In addition to the more well-known holiday, today is, according to the Book of Days, “nut-crack night” (also known as the “oracle of the nuts”):
A lad and lass each place a nut in the fire; the course of their courtship is predicted by the behavior of the nuts, whether they burn quiety together or jump apart.
This evening also apparently offers the opportunity for divination by cabbage-pulling.
I love holidays.
Japanese scientists have made a breakthrough in quantum computing:
A research team in Japan says it has successfully demonstrated for the first time in the world in a solid-state device one of the two basic building blocks that will be needed to construct a viable quantum computer.
The team has built a controlled NOT (CNOT) gate, which is a fundamental building block for quantum computing in the same way that a NAND gate is for traditional computing.
Research into quantum computers is still in its early days, and experts predict it will be at least 10 years before a viable quantum computer is developed. But if they can be developed, quantum computers hold the potential to revolutionize some aspects of computing because of their ability to calculate in a few seconds what might take a traditional supercomputer millions of years to accomplish.
Remember scientist prediction math – when they tell you a problem can be solved in 1 year, it’ll take 2. Two years really means five. Five means 10, and 10 means they have no earthly idea.
My sense of reality isn’t what it used to be.Of course, reality isn’t what it used to be.
If reality would be what it used to be, maybe I’d have a better sense of it.
But then I’d be out of touch with reality.
– Zippy, 10/29/03
I keep forgetting to blog my science writing here. There’s such a lag (a whole 12 hours or more!) between when I write it and when it’s published, I guess.
Anyway, here’s one:
The ordinary matter with which we are familiar? the stuff of stars, planets, your couch and kitchen table? makes up just 5 percent of the universe’s mass, the new results show.
The rest?
Scientists call it “dark matter” and “dark energy.”
And what is that?
“We haven’t a clue what either one of them is,” said Princeton University astrophysicist James Gunn.
Downloading some pictures, found this:
Mums in Lissa’s garden.
Nora off to a play this afternoon with her pals, so Lissa and I threw dog in car and headed for the bosque. With the big clompy brace off of her formerly broken ankle, Lissa is fully mobile again, but the doc said she should avoid cycling for another couple of weeks. (Not the cycling itself, but the getting on and off bits, apparently.) Thing is, as I mentioned yesterday, the fall colors are peaking, so we did a walk instead.
We traipsed up the levee from where Central Ave. crosses the river near Albuquerque’s downtown – that’s old Route 66 for those interested in Americana. They’ve spent a lot of time and energy since June clearing out overgrown underbrush in the woods along the river to reduce fire danger, and it’s now a lovely open forest of cottonwoods. You can see out to the river from the levee bank. I’d been on a tour with the city open space guy for a story for the paper, but Lissa hadn’t been yet, so it made it a learning, informational sort of walk.
It’s a beautiful stretch, with moments again and again where the Sandia Mountains (see the top right picture) pop out over the cottonwoods to the east.
Lissa picked up Chris Carmichael’s latest book for me, How I Made Lance Such a Stud, Vol II. Luckily, it was just at the library – not a book I need to own. It’s got some interesting information about exercise physiology, and I’d probably be a faster cyclist if I followed the CTS Pyramid for Success and all, but some days ya just wanna ride the bike, not do Carmichael’s TempoHillRepeatIntervals or some such.
Today a case in point, in which I was just sorta rolling along when I decided on an unplanned right at the Montaño bridge. I just wanted to cross the river to get a look at the fall colors from the bridge. But then I saw a nice hill up ahead on the other side and decided to climb it. Before I knew it, I was climbing Boca Negra Canyon toward the volcanoes. Now if this was a carefully planned Carmichael Training Systems day, I would have been off program and jeopardizing my careful training schedule. There’s pretty much no way to climb Boca Negra without going anaerobic. But hell, I just wanted to climb a hill. I need to be able to change my mind, frequently, to train on a whim. Guess I’ll never be a Pyramid of Success True Champion. Whatever.
Of course, my whim ended up being a very bad decision, on account of the howling headwind that enveloped me most of the way home, but whatever. It was still a fun ride, and the fall dressing on the cottonwoods along the river are a delight.
OK, the part about where I said “Armstrong is finished after five Tours and Ullrich will spoil his attempt to win a sixth next summer”? OK, what I really meant was “Ullrich doesn’t have a chance. Armstrong will win his sixth Tour in a row next summer”. They announced the 2004 route today. Time Trial up Alpe d’Huez. ‘Nuff said.
I have done this before, so I’ll be brief.
It was in a darkened car, listening to the radio, that I saw Roger Clemens strike out Luis Castillo last night, and that ultimately seems like the right way. I grew up with the sound of baseball in my ear, and called correctly you can see the game. I could see the fastball, the swing, the crowd rising. Scully used to do the thing after a home run, shutting up to let us listen to the roar of the crowd. There was 38 seconds his silence, only cheering, after Sandy Koufax struck out Harvey Kuenn for the final out of his 1965 perfect game.
I watched most of the game on TV, and it was pretty memorable, Clemens screwing up that first inning and then rising above it to pitch the right way, the tough and memorable way, for the next six brilliant innings. Storybook baseball, screw the ending. And then I had to go pick up the girls from school, so I flipped on the radio and listened in the darkness of a cool Albuquerque evening to what we assume will be Roger Clemens’ last inning on the mound.
I became a Yankee fan by listening to them on the radio, so that seems the right spot for this.
In the middle of game 7 of the American League championship series (that memorable extra-innings battle the Yankees won on Aaron Boone’s walkoff home run), when it looked like the Yankees were done, Derek Jeter leaned over to Boone and said, “The ghosts will show up eventually.” That’s not exactly cocky, but is an odd way of looking at things. Before Game 7 of the 2001 Arizona-Yankee World Series, Diamondback starter Curt Schilling guaranteed his fans a win. Jeter, one of enigmatic baseball minds of the 21st century, was more circumspect that year – no ghosts, just a smile: “I guarantee it’ll be a lot of fun.”
So it’s a three-game series now, and it is a lot of fun. Perhaps I’ll listen on the radio.
Today is the day that, by tradition, the swallows leave Mission San Juan Capistrano, a day not much celebrated. The swallows’ sprint return is a huge deal, but for some reason people don’t much like to talk about their departure. Sad omen of coming winter or something, though frankly winter is no particular reason to fret on the coast of what we now call Southern California. Capistrano was a Franciscan who saw the light enough to leave the order and marry, then saw a second light of some sort and left the marriage to go back to the order. His Christian duties included raising an army against the Turks, who no doubt had not seen any of the appropriate light and were therefore worth killing. It’s apparently what was done to non-Christians back in the day, though we’re thankfully beyond that now – aren’t we?