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In Flinders Chase National Park in Kangaroo Island in Australia lies a remarkable collection of rocks named, well, Remarkable Rocks. What is remarkable about these rocks is that they have been shaped by wind (eolic) erosion. The photographs belong to the author and can only be used with permission.
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In North Dakota there is a museum called the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Museum comprising two sites. One is the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility and the other is the November 33 Launch Facility. These structures are remnants of a series of missile launch sites that were active during the cold war.  In the Oscar-Zero site you can visit the living quarters of the men that would work 24 hour shifts every 3 days in a steel-reinforced concrete facility 50 feet below the ground (Launch Control Center) surrounded by the equipment necessary to launch nuclear missiles.    Launch Consoles In the underground facility two men would be in charge of ten nuclear missiles. If the need to launch these missiles arose, these men would be responsible for the monitoring, targeting, and launch of the missiles. This involved both men sitting at two consoles and performing a series of tasks in a simultaneous fashion. During their 24 hour shift, the men would live secluded in the underground facility. Several crews of men rotated though the facility and remained on alert 365 days a year to uphold the nuclear deterrence of the United States. The underground facility possessed its own environmental controls and power source in order to be self-sufficient during a nuclear attack. The November 33 site is a decommissioned missile silo. It’s most noteworthy structures are a sensor tower that would relay information to the main launch control site in case anyone trespassed at the missile site, and a concrete blast door that originally covered the missile and would be moved along rails in case its launch was necessary.  Left, rails for moving concrete blast door, Right, missile site with sensor tower.  Two views of blast door. As a result of the nuclear weapon-reduction treaties of the 1990s and the end of the cold war, many missile sites were closed across North Dakota, including this one. However, in other areas of North Dakota, missiles sites just like these remain operational. They are all easily recognizable because they also have a sensor tower and a blast door, but these sites are the real thing. Below those blast doors are the devices that can wipe out millions of human beings on the other side of the planet. You can see many of these sites while driving down North Dakota roads. They are a few dozen feet away from the edge of the road and are often surrounded by crop fields. The Address of the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Museum is 555 113th 1/2 Ave NE, Cooperstown, ND 58425 The photographs belong to the author and can only be used with permission.  The ruins of Clopper Mill in Germantown, Maryland, have an interesting history, and you can read the full version by clicking this link. In a nutshell, the original Mill was built and improved in the late 1700s to harness the energy of the waters of nearby Seneca Creek. In the early 1800s the Mill was sold to a successful businessman and local Maryland personality, Francis Cassatt Clopper (hence the name Clopper Mill), who expanded it to a height of 3 stories. The mill remained active until the late 1800s when steam-powered milling made mills like Clopper Mill obsolete. The mill was destroyed by a fire in 1947. The land on which the mill sits was purchased by the State of Maryland in 1955 and is now part of Seneca Creek State Park. The first interesting thing about Clopper Mill is its role in the story of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, when John Wilkes Booth killed President Lincoln, a member of Booth’s group, George Atzerodt, who had been tasked with killing the Vice President Andrew Johnson, failed in his deed and fled from Washington. On his way to a property owned by his family in Germantown, Atzerodt, who knew the miller working Clopper Mill, stayed for the night in this building. Atzerodt was later apprehended and hanged. The second interesting thing about Clopper Mill concerns the road that runs right next to it, Clopper Road. Clopper Road was built roughly along an early Native American trading route, and back in the 1970s it still was a country road. While driving along Clopper Road in 1970, singer-songwriters Billy Danoff and Taffy Nivert had the inspiration to write a song about the countryside and its winding roads. Later on they teamed with country music star John Denver to finish the song. In doing so, they set the song in a different state, West Virginia, and now the song Take Me Home, Country Roads is one of the 4 official songs of West Virginia.  Left, the guard rails of Clopper Road are visible behind the ruins of Clopper Mill  Right, Clopper Mill from Clopper Road  Left, the top floor of Clopper Mill was built with bricks. The lower floors were made out of stone.  Left, old causeway for the stream that powered Clopper Mill, Right, Seneca Creek. Clopper Mill lies roughly at the intersection of Clopper Road with Waring Station Road in Germantown, Maryland. The ruins of the mill are on the flood plain of Seneca Creek and have not been developed as part of the park. Unless you are willing to wade across Seneca Creek, the only access to the ruins is from Clopper Road, but it’s a bit treacherous because of the traffic and the absence of a sidewalk. Old photograph of Clopper Mill belongs to the City of Gaithersburg. All other photographs belong to the author and can only be used with permission. In the city of Miami in Florida, there is a unique sculpture garden named The Coral Castle Museum. The many sculptures in this site were chiseled out from over 1,000 tons of limestone (not coral) over a span of 28 years by a man of Latvian ancestry named Edward Leedskalnin. The bizarre environment of Coral Castle has been used as a set for movies and documentaries, and has been the object of much debate as to how this man single-handedly moved, sculpted, and erected rocks that weigh many tons.     The Coral Castle Museum is on 28655 South Dixie Highway, Miami, FL 33033
The photos belong to the author and can only be used with permission. A few years ago I started writing fiction under the pen name Phantomimic. I created a web site, and began publishing a writing blog. I self-published an e-book (The Sun Zebra), and planned to follow up with a string of new books, but then life happened. No, need to go into details, but this website and blog went dead for a few years. Eventually I regained my footing in the shores of normality, and I created another website and began writing a new blog related to my profession as a scientist. However, this website and blog remained, and I would visit it every now and then, read some past stuff that I wrote, and peer into the person I had been.
If you think that I am now going to say something to the effect that I will reactivate this web site and blog the way they used to be, that is not the case. I really don’t have the motivation to write about writing again or the energy to keep up two websites and update two blogs on a weekly basis. However, I have begun to do something in my life: travelling. I go to out of the way places, check them out, and take pictures and videos. All this stuff is accumulating in my hard drive where it serves no useful purpose, so I have decided to share it with you. This will be an eclectic travel blog of sorts, but it won’t be regular. I may not post for weeks, and then all of sudden post several things over a couple of days. Also don’t expect a lot of words (I want to do this with the least effort) and don’t expect me to make a significant point (that’s what my other blog is for). In this blog I will just tell you about the places I visit, and I will alert my followers about what I have posted using my Twitter and Facebook accounts. I am trying to get back to publishing the remainder of my fiction and write some more, but that is a work in progress. When I do get around to doing so, I will let you know. The shooting of the staff of the Charlie Hebdo magazine by Muslim extremists was an abhorable act of savagery and an affront to free speech. As a result of this, the magazine and its slain staff have been elevated to the status of martyrs with many proclaiming “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie). Such was the groundswell of support for the magazine (which barely sold 30,000 issues and was headed for bankruptcy) that it sold one million copies of the latest issue and is printing more. But I wonder: is this the way we should react when free speech is threatened or attacked regardless of the content and the nature of such free speech? Charlie Hebdo is a hardcore left-wing magazine. Most of its articles deal with issues like the economy, social justice, culture, politics and so forth. Charlie has even raised its voice against the discrimination that Muslims experience in France. The problem is that several of its articles and cartoons have involved a very brutal form of satirical humor that has been extremely offensive to many groups, not only Muslims. Consider the following cartoon that was published by Charlie in 2012 regarding the opposition of Catholics in France to gay marriage, which proclaims that a vocal opponent of gay marriage at the time, Cardinal Vingt-Trois, had three fathers; the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost, which are featured having sexual relations.  This cartoon created uproar within the catholic French community, but others felt it was justified due to the intense campaign against gay marriage led by catholic groups which many considered homophobic.
There is no doubt that Charlie had a right to publish this cartoon, as well as the cartoons of the prophet Muhamad. The question, however, is whether it was wise. Taking the example of the above cartoon, many Christians are for gay marriage, but a cartoon like the one above offends almost all Christians. Similarly the vast majority of Muslims are against terrorism, but a cartoon ridiculing their most prominent religious figure or their holy book will offend almost all of them. This is my beef with Charlie’s approach, even if they have a right to follow it. But what to do now when Charlie’s right to free speech has been so brutally repressed? Buy the new issue with yet another Muhamad cartoon in the cover and declare in solidarity “Je suis Charlie”? For reference let’s check some cases closer to home here in the US where free speech was attacked. The publisher of the pornographic magazine Hustler, Larry Flint, went through several obscenity trials and was shot and paralyzed from the waist down in 1978 by a white supremacist who was angered because Hustler featured an issue of a black man having sex with a white woman. So in support of free speech should we have bought the magazine? In 1987 the artist Andres Serrano took a photograph of a small crucifix immersed in a glass of his own urine (Piss Christ). The photograph went on to cause scandals when it was exhibited at galleries with the artist receiving death threats and losing grants to pursue his work. In support of his free speech should we have bought copies of the photograph and attended his exhibitions? In 1992 the band Body Count put out an album containing a song written by their lead vocalist Ice-T, called “Cop Killer”, which describes in expletive-riddled terms how an individual fed up with police brutality sets out to kill police officers. The backlash against the artist and the record company was so great that the album was reissued with the song removed. To defend free speech should we have bought the original album? My answer to these questions is “No”. You can support free speech without necessarily supporting a specific artist, even when their free speech is under attack. I believe Charlie Hebdo has its heart in the right place. It addresses valid issues that others may miss or shy from addressing, and it has paid a high price for doing so. In no uncertain way I condemn the despicable killing of its staff, which should not be tolerated or allowed to become a muzzle for free speech. However, I will not be buying the new issue. “Je ne suis pas Charlie” (I am not Charlie). I believe that what they do can be done in a way that generates less heat and more light. What do you think? *** If you like this blog you can have links to new blog posts delivered to your e-mail address. Please click here. I went to see Britain’s Finest, an act that bills itself as the best Beatles tribute band. As expected most of the crowd were old fogies on a nostalgia trip like me, but I was surprised to see many young people too. The beginning of the show started with the music of the Ed Sullivan show (which introduced the Beatle to the US), and when the curtain lifted, the four lads dressed in the classic Beatle’s gear from the sixties made their appearance and begun playing all the early favorites including “She loves you”, “I want to hold your hand”, “Help”, “A Hard Day’s Night”, “Can’t Buy Me Love” and so forth. In between songs they added funny comments spoken with a British accent that got the crowd laughing (e.g. “we now want to play a song that we composed recently about fifty years ago”). They ended the first part of the concert with the song “Twist and Shout” which got everyone clapping and dancing. The next part of the show is the one I was interested in. Most tribute bands merely imitate the original band, which of course is the whole point, but to me this does not have a lot of artistic merit. However, the Beatles stopped touring in 1966. As a result of this, and with the exception of the “Let it Be” rooftop concert in the eponymous movie and the fab four’s solo efforts, we have no idea how the Beatles would have played many of their later songs live. This meant that the members of the tribute band would have to actually create what a Beatles concert would have been like. And this they did magnificently.
The second part of the show was preceded by sitar music played over the loudspeakers, and when the curtains lifted the band appeared in full Sergeant Pepper’s regalia playing, of course, “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and then easing into “With a Little Help from my Friends” with the vocals sung by the drummer who played the part of Ringo. This section of the concert featured songs including “Come Together”, “Hello Goodbye”, “Penny Lane”, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and a costume transition of the band members to the Abbey Road phase of the Beatles. The guy who played Lennon donned a wig, round glasses, and sang an acoustic version of “Strawberry Fields”. The guy who played Paul also sang “Yesterday” and “Blackbird” to the delight of the audience, and the guy who played George sang the second most covered Beatle song (after “Yesterday”) “Something”. The show ended with the audience singing and clapping to “Get Back”, and the band came back for an encore where they sang “Hey Jude” joined by all the audience. I left the venue with the feeling that I had attended a concert by the real act hearing the legendary music that is still listened to today even by the new generations. Beatles 4 Ever! R.I.P. John and George *** If you like this blog you can have links to new blog posts delivered to your e-mail address. Please click here.  Here we are again in the middle of another Soccer World Cup. In the media we see images of the whole world all revved up with enthusiasm for the so-called "King of Sports" or "The Most Popular Sport in the Planet". But here in the United States a majority of Americans are once again left wondering what the hoopla is all about and perplexed at the passion soccer evokes.
Soccer indeed can stir up very strong emotions. Wars have been started or temporarily suspended as a result of soccer matches. People have died or been injured as a result of clashes between soccer fans, and some people have been known to commit suicide when their team did not win the World Cup. Players have been marginalized for the rest of their lives, retired, or even killed for failing to win a game or for committing a crucial mistake that led to the loss of a game. Referees have had to go into hiding for making a call considered unfair. The lives of entire groups of people around the globe revolve around the performance of their favorite teams, and the productivity of entire regions in certain countries goes up or down depending on whether the local soccer team wins. Certain teams and specific players have become legends. Their names and their feats are enshrined in museums and celebrated in word and song. Certain infamous games or goals or other events during the game where a team was "cheated" of a win, linger in the collective consciousness of countries decades after the fact. Some are even still discussed and analyzed nowadays with computer technology applied to ancient archival footage. When the national teams play in a World Cup all the activity in certain countries comes to a halt. The streets become deserted. No one works, including the police, which is not a problem because all the criminals are also watching the game. If the team wins there is a huge celebration with people stopping traffic and dancing in the streets. If the team loses the whole country goes into a long period of mourning as though a national catastrophe had occurred. So many people ask themselves: What is it with Americans? Why haven't they caught the soccer bug like everyone else? Why do they prefer this sport the rest of the world calls "American Football" over soccer? This question is even more relevant if you consider that soccer is the most popular (even more than football) youth participation sport in the United States up to the age of 13. I have investigated a little and have found that several explanations have been proposed ranging from the plausible to the whimsical. Let's take a look. 1) Not enough scoring Americans say that watching soccer is like having fun watching the grass grow. They claim that there is not enough scoring for the amount of time that one spends watching the actual game. The average number of total goals per game in world cup soccer from 1990 onward is about 2 to 3, whereas the average number of touchdowns per NFL football game has seen an uptick in recent years and was 4.92 in 2011. So there are more touchdowns per game in football than goals in soccer. But of course football is not a game of touchdowns; football is a game of points. Each touchdown is 6 points but you also have the option of kicking a field goal for 3 points (of course after a touchdown a team can go for the extra point kick or the 2 point conversion, but this is only after a touchdown). So in this aspect football does have an additional scoring mechanism besides touchdowns that makes it difficult for a game to end up scoreless. The last scoreless game in NFL history was back in 1943, whereas scoreless games in soccer are quite common. To this consideration you also have to add game times. In professional soccer you have 2 halves of 45 minutes for a total of 90 minutes of game time whereas professional football has 4 quarters of 15 minutes each for a total of 60 minutes of game time. So if scoring is important for Americans, football does come out ahead. 2) Not enough timeouts Americans like their timeouts and have no patience for a constant action game like soccer. In football the clock does stop after certain plays and if the game is broadcast on television TV timeouts are taken. All this can extend the actual length of a football game (from start to finish) to more than 3 hours. By comparison in soccer there is only a 15 minute rest period between halves making the actual start to finish length of a soccer game 105 minutes. So if Americans like timeouts then football is more suited for them. 3) Lack of physicality, the game is not violent or "manly" enough. Americans tend to like physical sports and they argue soccer is not physical enough. At high school or college level a common derogatory comment about soccer is that "it is a sport for girls". The fact that the U.S. woman's soccer team has won the Woman's World cup 2 times with 1 second and 3 third places finished, while the men's team has only achieved a third place finish back in 1930 of course does not help. Football is arguably a more physical sport than soccer. Despite all the protective gear, many football players suffer serious injuries regularly and many players experience injuries that still pain them many years after they have retired and that require multiple surgeries. The average NFL player's career lasts about 3.8 years whereas soccer players can play well into their thirties with careers lasting 10 years or more. There is also the fact that many soccer players feign an injury to hoax the referee into calling a penalty or have the other player expelled. This is considered by many Americans to be dishonest sissy-like behavior not becoming of a man. So if indeed physical manly confrontation is what Americans want then this is a reason to prefer Football. 4) Football is "Institutionalized" It is argued that, as opposed to soccer, the nature of football with its timeouts fits just right into American corporate and consumer culture. It is also argued that the popularity of football at the college level has turned it into huge money-making enterprise. The above create an insurmountable barrier for soccer to become popular in the United States. These seem also valid reasons for the difficulty that soccer has encountered in becoming more mainstream in the United States. 5) There are too many sports in the U.S. Another argument is that the sport's market in the United States is saturated. Football reigns supreme, but basketball, baseball, ice hockey, golf, etc. mop up the rest of soccer's potential fans. So soccer does not compete only against football for fans but against all those other sports. This is another plausible reason too why soccer has had trouble gaining traction in the United States. 6) You can't use your hands. It has been argued that there is something about being able to use your hands that runs deep within the "can do" American psyche or its "pioneer spirit". That is why sports invented in the U.S. such as football, baseball and basketball all involve using your hands. Because of this a sport like soccer is anathema to Americans. I don't know if this is true but there may be something to it. 7) Americans are not good at soccer and don't like it because they can't dance. There is the perception by many that, despite some exceptions, the average American guy cannot dance very well and feels uncomfortable about even trying it. Thus, because soccer requires the major footwork and leg to hip coordination that comes naturally from dancing, American guys are not good at it and can't relate to it. I am not sure that in general being a better dancer makes you a better soccer player or a more enthusiastic soccer fan. With regards to the "better player" part of this claim, you would have to argue that how good of a dancer the average guy is, somehow relates to the number of World Cups their country has won. The way it stands now it is (World Cups per country): Brazil 5 Italy 4 Germany 3 Argentina & Uruguay 2 England 1 France 1 Spain 1 So there you have it, are the Brazilian and Italian guys better dancers than the English, the French, and the Spanish (with the German, Argentinean and Uruguayans in between)? 8) No cheerleaders. It has been argued that Americans (here I guess this means guys) prefer football to soccer because of the cheerleaders (soccer in the U.S. doesn't have cheerleaders). After all, what good is a sport without a little porn? No comment. These are some of the reasons that have been put forward to explain why Americans have not caught the soccer bug. Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think about them and suggest any other explanations that you may have. *** If you like this blog you can have links to new blog posts delivered to your e-mail address. Please click here. The folks at NASA set up a few streaming video cameras in the International Space Station, so you can watch a video of the Earth as viewed from Space in real time as the station orbits around the Earth (click on the picture below). You can also check the map to see where in its orbit the station is. If it's in the dark side of the Earth the screen will be black. If it's changing from one camera to the other the screen will be gray momentarily. If you watch long enough you will be able to see the Earth light up or get dark as the station goes from sunrise to sunset and back! 
If you want to see more about space, check one of my old posts about gravity that features astronaut Chris Hadfield playing a version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity in the space station! ***
If you like this blog you can have links to new blog posts delivered to your e-mail address. Please click here.  What is the most abundant cell type in our bodies? The surprising answer is: bacteria. Bacteria in our gut outnumber the cells in our bodies by a ten to one ratio. Although we don’t normally think about bacteria as forming part of our bodies, our physiology and biochemistry is inextricably intertwined with these denizens of our bowels, and the extent of this relationship is just beginning to be untraveled. It is known that bacteria can affect our bodies by producing certain chemicals that cause a variety of effects on the immune system and on organs like the intestine or the liver. But what is not well known is whether bacteria can also affect our brains.
For example, researchers found out that when they fed mice antibiotics this caused a change in their behavior. These antibiotic-fed mice exhibited an increase in their exploratory activities and certain changes in their brain chemistry. When the researcher fed the antibiotics to the same strain of mice bred in sterile conditions (i.e. no bacteria in their guts), the behavior of the mice did not change and they experienced no alteration in brain chemistry. This indicated that the changes in gut bacteria brought about by the antibiotics were responsible for the alteration of the behavior of the mice. Another group of researchers performed an experiment where they fed groups of mice high-fat diets. The scientist treated some of the high-fat diet fed mice with a probiotic. This is a preparation of selected strains of bacteria thought to be beneficial for the intestine. Prolonged treatment with probiotics leads to a change in the bacterial makeup of the gut. The probiotic treatment prevented the mice from becoming obese, and the researchers found that this was associated with a decrease in food intake and an increase in certain blood hormones associated with the induction of satiety. When the scientists analyzed the brain of the probiotic-treated mice they found changes in the levels of expression of genes associated with the reduction of hunger and the increase in satiety. Of course these are animal experiments, but there are several conditions in humans involving changes in gut bacteria such as irritable bowel syndrome that are accompanied by feelings of anxiety and depression, and certain psychiatric conditions are also believed to be affected by the makeup of the bacteria of the gut. So next time you experience some mood swings during a bout of intestinal distress, take a good look at the remnants of your last meal as they disappear down the toilet. They may be related to what you are thinking or feeling more than you care to know! Image of gut bacteria by Janice Carr, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. *** If you like this blog you can have links to new blog posts delivered to your e-mail address. Please click here. |
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