A 5 year passage of time

When the pandemic started closing everything, my wife and I took a trip down to the Fairchild Botanic Gardens in Miami. 

Being an outdoor garden, they planned to stay open as long as they could. But the county had other plans and they wound up closing a few days after we went. 

They didn't re-open for several months so I only had a few pictures from that visit (as well as some others over the years). They helped my mental state during the closures and whatnot. 

I took the picture on the top in March 15, 2020. 

I went again today, a week before the anniversary of that date and recreated the picture in front of the same rainbow eucalyptus they have growing there. 

The world is very different. And yet here I am in front of a tree that doesn't care what we're  doing. It just grows. 

Leon Lederman

The name might not be a well-known household name, but Leon Lederman won a Nobel prize in Physics back in 1988, for his work with neutrinos.  Its a widely recognized piece of work that he undertook with other physicists to revolutionize how we think about subatomic particles.  And yes, you may also realize he is the discoverer of the Higgs boson particle.

But here's the thing.  In 2012, he started suffering from dementia.  The general care for it was covered under Medicare, which is good. But, as he needed more care, like an aide, or to stay at a memory care facility, Medicare didn't cover that.  

So in 2015,  his wife sold his Nobel prize for just a little over 3/4 of a million dollars.  Because they needed the money to continue to pay for his care.

A Nobel physicist who revolutionized our understanding of the universe had Medicare, and *still* had to sell his medal to cover expenses.  

He died in 2018, and the NY Times did an obituary for him: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/science/leon-lederman-died-particle-accelerators.html

There is something so wrong with this situation, with what we have for healthcare in a first world nation, one of the wealthiest EVER.  We can't even care for our people, even the ones that contribute to our betterment.  

What is wrong with us?!

Student solves a 100-year-old math problem

Divya is a grad student at Penn State.  Her graduate advisor challenged her to solve a problem. There's a supposed optimum solution for a rotator's movement., which was proposed by an aerodynamic engineer in Britain - but which appeared to be incomplete.

After poring over the math and applying some scientific curiosity, she came up with a solution that makes rotation more efficient.  And this finding can be applied to many things, but wind turbines will benefit directly.  

"I created an addendum to Glauert's problem which determines the optimal aerodynamic performance of a wind turbine by solving for the ideal flow conditions for a turbine in order to maximize its power output,"

https://interestingengineering.com/science/100-year-old-math-problem-revisited

As always, I remind you to always challenge the paradigm and consider that a theory is based on what we know and is observable - but a theory can always be adapted when we learn more.  

Scientific curiosity for the win! 

Wow! WWII bomb found near Paris

World War II ended 80 years ago, and yet we continue to find explosives and bombs in various locales.  But here is a case where a half ton unexploded bomb was found in a fairly populated area.

They've brought in people to dispose of it, but given its size, location,  and age, it is a delicate operation that may take some time to handle properly.

Its amazing just how much destruction was wrought during that war, and for that matter the Great War that happened 20 years before that.

French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said that the huge disruptions were caused by the discovery of a bomb that weighed half a ton. Workers found it overnight while doing earthmoving works near the tracks in the Seine-Saint-Denis region that borders Paris to the north. Bomb disposal experts were called.

https://apnews.com/article/france-paris-gare-nord-unexploded-bomb-d76871a93baee768df2a225922f12d89

Space is hard

Over the last week, we had some space news of note.

SpaceX tried (and failed again!) to launch starship.  The result was similar to the last launch in that they lost control of the upper stage and it pitched uncontrollably and they had to destroy it. 

In this case, the view of the craft and its problem were visible from the east coast of Florida (in spite of the launch from the Texas coastline, it flew eastward).  The reason for the visual was the time of day (sunlight was reflecting at the right angle), the altitude, and the typical trail from the rockets themselves as it pitched.

It was another learning experience for the company, because failure is always an option.  

But it caused problems for airports up and down Florida's coast and triggered a response from the FAA - which undoubtedly will prove "complicated" since Musk dictates what the FAA does and also owns SpaceX (conflict of interest anyone?)

Next up was Intelligent Machines second attempt at a lunar landing.  They launched a few weeks ago, and everything seemed to be going well.  Then when it came time for landing, they had some unexpected thrust from an engine; it landed, but like their last launch, it appears to be not quite upright.  They are getting data back and did deploy the solar panels, so they may be able to salvage some of the mission and meet major objectives.

And finally, we had the other lunar lander that was launched as part of the ride share with Intuitive Machines.  Blue Ghost, from Firefly aerospace, landed successfully and thus becomes the first *successful* moon landing for the US since the Apollo program ended 50 years ago,

  

In their case, I would argue space was hard - but achievable.  We'll learn a lot as they work through their mission objectives.

The good place and its message

I've been watching "The Good Place" which came out a decade ago.  I had never gotten around to it, but I finally decided to give it a go.  Its a lot of fun and deals with some intriguing topics, and includes a Florida-man for some terrific comedy relief.

Anyway, this is worthy of a mention because the underlying premise is that (spoiler if you haven't seen it) the scoring system that sends people to the good place hasn't kept up with our overly complicated world.  You may buy something from a company that doesn't treat its workers fairly, or you don't think about where your product comes from... and that winds up being negative points.

But, there's good from this learning: a theme that emerges is what we do next is more important than what we've done before. We can grow and become better people.

Its uplifting and feels good.  I know the show is from a while ago but there is a lesson in there that becomes even more relevant today.

And that reminds me that the general notion of religion is a bit of nonsense.  Look, if religious belief helps you achieve a form of enlightenment and feels good to you, then I say have at it. 

What I'm talking about is the broad part of religion and a god who wants humanity to succeed. 

How is it that someone like a T-rump (or any of the past "evil doers") can rise to power and make things miserable for the masses, while smart and decent people wind up dying young, having serious diseases, or otherwise have no ability to be that same kind of leader?

There's a flaw in the logic. 

And this is among the reasons that we can’t have nice things