Grogu getting ready for some Thanksgiving grub:
I've heard French people exclaim "Baf!" since I was a wee little lad. I was always interpreted it to mean something along the lines of "whatever" or, at the very least, a dismissive exclamation.
I've long known that to be baffled by something is to be perplexed by it, confused by it, etc.
I've also known that a baffle is a device used to redirect or frustrate the flow of light, noise, fluid, or heat.
The o.g. use is apparently for fire:
Knowing the origins of words is like understanding the mathematics behind phenomena: rather than being perplexed and frustrated and diverted by looking at things the wrong way, you can just look at the underlying symmetries and relationships. From this new perspective it's all so simple as to warrant a mere "Bah, humbug!"
(Scrooge was, indeed, baffled by Christmas, wasn't he?)
I finally decided to dabble in the trendy fashion of AI generated 'art'. Here are my first few attempts using the site https://creator.nightcafe.studio/
First Up:
-I uploaded the picture of me on the banner here at Riddicisms and asked to have it rendered in an Andy Warhol style:
I thought about the classic "am I the butterfly dreaming the world or was I dreaming I was a butterfly?":
I tried to get an image to go with the poem I wrote a while back "Said/Unsaid" : (my favorite image thus far)
Finally, I tried to get an image to go with my old post about time, free will, and death:
Prunes in America have always been associated with old people to me: some kind of vaguely unattractive thing they would eat for medicinal purposes.
But as we often do in English, the dried fruit we name after the French word for the fruit itself: prune is the French word for plum.
When I was kid, my grandparents had a couple of plum trees in their backyard. I have vivid memories of carefully selecting the perfectly ripe plum (perhaps a bit over-ripe actually) on the tree and eating it right there, standing in its shade. (pro-tip: always pick the plum on the shady side of the tree; it will still be surprisingly cool even deep into the day). The sweet freshness coupled with the softness of the flesh of the plum could not be beat. Sometimes it would dribble down my chin and I would lean forward so as not to drip on my feet. It was some kind of holy communion with nature for a young Kenny.
I long ago stopped even trying to eat a plum since they invariably disappointed me. The version of plums I can access now just don't match up to childhood memory.
"Prunes?" you ask. Well, yes, I buy those in bulk from Costco. Is there a metaphor for youth and old age lurking in this post somewhere. Why, no... not at all...
When I speak French, I have a strong American accent. If there's a word in French that sounds like the English word, it's probably just coming out in English in the middle of my French sentence.
When I was little, my French grandparents lived next door to the mayor of their small village. In addition to being the mayor, he was a crusty old Corsican school teacher. I think he taught the equivalent of 5th grade or something (apparently being the mayor of a small Corsican village is not a full-time undertaking).
I will always remember that my grandmother thought it'd be fun to send me to school one day with him. He called me to the board to do some math problems in front of the class. I remember to this day, he wanted me to solve:
5,6
x 3,2
------
I felt like there was something here, something obvious I should be able to translate into a problem I knew how to do, but being in front of classroom of these slightly older French kids (I think I was in 4th grade) just stopped me in my tracks. I confessed I didn't know how to do it and sat back down. "I guess they don't teach that yet in America" the neighbor said. When the next kid went up and solved it out, I could tell that they were using commas where we would use periods for the decimal places and I felt stupid that I hadn't figured that out on my own. Even in the fourth grade, I could've figured out to write
17,92
To this day, there is a whole class of Corsican kids who think their math education is superior to American math...
Anyway, later that evening I was telling stories about the day in my broken French and I referred to the school teacher as le maire several times. But of course I was saying it American-style so it came out like the French word le meilleur ! Eventually my Mom laughingly corrected me "Kenny, he's not The Best, he's just the mayor" I said I knew, that I was calling him, Le Mayor!
One of the reasons I love studying, thinking about, and teaching physics is that it is the process of revealing underlying truths: the things that nature really values are not those same qualities that we first notice.
I'm happy to report that I think today's youth is better at being less superficial than my own generation in this regard, but in large part I think it is fair to say that most people put a lot of value in the following:
In both columns these may be the attributes that are most easily identified and somehow seem tangible to us. Obviously, in the moment, as you are maneuvering through the world in the day-to-day, these factors do inform that navigation. But just because something is easy to identify and others talk primarily about certain attributes, does not necessarily mean those are the important ones in an essential sense.
As you study physics and, also, really begin to understand people what emerges as important is more like:
I've always known we get our english noun "souvenir" from the french verb meaning "to remember".
I've always known this humble brass vase my Mom keeps on her mantle:
As you age yourself, you become more interested in family history and family heirlooms so, for the first time, I recently asked about the origin of this vase. "Oh that is a repurposed, spent artillery shell from World War One," she casually informs me.
This floored me that this (for me) quotidian item that I have known all my life should quietly harbor such a profound and violent past. Maybe a great uncle of my Mom's served in WWI, we are not sure.
In any case, how cool is it that my family has an actual swords-into-plowshares keepsake?
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Let Us Beat Swords Into Ploughshares, Evgeniy Vuchetich 1959 |
"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." - Book of Isiah
Thank you for beating your artillery shells into vases, French infantrymen. I will souviendrai you every time I look at this souvenir.
Recently, I introduced my son to one of my all time favorite movies, Wings of Desire. I still remember seeing it for the first time as a freshman at Purdue (1988) and walking out with a friend and he wanted to talk about the movie because he thought it was a good movie. I didn't want to talk about it because I felt I had just experienced something holy and profound.
By now, I've probably seen it 5 or 6 times. But you know the funny thing about really deep experiences? They keep giving you something new. In the movie's penultimate scene, the two lovers finally meet in a club (with Nick Cave playing on stage in the adjoining room of course). What follows is a speech that tries to combine the dual themes of the movie: Love for the city (love for mankind), and Romantic Love. What I had failed to appreciate on prior viewing was that the glass of wine offered by Damiel to Marion. It is as if a priest were offering it in communion as a sacrament. They hold the glass together and look into each other's eyes. She takes a sip, he takes a sip and then the glass sits there in the background for the rest of the scene.
I like origami like I like singing: I appreciate it as a spectator not as a do-er.
(As an aside, I find it interesting that in recent years, I have seen a resurgence of interest in both Origami and Chess with the high school crowd. Both upward trends in popularity seem to predate COVID but the COVID isolation/take-on-a-hobby days would lend themselves to taking on these particular activities I imagine. Anyway...)
Early this summer (just after the school year), a colleague reached out and asked if I would be willing to help out for one week at an engineering summer camp. The designated instructor had to leave for the last week of an intensive course on origami and robotics. By then the campers were working on their projects and I was just kind of like a helper/cheerleader for their independent work. It was interesting to see what they came up with. These are the kind of projects school leaders and community members find so fascinating and are always pushing us to do more of in regular school. The experience reinforced my own take which is that projects are fun, interesting, enriching, but ultimately not super educational. Perfect for a summer workshop or as a do-it-yourself kit at home.
Some of the student projects (they were based on these origami robotics kits):
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| New Arm for Mars Rover |
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| Air-Bag like Bumpers |
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| Robotic Hand |
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| Robotic Leg |
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| Customized Robotic Pillow |
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| "Inverted" - showing the fold lines only |
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| Atlanta Botanical Garden's signature piece in the background! |
Waiting in my backyard for the chicken to finish on the grill (hey, it's what I do), enjoying the weather in the fading daylight. As I was looking up at the branches of some of the old oaks in my backyard (the branching patterns recalling for me the divergence points in a person's own timeline),
Suddenly I was 13 or so and heading out to the beach for the first time that summer, as I excitedly exited the narrow pathway I always took to the expanse of the ocean, I was taking a moment to appreciate the beach itself - the waves, the sun, the stiff breeze carrying the unmistakeable smell of the sea. This was The Beach - the one near my grandparent's house in Corsica; the Beach to which all others were compared since it is deep in my psyche as an Important Place. I felt something tickling my legs and wondering if the wind was strong enough to be kicking up the sand and that was striking my legs?
That I am the same person right now in my backyard as I was some forty years ago really struck me. I stood there in my own backyard, smelling the chicken reaching its final stages and feeling that breeze and marveling at that fact in the magical light of dusk. I am that same person and yet not quite the same. We are connected over all that time. I contain the sum total of that 13 year old boy marveling at the sea and discovering that the wind can tickle you.
That's amazing isn't it?
So, in Skyrim, I've hung around a few sawmills (when you are low level, you gotta do some grunt work to earn some coin and build your rep with the townfolk, you know what I mean?):
I think Skyrim got their water wheel wrong though. In the game, they have a traditional mill-style wheel on the side catching some slow flowing water whereas IRL they seem to need fast moving water driving a wheel that is directly beneath the mechanism. (there are two here because the smaller one is used to drive the log forward into the blade which is driven by the bigger one in the back. Clever engineering!)
1. Leave your old 2008 Honda Accord undriven for a month or so in the driveway.
2. Drive a very short distance to the high school parking lot.
3. Spend a long time teaching her how to turn on the lights, the blinkers, the wipers, etc.
4. Do step #3 without actually turning on the engine
5. Have her finally crank on the engine to take a little drive around the parking lot only to find out the battery is now very dead.
If only I knew something about batteries, alternators, or electricity, maybe I could have seen this coming! *sigh*
(I, of course, just left the car sitting there for a day or so while I slowly extracted the old battery (well used from 2014) and replaced it with a new one in the parking lot. It took me more trips back and forth from home because I compounded my idiocy by not bring the right wrench or any WD-40 the first time...)
When the exit sign tells you about their known unknowns:
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| So sad, Exit 257 - you want some "Attractions" but none yet... |
And then there are the exit signs that don't even know what they don't know:
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| photo creds: Irene |
Or, as Donald Rumsfeld famously called it, their "unknown unknowns":
P.S. I just found out that Rumsfeld had first heard of the concept of known unknowns and unknown unknowns from a NASA administrator. No wonder this speech of his resonated with me and so many others at the time. Just goes to say, you can learn something from anyone if you care to!
(Well, over a kilometer up anyway at Bearfence Mountain in the Shenandoah National Park)
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| Resting after a rock scramble of a hike (photo credits: Irene) |
Click here to see an interactive map of the hike:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/9221881216
Here's my panoramic from the top:
Turns out this recent short hike is the most documented hike of mine, ever... funny how pervasive technology has become even on a nature outing!
I was admiring the eponymous 'smoke' of the Smoky Mountains on a recent trip:
Naively, I was trying to figure out why the clouds being caught on the mountains here were so different. However, I was confusing cause and effect. These are not clouds of vapor coming down form the sky but rather clouds of vapor being released into the sky!
Later, while hiking, we noticed that the ground beneath certain pine trees was wet and that their leaves were all wet (while the surrounding trees and ground were not so).
Those pine tree (trees in general I suppose) are exhaling. Along with good old invisible oxygen, they are exuding those tree scents and all kinds of organic compounds (VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds)).
So, what we are seeing is not some kind of weather phenomenon, but rather the forest exhaling. The 'smoke' is literally the breath of the world made manifest before our eyes! Thank you trees for using the sunlight to break those carbons off your inhaled carbon dioxide and throwing all that oxygen back into the atmosphere for us animals to inhale in turn.
Mistaking the effect for the cause again, KR - c'mon, you should know better!
P.S. the 'blue' of these blue ridge mountains is also due to light scattering from small, released molecules just like the atmosphere itself scatters light off of its own nitrogen to be blue. (The 'Smokies' are a subset of the Blue Ridge Mountains)
P.P.S. Shaconage (pronounced Sha-Kon-O-Hey)is the OG Cherokee name for the mountains. Way cooler name imo.
I love the serendipitous moments. Especially the small ones.
Near our campsite that we had chosen sight unseen in a park we had never visited, I noticed a little path crossing a creek:
So, the next morning, I did:
I was reading the fascinating story of one of this year's winner of the Fields Medal in Mathematics, June Huh, when I was struck by this reflective quote from him on his younger, lost self:
"I wanted to be someone who writes great poetry. I didn't want to write great poetry."
I just had to stop reading and ponder that one. That's a great one, right?
He said this while reflecting on the fact that he dropped out of high school to concentrate on poetry full time. (there's a lesson in the meandering path life can take right there!)
Through my years of teaching, I have always felt that I had little to offer the brightest of my students. It felt like I was almost an impediment to their learning. Not necessarily me as a person, but me as an instrument of the learning box with specific expectations called school. I, on the other hand, always liked schools and their clear expectations. Now I realize that part of the reason for my liking school is that I didn't have to make choices or figure stuff out of my own. I enjoyed school not because I was smart or hard working but because I was intellectually lazy. The article explain that for June, "School was excruciating... He loved to learn but couldn’t focus or absorb anything in a classroom setting."
I know a lot of really really smart people who think that school as we know it doesn't work and we need to restructure and rebuild the entire enterprise of public education. I think that they are being naive in their giftedness. Most of us need that structure and those fake, external motivators. But I am quick to admit that one size does not fit all! I actually think public school do an excellent job considering the wide swath of students they need to serve and add some kind of value to. It really is amazing that a single institution can serve such a large proportion of students who just happened to live in the same zip code when you think about it.
Well, Professor Huh, I am glad you found your true calling rather than the one you thought you wanted to be. A poet of mathematics is a mighty fine thing!
P.S. I also found it fascinating that he can only work for about 3 hours a day before he gets exhausted. I have worked a 16 hour shift of manual labor in a winery and felt okay the following morning but I could only study for exams with great concentration for about 2 or 3 hours at a stretch. I recall that once, as a freshman at Purdue, I had 5 final exams with a single 48 period at the end of one semester. I remember eating on those days as if I was been running marathons. It always makes me wonder how little I am actually using my brain on other days...
Izze and I made a run to Barnes and Nobles today. As we were driving there, I reflected to her: I bet you could poll families about what is the first non-essential venue they went to after the pandemic set in a few years ago and the result will tell you something essential about them. So, after work, school, and groceries - where did your family go first? For the Rideouts, it was the book store. Interesting and revealing, right?
Now, full confession time: Every time I go to the book store, I go straight to study aids section and look the books I wrote or co-wrote for Barrons. I look at them for a second (maybe re-arrange the shelf discretely while no one is looking) and then go about my business. I'm embarrassed by this but I also feel, how could I not?
Today, I was in the science aisle and browsing when I saw one of my books there too! I had never thought to look for it in this section.
Then I noticed another Barron's book that look oddly familiar. I picked it up and flipped through it. All of the pages looked familiar and then I remembered.
A few years ago I did some consulting for a physics-in-pictures kind of book. It turned out to be many more back-and-forth iterations than originally anticipated and the editor had promised me an editorial credit in the book. As the pandemic dragged on longer than anyone could have imagined, I lost track of the project.
I went ahead and bought a copy for myself.
I was born to love thee.
Eye wide open, your faults I now see.
But in your promises, I want to believe
My youthful optimism: Naive, naive.
America, come back to me...
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| Sources: Our World in Data; World Bank |
Tonight, at dinner, the Rideouts had a discussion about that staple of 8th grade literature: The on-ramp to the Bard's work: Romeo and Juliet.
After I regaled the fam (okay, maybe I bored them and they indulged me, but I far prefer 'regaled') with a tale of how, in my own 8th grade, our english class staged a low budget production of Romeo and Juliet. (actually, as I type this, I am recalling the actual play was 'The Taming of the Shrew'. Awkward). Anyhow, what I remember most about this production (for which the audience only consisted of about half of our parents) is that, at one point, my buddy JTC seemed to have forgotten his line so I reached out and tapped him on the arm to prompt him to say it. The thing is, I'm pretty sure he didn't need nor did he appreciate that public prompting. Hopefully he has forgotten all about this incident.
Okay, all that is neither here nor there. What I posited at the dinner table is that many enduring tales or expressions or ideas persevere not because they are eternal truths but because there is a subtext that is exactly the opposite of the espoused idea.
For example: Consider the expression "taking candy from a baby" which nominally means something easily done. But, in reality, a baby holds on tight to candy and baby mammals have astonishingly strong grips; such that taking candy from a baby is, in actual fact, harder than you think.
Now, the conventional motif of Romeo and Juliet is one of star crossed lovers, tragic destiny, etc. But a recent viewing with the fam reminded me of the beginning of the play in which it is made clear that Romeo is the type of guy who is falling in love with every girl he meets. So, what is going on here? Is the play about how being ruled by your passions is dangerous rather than how your passion is a reflection of your destiny?
Hmmm... I gotta go now ... cause, you know, a rolling stone gathers no moss...
Seb is taking French and making connections that never occurred to me. This morning he mentioned to Irene, "Hey - adieu in French and adios in Spanish both reference god but mean goodbye!" Irene does a quick internet search during the day and lays this one on us at dinner: "Goodbye evolved from 'God be with you'!"
I'm like, what? Dieu, m'aidez!
