reductions, substitutions, proton transfers--which all involve electron donors and acceptors.  I still think that BH₃NH₃ best illustrates how chemistry is like sex: link

Presumably, the chemistry of memory has some donor and acceptor aspect at the molecular level. Long term potentiation. Learning is also like transubstantiation--words becoming neuronal flesh and all that. But there is more to learning than replication.  As Plutarch noted, learning is less like bucket filling and more like igniting little fires; Jefferson echoed that same thought: knowledge is contagious.

Here are some mnemonics for today's lesson:

HOMO/LUMO
Donor/Acceptor
Base/Acid
nucleophile/electrophile
Plug/Socket
Hand/Glove
Foot/Shoe

You can guess the rest.

Last Letters From Stalingrad: #26

...I still must tell you that we went to the movies on Thursday. It was not a regular show, otherwise you might think that we have more time than we knew what to do with. We saw "Geier-Walli;" all sat on the floor on their helmets or squatting like Negroes. It is a very nice film. You wrote me that I should be careful with girls. But, Maria, there aren't any girls around here. We were all by ourselves, close to two hundred men. The movie came from the propaganda company. They play in the barn every evening; only yesterday, so have I heard, the Russians fired into the village. I had planned to see "Geier-Walli" earlier in Dresden and Hanover, but I couldn't make it then. In Stalingrad I finally succeeded and saw "Geier-Walli." What a joke. If I go on leave, I am going to see "Geier-Walli" in a real movie house. I hope they will play the film in Dresden. Even in the barn the film was quite beautiful. Only the sound couldn't be heard properly, and then the others made so many jokes, and smoked so much, you couldn't anything for smoke. Some also used the show to get warm and to get some sleep. "Geier-Walli" in Stalingrad. I'll never forget it.

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"Wally of the Vultures" (1940) IMDb.

A key to understanding this ongoing series is here, and here. Each letter (39 in all) was written by a different and anonymous German soldier who knew he was going to die (well perhaps #26 didn't have a clue). I associate these letters with Christmastime for reasons explained at the links.

Especially In Michigan

A favorite song of mine dedicated to those who know who they are:

The Downside Of Trade Unionism

Walter Reuther (1907-1970)

My dad belonged to a union--albeit a very weak one--The International Typographical Union. Printing technology undermined the ITU.  But he (and we) no doubt enjoyed bargained-for benefits.  I have fond memories of the annual summer "Company Picnic" at Hoyt Park in Madison, which his union partially sponsored.

The history of American unionization is pretty bloody--like the rest of world history. Walter "The Redhead" Reuther started growing Detroit's UAW beginning around 1934 until his death in 1970. For a readable account of him, see William Manchester's "The Glory And The Dream" beginning on p. 388. Men like Reuther were fighting for living standards and basic equity back then. They played offense and they mostly won.

Private sector unions like the UAW grew first and the public sector unions--always lagging in growth--followed. Decisions like Wisconsin's to allow public sector unions to collectively bargain led the way in 1959.

I'm old enough to be grounded by memories of the days when public sector workers were not the best paid workers on the block--we called them "State Workers" in Madison--but they gained steadily. Teachers, professors, clericals, even janitors.

When trade unionism in the private sector began to ebb, it exposed inequalities enjoyed by State employees. Here in California, state employees built a cozy relationship with the California State government which may have peaked but has not subsided. It's not really the fault of individual state employees that they enjoy benefits away and above others--it's a collective thing.

We saw a violent defensive play in Michigan today.  Gone are the days of playing offense in a growing economy. The general public--if they get the facts--will not sympathize like they did in the 1930's. It's just the wrong time of the life cycle.