In spite of the fact that I have been missing in action for the last month, I am alive and well. I could offer excuses, but L has changed jobs and is now located back here at home rather than 3 hours up the road. So we have been doing a lot of things around the house and just making up for time apart over the last few years. In addition, we each spent a week down and out with the creeping crud that was endemic in this area and had a friend pass away. In other words, life got in the way for bit.

It is official that this was the hottest August in recorded history here! Same for Denver and much of Colorado.

Time once more for the ignorant to rant that there is no such thing as climate change. It is going to be interesting to see what the weather is like this winter.

But the real reason I chose today to start blogging again? Today is L and my 36th wedding anniversary. Early on we were this carefree couple.

I still have a fond spot in my heart for the maxi dress with empire waist from this era. Of course, we evolved through college to become this pair when we got engaged. (Notice that the horn rimmed glasses were gone!)

It seems hard to believe that it was 36 years ago that we meandered through the maze of getting married on the way from the east coast to the west coast, stopping off here in Colorado to get hitched before a small crowd of 200-300 or so. Don’t you think we looked pretty calm? (And notice that the horn rims are back due to some damage to the other glasses in the days preceding the wedding.)

And now? Well, we both look a bit whiter of hair. (The picture is actually from last fall.)

Do you ever watch foreign movies with English subtitles?

I do. I find that they satisfy a craving for a completely different viewpoint on life and society than my normal viewing habits. I am especially fond of Swedish and French films for their rather odd (to an American) point of view.

Understand that I don’t speak or understand a word of Swedish, so the subtitles have to carry the movie for me. Likewise my French is pretty poor, so unless the on-screen action involves speaking to the class idiot, I have to depend on the subtitles. It is always amazing to me how much of the emotional tone one can deduce just from hearing the voice inflections of the actors, even when you don’t understand a word they are saying! I suspect that the similar inflection structure of French and Swedish to English is the reason I like those films and cannot stand, for example, German subtitled films.

It is also interesting to me that my preference for type of film varies by nationality. I like Swedish detective mysteries and social movies while I like French humor and farce. I tend to like the humor in French movies featuring Audrey Tautou, whereas I really don’t have a favorite actor or actress in Swedish films.

So with all my oddities in mind, here are a few foreign films that I highly recommend, subtitles and all:

After battling network issues and then some weather issues and spending some time in the mountains with L, I am once more sweating profusely at my keyboard. So what great oddity do I bring forth to celebrate my return? That was a tough question since I seem to have run amok amidst things that pique my interest and curiosity of late.

For example, I read that the recent quake in Japan is estimated to have moved the main island approximately 8 feet eastward. Interesting in and of itself, but that led my mind wondering how property surveyors handle the movement. Up til the introduction of GPS units it would not have make much difference since survey marks were based off the geologic survey markers embedded in the ground. Since the ground moved, the basis mark moved with it and all was fine. But now survey is based increasingly off of precision GPS readings. Those GPS readings are based on satellite positioning, not ground. So the ground moved but the satellite did not.

Picture now the poor Japanese property owner whose neighbor wants to build a fence at the edge of his lot. The deed marks the lot in terms of latitude and longitude. So a surveyor comes out and marks the corners of the neighbors lot from the latitude and longitude via satellite and now discovers the the lot sits 8 feet into our poor owners lot, right through his kitchen. So how is the subsequent slew of anomalies corrected/handled. Inquiring minds want to know!

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Gore Vidal quotes:

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half have never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

A short fairy tale of woe and doom. Once upon a time there was a company named Google who also happened to own another company called Blogger. One fine day, one product of Google ceased to work with the only product of Blogger. True to form, Google acknowledged there was a problem for some users and proclaimed that they were working on the issue. After weeks of problems logging in to Blogger using Google’s Chrome browser, today it seems to work mostly work correctly again. You might think that such idiocy wouldn’t happen with products all under one owner like that, but … So the moral of the story? Not even all the ducks in one family swim together is a straight line all the time.

In any case, today was Memorial Day and it was a nice and slightly cool day until about 4pm when the forecast 50 mile an hour winds and hail hit. It all cleared out in time for me to fire up the BBQ to cook for the small celebratory crew of L, her mother, my mother, and me. So we had a great repast and sat around the table talking for a bit over desert. All in all a very pleasant evening.

One of the topics of conversation was the question: Do you count relatives by marriage as “relations” or not? The original train of thought came about from L and my attendance at a high school graduation party for the daughter of a golfing buddy. At said party we ran into a person who is related via marriage to me through the fact that he is the cousin of my uncle’s wife. We also ran into the brother of another aunt’s late husband. I would consider those all relatives (even if a bit distant). On the other hand some people do not consider any marriage tag-a-logs other than spouses to be relatives. So what do you think?

I was reminded yesterday of one of my favorite quotes from Richard P. Feynman, the late Nobel prize winning physicist,bongo drum player, artist, and personal idol. It exposes the deep inner feeling of most physicists in a way that anyone can understand. Without further ado:

Any dyed in the wool physicist will not only agree but cheer wildly for the aptness of the quote.

I was reminded of the quote because of an afterward on an Abstruse Goose cartoon that presented the quote and then supplied the rather tongue in cheek mathematicians answer – “And your point is ..?” Now anyone who has spent much time with me knows that two phrases that I use often are “Are you done blithering yet?” and “And your point is?” The cartoon struck me as great because it used a favorite quote from one of my heroes and poked at my own foibles. What more could one ask for from an afterward to a good cartoon?

I will leave you with a few other Feynman quotes that only get better with time:

• Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.

• I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.

• There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

• If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.

• The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.