Weeeell...we gambled on the aurora display in Seattle and lost. But it was fun being spontaneous and taking a chance.

We arrived in Seattle after two good flights, right on time. We killed a couple of hours in the hotel and at dusk (630pm Pacific, 0030 UTC) we set out on a walk to see what we could see.

Our first stop was atop a WallyPark parking structure a couple of blocks away. My reasoning was to get as high as possible (elevation, not psychoactive) and above street lights with a good view North. The WallyPark was perfect. But we squinted into the not-quite-dark sky for about 30 minutes, got a bit chilled from the wind and the 40-ish degree temp, then decided to take a break and wait for full dark.

Our break was a tasty BBQ snack at Sharp's Roast House, right next door. (An unfortunate name. Given that we're in Seattle, I thought a roast house would be a coffee shop. Go figure.) Good BBQ, great atmosphere and a whiskey collection for the ages. This picture shows only one of several similar racks of hooch.

After our snack we returned to the roof of the WallyPark, stared North and possibly, maybe, saw a greenish glow right on the horizon. But it was very faint, so we decided to go to Plan B.

We walked back to the hotel and bribed (yes, really) the shuttle driver to take us to what he thought would be the best vantage point nearby – the light rail station at Angle Lake. We went to the top of both the light rail track and the adjacent parking structure, stared into the dark Northern void, but no aurora. Nada.

Somewhat disheartened, we trudged home to the hotel, walking about a mile through the cold suburban streets of Seatac. We changed our reservations to leave the next morning.

Looking back, I think I made one big mistake in our viewing plan. Every online resource says to avoid city light pollution. I ignored this advice, thinking that the skies would belit up brightly by the aurora. As I explored the actual measurements of light pollution, I found maps like this.

There we were in a sea of light pollution, looking north through the worst of it. Not surprising we couldn’t see the Northern Lights.

All in all, I’m glad we took the chance. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. We had an interesting weekend and learned a few things.

I woke up this morning and read about the unusually strong Northern Lights to be seen this evening, if you’re in the right parts of the world. And the fact that the aurora will be visible as far south as Seattle and Portland. And that the kp index, a measure of the strength of the magnetic storm causing the aurora, will be especially high tonight – 7 out of a possible 10. Finally, I read about Seattle having weirdly clear skies for the next 36 hours.

After a few minutes thought, I woke K up and asked her if she wanted to go to Seattle. Her first answer was “What’s wrong?” Once she heard why I wanted to go, the answer was yes. So in two hours, we booked flights, got a hotel room, got ready and we took off for the airport in hope of seeing something special.

We’re now in Seattle, 5pm, and hoping for a natural physics show starting about 7pm. Pictures to follow.

Hahahahahaha….Facebook just changed its name to “Meta”. I bet Ron Artest, who changed his name to “Metta World Peace” back in 2011, will have a few things to say about that. At least he could blame the decision on drugs. I imagine the FBers charged with coming up with the new name spent millions and crowd tested the name.

Perhaps the brand had become so toxic they had to, but geez…taking a 100% recognizable worldwide brand and changing it to something inane like Meta? Smells like desperation.

Though really, anything they chose as the replacement name for Facebook was going to be mocked. Unless they chose 42.

I really like reading Casey Handmer’s blog about the state of space exploration. He goes pretty deep with details to justify his opinions. Today he’s written a long post, ostensibly about SpaceX’s Starship, but more accurately it’s a brutal indictment of NASA. It seems that NASA, Boeing and other “establishment” aerospace players can’t even admit that SpaceX, if successful with Starship, has changed the economics of orbital and deep space launch forever.

I really hope Handmer is right. If so, we’ll see at-scale trips to the Moon and back within my lifetime. Hell, within the next five years. Colonization becomes possible, even practical. This is a profound paradigm shift, as impactful as the invention of steam engines and automobiles. What wasn’t possible is now possible, even inevitable.

Musk can be a real jerk at times, but the combination of Tesla (cars), Tesla (energy), Starlink (satellites and broadband networks) and SpaceX (rocketry) still amaze me. How can one guy change the world through technology over and over?

Tesla and SpaceX being headquartered in TX, and the new space launch city being built on the TX Gulf coast, are the only good reasons I can think of to move to TX. (And Khraungbin. Can’t forget Khraungbin.) I missed all the Apollo and Shuttle launches, but I now have a chance to go see a Starship launch.

Well, I took the late afternoon and went to see Dune on the big screen. IMAX. Couldn’t talk K into going, even with the amazing promise of spending 3 hours with me in a dark, extremely loud room. Go figure.

And…I’m still disappointed. The movie was better on the big screen, but it was still long and plodding. It was still monotone and way too dark (the lighting, not the mood); still looked a lot like it was shot through gauze. I liked Chalamet a tiny bit better on the big screen, but still…foppish. I could hear Lady Jessica’s lines for the first time, but the idea of a weak, almost-always-crying Bene Gesserit is just wrong.

So I’m glad I gave it a try, but at this point I’m not a fan of the 2021 Dune movie. It’s a long, extended, beautiful shot of a desert, with a few decent battle scenes and hellacious special effects. And an absolutely overwhelming musical score (thanks, Hans). I sure hope The Wheel of Time fares better.

The recent dump of internal documents from Facebook, accompanied by whistleblowers, has made it obvious to anyone listening that Facebook promotes conflict. Is a strong force for dividing the nation(s). Wired has a nice, objective summary of the findings, including some good data showing that Facebook had to know that its platform promoted conflict, anger and divisive speech. The metrics make that clear.

That was all pretty obvious to me in 2016 when pre-election chatter drove a wedge between some of my family members. We pretty much “lost” an aunt and uncle in that foray, and that’s when I deleted my account and data from Facebook. It had been good to keep in touch with certain family members and high school friends, but the downside price is/was too high.

Facebook was always a toxic mix of ads, creepy connectedness and algorithmic amplification of emotion, particularly negative emotion. It finally caught up with them.

It didn’t have to be that way. Facebook’s algorithms could have been weighted toward privacy, respect, ethical speech and collaboration. I wonder who made the calls over time that led them to build such a dark platform?

This announcement was really exciting for me. Scientists now have proof that Einstein’s time dilation effect works at the quantum level, not just in macroscopic space. Even better, it’s time dilation due to gravity, not velocity.

Everyone (OK, lots of people) is/are familiar with the concept that if I travel at lightspeed for a few years of my subjective time and return home, thousands of years may have passed at home. That’s been a science fiction staple since the 60s. But fewer people are aware that Einstein’s general theory of relativity also predicts that time passes differently in gravity wells due to the warping of space-time. The larger the gravity differential in frames of reference, the larger the time delta. The example the Quanta article uses, that living on the top of Everest will make you age a tiny bit faster than living at sea level is a good one. Time moves more slowly at the bottom of a gravity well.

This was a big part of the story in the movie Interstellar (one of my top 10 movies ever), when part of the crew traveled to a planet with intense gravity due to its proximity to a black hole, and the hours or so they spent there meant that their crew mate who stayed on the ship had aged 30 years when they returned. (They didn’t really model the gravity very well in the film; it would have smashed them like a bug…so some hand-waving was involved.)

But back to reality. The method used to measure gravity’s effect on quantum processes was ingenious. They used a laser to excite a tiny cloud of strontium atoms, so that their electrons would change quantum states predictably. By measuring the frequency (time) of each state change at the top and bottom of the cloud, they could see and measure the effects of gravitic time dilation.

The mysterious nature of gravity and its role in how the universe works is one of my favorite subjects. It’s great to see a little of the mystery peeled back.

Wow, I love this idea. Agrivoltaics. Why isn’t this being started everywhere? This gives struggling farmers a new income stream, plus takes electricity cost out of his P&L. And the plants grow well.

Would be perfect for my little Fallbrook town, once very farm-intensive but now with a lot of cleared, fallow land available. And about 350 days of sunshine each year. The electricity can power pumps for wells, which solves most of the water problem.

All this, and new word to boot: agrivoltaics.

Having seen DUNE and a plethora of ornithopters last night, this announcement is timely. Basically a flying motorcycle.

This comment kind of summed it up, though: “This seems like an exciting and fun way to die tragically.”.

I’ve had something on my mind for a while, and it’s time to put my thoughts on paper screen. Vaccine mandates. They are yet another divisive issue in America, and for good reason – it’s complicated. Here’s my take.

Pro mandate points:

• To stop a pandemic, the best possible tool is to get everyone vaccinated. Full stop. A virus needs a susceptible host population to infect and mutate among, and if there’s no one left to infect due to vaccinated or natural immunity, the virus dies out.
• You get vaccinated not just for yourself, but for everyone else. It’s for the greater good.
• Vaccines have improved modern life immeasurably, removing polio, measles, mumps, malaria and many other crippling diseases from our lives. The science works.
• There are many jobs that require the extra protection of employees being vaccinated, from a risk management point of view. An employer of health care providers, nursing home staff, and teachers all have perfectly logical reasons to insist that their employees not spread a disease among the more vulnerable clients (people) in their care.

Con-mandate point of view:

• Consistent with my position on abortion, in a free society I and only I get to decide what happens to my body. My agency over the bag of meat that supports my brain is absolute.
• In general, government powers should be restricted. Government overreach *is* a problem, and allowing federal, state or local governments control over the citizen’s body seems a very bad idea.

So…two compelling arguments. It’s definitely a debate worth having. And the middle ground isn’t obvious. But after thinking it through, I’ve found a middle ground position that makes sense to me.

My position can be summed up in two succinct points:

1. My body my choice. The government cannot force me to ingest something I don’t want to.
2. I’m OK with employer mandates, but not government mandates. Getting a job with another employer is a choice I can make if I don’t want to be vaccinated. Or subjecting myself to regular testing protocols. But leaving the country or becoming a criminal if I say no isn’t a real choice. So for an employer vaccine mandate (requirement of employment), the employer’s risk management need is satisfied, and the employee’s right to choose is satisfied.

This logic works for me. I wish more people could agree and stop demonizing each other about it.

This may be the most interesting subject in the world: consciousness. Something we all experience (at least, I think everyone else is conscious), something that defines us, something that can’t be seen or measured. Something that completely eludes science (so far). The “Hard Problem” indeed.

About the only thing we (sort of) know about consciousness is that it’s associated with the brain. Cut off a hand, it hurts, but you’re still you. But damage the brain sufficiently, and you’re gone. People like to talk about having a soul, and even as an irreligious agnostic I have no argument with that. “Soul” is just another word for “consciousness”.

Kudos to The Guardian for publishing such a thoughtful piece. There’s a book or two in there somewhere.

I’m still laughing about the Gang of Violent Otters, every time I say or think the phrase. It’s such a Monty Python idea.

But it got me thinking. Otters are cute and cuddly-looking, beautiful in their own way, but they’re known to be fearsome aquatic predators. And that got me thinking about other predators. Eagles, hawks, mountain lions, wolves, tigers – all beautiful predators. Polar bears, orcas, grizzlies, domesticated cats – same.

So why are most predators beautiful? There are exceptions – sharks (one could argue their beauty), hyenas (definitely not beautiful), and spiders (again, one could argue).

I asked my friend Google, and I can’t find’s any scientific study of the correlation between beauty and predators. I’m not the only person who’s had this thought, as seen in this website.

And, what about humans? I’m not sure where we would fall on the beauty scale, but compared to tigers, orcas, etc., I’d say pretty low. We’re a mangy bunch.

And finally, another big question. What caused humans to become predators, as opposed to all our ape cousins who are primarily herbivores?

A recent study discussed this idea, and posits that humans were the original superpredator, and that eating lots of fatty meat fed the development of larger and larger brains. I suppose it’s possible, but again, what triggered humans to start hunting animals? Perhaps we’re just built that way – no trigger required.

This is definitely my next (first) rock band’s name: Gang of Violent Otters. Hilarious, and one more reason to visit Alaska.

There are lot of hyperbolic, interesting things being written about Dune right now, but none come close to this detailed, scholarly essay on Tor.com. I even learned a new word reading it: conlanger.

Sure, I picked up on the Muslim/Middle Eastern flavor of the Fremen and Arrakis, but this essay reveals a whole new level. Who knew?

I haven’t done much with photography lately. So here are a few of my favorite pictures from the vault. All great memories.

FALL BOUNTY, taken in Nashville in 2018.

DESCENT FROM ST. PETER’S BASILICA, 2018

BAJA BEAUTY, 2003

MALTA SUNSET, 2018

ASTRONOMY HEAVEN OR HELL, 2021

TREED GRANDSON, 2021

Seems like yesterday. The ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything.

Big day today. My buddy Jon and I won our flight in the golf tournament – pretty much the only golf event I’ve ever won. Normally I’m a bucket of nerves when there’s any outside “pressure” on my game, but not this weekend. Then we went on to the shootout for flight winners, where we placed 5th in the group of 10 shootout teams – respectable, but not what we hoped. But we had a great time and won enough money to pay for our whole weekend and then some.

Louisiana foodie update – we ate dinner twice in a row at The Greyhound, a gastropub with perhaps the greatest fries ever. Crispy outside, mashed potato good inside, perfectly browned…they’re great. And their wedge salad and wood-fired pizzas are also excellent. The Greyhound is worth a visit or two f you’re in Covington.

Kentucky played Georgia today also, and while the Cats lost, we were respectable. Georgia is tough – they deserve to be #1. Hopefully the Cats can go on to win most or all of their remaining games and have a historic season.

We live in a wonderful time. From eso.org:

The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) has taken the first ever image of a young, Sun-like star accompanied by two giant exoplanets. Images of systems with multiple exoplanets are extremely rare, and — until now — astronomers had never directly observed more than one planet orbiting a star similar to the Sun. The observations can help astronomers understand how planets formed and evolved around our own Sun.

Louisville isn’t the only destination with great food. I’m in Covington LA and we’re two for two on meals so far.

After a day on airlines, we decided to eat somewhat light so we visited Seiler Bar. We shared some generous and very tasty hors d’ouvres including chorizo shrimp, lamb chops, and seared scallops. With a nice bottle of Willamette Valley Pinot. Great atmosphere, great food.

Today we had lunch at Lola, and the food there was a home run. I had a fired chicken sandwich and truffle fries that was as good as any chicken sandwich ever. Jon had a bowl of mac and cheese topped with pulled pork and some picked jalapenos. Looked delicious, and he confirmed that.

Every time I’ve been to the north shore of Lake Ponchatrain the food has been memorable. So far this visit is no different.

I failed to acknowledge one notable event yesterday. William Shatner, Captain Kirk himself, made it into space (well, to the edge of space) at the age of 90. There’s so much about this that’s cool. The obvious thing is his age – that pretty much crushes the idea that only young healthy folks can survive a launch. Good news for me. I might make it to the Moon after all.

The other cool aspect is the life imitating art part. Captain Kirk goes to space in real life! I spent many nights as a youngster hiding in the hallway watching Star Trek surreptitiously, because it was on way past my bedtime. Mom and Dad may have known I was there, but I doubt it. Then, 15+ years later, I spent many afternoons at college with my geeky friends drinking and watching those same Star Trek episodes. We knew every line and scene – that made it all the more fun.

It *is* kind of sad that the spaceship he rode looks like something from a scifi-porn movie. Or the Hitchhiker’s Guide. The Enterprise was iconic and cool. The Blue Origin New Shepherd…not so much.

But we take what we can get in real life, and I’m happy for Kirk/Shatner realizing this dream.

Final note – I can’t take credit for the post title. I read it somewhere last night, and it’s too good not to share.

I’m back on SWA today, headed for NOLA. Flights running on time so far (fingers crossed), still packed with mostly-silent masked passengers. Still full of young fashion-conscious women with the ubiquitous flat-brimmed hats.

I think it’ll be another six months before the airlines and health officials feel OK about removing the universal mask rule in airports and planes. Of course, that’s just *after* we complete our massive 3-4 month travel binge. Go figure.

The weather in NOLA looks great for the weekend. Last time Jon and I tried to do the golf weekend (2018), we ran into hurricane weather. Blew us right off the course. 2019 and 2020 were casualties of COVID without vaccinations, but here we are in 2021, ready to go thanks to mRNA tech.

Now if I can just remember how to swing a golf club…

We’re wrapping up our Louisville stay soon. As usual, we’ve eaten out a lot. Why not; the food scene in Louisville is great. The restaurants we’ve frequented include:

• FABD BBQ – kind of a dive bar inside, but good BBQ. I had the pulled pork sandwich and fried green beans (yum; just proves that anything deep fried is tasty).
• Con Huevos – perfect as usual. Their enchiladas and sauces are superb.
• El Mundo – the Frankfort Ave location. Not very good; won’t return.
• Mussel and Burger – the downtown location. Nice space, but the mussels weren’t as good as I remember.
• Lotsa Pasta – not a restaurant, but its wonderful fresh pasta was used to make our first at-home meal for the family.
• Green District – love their salads. The chop everything neatly, my favorite way to eat a salad.
• Parlour – really good pizza.
• Joella’s – pretty much the perfect chicken sandwich. Love that place.
• The Grape Leaf – I’ve had some good meals there in the past. This time the lamb was very strong tasting. Will give it another try.

I really wanted to visit Barn8, Game and Red Hog too, but it didn’t work out. Next time…

Wow! Another huge UK win last night against LSU. And it wasn’t close – UK dominated.

We’re six-and-zero for the first time in 71 years (!), and only the second time in history. Glad I was in state to enjoy the victory.

The final trailer for the new Dune movie is here. Watching it gives me chills (yeah I know, fanboy is not a good look for a senior citizen). Can’t wait for October 22.

It’s a wet week in both KY and Socal. Can’t remember the last time that happened.

This is really interesting and a bit scary. Drones able to fly unassisted through forest using an AI navigator. Technically cool, but somehow I think this may come back to bite us. Our machine overlords are a step closer to inception.

And here’s a guy who has taken an idea of mine and fleshed it out. (He arrived at the idea independently, and he’s clearly a better engineer than me.) The idea is to use a precisely targeted laser for bug control. In his case he targets mosquitos, but I was thinking about how to control the damnable Mediterranean Olive Fly that damages olive crops in the US. The fly makes growing olives about twice as hard and expensive as it would be otherwise.

In slightly political news, I’ve seen a lot of “Lions, Not Sheep” hats and shirts during this trip – mostly at the airports. I wondered what that is a reference to, and now I’ve learned that it’s a slogan that the anti-vaxxers have adopted. Seems you’re a sheep if you follow rules. And then I learned that a Utah entrepreneur huckster named Sean Whalen has monetized the slogan via this weird, unsettling website, featuring bearded wannabe military types (mostly Whalen) modeling LnS shirts and hats with menacing looks. And women (mostly Whalen’s new wife) who apparently will only procreate with oh-so-alpha bearded men. The whole thing is a bit confusing, but at the root of it all is the ever-present infantile conservative attitude of “you can’t tell me what to do!”. No rules for me, I’m a free agent in the universe. Somehow we “sheep” have to find a way to push back on this. I prefer to live in a society with rules, rather than rule by the biggest baddest dude with a gun (they call that most of the Middle East, by the way). Maybe all the “Lions Not Sheep” wearers should make their way to Afghanistan, where bearded dudes with guns are at the top of the rotten heap. I’ll buy the first round of one-way tickets.

And finally, on a lighter note, this is prime tomato season in Kentucky. Went to the local farmer’s market yesterday and picked up some amazing heirloom tomatoes, which K then transformed into a scrumptious Caprese salad. There’s nothing like a vine-ripened tomato in the fall. Perfection.

Haven’t written much (OK, nothing) since arriving in Louisville. Partly due to sleep deprivation, partly due to location-based changes in routine. The sleep problems are due to (a) time zones and (b) a new bed at the KY place that hasn’t turned out to be as comfortable as hoped.

That in itself is a story. I ordered another Zinus mattress from Amazon for the master bedroom. It wasn’t the same model as the first (comfortable) one, but supposedly close. Turns out, nope. So I called Amazon to figure out how to return it, expecting a somewhat onerous process. Amazingly, Amazon decided that it would be simpler to just refund my cost for the mattress and allow me to donate it or trash it (we will definitely donate it). I guess that’s what happens when pure business logic intersects with good customer service. It would have cost them more to have it shipped back to them and disposed of on their end than to just refund me. So, win-win. Just one more reason I continue to shop heavily at Amazon.

Another story for the week is that it miraculously rained quite a bit in Socal since we left. About 0.75 inches overnight in Fallbrook, an October miracle. That will go a long way toward mitigating the 2021 fire season.

Later today we make the pilgrimage back to Ashland to see my Dad. It’s a nice drive, though about an hour too long. We drive through hilly Frankfort and the whiskey trail, through Lexington and the Bluegrass region, through Morehead and The Knobs, and finally into Appalachia proper. It’ll be good to see Dad and Phyllis, especially now that they’ve regained their health after a long non-COVID respiratory problem. Perhaps a simple cold made worse by being mid-80s.

Don’t have time to write much today, but…the football Cats beat Florida at home for the first time in 36 years! The last time this happened was the year Emily was born, so, wow! Sadly, I only got to see parts of the game but I did get to see the big finish. Wish I had been in Lexington to help celebrate.

Any takers?