V's Birthday

We had a birthday party for V a few days ago.  M baked a cinnamon crumble cake just for her.  The kids gave her presents and cards. 

I also took V out over the weekend for breakfast at the beach for her birthday.  It has become something of a tradition for us.  In Germany I would take her to breakfast next to the Baltic and here I took her to a place up on the North Shore. 

V's mom also sent an orchid flower arrangement. 

Faster than light‽

I came across something that is potentially very exciting for space exploration.  NASA's "Eagleworks" lab is working on two advanced, theoretical propulsion approaches.  One of these is an interferometer to measure nanometer scale disturbances in spacetime over a centimeter scale perpendicular to a ring of energy flow (link and link).

From http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936_2011016932.pdf

The idea is related to the expansion of the universe, which is not limited by the speed of light because mass is not "moving" locally in space, but it's relative position is space is moving because the space itself, around the object is stretching (or shrinking).  If you want to travel to Proxima Centauri, 4.24 light years away, instead of using a tremendous amount of fuel to accelerate, like is proposed for the daedalus (50 years to Bernard's star) or longshot (100 years to Alpha Centauri B) projects, just shrink the space in front of the ship and re-expand it behind you.  There are no inertia/momentum problems because you're not "really" accelerating, and your clock has the same time on it as the controllers back in Houston...! (I naively wrote about something like this in this blog back in March, link.)

from http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936_2011016932.pdf

I looked around on the internet and some comments have been made about this.  From what I can tell so far there is a symposium in Houston in mid-September where an announcement of some of the results of the experiment will be made.  There are also some new theoretical results that energy requirement of the space bubble can be optimized by oscillating its intensity and modifying its thickness, to theoretically approach a 10 meter sized bubble with an effective speed of 10c (10 times the speed of light) so Proxima Centauri becomes a trip of less than 6 months (link)!  (This post says the math ultimately allows a trip to Alpha Centauri in as little as two weeks (link)!)

A breakthrough technology like this is exactly what we need to work toward to cover the 250 light years (in a 6 to 25 year trip) to find the nearest planet with multicellular life (link)!  

First Week of School

The first week went well, so far so good, for the kids in school.  The biggest challenge has been adjusting to the new schedule of waking early to drive to school and doing homework after getting home late at night.

The teachers are puzzled about their background.  They have been asking if the kids were home-schooled in Germany (because they are so behind in some areas) and ask if they have ever been in a classroom before.  We have had to explain that no, home schooling is illegal in Germany, which surprises them.  We told them that non-German kids do not count in the schools testing score results for the first four years after arriving in Germany, so the teachers did not teach them and focused on educating the other kids.  This is not speculation, the teachers in Germany told us they were doing this without a hint of embarrassment.  However, I think the teachers here don't believe us because this is so illegal here it is hard to image a "civilized" country doing this somewhere else.  I explain to them that this, the kids education, is the main reason we had to leave Europe and return to the US. 

I am working with the kids each night on their homework and focusing on difficult areas.  They are both smart kids and I am confident that they will catch up quickly. 

We also all got sick this week with a cold, which is probably related to exposure at school, so we are resting up now this weekend.  Although T did get in a lion dance gig this morning.

Also the kids have been taking care of the neighbors dogs for the last two weeks, while they are away traveling.  Overall they have been very responsible about it, feeding the dogs first thing in the morning and checking to make sure they have water and watering the plants. 

Car Wash

The kids had fun washing the van; they sprayed each other as much as the van.  It looked almost like a different vehicle later.  It had the same problem I do; part of my tan keeps washing off. 

The Slate-nepi of Laseriland

The kids going back to school reminded me of something when I was in school that caused a stir.  In high-school, in the 1980's, I wrote an essay about a hypothetical group of people called the Slate-nepi that lived in a country called Laseriland.  The Slate-nepi were not allowed to freely move and work in the land they had lived in for countless generations and many had to give up their homes and farms.  They had to stay in restricted "homeland" territories and pass though security gate checks to work as cheap labor at jobs in Laseriland that were outside their residential lands.  The jobs they could work at were restricted.  This legal status, of citizens and Slate-nepi, was inherited from generation to generation.  The Slate-nepi were impoverished and there were numerous restrictions on education, and even basic building materials, placed on them by the ruling Laseriland government.  Media reports were highly biased where the Slate-nepi were often referred to as militant terrorists and Laseriland citizens as student demonstrators or as security defense.  Etc..., etc....

When this was read in my class, people thought it was a fairly transparent attempt to refer to apartheid in South Africa, until I told them that Laseri and Slatenepi were anagrams (link). 

See also the situation in the UAE, where over 70% of the residents are laborers who are not citizens and have no way of attaining citizenship (link). 

Back to School

Both T and M went to their first day of public school in Hawai'i today.  School actually started for most students a little over a week ago but the principals wouldn't accept them until they were sure there was enough room in their classes, but they both got in so we registered them on Monday, bought a uniform, and they started today, which also happens to be my birthday.  They are also both signed up for ESL.

So far so good.  They both brought home homework to do tonight.  The only hiccup was confusion on the schools part about T's supply list.  He was supposed to get the list when we picked him up today (according to the front office), but his class teachers thought that he should already have the school supplies today and have been given the list by the front office yesterday...a basic blame-the-person-who-is-not-there run around.  So we stopped driving, I went into the office, found someone and asked for the list.  After some surprise and rummaging around in drawers they found it and gave me a copy. 

We also found out today that red clothes are completely banned at the schools, because of gangs, which rules out a lot of the clothes the kids have.  So I suppose we will have to do some clothes shopping this weekend.

I am not a big fan of public schools, at least in the way they are currently implemented with ridiculously little funding.  I must admit I am very apprehensive about this and hope that it works out for the kids.  I plan to continue to supplement the kids education with home schooling along the way. 

Also, V is the star of her class!  She registered and took advanced placement tests for her degree program.  She was one of a few people to place out of one of the classes (she scored so high on the test she does not have to take the class).  She was the only person this year to place out of a second class.  And she only missed a third advanced placement by three points, and she was the highest score in the third test! 

Rain

We got a downpour!  (I can hear my mother correcting me to "we had a ...")  Rivers of water gushed down the sides of the streets. 

We have a tarp over the back porch.  With the UV damage breaking down the nylon cords holding it up, and the wind whipping it around, the weight from the rainfall was the final straw.  The tarp was ripping loose to the ground. 

So, a few days later we took the rest of it down and bungeed up a new (brown) tarp to replace it.  It's something that's needed doing for a while. 

Cleaning the Old Vacuum Pump § 1

I worked on taking apart and cleaning the old two-stage vacuum pump that I salvaged.  The thing weighs 110 pounds!  I started with the motor.  It has a 3/4 hp GE electric motor to run it. 

I took it apart and cleaned all the dust, bugs, cobwebs and gunk out of it.  Then oiled everything with machine oil.  It had two points where you are supposed to add oil for the rotor bearings, but I had to break the factory paint seal to pull the little plugs out (marked with "oil") to add oil.  I don't think the motor has ever been oiled.

I showed T and M the inside so they could see the similarity (coils of wire) with the electric motors we made.  Then put everything back together.  I tried plugging it in and turning it on, while it was unattached, to see if it worked before working on the rest of the pump.  Wow, it jumped sideways and was singing away instantly.  This motor has a lot of torque. 

Fire

It has been very dry the last few months, we are in a drought, and fires have been breaking out around the island.  Every now and then we can smell smoke in the air and once while driving V saw a fire that had just started in the grass and weeds of the median and a man jumped out of his car and ran over to stomp it out before it got any larger. 

We were at the public library, then drove to the grocery store to run errands and there was a big plume of dark smoke rising in the sky towards the coast, in the direction of an air field and oil refinery.  We were going to fill up the gas tank next (at the cheapest place on the island and our empty light was coming on) but we made a side trip by our house first so I could grab my camera. 

In the picture above it looks like the building is on fire, but the smoke is just lined up and is coming up from far behind the building. 

Then the fire trucks came by with alarms blaring and leaning heavy on the horn. 

Above is the view when we pulled into the costco gas station.  Again, the fire is much further in the distance than it looks from these pictures.  I snapped some more pictures while we were filling up but of course we didn't try to get any closer and went back from here (so we wouldn't get in the way or get caught in the wrong place). 

I switched to my zoom lens and you can make out part of the oil refinery in the distance through the smoke in the center of the picture above and below. 

In the next two pictures a helicopter was flying between us and the smoke.  It helps give a sense of scale. 

Later we learned it was a grass fire in a field that burned many acres, but it was near the oil refinery and a place where the pipes go right over the road and back down again on the other side.  It seems like this could have easily been a lot worse.

Zap!

The van has had trouble starting after the lights have been on, even for a short time.  Once it wouldn't start at night and we waited till the morning for the charge to build back up a bit to get it started.  (We also had the solar charged battery as a potential backup but we didn't need to use it, yet.)  I bought some jumper cables the next day and tossed them in the back, just in case.  Then the next weekend we picked up a replacement battery (there is no telling how old the battery is that came with the van).  By the way, Costco is by far the cheapest place we have found to buy car batteries. 

I took out the old battery and told T to put in the new one. 

At first T picked up both cables, one in each hand, and started to attach them to the terminals.  I told him to stop and explained why that was not a good idea (he would connect the circuit).  I then told him about a high school teacher I had that accidentally laid a wrench on the battery, connecting the terminals, and that he was injured in the process.  T was using a wrench to tighten down a bolt on one of the terminals and sure enough, seconds later:  POP!  FLASH!  Sparks flew in the air; T jerked his hand back, and the wrench went flying. 

As he turned the bolt the other end of the wrench came down toward the other terminal.  While my words may have been lost on him, he won't soon forget the fireworks, which may be a very fortunate and valuable lesson in working with electricity. 

The arc took a bite out of the lead of the terminal and burned a slight pit and deposited lead on the end of the wrench. 

There was a chuck liquified out of the near-left side of the terminal.  It is mostly obscured by the connector fastened over it. 

We also changed the oil and oil filter for good measure.  T is starting to get that routine down. 

Celtic Independence

There is talk in the news recently about a referendum vote for the independence of Scotland in 2014 (link).

I use to have a coworker from England and occasionally I would try to discuss the independence of the Celtic nations England had taken over.  He was opposed to the very idea, surprisingly so.  At one point in our discussion I got in a good comeback.  He said the Celts were an ancient, powerful and far-reaching culture that had nothing to do what-so-ever with the modern, so-called, Celtic people.  I said, "Oh, kind of like the British Empire?" 

On of his central arguments kept coming back to something along the lines of "the Scottish can ruin their economy and future just as well as the English can."  I tried to carry this to an (pointing out that it is) absurd counter-argument along the lines of "if I am just as capable of making bad decisions as you are, then why aren't I in charge of making decisions about your life, such as who you will marry, how many kids you will have, how much to save for retirement, etc... " 

In my mind it is not about who can do a better job, which just opens the door to all kinds of manipulative arguments on either side.  It is who should be in control of their own future, you or someone else?  The Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and Cornish or the English?

Expecting

We are expecting a new baby this fall! 

I love all my kids but I am planning for this to be the last one.  There are more kids running around here than I know what to do with.  Seriously though, the older two have been a huge help with the younger one. 

Infrastructure and response

I remember reading an essay by Isaac Asimov decades ago that argued for a slow steady expansion into space (to Earth orbit, then a Moon base, then a Mars Moon base, then Mars, ...) instead of one-off missions where you go, look around, then leave.  In his view once humans arrived at a new place they would never really leave and the required space based infrastructure would be built up to make each following mission easier than it would be by doing everything from Earth. 

In a way it feels like we are not doing this, the prime example being no humans returning to the Moon in almost 40 years.  However, the ISS has been continuously occupied for many years and Curiosity's Mars landing last night is perhaps another example.  We had multiple satellites in orbit around Mars that assisted with relaying data from the landing.  Also, when a lander lands on another planet or moon something seems missing because you can't actually see the craft itself landing, everything is from it's point of view.  However, for the first time, a orbiting satellite captured an image of the lander parachuting to the surface.

At this moment, I think this is the most significant image returned from the landing.  It shows that we are building a coordinated infrastructure on another planet.

Also, I am struck by the public response.  I read an article that said people in times square were watching the landing and broke into a spontaneous chant of "SCIENCE!, SCIENCE!, SCIENCE!, ..."  Often it feels like science is vilified in our popular culture.  I can't remember the last time something spontaneous like this from a crowd has happened in support of science!

Curiosity Lands on Mars

It worked!

We watched the live feed from nasa.gov.  The craft lander separated, entered the atmosphere, parachute deployed, radar locked, fired thrusters, lander separated, lowered from sky crane, and landed softly on the surface from 13,000 mph minutes before.   The controllers were ecstatic and the lander returned some images.  The announcer said the NASA websites crashed from the traffic but we had a live feed the entire time (although the video was a bit choppy at moments).

Here is a link to the landing video.  

Screen capture at moment landing announced.

First thumbnail image returned (from screen capture of video) moments later.  The horizon is near the top and a wheel is visible in the lower right.

The Evolving Mars Rover

We are eagerly anticipating seeing the outcome of the new mars rover landing Sunday night.  I first blogged about it last November.  I came across this NASA picture (click for link to full picture) that shows how much the size of the mars rovers has grown.  From the tiny rover in 1997, to the larger one in 2004, to the car sized rover landing, one way or another, this weekend.

Around the world in 108 minutes

I was reading about the first human in space in 1961.  Yuri Gagarin made one orbit of the Earth.  It is funny, in retrospect, to read about his reentry and landing.  The launch trajectory was off, early in the flight he asked for the orbital parameters but the ground crew couldn't tell him because they hadn't been recalculated yet.  After Siberia he went out of radio contact and the flight was over the Pacific and South Atlantic.  The retrofire for reentry happened off the coast of Angola.  Then the spacecraft modules failed to separate correctly until some wires broke (not by design).  After an 8 g reentry he was ejected 23,000 feet above the ground to parachute the rest of the way.  However, he was 280 km (174 miles) from where he was supposed to land.  Luckily he did not end up in Siberia, the Caspian Sea, the Gobi desert, or the Himalayas but on a farm in Russia (he was supposed to land in Kazakhstan in Central Asia).  With a farmer and daughter watching, a creature in a bright orange suit and space helmet landed in their field.  The mission was a secret before the launch so they could not have known about it.  I wish I could see the look on their faces.  Gagarin said, "When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"  I also wonder what Moscow was thinking, when they lost contact, realized the trajectory was off, and he didn't land when expected... 

Schools, citizenship and assumptions

In Germany we had to put up with all kinds of false assumptions that were made based on us not being German/EU citizens, and quite a number of these surrounded the school system.  Well, in this case it has happened again in reverse and I am venting about it a bit here.

We are trying to get our children into the public school system after homeschooling them for a year since arriving in the US.  Our children were in German speaking schools in Germany.  We had planned to get them into ESL (English as a Second Language) classes here to get them up to speed in English.  However, we just found out that when we registered to home-school; the school system recorded into the computer system, without asking us, that our children have always used English and no other languages, so we do not qualify for ESL--apparently they assumed this because we are US citizens?  Today V explained that they have never had an English class, etc.  But the school administration said that once it is recorded into the system it can not be changed...  So now we have to try to figure out a way to appeal this.  I am sure if they were German citizens this would not have happened.  Again, and this is a reoccurring theme in my life, why couldn't they have just asked us instead of making up assumptions that have important impacts and can not be revised. 

Sometimes the whole world seems stacked against families that move or don't fit the mold.  Our job now is to work to revise this and also to make the people in the school system think twice about making assumptions, so that this, or something similar, is less likely to happen to the next family that moves here.