Month: October 2011

Book Review: Starfarers – by Poul Anderson

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Science Fiction, Three StarsLeave a comment

Starfarers came out in 1998. I bought the hardcopy. Anderson’s strange prose style didn’t work for me and the book ended up in a box for ten years. I took it out again, and after struggling through the first third of its 494 pages, it picked up speed for me and I very much enjoyed reading it this time.

The book starts on earth in the nearer future. Astronomers noticed point-like sources of hard X rays with radio tails crisscrossing a region in the constellation Centaur. Parallax measurements taken across interplanetary spans showed that they were about 5,000 light-years away. Further analysis showed that they moved at virtually the speed of light.

Studying this phenomenon, scientists concluded that they must be spaceships, traveling at nearly the speed of light, something formerly thought impossible. The ultimate conclusion was twofold: There is intelligent life with technology out in the universe, and traveling at the speed of light is apparently possible – somehow. This knowledge spurned human scientists to invent the “zero zero drive”, an engine allowing human craft travel at virtually the speed of light.

Einstein’s physics states that when an object travels at relativistic speeds, those approaching the speed of light, the mass of the object approaches infinity (hence this is difficult to achieve) and time slows down. This is the technology that underlies the premise of the novel Starfarers. Earth evolves a society where crews on starships travel to distant stars, say 20 light years away, for exploration, eventual colonization of planets and finally trade.

The problem is that it takes, assuming travel at 99.9 percent the speed of light, 20 years to get to the destination. and another 20 to get back. When the travelers return, 40 years will have passed on earth. Due to time slowing down during the travel for the crew and ship, however, the crew will only age a few days during the 20 year trip there and finally a few more days traveling back home. All their friends on earth will be 40 years older, if still alive. It would be like leaving in the 60ies and coming back now.

Now imagine such a trip to a star 100 light years away. You travel a few weeks subjective, and you come back after 200 years. It’s like leaving on a trip when America declared its independence and coming back now, a month older.

Well, to visit the society in the Centaur region 5,000 light years away, earth built the starship Envoy, the most advanced vessel ever built. A crew of 10 people embarked on the trip of 5,000 years one way. For them, subjective, the trip took a year and a half each way.

Imagine what they found when they met the aliens whose starship trails they had detected 5,000 years before, which were then 5,000 years old already, or 10,000 years total before the time when they arrived. Was the civilization still starfaring then? Did it even exist anymore?

Imagine what they found when they returned to earth, approximately in the year 13,000?

Poul Anderson’s writing style is sometimes difficult to read. His plot development in  this story is also somewhat clumsy. There are entire sections in this book that add some perspective, but don’t help the story along, so they really could have been left out. There are also some characters in the story that just don’t make sense. Why would Brent and Cleland board a starship to go on a 10,000 year journey, only to get antsy to go back home after 5,000 years have gone by? What’s another 5,000 years at that point.

While there are problems with this novel, the central idea of time dilation and the societal issues that arise from it are powerful and thought-provoking.

Time dilation speculation is almost as much fun as time travel rumination.

Rating: ***

Excellent 60 Minutes Piece on Van Gogh

On By Norbert HauptIn ArtLeave a comment

The 60 Minutes piece on Van Gogh shows brilliant art work, tells the story of Van Gogh and lays out an alternative version of his death. Widely purported as a suicide, recent research indicates that his death was far from what we think it was.

More than anything, I enjoyed the pictures of the places in Auvers where Van Gogh lived and finally died, the room where he stayed, the inn where he took his meals, photographs of the people who lived around him, and the portraits of the people he painted.

Click here for the link to 60 Minutes. Unfortunately, you have to watch 2 Liptor commercials to get there. You can fast forward over the first story to get to the Van Gogh piece, but you can’t get past the commercials. Argh.

Review: Breaking Bad

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries1 Comment

Breaking Bad must be one of the best television dramas in years. I am addicted.

A fifty year old high school chemistry teacher, down on his luck, barely able to provide for his family and his newly pregnant wife, discovers that he has lung cancer with a prognosis that he has 18 months to live.

Desperate for a way to not only finance his treatments, but also to provide a nest-egg for his family before he dies, he resorts to “cooking” crystal meth. Not cut out for the life of a criminal and the characters he needs to deal with in his new endeavor, he quickly slides down the slippery slope of lies and cover ups with seemingly no way out.

I didn’t know this show existed. Starting in 2008, it is actually now in its fifth season. This goes to show you how much TV I watch: just about none. We recently subscribed to Netflix streaming. The kids told us about the show. I watched the first episode, and I was hooked. If I allowed myself, I could sit for three days and watch one show after the other. So I established the rule that I get to watch only one per day. I now finished 13 episodes of 33 on Netflix.

That’s the good thing about not finding out earlier. I didn’t have to wait for weekly episodes for four years. I get to watch them all at once now.

Jest aside. Unless you’re ready to watch all episodes, don’t get started. The acting is excellent. The plot and story in intricate and believable. The insight into the drug culture is revealing. The slide of a good man into depravity is convincing.

I am not done watching, but I am giving it a rating:

Rating: ****

35 States Apply for Race to the Top Funding

On By Norbert HauptIn Education, Political1 Comment

This country does not have a terror problem, a war problem, a budget problem per se. It has an education problem, which is decades old and is not being addressed properly. We’re dumbing down and falling behind, and it’s starting with your infants and toddlers in early education, it continues in elementary education and goes on from there.

Lack of American graduates in science and math puts us further and further behind China, India, Korea, Japan, Germany and many other countries every year. We’re outsourcing our future, by cutting the education of our youngest citizens – those who will carry us when we are old.

The U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services announced today that 35 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico submitted applications for the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge, a $500 million state-level competitive grant program to improve early learning and development. Applicants include: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

I wonder what the states that did not apply are doing? Texas is missing from this list. What’s up, Governor Perry?

New Definition of Gender for Employers

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries3 Comments

California’s lawmakers passed new employment legislation. Here is one of  the bills, which is now requiring, among other things, that we allow genetic males to come to work in drag, if their identity or gender expression requires it:

AB 887: An Expanded Definition of Gender and How it Impacts Dress Code Policies

Effective immediately, AB 887 makes changes to the California Civil Code (the Unruh Civil Rights Act), Government Code (including the Fair Employment and Housing Act or “FEHA”), Education Code and Insurance Code relating to the definition of the term “gender”.  Currently, each of these statutes provides that “gender” is a protected classification and prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender. For example, the FEHA prohibits discrimination in employment practices based on an individual’s “gender.”

The definition of “gender” has been expanded to mean a person’s gender identity and gender expression. Gender expression is further defined to mean a person’s gender-related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.

Government Code section 12949 (of the FEHA) was specifically amended to state that although an employer may require an employee to adhere to reasonable workplace appearance, grooming and dress standards, such adherence should not require an employee to appear or dress inconsistently with his or her gender identity or gender expression.

What this means: Employers should update their sexual harassment and discrimination policies to include the newly refined definition of gender as a protected characteristic under the law. Employers with appearance-related policies are also encouraged to include language consistent with the changes to Government Code section 12949 and to ensure that the dress codes are gender neutral.

Challenges Using American Airlines Transportation Vouchers

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product9 Comments

Three years ago I experienced frustration with American Airlines travel vouchers. Earlier this year I got another one when I had to cancel a ticket and received a refund as a result. However, American Airlines does not post the refund back to my credit card like any other vendor or retailer of goods or services. American Airlines also does not implement a user-friendly online credit like Southwest, where I can use the credit to pay for my next ticket. No, American Airlines issues a travel voucher – see below:

Note that the voucher is for $140.40, and it’s good for a year after the date of issue of 15FEB11. American Airlines had to print this thing in a little ticket booklet and mail it to me.

I had forgotten about this in my drawer. When I came across it, I decided that I would use it the next time I bought a ticket. Today I booked a flight, put it on hold, and wanted to use the voucher as part of the payment. Normally I pay online. But with vouchers, the American Airlines system is clunky enough that they can’t handle this online and I had to call.

The agent asked for my reservation confirmation number and figured out that I was flying on November 1st. She informed me that the system needed 12 days for me to mail the voucher back to American Airlines to be received and posted to my ticket. Since my flight was sooner than 12 days from now, there was not enough time.

She said that next time I booked a ticket 21 days out I should use the voucher. I responded that I never booked tickets 21 days out, that I was a business traveler, and all my trips were usually short notice, never more than two weeks in the future.

At first she didn’t have a good answer. Then she said that I could take the voucher to an airport and use it for payment. I reminded her that the voucher was for only $140. I was not about to spend several hours of my workday to drive to the airport, park, go to a counter, just to pay for part of a ticket with a piece of paper that they should never have mailed to me in the first place anyway – all for $140.

American Airlines obviously has no incentive to fix this problem. The barriers to using travel vouchers are so impossibly high, people probably just trash them routinely, and American Airlines posts a profit. Show me a business traveler who can book 21 days in advance, then pay by a clunky system of first calling, then mailing a voucher to some office, over 12 days before the flight.

To put this into perspective: I am not just some occasional traveler. I am an American Airlines Platinum member. I travel around 100,000 miles a year. I have almost 2 million lifetime miles with American Airlines. Yet, the loyalty desk can’t figure out a better way to give me a refund when I, very occasionally, have to cancel a flight.

American Airlines – Are You Listening?

Book Review: The Forever War – by Joe Haldeman

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Science Fiction, Three Stars3 Comments

Born around 1970, William Mandella enlists in the military and leaves on an interstellar spaceship with a company of soldiers to fight the Taurans, the first aliens the human race encounters. The war between humans and Taurans goes on for centuries. Due to time dilation as a result of traveling at relativistic speeds, the soldiers that travel in the interstellar space ships do not age as fast as the rest of humanity that remains on earth. So when William comes back after his first deployment, subjectively only a few months after leaving earth, some 50 years have passed on earth, his mother is an old woman, all his friends are gone, and the earth has degenerated to a world with few remaining resources, too many people, powerless government, where marauding hordes of brutes take what they want by force.

The Forever War is a classic “must read” science fiction story. It reminded me of Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. Also, coincidentally, I was reading it in parallel with Starfarers by Poul Anderson. Both novels have time dilation as its central theme and underlying concept upon which a good portion of the plot rests. Both Starfarers (which I have not finished reading yet) and The Forever War develop time dilation to an extensive degree – so much in fact that am writing a separate blog post just on that topic.

Haldeman wrote this book in 1975. Strange that it took me this long to pick it up, as it has all the elements in a science fiction story that I look for: Epic journeys. Aliens. Fascinating physics concepts. Forward time travel through time dilation. Future earth speculation. Advanced military technology. Well developed characters. A love story. A great ending. It’s a satisfying book that makes you want for more.

Poem: Mondnacht

On By Norbert HauptIn Music, Poetry5 Comments

Very seldom do I stumble across poetry that really touches me. Mondnacht (moon night) is one such poem. I saw it as a youth, memorized it, thanks to a persistent, and at the time loathed, German teacher. I wrote it into the cover of a book some time later. Then I completely forgot about it. Last week, I happened upon the book that lay dormant in a box for 40 years, opened the cover, and there it was. It touched me deeply once again.

[I cannot convey this in English. If you can read German, may it lift your soul and fly away with you.]

Mondnacht

Es war, als hätt’ der Himmel
Die Erde still geküsst,
Dass sie im Blütenschimmer
Von ihm nun träumen müsst’.

Die Luft ging durch die Felder,
Die Ähren wogten sacht,
Es rauschten leis’ die Wälder,
So sternklar war die Nacht.

Und meine Seele spannte
Weit ihre Flügel aus,
Flog durch die stillen Lande,
Als flöge sie nach Haus.

–Josef von Eichendorff

Addendum Jan 8, 2017 – a German friend, whom I shared this post with (WI), reminded me that there was a musical version by Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856). I found this excellent 1974 recording by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925 – 2012), who passed away in 2012 at age 86.

I have, in these pages, often decried Germans and the harm and hurt they have collectively caused the world in the 20th century. To be fair, they have also immensely contributed to the world’s treasures in literature, poetry and music. All three are represented in the musical rendition of Mondnacht above. Enjoy!

Punishing Children of Illegal Immigrants

On By Norbert HauptIn Crack-Ups, Political1 Comment

Texas Governor Rick Perry got into trouble in his last debate with his own Republican party because he defended the policy in Texas of charging in-state college tuition rates to the children of illegal immigrants.

This is America. We are all immigrants. I am one, albeit a legal one. My children got in-state tuition in college.

There are actually many people in our America that believe, adamantly at that, that children of illegal immigrants should not get in-state tuition. These are American citizens we are talking about, people who were born here, in Texas, in Arizona, in California. Just because their parents did something illegal – enter this country without a visa – we want to punish the children?

How about we punish children for parents who have done something else illegal, like smoke marijuana? How about a week suspension from school if your parents ever smoked pot? How about we brand you with a tattoo if your mom ever got caught shoplifting? How about a higher tax rate if your dad ever committed a felony?

Sales Wisdom: Zazzle vs. WackyButtons

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product, BusinessLeave a comment

Here is a great example of sales strategy gone wacky (pun intended) as outlined by my virtual mentor Gitomer. If you really go online with your business, you have to do it right.

Playing Things Upside Down

On By Norbert HauptIn Crack-Ups1 Comment

When I was 16, I bought myself a harmonica, went to the park, sat on a bench, and started playing it. I had never tried it before. Within an hour, I was able to do the tunes of “How Many Roads” by Bob Dylan. I was proud of myself.

Over the years,  I learned to play the Piccolo, and various larger harmonicas. Sometimes when I am alone and pensive, I bring them out, and I reminisce while I play.

What I didn’t know that fateful day in the park was that I put it into my mouth upside down. This reversed the sides of the high and low notes, somewhat like reversing  the keys on a piano. I  didn’t realize I played backwards until many years later – way too late to switch. I still play upside down today.

I checked into the Hampton Inn in Albany, NY last night and observed the desk clerk using the mouse on the computer upside down. When I asked him about it, he said that when he bought his first computer he didn’t realize he had it backwards, and he can’t use it any other way now.

I tried this just now. Not only are the buttons reversed (since I use a PC and there are two, for you Mac-fiends), but the cursor moves in the opposite direction. Try it and see if you can control it meaningfully.

Rick Perry, the super-Bush

On By Norbert HauptIn Atrocities, Commentaries, PoliticalLeave a comment

I have seen pristine wilderness. There is little enough left in our country, and probably less in many other place in the rest of the world. Theodore Roosevelt had a vision, and many followed, building a network of protection for our natural resources and splendor. We are finally on the road to cleaning up our air and our water.

I have also seen what logging does to a mountain. I have seen what coal mining does to a countryside. I have choked on the smog of Los Angeles. I have tried to hike through “private land” riddled with barbed wire fences and no trespassing signs. We have all seen the stewardship of our land by the oil companies in the recent BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Do I need to point out that our private enterprise system has absolutely no incentive to keep nature alive, keep the wilderness preserved, and keep the Grand Canyon clean? Private enterprise will use the land, until it is used up. That’s how it works. And the land, that took millions of years to form, is used up in a few decades of logging, drilling and paving. Private enterprise is the pimp that would turn our parks into prostitutes while they paid out, and wretches after they become used up.

Perry wants to roll back clean-air regulations, expand offshore drilling, open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and repeal many of the EPA’s mandates. I am in disbelief that a politician can stand up and say those things and a majority of people latch on to this as a good thing, because it supposedly would spark 1.2 million good American jobs.

Maybe we should just pave the whole country. That would create even more good American jobs, at least while the paving lasted. Never mind that we’d have no room for cows to graze. But then, we will deal with that problem 20 years down the road. Maybe we could use the Grand Canyon as a dump site for nuclear waste. It’s a big enough hole to take all our waste for decades, perhaps centuries to come. Oh, we would even create a whole new industry by importing nuclear waste from France, Russia, Japan and China for centuries. That would create a lot of good American jobs. Never mind that the water of the Colorado would give us all 5 arms, 6 fingers and 3 eyes. The more the better.

Here is a slogan that would work:

Perry, the super-Bush, for president.

Good American jobs for a few years.

Trashing the country for generations.

 

Hilton Website Needs Major Help

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad ProductLeave a comment

The Hilton web site, which I have used for more than 10 years to book hotels, was stable for a long time. Within the last year, however, they have started making changes. It is getting worse with every improvement they install.

It forgets who I am and requires that I log in over and over again. It drops my reservations, so I have to keep checking if they actually took, and it has this annoying feature where when you’re done with one reservation and you need to go back to the main site there is no way to do it. So you end up having to use the back button on the browser, which confuses it even more.

So I broke down and tried to send them some feedback. See the form below. When I tried to select the operating system, Windows 7, the most popular and newest, was not even one of their options. Then I typed a message with detail, giving them some pointers of what’s wrong. When I got to 500 characters it hung up and eventually cleared the screen.

That did it. The message below is the result:

What’s with these sites that give you 500 characters only to say your feedback? This is programmers dictating what users can do for their convenience. Hilton needs serious help in the web programming department.

They have it completely backwards. Customer service at its worst.

Steve Jobs’ Plateless Car

On By Norbert HauptIn Cool People, Uncategorized2 Comments

Steve Jobs drove a silver 2007 Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG without a license plate.

Here is an article that explains – somewhat.

Art Interpretations

On By Norbert HauptIn Art, Feelings2 Comments

A few days ago I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, one of the world’s largest art galleries. I spent some time in the rooms where many of the Van Gogh paintings are. Van Gogh is my favorite painter and I could spend hours sitting there in the presence of greatness.

But that’s not possible in the Met. The Van Gogh rooms are usually packed. I am not the only one who loves Van Gogh. Guides come through regularly with their groups and they always talk about Van Gogh and particularly one of his most famous paintings, A Wheatfield with Cypresses:

One of they guides told about the meaning of the cypresses, the clouds and the wheatfields. Everyone puts thoughts into Van Gogh’s brain and meaning into his brushstrokes. At the risk of offending an entire academic branch of art historians and art analysts:

I think it’s all made-up:

I don’t think Van Gogh ever sat there and thought about what symbolic meaning to put into the wheatfield and the cypress. He painted the damn things because he could not help it, he was a painter and that’s what he did. He loved the bright colors of the world, and he loved even more magnifying them and laying them thick on the canvas. The field was hot, and he wanted to make the yellow in wheat look hot. It worked. Van Gogh had passion for his work and his art. He never thought that there would be art interpreters in museums in New York that would look at his work. He never knew how great he would become after his death.

And that is a very sad thing, making Van Gogh greater yet.

I cannot turn around and walk away from A Wheatfield with Cypresses without tears welling up in my eyes.