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	<title>Letters to a Persian Cat &#187; physics | Letters to a Persian Cat</title>
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		<title>Stardust</title>
		<link>http://persian-cat.de/?p=2886</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Feb 2013 23:09:35 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Dear Michael, All the big stars, i.e. those with a mass exceeding the sun&#8217;s mass by a factor of 1.3, gain most of their energy by a hydrogen-fusion reaction that involves a catalytic cycle, known as the Bethe-Weizsäcker or CNO-cycle. During this reaction cycle,  protons (i.e. hydrogen nuclei) are added four times into a cycling reaction that converts carbon through&#8230; <a href="http://persian-cat.de/?p=2886">(more...)</a>]]></description>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">Dear Michael,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">All the big stars, i.e. those with a mass exceeding the sun&#8217;s mass by a factor of 1.3, gain most of their energy by a hydrogen-fusion reaction that involves a catalytic cycle, known as the Bethe-Weizsäcker or CNO-cycle.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">During this reaction cycle,  protons (i.e. hydrogen nuclei) are added four times into a cycling reaction that converts carbon through various nitrogen and oxygene isotopes back to carbon, while releasing helium as the net reaction product and, of course, the enormous amount of energy which fuels the star.</p>
<div class="mceTemp mceIEcenter" style="text-align: justify;">
<dl id="attachment_2887" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 445px;">
<dt class="wp-caption-dt"><a href="http://persian-cat.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/CNO-cycle.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-2887" title="CNO-cycle" src="http://persian-cat.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/CNO-cycle.jpg" alt="" width="435" height="326" /></a></dt>
<dd class="wp-caption-dd">CNO cycle</dd>
</dl>
</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This cycle in its logic resembles the citric acid cycle, during which all aerobic organisms convert energy from nutrients (i.e.  carbohydrates, fat, and sometimes proteins) into ATP.  Similar to the  Bethe-Weizsäcker cycle, successive transfer of protons (in this case  released from water) are an important feature of this energy conversion.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">But  beyond this similarity in the reaction cycle, the CNO-cycle (providing  stars with their enormous energy) and the citric-acid cycle (providing energy to living organisms) are connected by a much more fundamental link:  The Bethe-Weizsäcker CNO  cycle is the first reaction in the formation of our universe that  produces Oxygene and Nitrogene from Carbon and Hydrogene (Carbon is  directly produced by 3-alpha fusion of Helium nuclei).  And it is these  three elements, namely Carbon, Oxygene, Nitrogene and Hydrogene, that  are the basic elements of all living matter. All Carbohydrates are made  of C, H and O, as are all fatty acids. All proteins are made of C, H, O,  and N  (with a trace of Sulphur).  And essential element that is  missing is Phosphorus, an integral constituent of DNA and RNA. But in  molar amount, it is much less than C, H, N, and O.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So we have to acknowledge that the main constituents of our body (and of any other living organism as well) were a by-product of the stars engine.</p>
<p>Or as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young put it in their songs lyrics:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong><em>We are Stardust</em></strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Well I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road</em><br />
<em> And I asked him tell where are you going, this he told me:</em><br />
<em> (He) said, I&#8217;m going down to Yasgur&#8217;s farm, going to join in a rock and roll band.</em><br />
<em> Got to get back to the land, and set my soul free.</em><br />
<em> We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,</em><br />
<em> And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em> Well, then can I roam beside you? I have come to lose the smog.</em><br />
<em> And I feel myself a cog in something turning.</em><br />
<em> And maybe it&#8217;s the time of year, yes, said maybe it&#8217;s the time of man.</em><br />
<em> And I don&#8217;t know who I am but life is for learning.</em><br />
<em> We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,</em><br />
<em> And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em> By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong,</em><br />
<em> And everywhere was song and celebration.</em><br />
<em> And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes riding shotgun in the sky,</em><br />
<em> Turning into butterflies above our nation.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em> We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil&#8217;s bargain,</em><br />
<em> And we got to get ourselves back to the garden</em></p>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Ghazal, my Dear,  I always believed that you came from another star. What you wrote above shows that you brought from there some interesting ideas with you.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Take Care, my Dear</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Michael</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">PS:  I think we also have something in common, in our dialogue that is going on for about 3 years now.  Whereas I always tried my best to misunderstand you, to fill the empty spaces in your messages with a meaning that perhaps was never there, you in contrast always managed to not understand anything from what I wrote. When I imagined that there are words between the empty spaces in your letters, you decided that the long sentences from me were void of any meaning.  How long can this go on ?</p>
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		<title>The Moon &#8212; one year later, but more than one year elder</title>
		<link>http://persian-cat.de/?p=2687</link>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 12 Aug 2012 13:07:01 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Ghazal my dear, What is age, and what is aging, if everyone uses a different measure for this. This came to my mind when I did another picture of the moon tonight. Tonight it was once again the night of the Persides meteor shower. But since nothing could top the spectacular meteor that we saw together with you at the&#8230; <a href="http://persian-cat.de/?p=2687">(more...)</a>]]></description>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">Ghazal my dear,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">What  is age, and what is aging, if everyone uses a different measure for  this. This came to my mind when I did another picture of the moon  tonight. Tonight it was once again the night of the Persides meteor  shower. But since nothing could top the spectacular meteor that we saw  together with you at the same night in 2010, I put more attention to the  moon again <strong>(1)</strong>. A year ago at the same night, we have been at the Bulgarian blacksea coast, and then the <a href="http://broken-radius.blogspot.de/2012/08/persides-stjaernfall-night-at-black-sea.html">Persides night fell together with the full moon</a>. This year, however, the same day in the year (11th to 12th of August), the moon looked completely different.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_jGkvM-P2-U/UCfojvgHW5I/AAAAAAAAAKM/vM-e8MHOSdo/s1600/Moon%2B1year%2Belder.jpg"><img class="alignleft" style="border: 0px none;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_jGkvM-P2-U/UCfojvgHW5I/AAAAAAAAAKM/vM-e8MHOSdo/s400/Moon%2B1year%2Belder.jpg" border="0" alt="" width="207" height="400" /></a>Its  shape was already ascending to less than 25%, whereas full moon was  already 10 days ago (exactly at August 2nd). So it is of some interest  to understand why according to the solar calender exactly one year  passed by (and even the Persides meteor showers declined to this <strong>(2), </strong>but  the moon implies something different. As a proof, the picture on the  left shows the shape of the moon as of tonight, and you can compare with  the <a href="http://broken-radius.blogspot.de/2012/08/persides-stjaernfall-night-at-black-sea.html">picture from a year ago</a>.</p>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>The reason for this asynchrony is that the circular rotation of the moon around the earth and relative to the sun  happens once every 29 days, 12h and ~4min. This means, that 12 month for the moon (or  one year for it) take only 345 days, i.e. 11 days less than a normal year of 356 days.  Therefore the full moon of August 2012 was visible 11 days earlier than  the full moon of August 2011.</p>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>This  means that for people who rely on the sun as their calender reference, a  year has some 11 extra days, as compared to people who rely on the moon  as a calender standard (like muslims). In the long term, after 33 solar  years (which the western civilisation and the Persians use) an extra  year has already accumulated for people in the islamic world. I have no  clue if muslims indeed celebrate their birthdays according to the moons  calender, and count one extra life year every 33 normal years. And it is  not completely unlikely, that the processes of real biologically aging  (or lets call it maturing) is influenced to some degree by the  imagination of aging. Maybe somebody who really feels elder, if he or  she suddenly discovers that instead of 33, he or she is already 34 years  old. So therefore you might conclude (together with the early Beatles)  that it is better to <strong>&#8220;&#8230;.follow the sun&#8221;</strong>:</p>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="330" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cgluqHpapIk" width="530"></iframe></p>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>Sun is definitely  good for a couple of physiological functions (vitamin D synthesis,  production of serotonin which makes us happy and satisfied), but in  higher doses it is doing the opposite: You know better than anybody else  how UV-A and UV-B can accelerate the entire aging process, since you  work on this issue and even got a <a href="http://www.die-bowe.de/scientific-career.html">scientific price</a> for this. The Isar island, where some black ashes might still mark the site of our camp-fire, and which <a href="http://broken-radius.blogspot.de/2012/07/island-in-stream.html">looked pretty uncosy and barely populated</a> three weeks ago, today saw masses of locals who followed the sun and took advice from the 1960 Beatles song, rather than from <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=21784087">your 2011 publication in Mutation Research</a>.</p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pAY4AVL2nOw/UCf0q65A0UI/AAAAAAAAAKk/EArtMovvRQw/s1600/Island%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bstream--Sunny%2BDay.jpg"><img class="aligncenter" style="border: 0px none;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pAY4AVL2nOw/UCf0q65A0UI/AAAAAAAAAKk/EArtMovvRQw/s400/Island%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bstream--Sunny%2BDay.jpg" border="0" alt="" width="400" height="300" /></a></p>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>I  guess that now you&#8217;d like to know why I waited for an entire year,  before sending you another photograph of the moon again. The reason was  that after the Persides night in Bulgaria last year, my camera broke. I  somehow smashed the display, and from then on it was totally black. But I  did not want to throw it in the waste bin right away, since this camera  was always a brave and reliable companion to us. So I left it untouched  on my desk, before in a quiet moment three weeks ago I started to take  it apart (like I did it with your <a href="http://broken-radius.blogspot.de/2010/07/time-shift-and-crystals.html">wrist-watch two years ago</a>).  I soon realized that the broken display can be removed carefully and  replaced with a new one. And soon I found through Ebay a possibility to  get even seperate display units for virtually every single digital  camera. I quickly located a provider with the funny name of  GLOBAL-SHINING <strong>(3). </strong>Mr. or Mrs. Global Shining appeared to be a  Mr. Ho, living with his GLOBAL STAR SHINING in Flat S30 1/F, Shopping  Arcade, Tsuen Wan Centre, Tsuen Wan, Hongkong <strong>(4)</strong>.</p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qutEkcZ3FqM/UCz9N3iIxYI/AAAAAAAAALQ/p8u5bLTg-8Q/s1600/Mr+Ho3.jpg"><img class="aligncenter" style="border: 0px none;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qutEkcZ3FqM/UCz9N3iIxYI/AAAAAAAAALQ/p8u5bLTg-8Q/s640/Mr+Ho3.jpg" border="0" alt="" width="480" height="640" /></a></p>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>When  I received Mr. Ho&#8217;s delivery, the small parcell contained not only the  brand-new Samsung camery display, it also had as a little extra a  special screw driver (not only fitting the microscopic steel screws that  held together the camera back, but also of perfect size for chinese  fingers) and a handwritten piece of paper saying &#8220;Thank you for  considering GLOBAL SHINING as business partner&#8221;.</p>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>By  help of the microscopic screw driver and some forceps from the lab I  quickly managed to replace the camera display, and the pictures on  todays post are the proof how well the whole camera is working again.  Since I was so happy about revitalising the nice camera with the Mr.  Ho&#8217;s help, I decided not only to give him excellent reference points on  Ebay, but also send him some words of gratitude on a postcard showing  Castle Neuschwanstein. It is nice to imagine how Mr. Ho mounts the  colourful postcard to the wall of his Flat S30 1/F in the shopping  arcade of Tsue Wan, Hongkong.</p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Is there a final take-home message from this post for you, Ghazal ? Maybe you will find one.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Take Care my Dear</p>
<p>Michael</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Footnotes: </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>(1)</strong> Surely you know that the Moon symbolizes the pure, innocent beauty in  Persian classicla poetry. This is independent of the exclusive role of  the Sun in ancient, pre-islamic Persian culture, philosophy and science.  But because poetry is very much influenced by arabic traditions, their  spiritual preference for the moon as symbol in religion and arts got  access into the poetry of Hafez, Rumi, Atta and Omar Khayyun.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>(2)</strong> The Persides Meteor shower lives up to its name: same as the Persian  people do, it follows precisely the sun&#8217;s calender. I guess that it  follows in a precise and constant time after Persian Nouruz.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>(3)</strong> Initially I could not figure out, if the name of the company  GLOBAL-SHINING was referring to the moon or the sun. But now that I know  that it is a Hongkong based company, I guess they even mean the Shining  Stars.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>(4)</strong> I guess Mr. Ho wont mind having his business  address published here on my blog. But it might further promoted his  excellent business. Just that Tsuen Wan does not have a postcode might  discourage Hongkong tourists to drop into his store and buy camera  displays.</p>
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		<title>ELIZA &#8211; The Intelligent Answering Machine</title>
		<link>http://persian-cat.de/?p=1627</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:57:23 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Dear Michael, sometimes I wonder if we don&#8221;t trust too much in the electronic communication, when one person writes some words to another person thousands of km away, and these words are converted into a sequence of bits and rush through computer chips and are converted into electric pulses or light waves, send back and forth to satellites until they&#8230; <a href="http://persian-cat.de/?p=1627">(more...)</a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Dear Michael,<br />
sometimes I wonder if we don&#8221;t trust too much in the electronic communication, when one person writes some words to another person thousands of km away, and these words are converted into a sequence of bits and rush through computer chips and are converted into electric pulses or light waves, send back and forth to satellites until they finally reach the recipient. And the recipient for some reason does not question that the words he reads in the message are nothing else but the written thoughts that his friend has hammered into the keyboard thousands of km away.<br />
Shouldn&#8221;t we be more cautious about the messages we receive day by day ? I don&#8221;t mean the mail I receive from you, I&#8221;m always sure that they come from you, cause they have their very unique style and always contain some code-words that mark them as authentic. But my younger brother, who is studying IT technology in the 2nd course now has shown me something they are doing currently. They got the project to develop a computer program that is able to write &#8220;fake answers&#8221; to an e-mail. I don&#8221;t know how they are doing it, but the program searches for some keywords in an incomming message, and than replies with some sort of standard sentences (that are usually not very complex or intelligent) which again contain the same keywords.<br />
So my dear brother asked me to test his program. Therefore I send him an e-mail and within some micro-seconds already got an answer:</p>
<p><strong>My Dear A.,<br />
I send you my best wishes to persian New-Year. Did you received my present that I send you by post ?  When I packed the parcel I cut my fingers with the scissors and had to put bandage on and now I can only use my left hand. I went with Shava to the mountains on Saturday, because with an injured finger the only proper thing to do is to go out for a walk in nature. We would have liked to stay there till Sunday, but I have no time because I have to prepare for the lecture at college. The students of the new curse will arrive tomorrow, and they want to be entertained properly. I hope you doing well and work hard to become the next Bill Gates or J.v.Neumann.<br />
In love, your sister ghazal</strong></p>
<p>Now have a look at the answer I received instantly from his program:<br />
<strong><br />
&#8220;Dear Sister ghazal,<br />
O, I did not knew there was persian New-Year. What present you send, I did not received anything. O, you cut your fingers ? Interesting, why you need the scissors for this !  Did Shava liked the mountains ? What else did you do on Saturday ?  So the students will come. I hope they will have fun.</p>
<p>Take Care<br />
/your brother A.&#8221;<br />
</strong></p>
<p>And now, what do you think ?  Do you find that the program is doing a good job ?  I know my brother was never very keen sending long letters to anybody, but at least he put his own (crazy) ideas into it. But the program that he wrote virtually only repeats what I wrote in my original message. I think it is better to carry on writing down our own thoughts, even though the answers may take a bid longer. </p>
<p>Hope everything is fine with you, Good Night.<br />
Ghazal</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;</p>
<p>Ghazal my Dear,<br />
So funny to read your experiences with your brother. Thanks god, it is just a technical project that sends you such standard and formal letters in response to a mail. The quality of a machine-based artificial intelligence was actully tested by one of the earliest and most influential computer scientist (Alan Turing) by setting up a similar device that you and your borther were using. Turing suggested, that an experimentalist should do two verbal dialogues in parallel behind two black curtains. Behind one of the curtains a human person should sit to conduct a dialogue with him, wherease behind the other curtain the artificial-intelligence machine had to be placed. If the experimentalist could not tell after a certain time where the talking machine was and where the person was, than according to A.Turing the machine has passed the criteria of having indeed artificial intelligence.<br />
But I could imagine, that this also depends a lot on the experimentalist. Simple-minded people might get fooled very easily, they might even think that a mail-response from your brothers program comes from a real person. Other people who read and wright a lot are probably much more critical. I could imagine that you are extremely critical. I think it will not be possible for any machine to fool you. You have somethink like a seventh sense to tell what is real and what is fake.</p>
<p>There were several attempts among IT freaks to beat Alan Turings test. They were called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatterbot" target=new>Chatter-Bots</a> and among them ELIZA was probably the most famous. ELIZA was such an artifical language dialoge program developed at MIT. The exciting thing was that it should play the role of a psychoanalyst, talking to a patient. When Weizenbaum developed ELIZA, it was the time of Flower-Power, Hippie-Music and mind-extending drugs for the young, but the elder generation discovered the healing power of psycho-therapy. I guess this was the motivation for Weizenbaum designing ELIZA as a psychatrists chatter-bot. But even though ELIZA impressed some people really a lot (they were told that the doctor has a bad flue and therefore talks to them from behind a courtain), dedicated linguists that used the Turing Test could tell that it was only a machine. </p>
<p>I hope you can sleep well and don&#8221;t carry on endless dialogues with a machine in your dreams.</p>
<p>Take Care, Ghazal,<br />
Michael</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;</p>
<p>Hi Michael,<br />
a last remark before midnight: Do you know why the computer program by Weizenbaum, that could participate in seemingly meaningful dialogues, was called ELIZA ? There was the character of Eliza Dolittle, a simple, uneducated person with a very basic language in G.B.Shaws play &#8220;Pigmalion&#8221; (later in the funny musical &#8220;May Fair Lady&#8221;). Two university professors, one of them was Mr. Higgins, made a bet:  Higgins promised that he will &#8220;re-educate&#8221; Eliza Dolitte with brute force, give her not just elegant clothes but also a new language. And he will guide Eliza Dolittle to a reception of the high society and nobody should recognised that before she was selling flowers on the market every day. Guess what happend ?</p>
<p>Take care<br />
/ghazal</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;</p>
<p>Hi Ghazal my Dear,</p>
<p>What is wrong with a girl that sells flowers all day long ?<br />
(See, now you caught me responding to you in the answering-machine-style <img src='http://persian-cat.de/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';-)' class='wp-smiley' /> .<br />
I promise I wont do it again. But don&#8221;t expect me to read G.B.Shaws &#8220;Pygmalion&#8221; now to answer your question. It is already after midnight, and I have to go for a walk with our dog. </p>
<p>I&#8221;ll tell you tomorrow about what I think about Eliza Dolittles qualities as a chatter-bot.</p>
<p>Take Care, Good Night<br />
Michael</p>
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		<title>Why the Fukushima nuclear disaster is good for nature</title>
		<link>http://persian-cat.de/?p=1624</link>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 03 Apr 2011 23:37:37 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[It is always worth to follow Monthy Pythons advise and ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE, even in case of an accident that univocally is considered a major disaster for the civilized world and in Japan the biggest catastrophy since their defeat in WW2. At least here in Germany, the most prominent critics of nuclear energy are the&#8230; <a href="http://persian-cat.de/?p=1624">(more...)</a>]]></description>
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It is always worth to follow Monthy Pythons advise and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ec_acXb88E" target=new>ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE</a>, even in case of an accident that  univocally is considered a major disaster for the civilized world and in Japan the biggest catastrophy since their defeat in WW2. At least here in Germany, the most prominent critics of nuclear energy are the greens, in close alliance with WWF and Greenpeace. And as we all know how the german Angst works so well and so absolute predictable, it was no wonder the Green Party managed to kick-out the conservative christian-democrats from their stronghold in Baden-Wuertemberg, just by pointing to Fukushima and reminding every voter in their state that it were the cristian-democrats who always support nuclear energy.<br />
This, on the first glance, looked very straight for the green party, a clear &#8220;full-house&#8221; so to say. But in fact, they might have even won twice: Fukushima not only gave them the prime-minister post of Baden-Wuertemberg on a silver plate, but there might be even more important benefits in the long-term and on the global scale. I&#8221;m talking here about the Whales and Dolphins, who over the last years were slaughtered by the thousands to satisfy the desire of the japanese cuisine. Not the UN, nor Greenpeace or WWF could achieve, what the Fukushima accident did: a natural protection for these big naval mammals for at least one generation of animals. Remember, caesium 137, the strong gamma-isotope that was released into the japanese sea and into the pacific, has a physical half-life time of 30 years, and its biological half life time is not much shorter. It preferentially accumulates in the muscle-tissue of mammals, including whales and dolphins. For them, it does not bear a real health risk, so nobody of us should worry, and if Greenpeace and WWF do so, we all know it is just their business to beat the drum. In fact, muscle tissue is one of the most radio-resistent, so whales and dolphins will live as good or as bad as without caesium-137 in the ocean. But for us humans, since we always worry and we made the german Angst &nbsp;one of our best export-goods, any knowledge that a few single atoms caesium-137 are in our steak or Sushi or Miso-Soup makes us sick right away. So the japanese whale-fishers and the <a href="http://www.seashepherd.org/dolphins/" target="new">violent Dolphin-Killers in Taiji</a>&nbsp;will face some tough years to come. I guess the sale for whale and dolphin meat will drop by 99% soon. Unless some hard-liners such as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf3YedwEd9c" target=new>Mr. &#8220;I-take-some-days-off&#8221;-Shimizu</a> of Tepco, or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg2mz-acj5k" target=new>Mr.&#8221;My-blue-jackets-is-a-fake-Levis&#8221;-Edano</a> of the gouvernment or his imperial highness <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHoYDzfzezA" target=new>Mr.&#8221;I-love-you-all&#8221;-Akihito</a> will demonstrate in front of the TV-cameras and on their web-sites how delicious whale-sushi and dolphin-soup still is, the  popularity of this sea-food would go down to virtually zero.<br />
We all know instinctively, that there always must be light, when there is shadow. Or as a good friend of mine who was cought by the idea of physical laws-of-conservation ones formulated it: &nbsp;For every person on earth who stops crying, another one has to break-out in tears. The sum of all the tears in the world is therefore a fixed number. Therefore, we should not feel to much mercy when we see the japanese nuclear managers spreading around their fake tears and mourning and begging for pardon. We must know: for the whales and dolphins now starts a great time, they will live for the next decades a life without fear. Like the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vTLxpz9HKs" target=new>Jews still celebrate Purim as the rescue from a masacre</a> planned by the persian minister Haman in the 5th century BC, such will the whales and the dolphins always commemorate the year 2011, when a devine hand blow up the Fukushima reactors and spilled the caesium-137 broth into the ocean to mark all naval mammals as unedible and unhuntable.<br />
Or would it even be possible that not God in his wise decision triggered the earth-quake and than the tsunami, that hit Fukushima so badly ? Could it be that all the whales and the dolphins of the world united and made a big, big wave like we do on a much smaller scale in the bathing-tube, that hit the coolant-pumps and auxilary generators and electricity supply in Fukushima ? Don&#8221;t forget, how intelligent whales and dolphins can be: If you ever saw the movie &#8220;Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe&#8221;, you remember how they could smell the coming disaster and with a smile on their face (which in fact they always have) they said &#8220;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG6b3V2MNxQ&amp;feature=related" target=new>So long, and thanks for all the fish</a>&#8220;.<br />
Does not matter who really did it, intelligent creatures (like the whales or dolphins) or super-super-intelligent creature (like god or the WWF), finally we should understand that it was worth it. This little nervous break-down around a japanse nuclear facility rescued the future life of our most loved naval creatures.
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		<title>What means &#8220;Ey Vay&#8221; ?</title>
		<link>http://persian-cat.de/?p=1539</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:57:51 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[At university I had a very good friend from Jordan. He was palestine, much younger than the rest of us physics students and extremely gifted. But he did not only had an extraordinary mathematical talent, he was also very familial with classical european music and literature. On the other hand, he had a very firm opinion about Israel, whom he&#8230; <a href="http://persian-cat.de/?p=1539">(more...)</a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>At university I had a very good friend from Jordan. He was palestine, much younger than the rest of us physics students and extremely gifted. But he did not only had an extraordinary mathematical talent, he was also very familial with classical european music and literature. On the other hand, he had a very firm opinion about Israel, whom he completely refused the right of existence. About the last point we had a never-ending intellectual fight, whereas for most other issues, philosophy, science, values of life we felt quite similar. During the friendship with him, Ismail, I learned a lot about tolerance and that different points in some aspects of life does not has to result in a confrontation, but in fact can be a gain for both. I knew that he was muslim, praying 5 times a day, and he knew I am bloody atheist, drinking a glass of wine here and than and having sympathy for Israel.</p>
<p>Thanks to his permanent supply of records from west-Germany, I used to visit him to listen to some rare pieces of music. Once he brought from his shopping trips to West-Berlin Strawinskys &#8220;Le Sacre du Printemps&#8221;, played by the Berlin Philharmonics. When I heard the first tunes by the oboe, with the sudden entry of the rhythm strings, I got completely struck. Maybe this day I had already a glass of wine, but together with the music I felt more and more in one of the fairy tales of 1001 nights. Inspired by the idea of the &#8220;Sacre&#8221; I asked Ismail if he knew something about this new student, which must be from another muslim country, because she sits the whole afternoon in the state library wearing a head scarf. But I told him that even though she wears the scarf, one could see how beautiful she was and that she had the most amazing blue eyes. So I asked Ismail if he could find out her name, what he did, but only after telling me that any further intentions to meet her were very likely a waste of effort. Anyway, a few days later Ismail came to me and said &#8220;The girl you saw at the library is Samira. She is from Syria, and daughter of a high ranking Baths party leader. They are all instructed not to make any personal contacts to ordinary germans. And by the way, all of us foreign students coming to your country had to sign an agreement at the east-german embassy, promissing that we will avoid any privat relationship to german student-mates or people on the street. So you see, even our occasional get-together to listen to music, talk about quantum-mechanics and Einsteins philosophy and to argue about middle-east politics, all this might be already illegal. What you think they will call it if you start here to court a student girl from Syria ?&#8221;. In my naive understanding of friendship (and in these times friendship in the official speach of politics meant &#8220;friendship between all peace-loving nations&#8221;) I just rejected his very rational arguments and the next day went to the library again and asked the girl &#8220;You are Samira, right ?&#8221;. Under her scarf I almost could see how she wrinkled her brows, since it appeared that except of her name &#8220;Samira&#8221; she did not understood a single word. What I did not knew, that except of Ismail, who spoke fluently several languages and quickly made the brilliant jokes in german, most of the foreign students from rich countries had their privat translator, who sat next to them during all lectures and seminars and therefore making any attempt to learn the language of their host country superfluous. Therefore, our first conversation was very limited. Today I have to laugh about my silly idea to seduce a girl with the only arabic phrase I knew: &#8220;Salam Alejkum&#8221;. But at least I could invite her to &#8220;coffee&#8221;, which I was pretty sure must sound similar in arabic. She shook her head and said &#8220;Chaj&#8221;, which fortunately I knew from russian, where it also means &#8220;Tea&#8221;. So we went to the library buffet, which was located in the basement and had the chic of a station toilet. I could imagine that for her drinking a tea or coffee had another cultural implication, and this filthy buffet with its fuggy smelling air would hamper the last bit of delight, even of this third-class tea. Therefore I made signs to her to leave this filthy room with our cups and sit outside on the concrete stairways of the old library building.</p>
<p>Our conversation resembled very much the one between Robinson Crusoe and Friday: pointing to various things around us we would give them the names in our two languages. This way I learned that chestnut was &#8220;chestanub&#8221;, honey is &#8220;Al Asal&#8221; and eyes are &#8220;orjoun&#8221;. We probably met several times in and outside the library, and I was following Ismails warning that inviting a girl that wears a head scarf anywere else could cause a serious problem for both sides. But even the occasional encounter between the two of us on the stairway outside the library must have attracted the attention of some watchdogs from either her or my country. Somebody must have been concerned that we might find our own very individual interpretation of friendship between the nations. And they might have also kept a record of the progress we made in our conversation, which became more and more intense, but absolutely ununderstandable for any outsider, who would have tried to sneak into our talks. For our own use we had created a sort of german-english-arabic Esperanto, that to anybody else must have sounded as a completely cryptic code. But I never considered, and neither did Samira, that Ismails advise not to meet each other somewhere else than at the library for moral reasons was indeed the most foolish thing to do. Because we were sitting there like on an open display: visible for everybody who wanted to keep a record of the frequency and intensity of our short, but regular meetings. And this was perhaps seen as an open demonstration of disobedience, for two totalitarian countries a heresy much worse than would have a secret get-together been.</p>
<p>The security forces acted fast, silently and efficient: without any warning Samira was send home to Syria with a couple of hours notice. And since we did not had telephone, let alone e-mail or mobile in the mid 80es, she could not even say good bye. I also had forgotten to give her my address, since for us the stairway of the library was always the natural place to meet. After a couple of days not seeing her I asked Ismail if he could find out what happened to her. His legendary talent in physics has made him an admired student not only for us, but in particular for most other foreign students from middle-east countries as well. So it took him only a short talk with a guy from the syrian students group to find out that Samira was back home. The explanation was that she came to Germany only for a short summer school in aerodynamics, and this course had finished now. Funny enough, the books she always read at the library were all about high-energy nuclear physics.</p>
<p>Ismail with some degree of satisfaction said: &#8220;You see, I told you never try to court a girl with a head-scarf. You have to wait until somebody of her family lifts her scarf for you&#8221;. When I told him, that Samira ones already shifted her scarf backward, showing with or without intention some of her chestnut-coloured, curly hair and that she might not fit into his conventional idea of a modern girl, he band backward, started laughing and said &#8220;Oh Boy&#8221;. Ismails &#8220;Oh Boy&#8221; was a sort of final sentence of this short but inspiring relation to a girl with a head scarf that she was just about to lift without any help. It was like the two words &#8220;The End&#8221; on the final credits of a nice, long movie.Until recently, and still entangled in the belief that a german-english-arabic Esperanto is an easy way to bridge language-boarders I was convinced that &#8220;Oh Boy&#8221; means just &#8220;Oh Boy&#8221;, a very common vocative in english with a connotation that lays somewhere between compassion and admonition.</p>
<p>But only recently, 24 years later, I heard again this phrase, and now it sounded more like &#8220;Ey Vay !&#8221;. It was during an interview with one of the students who took part in the 2009 demonstrations in Teheran, shown in Ali Samadi Ahadis wonderful movie &#8220;The Green Wave&#8221;. And here, the interview was subtitled, and I had to learn that Ismail was using the same &#8220;Ey Vay !&#8221;, meaning &#8220;Oh God&#8221; when he commented my reckless idea of courting Samira. In these years in the late 80es the islamic &#8220;revolution&#8221; in Iran was just 10 years ago, and occasional reports about police forces in Teheran that would fix womans head-scarfs with pins on their head were taken as US propaganda. Still caught in the memories of Samira and her rather lavish usage of her scarf I did not had enough fantasy to imagine that a few strains of hair leaking under it could provoke a violent and inhuman reaction by the police. And I could not imagine that 24 years later an iranian student would talk about much worse violence on the streets of Teheran, using the phrase &#8220;Ey Vay !&#8221; to express complete frustration and disgust.</p>
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		<title>Relax with the kinetic sculpture</title>
		<link>http://persian-cat.de/?p=1450</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:35:00 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Hi Ghazal my Dear, Reading you last e-mails I got the impression that you are most excited if I send you links to some &#8220;moving pictures&#8221; (the origin of the word MOVIE, as you perhaps know). The german translation is KINO, which comes from french CINEMATOGRAPH, meaning &#8220;moving or kinetic image&#8221; and what gave rise to the english CINEMA. Why&#8230; <a href="http://persian-cat.de/?p=1450">(more...)</a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hi Ghazal my Dear,</p>
<p>Reading you last e-mails I got the impression that you are most excited if I send you links to some &#8220;moving pictures&#8221; (the origin of the word MOVIE, as you perhaps know). The german translation is KINO, which comes from french CINEMATOGRAPH, meaning &#8220;moving or kinetic image&#8221; and what gave rise to the english CINEMA.</p>
<p>Why I tell you all this stuff ?  Not only because I remember the films we saw together here in Munich, and the nice time we had before and afterward.<br />
There is another reason, and this I discovered last weekend at the BMW museum (can&#8221;t remember if you went there with your family or with Shava). Perhaps the most impressive object in the museum is the so-called &#8220;kinetic sculpture&#8221;, an arrangement of steel balls hanging on wires and thereby can all be individually moved up and down controlled by a machine. And this generates the most astonishing images of slowly moving 3D-sculptures. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/W9vBnScZx9E/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/W9vBnScZx9E?f=videos&#038;c=google-webdrive-0&#038;app=youtube_gdata" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="480" height="400" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/W9vBnScZx9E?f=videos&#038;c=google-webdrive-0&#038;app=youtube_gdata" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div>
<p>I am almost sure, Ghazal, you will like this. And I am also sure that you work hard these days, same as you did during your MSc project here, and therefore you deserve some relaxing videos at night.</p>
<p>Enjoy, Take Care</p>
<p>Michael</p>
<p>As always, I hope you are doing fine and stay as nice and charming and strong as you have always been.</p>
<p>PS: Had a look at the swedish word for cinema, and this is Biograph. No clue what &#8220;Bio&#8221; means therein. There is a type of apple, which is called Boskoop, but this I guess is a coincidental similarity. And Cinema is written in Persian as<br />
سينما.<br />
And here, you see, I don&#8221;t even know how this is pronounced. So many things I&#8221;d like to ask you.</p>
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		<title>A Joint Meteor Party</title>
		<link>http://persian-cat.de/?p=1234</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:58:15 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Hi Ghazal my Dear, You recently raised the issue of spotting simultaneously the same meteor from your place in Stockholm and from here in Munich. It appears it is not as simple as you thought, since you cannot compare it with the moon, sun or stars that, if they are high enough always look the same from here and from&#8230; <a href="http://persian-cat.de/?p=1234">(more...)</a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hi Ghazal my Dear,<br />
You recently raised the issue of spotting simultaneously the same meteor from your place in Stockholm and from here in Munich.<br />
It appears it is not as simple as you thought, since you cannot compare it with the moon, sun or stars that, if they are high enough always look the same from here and from there. The difference is, that meteors, once we see them glowing, have already entered the upper layer of the earth atmosphere (about 100km altitute). And therefore, it is a matter of whether they are still above the horizon of an observer or below, and this determines if they are visible or not. Trigonometric calculation (see below) shows, that a meteor coming down as far as 1121 km from the location of an observer would still appear above the horizon (and therefore be visible). Munich and Stockholm are exactly 1310 km distant from each other (on a direct line, not motorway, railway or flight), and therefore each meteor coming down halfway between the two would easily be visible (since the distance to each of the two observers would only be 655 km).<br />
And even more, all meteors coming down within a +/- 54 degrees radiant around the direct line could also be visible (i.e. about one quarter of the whole skies circumsphere, what is not too bad). So my suggestion for the Leonides meteor-shower on the 17th of november is: If we two agree on a defined observation time (maybe one hour around midnight), and we both look in the right direction, and there are no clouds, and we are lucky, and we believe in this calculation, and the Leonides shower has not choosen another trajectory this year, and there are now vampires biting us at night, and there are no drunken guys distracting us, and no haloween &#8211; kids begging for sweets, and no snowmen melting next to us and and and &#8230;.<br />
then we might be really lucky and both spot the same meteor at the same moment. Our wishes, most likely will neutralise each other, I&#8221;m sure, so life will carry on.</p>
<p>TAKE CARE, my Dear</p>
<p>Michael</p>
<p><img src="http://51005274.de.strato-hosting.eu/cgi-data/weblog_basic/uploads/2010/11/meteor-distance.jpg" alt="meteor-distance" title="meteor-distance" width="720" height="660" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1235" /></p>
<p>&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.</p>
<p>Hi michael,</p>
<p>So your calculation shows that if I would look southward from here and you would look northward from Munich, we would both spot the same meteor tonight ?  Does your calculation also considers by chance the outside temperature ?  You can&#8221;t expect me to wait outside our house for an hour tonight, since we have already snow here and its freezing cold. And anyhow, even if I would spot a meteor tonight, even knowing that the same is visible from Munich, it would not be the same as at was in August, when we were watching the Perseides shower. Then it was warm, a nice summer night, and it was fun to be there together. I think I will skip the &#8220;stjaernfallen&#8221; tonight. But your calculation should equally hold true for next years Perseides in August, right?  But then, who knows, maybe I&#8221;m back in Munich, and the 1310 km distance is obsolet.</p>
<p>I wish you a pleasant night anyway</p>
<p>Take care</p>
<p>/ghazal</p>
<p>PS: I could stay inside and try to spot some of the meteors tonight through the window, can&#8221;t I ?</p>
<p>&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.</p>
<p>Ghazal, my Dear,</p>
<p>Assuming there is a clear sky tonight, you might spot a meteor through the window, why not.<br />
Which side does your window face ?  north, south ?</p>
<p>Michael</p>
<p>&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.</p>
<p>Dear michael,</p>
<p>I checked, the window of my room faces north, and our kitchen to the west. What is the best ?</p>
<p>/ghazal</p>
<p>&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.</p>
<p>I guess if you watch through your window northward, you perhaps wont see the meteors, but you have a good chance to see Polar-Light. By the way, since Polar-Light comes also from the upper atmosphere (like the meteors), the calculation is equally valid for them. This means, you might see the same Polar-Light looking northward as an eskimo in Greenland or a reindeer farmer in Lappland.<br />
But they don&#8221;t know about you, they have never seen the magic of your  blue eyes, my Dear. Maybe for them the polar light is frightening or a common feature, they have probably no association with it, not that a particular person they miss a lot is watching it at the same time.</p>
<p>O.k., I have to accept that the november Leonides shower is a not the most suitable, despite all the calculations. However, in case I spot a meteor tonight, I&#8221;ll imagine that at least in your dreams you see the same one, and that it takes you on to an angel flight through the night sky.</p>
<p>TAKE CARE, enjoy</p>
<p>Michael</p>
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		<title>Discovery of a habitable planet (also for horses ?)</title>
		<link>http://persian-cat.de/?p=1107</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:58:36 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Ghazal, my Dear, What a funny coincidence that today, just a couple of days after you speculated about finding a house for us on the moon astronomers from Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C announced the discovery of the first extra-terrestrial habitable planet in the universe. For sure, the moon is much closer to the earth, to your family&#8230; <a href="http://persian-cat.de/?p=1107">(more...)</a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Ghazal, my Dear,</p>
<p>What a funny coincidence that today, just a couple of days after you speculated about finding a house for us on the moon astronomers from Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C announced the discovery of the <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/100930-new-planet-discovered-first-habitable-earthike-water-gliese-581g-science-goldilocks/" target=new>first extra-terrestrial habitable planet</a> in the universe. For sure, the moon is much closer to the earth, to your family and friends, and you probably can even spot Sweden from there if it is &#8220;Full-Earth&#8221;. According to the U.S. astronomers, however, the living conditions on &#8220;Gliese 581g&#8221; as the planet was named, should be much more convenient than the surface of the moon. O.k., I have to admit, you have to spend more for transportation (Gliese 581g is about 20 light-years or 190 billion km away from europe, moon &#8220;only&#8221; 380 000 km), but I would be ready to spend some extra money for the flight tickets, but have a nice environment instead (like on earth, the value of a property mainly depends on the three factors &#8220;location, location and location&#8221;). Talking about the living conditions there, of course one cannot expect exactly the same as on earth, but I guess we could easily accomodate to them. For instance, the seasonal year is only 37 days long (whether there ARE seasons like summer and winter here on earth is not known yet). There are, however day and night, that&#8221;s for sure. And the day-and-night rhythm seems to be much more human (first estimate is between 25 and 35 hours) than what you have in northern Sweden with their 180 days polar-day followed by another 185 days darkness.<br />
There is one problem, and thats the mass of Gliese 581g:  Since it is about 3 times heavier than the earth, physics unavoidably will give everything there a 3 fold higher weight. So the first weeks up there would be quite exhausting, walking, standing or dancing will be a tough physical exercise, untill our skelleton, joints and muscle strengthen and got used to carry this extra weight. The good thing and the best way to get around this stressful gravitational stress is the existence of water up there on Gliese 581g. Calculations show that there will be plenty of lakes, oceans and beaches, and the water should be crispy and cristal-clear. There just was no messy industry or agriculture or human sewage to spoil the water). And swimming, you should know, we would not feel our extra weight any more because of the (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#The_Golden_Crown" target=new>hydrostatic principle discovered by Archimedes</a>).<br />
Anyhow, whether you believe him or not and whether you like spending most of your day in the water, it is good that neither you nor me have any weight problems here on earth. This is for sure a good pre-condition to relocate to Gliese 581g, and maybe they even want to see a health-certificate for this when you ask for entry visa up there.</p>
<p>Hope you sleep well, and maybe in your dream discover some extra &#8220;must-sees&#8221; on this planet.</p>
<p>Take Care,</p>
<p>Michael</p>
<p>PS:  You don&#8221;t have to prepare you luggage right now. And for sure: You first have to finish your MSc project and got the degree, because this improves your chances to make a scientific career on &#8220;Gliese 581g&#8221;.</p>
<p>&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;..</p>
<p>hi michael,</p>
<p>what ????    I don&#8221;t wanna go to this extra-terrestrial planet !  I just made up my mind, and after struggling with myself again and again and weighing every pro and con, and talking with my family in Sweden I declined to consider a future here in Munich. Thats 980 km away from Stockholm, and I wont accept any further distance. Not the moon (&#8220;only&#8221; 380 000 km ha, ha, ha) let alone a planet that is so far away, that even the light needs 20 years to reach stockholm. So then, everything the U.S. astronomers discovered now only shows how this planet was 20 years ago. Things can change so rapidly, michael, just have a look on our earth and ourself: 20 years ago we didn&#8221;t had mobile phones, but instead Freddy Mercury and Frank Zappa were still alive. You have been in east-berlin working in the station-bistro and I was a 4-year old baby-girl carried around europe on the arms of my beloved parents. How can we be  sure that during the last 20 years no massive industrialisation started on this strange planet, or that global cooling down turn all the lakes and oceans into ice-skating courses ? Thats my last word. This planet is not an option for me.<br />
And by the way, I came along this marvellous horse range this morning, on my way to the lab. It was a mystic scenery, how the horse appeared slowly from the morning mist.<img src="http://51005274.de.strato-hosting.eu/cgi-data/weblog_basic/uploads/2010/10/horses-in-morning-mist.jpg" alt="horses-in-morning-mist" title="horses-in-morning-mist" width="280" height="160" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1109" />.<br />
When I was a kid, my dad used to read me persian fairytales, in which a white camel played a role, because it rescued Zartusht (or Zaratustra as you call him) from the deluge. I think you mentioned this legend also on your blog entry form July 16th. I fell in love with this camel, and the horses I met this morning reminded me of it. I think their physical strength and mental calmness are similar, and that makes both of them good companions to men. There was a display on the horse farm, and as much as I understoud german, they offered to give you one of the horses for riding out, if you agree to take care of it and clean it and feed it, it wont even cost a lot. So this, I have to admit, was one reason for me to consider staying in Munich.<br />
I doubt that there will be horses on this far planet, therefore I also don&#8221;t want to go there.<br />
<img src="http://51005274.de.strato-hosting.eu/cgi-data/weblog_basic/uploads/2010/10/horses-in-morning-mist-2.jpg" alt="horses-in-morning-mist-2" title="horses-in-morning-mist-2" width="280" height="215" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1110" /></p>
<p>Hope you understand my concern, michael.</p>
<p>Have a good night, and good dreams.</p>
<p>/ghazal</p>
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		<title>Quantum Entanglement, Dogs and the Problem of Longitude</title>
		<link>http://persian-cat.de/?p=867</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 07 Aug 2010 09:51:40 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Hi Ghazal, my Dear, Hope you didn&#8221; got lost on your Random Walk (swedish &#8220;Slump Promenade&#8221;) through the Olympia shopping mall. The swedish &#8220;Slump&#8221; (for Randomness) is really a very, very strange word, isn&#8221;t it. And in research, randomness is always what we like to minimize because it tends to obscure our observations, which we would like so much to&#8230; <a href="http://persian-cat.de/?p=867">(more...)</a>]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hi Ghazal, my Dear,</p>
<p>Hope you didn&#8221; got lost on your Random Walk (swedish &#8220;Slump Promenade&#8221;) through the Olympia shopping mall.</p>
<p>The swedish &#8220;Slump&#8221; (for Randomness) is really a very, very strange word, isn&#8221;t it.  And in research, randomness is always what we like to minimize because it tends to obscure our observations, which we would like so much to interprete as a result of shear causality. In the formular for the genetic LOD-score = log10 (Likelihood for Linkage by causative gene)/(Likelihood for Linkage by chance) it is the denominator standing below the fraction line.</p>
<p>Interesting, in the swedish Wikipedia-entry for Slump/Randomness there is a indirect link to a subject I already mentioned recently: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement" target="new">Quantum Entanglement</a> or <a href="http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvantmekanisk_sammanfl%C3%A4tning" target="new">Kvantmekanisk sammanflätning</a>. This subject is still a hot issue between <a href="http://www.nature.com/milestones/milephotons/full/milephotons12.html" target="new">opponents and proponets of the quantum-mechanics.</a> But there is <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091014/full/news.2009.1002.html" target="new">good evidence</a> that it works. The principle is as following: You take two particles that form a pair (having a joint wavefunction) and therefore are dependent from each other in their quantum-mechanical status. When you separate them spatially, their joint wavefunction remains and therefore their  correlation is preserved. It is now believed, that by &#8220;taking on of these particles with you&#8221; wherever you go, and leave the other particle at home, you always can determine the status of the remote particle. A recent <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080813/full/news.2008.1038.html" target="new">study published in NATURE</a> estimated, that the speed by which information can be exchanged this way is about 10 000 times faster than speed of light.<br />
My proposal, you remember, was to use our two twin DKNY watches for a permanent informational link between us, because their status I believe is already &#8220;entangled&#8221; .</p>
<p>A funny idea emerged in the 18th century, assuming an extra-sensual information transfer could solve the problem in sea navigations of how to keep the precise time from their home country (this was crucial to determine the longitude). There was the hilarious theory that if you take two dogs from the same litter (virtually twins), and you leave one of them at home and take the other one on board a ship that will go around the world, then the two dogs remain linked to each other by a transzendental and telepathic connection. Therefore, whenever the dog at home is hurt (for instance by peeking it with a needle), the other dog on-board the ship instantly feels the pain and howls loudely. So when the dog that is left home is hurt once a day at 12 o&#8221;clock midday, the people on board the ship hear the second dog howling and this way they know precisely when it is 12 o&#8221;clock at home. Funny idea, isn&#8221;t it.<br />
Unfortunately (but maybe furtunately for the dogs) this project never worked ;-}, and finally the english carpenter and self-educated watchmaker John Harrison constructed in the year 1735 the first ship chronometer that run precise enough over many weeks on board the ship and therefore allowed the determination of the geographic longitude.<br />
Although the strange idea to use dogs telepathic abilities for this purpose was born in England in the 18th century, it later appeared so hilarious that nowadays the english Wikipedia refers to it only in an entry on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_of_sympathy" target="new">&#8220;Powder of Sympathy&#8221; </a> rather than in its larger article on &#8220;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_problem" target="new">The problem of Longitude</a>&#8220;. The german, as always very open to strange and esoteric ideas, still reproduces this telepathic dog hypothesis in their Wikipedia.<br />
But who knows, maybe today with the knowledge of quantum-mechanic entanglement we can make it work using our two watches.</p>
<p>Enjoy the time, my dear, don&#8221;t condemn me</p>
<p>Michael</p>
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