GarbageInCompostOut

DOANSA INSPIRED HOUSEHOLD GRAYWATER RECOVERY PROJECT

For a while I have thought of trying to do something about the sheer absurdity of flushing huge amounts of water down the kitchen sink - perfectly usable water whether it is from rinsing vegetables, washing dal, washing dishes by hand or even water from the dishwasher - while at the same time using clean water to irrigate.

The right-wing American approach would be to send other people's children out to attack Canada in the name of liberating them, and then build a pipeline from Hudson Bay to LA. [Want an excuse? Canada produces almost all of the world's Co60 which is used for treating cancer. The source is supposedly under repair, but Canada refuses UN inspections and is suspected of trying to develop a Co60 dirty thermonuclear bio-weapon terrorist bomb. Diplomacy has not worked, 3 Israeli cancer patients may die soon so the Knesset may authorize Mossad to bomb the facility.] Just think of all the jobs that War and Peace would create, and finally water-independency for LA so that Orange County is no longer dependent on crazy-arse gay-rights advocating NorCal tin-pot mayors for their God-given right to water.

The ObuDemocratMama approach would be to develop "alternate water" - something that you could carry around with you and when needed just add water and hey! Presto! you get InstaWater (C)! This would be achieved by giving PanIndra half billion dollars to develop their idea of cylindrical glass tube water evaporators and to set up a evaporated water manufacturing facility in the South Bay. Unfortunately, the only thing that will evaporate is the money.

Note that there is discussion of conservation - banning alfalfa farming, golf, or lawns.

So here is something I thought I could do personally -as one of those ingenious middle class American private individuals, BUSH's thousand points of light, take initiative into your own hands- to avert global warming, save trees, reduce my carbon footprint, salve my conscience. (Breathlessly and earnestly in school child voice: "If every American household were to implement this scheme it would save THOUSANDS of gallons of fresh water!" Really? Save the Earth!)

Coffee, banana peel, grapefruit peel and broccoli stems.

Banana peel down the hatch.

Broccoli stems down!

Coffee grounds gone.

Grapefruit peel down the food disposal.

The plumbing, the transparent hose takes it outside ...

... to PVC tube ...

which carries it across the patio ...

... and into the vegetable garden.

Next I tried a small bucket load of food scraps ...

Minor snafu ...

MAJOR fail!

Finally got it all working, and learned: no egg shells, more water flow, less food scraps flux.

But, it is not solved until it is all cleaned up.

LiveArtCinequest2012

On our way out from the Shorts3 collection, we saw 3 artists in the act. Both Maya and Elsa wanted to stay and watch, so we went in to see them.

Corey about to board the metro to school.

Sara's painting dedicated to International Working Women's Day - March 8, 2012.

"You accusing me of copying? I never even been to no fifteen or sixteen chapel!"

Joe talking about his work, right before I started to talk about his work!

Beneath those funky triangle symbols, there are 4 horizontal lines and Maxwell's silver hammer!

No! No! No! Gravity isn't a force!

 

Joe and myself, after we shared equations.

Joe had
F  = m a
Newton's law of gravitation
Maxwell's silver equations
Black Hole entropy
Informational entropy

I suggested the following:
G_ab = 8 Pi G T_ab (The Einstein equation)
[x,p] = i hbar I (The fundamental fact about Quantum Mechanics.)
The commutator between a simple loop and a trefoil knot with a "hand", representing Loop Quantum Gravity
and Maxwell's equations
d F = 0 (the EM 4-tensor is divergence free)
d *F = *j (the curl of its dual is the dual of the 4-current co-vector).

9 March update: Joe put in all those suggestions!

Ashtekar variables, and you can just about discern a loop commutator.

The Einstein Equation (Gravitation, or the E=mc^2 of General Relativity)

Joe also added my name next to Newton's Equation for Gravitation, I'll post that as soon as Rajesh Aji sends me a copy.

29JanPostOaklandMoveInDayLunch

On Jan 24th I took excess food from OccupySF, my own and other leftovers. We'd decided that I would take it to OccupyOakland's MoveInDay rally and occupation planned for the weekend of Jan 28th and 29th. I had a previous engagement for Saturday January 28th, to suck on some cracks. (I use protection in cracks, specially when they are slick, and even if they are warm, as were the ones I encountered, deep in the bottom of a gorge. No accidents, but I did come out heavily bruised and scraped.)

Before leaving for the trip I had to make arrangements to get the food delivered to OccupyHungerOakland. I took the food with me to Zeth's place on Friday night, stored it in his fridge and handed it over to Melanie. The arrangement was that Melanie would contact Marie, who'd been delegated by Leila of OccupyHungerOakland, and the two of them would work out how and where to heat the food and transfer it to wherever it was required.

As you know, OccupyOakland's MoveInDay turned disastrously violent, which is so anti-American that I feel like bombing Iran just for the heck of it. More on this later. On Saturday night we heard from Melanie the bad news, and that she had not been contacted. She thought our contacts were probably hospitalised themselves, in prison, or taking care of all the wounded and tear-gassed, smoke-bombed people.

On Sunday morning though, Marie and Melanie did get together and heat up all the food and took it out to Oscar Grant Plaza. It was a good thing I had delivered the food, and that it was such huge quantities because that was the only food there for lunch!

A young male Occupier who'd not been arrested by the cops? What is he? Gay? Or an FBI informant?

Leila (serving) and Marie (behind the water jug) on the day after the Oakland Police terrorised the populace and lost control of themselves. Send OPF to where they are needed - to take on the Israeli Defense Forces and protect the Palestinians.

Scenes of the people at the kitchen.

MoonVenusConjunction

Susan Arastradero's photo of a Moon-Venus conjunction.

Q0. If there is no reflection of the photograph, and assuming the photo is taken in the northern heimsphere, can you tell whether it is at sunrise or sunset?

Answer: First determine the ecliptic, this is the plane containing the observer and the "arrow" defined by the Moon's "bow". IN the northern hemisphere, the zenith of the ecliptic is in the south, so S is to your right, North to your left and hence you are facing East and it is sunrise. Susan had mentioned to me that she had not traveled outside CA to anywhere but Arizona and Cuba, which are all in the northern hemisphere. Then she mentions in her e-mail that she had just enough time to take the picture before the sky became too light.

Here is another puzzle, based on an excerpt from her e-mail: "At first I thought the shape of Venus was blurred 'till a friend pointed out that it was earth's shadow."

Q1. What do you discern of Venus' shape?

Answer: A crescent.

Q2. Why is it impossible that the crescent is defined by earth's shadow?

Answer: I'll leave that to you.

Q3. What is the cause of the crescent shape of Venus?

Answer: That is the part of Venus that is lit by the Sun! The gedankenarrow in the bow formed by Venus' crescent points towards the Sun, as does the crescent Moon.

Q4. Is Venus on the near or the far side of the Sun?

Answer: The near side. If it were at the points on its orbit tangent to us, i.e. the Sun and Venus were to be equidistant to us, we would see Venus exactly half lit. If it were at points further, and hence on the other side, we would see more of its face lit (in extremis in opposition to us or in far conjunction with the Sun we would see the Full Venus) and hence a gibbous Venus. Since we see a crescent Venus, we know it is on the near side, since we see less than half of its face lit by the Sun (again, in extremis, when Venus is in near conjunction with the Sun we see a "dark" or New Venus).

OccupyCrucifix

Crucifix for Green Christ

Fleeing Scottish terrier

Abstract, with face and shark

The Keeler needles, near mt Whitney in the High Sierra.

Abstract shape near Yosemite granite wall.

ArastraderoWaterCressSalad

Wild watercress

 The trails upstream are open for horseback riding, so I only tasted a bit of it to make sure it was watercress ...

Elsa and Maya helped me gather the cress for a salad

Triple washed (very little detergent, gentle cycle, short spin).

Served with KeyLime/OliveOil/Salt/pepper/Garlic/Walnuts dressing. The KeyLimes were also gleaned with permission from a neighbour.

Why is this on my "political" blog? Because of gleaned and foraged ingredients.

TurgenevReview

Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Gogol and "The Art of Kissing" were recommended to me at Leigh's Favorite Books, as was "Hugo Cabret".

Turgenev's 4th period seems to me to be characterized by lengthy passages describing the physical landscape and the "externality" of his characters. The two stories I've read from this period are "The Singers" and "Bezhin Meadow", representing the end of this period of his work. Both have lengthy descriptions of the physical landscape and observations of nature, and I'll comment on this aspect with excerpts from "Bezhin".

In both these stories Turgenev writes lengthy descriptions of all the characters, minor and major. In fact, it is difficult to identify the major characters based on the length of the description (In "Singers", the innkeeper, Booby, Blinker, the wild gentleman, the Turk and the contractor all get equal descriptive time, in Bezhin, there are no main characters.), they become major only due to the percentage of the narrative that develops with them or that they drive. The character descriptions while quite detailed, are mostly "as they are right now", with very little back story or development. So one does not understand how the characters came to be the way they are, nor what motivates them to act the way they do.

This is in compete contrast to the rest of the stories in "First Love and other tales": Mumu, Assya, First Love, Clara Milich. (I am leaving out "Living Relics" as it seems to me to belong stylistically with "Singers" and "Bezhin".) In these latter, and later stories, Turgenev has fewer characters, spends a lot of time with his principal characters, and gives us their development: not just what they are now, but how they came to be that way, why they react, act or behave the way they do in his stories, going back in many cases to their childhoods and formative incidents in their lives.

Turgenev's approach to his characters in his 4th period may initially strike one as lazy. However, there is I think a higher principle at work, that of Truth. He, as the narrator, meets people for only a few hours, in situations that are mostly unusual and unfamiliar to the narrator, in which he also meets a lot of other people. He cannot honestly know which people will play narratively important roles in the future and become characters. He cannot "interview" the characters for their back story without dishonestly exploiting the situation in which he is casually meeting them for the first, and possibly last time. He can only listen when they tell him fragmented bits of their past that they deem important or worth sharing. He has to allow the conversation to flow, the lived events to transpire, tell them about himself, and himself be an actor in the situation.

Furthermore, he cannot honestly invent a fanciful, explanatory backstory for them. The rest of the backstory he could have made up made up is unknowable to him and would be the equivalent of untestable hypotheses. As a natural philosopher, as a scientist and observer of nature,  Turgenev gives us what he sees, that which he can reasonably deduce and defend, and little more.

In the end, Turgenev doesn't develop his characters for his readers, but he remains honest to the people he meets, who after all do not see themselves as characters in a Turgenev story.  Yes, I am in total sympathy with this Turgenev the writer, and for obvious reasons.

Observations of Nature by Turgenev

Observations of Nature in Art

May 23rd 2012, Please read this DISCLAIMER before proceeding. Today's edits are in red.

RAINBOWS:

A. What is wrong with this picture?

(Thanks to Shailesh S for motivating the following.) 

Have you ever seen an elliptical rainbow? No? Let's ask ourselves why not? Imagine looking at a circle, a child's hula, or a hoop-earring in a 3/4 profile photo of a beautiful woman looking out over a seascape (just saying!). The hula-hoop appears as a circle only from one particular angle, out of 2 Pi steradians. To anyone else looking at it, it appears as an ellipse. This becomes clear when they are as far to one side of you as you are from the hula-hoop. Now imagine that there is a big evening rainfront about 20 miles to your East, and you see a rainbow (in the East, why?), and your friend who lives 20 miles to your North texts you, "i c byu t ful rnbo, do u?". You respond, "Yes, i c it 2, as circle, so u must c it as ellipse." She txts bak, "No way, mine is circle 2! ;-?"

Now, the only way the same real object can appear as a circle to all viewers is if it is a ... sphere! Let's accept that a rainbow is not a sphere (in four dimensional space, it would be! Isn't just that a reason one would wish String Theory to be true?). Then we have to conclude that a rainbow is not real! What one means by "not real" is that you can't project it on a screen. Such images are called "virtual images", like the image you see through a magnifying glass. 

We see the rainbow, because the lens of our eye collects the light reflected and refracted from all the raindrops and projects a real image onto our retina. If we consider "seeing an object" to mean sensory perception of light emanating or reflected or otherwise having interacted with that object, then what we are seeing when we "see a rainbow" is all the raindrops!

So the only real image of the rainbow is the one that is projected onto your retina and which is then processed by your brain. Now since that is just as true for your friend as it is for you, what that means is that each and every person has their own personal rainbow, and she or he is at the center of it!   That is a pretty good analogy for consciousness of the universe.

You'll never see a rainbow as an ellipse, less so as co-axial elliptical bands. If we insist on imagining what it would look like to another observer far to the left of us, it would still not look like the above where the red arc remains on the left edge and the blue arc remains on the right edge. The colors form concentric annular discs, so the red arc should be imagined to stay on the outside edge of the elliptical form, and the blue arc on the inside edge.

B. What is wrong with this picture?

 The three rainbows have three different centers, implying three sources of light! On a planet with three or more spectrally identical suns, this landscape is possible. However, since rainbows are virtual images, they would not obscure one another.

Ignoring the rainbow on the right, non-concentric double rainbows are in principle possible. The lower one (whose center is the shadow of your head and is below the horizon) is the normal one formed by light from the sun refracting and reflecting off the raindrops. The upper rainbow, with its center above the horizon, is formed by sunlight which is first reflected by the body of water in the foreground, and then impinges at an upward angle on the raindrops! The center of the reflection rainbow is where the shadow of your head would appear to be after reflection from (a continuation of) the expanse of water. Because of the landforms, the upper rainbow should be incomplete except where there is water directly below the lower rainbow. What a thought-provoking painting!

Now, just as we can see multiple shadows due to multiple lights, for example at night in an illuminated parking lot, with some luck and lots of practice with a hose spraying water, one might be able to see three rainbows as well. 

C. What is wrong with this picture?

The sun is under the rainbow? Whatever the artist is smoking, I want some! This was seen by some of my readers as being derisive towards the artist. By no means! I really really do want some! A rather prosaic way of achieving the same effect would be to have a filtered mirror in front and just to the side of you while looking at the rainbow. By the way, even if the sun was above the rainbow it would still be wrong. Here is an excerpt from the page of an observant artist : "On a showery day, one may be blessed with the appearance of a rainbow. It is visible in an area of the sky opposite the light source."

D. What is wrong with this picture?

The order of the colors is inverted, as the artist could have ascertained by umm ...  looking. But hey! Why look at nature when you can do an art project? Or go online to check whether it is raining? What I think bothers me here is that young children, even when they see a rainbow, are perhaps missing the time with an adult who could help them look at the rainbow. By which I mean observe and mindfulness, which is a first step towards both science and art.

The angles for the first maximum, or the primary rainbow, are proportional to the wavelength. A rainbow, or anything else with a spectrum, requires dispersion, i.e. wavelength dependence of the relative refractive index of the material of the drops (water) in the atmosphere (air). In water, shorter wavelengths (blue) are dispersed more than longer wavelengths (red). Hence one might expect that red be on the inside and blue be on the outside, as in the above painting.  However, the light is also reflected from the back wall of the droplet and purely due to the geometry of this reflection, the colors cross each other and are inverted. See the wikipedia rainbow article.

E. What is wrong with this picture?

This is more subtle! Again, all the artist need have done is look! From inside to outside, the colors in the secondary rainbow go from red to blue! The secondary rainbow is formed when the light is reflected inside the rainbow twice! This causes the order of the colors to be inverted yet again and back to the original "blue is dispersed more". I'll confess that I haven't figured out the geometry of this, and neither has wikipedia.

F. What is i) right and ii) wrong with this picture?

i) The two rainbows are concentric, and the shadows cast by objects are consistent with the position of the sun. That is, the line joining the observer to the center of the rainbow is parallel to the lines joining objects to their shadows.
ii) However, I would have expected to see the shadow of the artist's head at the geometric center of the rainbow, near the bottom, but by my reckoning within the frame of the painting. This is a minor quibble.

G. In contrast, what is right with this picture?

The order of the colors of the secondary rainbow. An artist actually looked at nature! (Okay, the last sentence is unneccesary.)

G. What are two things wrong with this picture?

First, the only way the rainbow can be seen in front of the background trees is if there is rain or mist between the artist and the trees, which, from the clarity of appearance of the sheep and houses near the "pot-of-gold" point, does not appear to be the case. Second, from the artist's viewpoint one can see close to 180 degrees worth of the rainbow, implying that the sun is at the horizon. This is inconsistent with the rather short length of the children's shadows, which indicate the sun to be about halfway to the zenith, or about 45 degrees above the horizon, in which case the rainbow shouldn't be visible at all! (The sun has to be less than 42 degrees above the horizon, since that is the outer conical angle of the rainbow.)

 SNOWFLAKES: The next time I see non-C6 symmetry snowflakes I'll scream.

Scream 1

Scream 2

Scream 3

The USPS, which tends not to be particularly science friendly, did use actual photos of snowflakes for their stamps.

To which one can only say,
"Naught immortal hand nor eye
  could frame thy C6 symmetry"

Next up: descriptions of nature in Turgenev.

WhatDoesThis MakeWarudkar?

If you have anything political to say that is more than 5 lines in length or likely to invite/incite responses, I think it is a good idea to write it on some blog of yours, and to the discussion group, mail only a link to your blog.

Discmailer: If you are not a member of the Hostel 8 B wing 1985 (IIT-B) yahoo group, this is probably irrelevant to you.

GAWAS 10 (However, since having to pay $4.89/gal. of gas is enough to make AW go completely ballistic, I just have to admit that my calibration is off. Perhaps we can work on a new scale: GetAshishWarudkarBallisticScale.)

Warudkar,

This post is NOT to criticize your politics. Since I do not like you, I can't give you any gaalis. However, based on the following, people can make up their minds as to what you are. (The images are screen captures from the YahooGroup. Click on the image for better resolution.)

Those of you who have looked at the post know that, at least at the beginning, I was careful to keep politics out of it, all the post has are photos of food and people eating it. AW's response is longer than my original post.

A little later:

Since AW doesn't want to see my "lefty" politics, he wants to regulate this space and keep me from posting links to my blog. Hower, like most anti-regulationists, what he really believes are that regulations only apply to others, not to those -like him- who are the "chosen ones". Witness the following, which is only about 1/8th of the full-length article that AW chose to cut-and-paste into his mail message. (I can hear you shouting, AW!)

Is AW now against Copyright protection as "too much regulation stifling innovation"? Next will AW launch a anti-regulatory tirade against the Patent office? Inquiring minds all are all agog!

Five-toe running non-shoes

After dissing these shoes for years, I saw them on sale and bought a pair. My reaction: love them!

I've been running barefoot on the sidewalks here for a year or so. Why? because I can! No shit, as in India, and no snow as in Buffalo. I've learned to run on light gravel and can take the occasional pebble in stride. However I've also been hill running for about a year on the trails in Rancho San Antonio and have wanted to try running lightfoot on the trails. I've tried with varying degrees of success to run in Tevas or Chacos. They work out OK, but as a rule are too heavy and hot.

I am trying to get in shape so I can run with _. As many of you know, his nickname for me in IIT was "Slow". In fact he refuses to run with me even on adjacent treadmills, claiming I run so slow he has to make his treadmill go backwards so I can keep up.

A few months ago I got a pair of open Keen sandals and have run in those on the trails. They are quite light, the problem has been that once gravel gets in it is impossible to shake out. Also, my big toe still ends up hitting against the front of the shoe.

When I first got the Vibram FiveFingers, I went for a walk in them to try them out. A number of times I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was walking around naked, which is opuzzling becaise I walk barefoot quite a lot and have never felt "naked". The next day I went for a run in the hills, reallhy felt comfortable and ran well. SInce then each time I've run in them I've hit some personal best, mostly in terms of how high I've been able to run without stopping to walk. For example, on the second day I was able to run all the way around a loop that previously I had had to stop on twice. On the third day I ran it in the opposite, steeper direction and on the third day I ran a different trail to a point that had previously taken me 3-4 rests.

What do I note is different?
1) Sensations! You feel the ground beneath your feet. If you are a sensualist, you'll love these. You also feel the wind between your toes.
2) Lateral stability, since you no longer have that ridiculous 1.25" of sole below your heel, with a sharp edge just waiting to lever you over and hence twist your ankle. Your foot lands, and it is contact with the ground.
3) Because your heel is lower, your calf tendons get much more of a stretch and a workout. My strike was much more full-foot ball toe, and the feet muscles get a workout as well.  So watch out for the lower leg workout at the beginning, similar to when you start sand running for the first time.
4) They are so much lighter, on the way back, even when I was more tired, I felt like I was flying.

5) When you finish a cross-country run, you notice all the grass stalks stuck between your toes.