German, French; potato, pohtahtoh

I'm not a recipe follower though I do love to cook.  In recent years, with the ease of access to recipes of all kinds on the internet, I have taken to looking at 2 or 3 recipes online before I cook and then following none of them.  However, I find it grounding in my process and looking at those recipes certainly gives me ideas. 

Imagine my surprise when I decided to make a dish I had not made in years and googled "German Potato Salad".  I'm like, what's with the bacon everywhere?  This is not how Mama made it!  It slowly dawned on me that I had never before actually looked up a recipe for Potato Salad and had just been winging it by imitating my childhood memories.  Then, I realized in a fit of deep intellectual insight: "Hey, my Mom is actually French, not German so...." and then when I googled "French potato salad" I started seeing dishes that looked much more like what I was expecting.  Anyway, I promptly ignored all those "French Potato Salad" recipes and did my thing:

So, I have come to realize that Americans like to call any cold potato salad that is not mayonnaise based as "German".  But of course, every region in the world has their own way of flavoring up some boiled potatoes! (apparently, just within Germany the regional differences are so big it doesn't really make sense to glom it all together as one dish). 

I have a strong memory of when I first came to think of 'my' dish as "German Potato Salad" (growing up, Mom did not name the dishes; She served them and then I ate them and that was that). It was actually in grad school.  A bunch of us CMU physics grad student nerds were having a pot luck dinner at someone's house.  (Elaine's house, Shadyside, Pittsburgh circa 1993?)  I made this salad for some reason.  One guy (Eldon?) LOVED it and I can still picture him pointing at his second serving emphatically and saying "This is really good German Potato Salad, Ken!"  He said it in an authoritative way like someone who really knows their German potato salads so I thought "Hmm, that must be what that dish is called." 

Thank you for your excellent answers

Sometimes grading is fun.  For example, check out some of these answers from a recent test in honors astronomy:

I guess I really emphasize how much Vera Rubin missed out in recognition because she was a woman:

You know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery:

Time to sketch either a sideways Saturn or Uranus (which is already on its side!) in the middle of a questions about fundamental particles:

Wish I had thought to scan in fun answers earlier in my career!  Better late than never?

Lapin

Recently, while shopping at H-Mart, I realized I had never cooked rabbit for the kids.  So, I bought a frozen one on impulse.  Today, we had the wood stove going, and I love to use that surface to cook soups on.  Well, you see where this is going...

Step one:  Rabbit with onions, celery, and garlic

Step two: Mushrooms

Carrots potatoes and wine/chicken stock 

Fours hours later, dinner is served!

The verdict?  "Dad, this tastes like chicken.  Next time just make your usual coq-au-vin."

Inertial Paths, Fake Forces, and Rotating Spaceships

Recently I just read a whole bunch of relatively shabby explanations from students of why rotating spaceships can simulate gravity.  These are seniors who have taken a full year of physics and are currently in my astronomy class so they are well equipped to give a decent explainer, but most of them just said something like "centripetal centrifugal, blah blah blah".  As I was looking over their work, I realized that one of the major conceptual problems is that a true understanding of why this works involves a tale of two fake forces:

Fake force #1: 

Gravity

You don't actually ever feel the force of gravity pulling you down into the ground (contrary to what I teach my student to draw on free body diagrams!).  Rather, you only feel the normal force pushing up on you (the opposite direction!).  This was one of Einstein's key insights in revealing the General Theory of Relativity.  Since gravity is really just an alteration of your inertial path ("warping of spacetime"), it is not a force. What you feel is the ground pushing up against your inertial path so you assume something is pulling down on you.

Fake force #2:

Centrifugal forces

You don't actually ever feel a force pulling you out of a circle (or a turn).  Rather you feel a force directed towards the center of the arc of the circle of the turn you are making (the opposite direction!).  The force is required to keep you from following your inertial path (which is tangent to the circle).   Since you feel the force pushing inwards on you against your inertial path, you assume something is pulling outward on you.

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So, "artificial gravity" on space stations (accomplished by walking on the inside of the outer surface of rotation) is really the swapping of one fake force for another.  Either way, what you feel is a force on your feet preventing your from following your inertial path (the one you would take without any forces).

According to Einstein, we've been experiencing gravity as an upward acceleration on our feet our entire lives.  So, if you stand on the inside of a rotating surface, a 9.8 m/s/s centripetal acceleration to keep you going in a circle will substitute quite nicely for a gravitational field of 9.8 N/kg.  In one case we are accelerating inward to curve through space and in the other we are accelerating upward to curve through time.

The movie we were discussing was "Interstellar"

"If a person falls freely, he will not feel his own weight" - Einstein's 'happiest thought'

Long Live the New Year

‘Round, Round we go - 

Another year over

And a new one just begun;

A time of renewal, 

Yet another bite at the apple!

We cycle our personal calendars from December back to January,

Feeling younger and refreshed.

The Earth rotates, carries us out of its shadow -

Not just the dawn of a new day but a new year:

The Earth revolves anew around the Sun.

Circles nested within circles.  

How deep does it go?

Arbitrarily, we mark the passage of time:

Reflect, 

Take stock,

Look forward and celebrate the renewing of the renewal

Which we pretend will never end.

‘Tis not a true renewing though,

As it is predicated on the old;

The new year has the old one embedded within it.

I will not be getting any younger.

The planet will not sweep out an identical

Path through space and time.

The Sun is lighter, our ellipse precessed, space expanded and cooled: 

Nothing is exactly the same 

Our personal and Universal entropy climbs

No matter how we mark the time.

Nonetheless, we celebrate the completion of a lap.

The idea of renewal,
Marking the moment,

They are not valid but they are necessary.

Invalid validness keeps me going on,

Keeps me spinning round,

The cognitive up and at ‘em my small brain needs…

So, three cheers for another lap, world of mine.

The changes are slow enough and my vision poor enough

I can tell myself all is possible once again.

We are all riding the tide of entropy 

Sometime between too low (boringly ordered)

And too high (boring in its disorder).

Like a catapulted sleeper

Who awaken near the apex of his flight,

Enjoying the heights of the ride

Having missed the ascent

And falling asleep before the descent.

What a glorious time to be alive,

What a view our big brains have earned

Examining those Keplerian ellipses we ride.

The clockwork of finite nested circles that is the universe

Spins not forever - 

It had a beginning and will someday end,

But what glorious turning for now!

AI art generated from lines of this poem

Pasta from Santa

Spoiler Alert:  There is no Santa in this story.  I bought myself an automated pasta-maker and put it under the tree for myself (no, I didn't wrap it but I didn't start using it until after the 25th!).  

It mixes and extrudes automatically.  I just have to cut the length off that I want to keep as it extrudes:

It does different shapes:

Plain Spaghetti

Plain Penne

100 percent whole wheat

50 % white flour / 50 % whole wheat

-----------------------20-Feb-24 Update------------------

Tomato and Spinach Pastas!

Deep Fakes, Authenticity, and History

I was reading a New York Times article about the "Last Beatles' Song" and pondering this new reality we find ourselves in, fretting over Deep Fakes and authenticity.  I share the unease that most do, but what I am understanding today is that we are just entering a new reality where, in the future, it will seem quaint and (perhaps) cool for live people to perform in front of cameras and create movies the traditional way. My first experience of this was was in the Star Wars Rogue One in which both Princess Leia and General Tarkin appear but there is no actor/actress alive to do that role anymore.  

In the distant past, the only way to get a story experience was to hear the storyteller tell the tale in your presence.  Then books were invented and it became a quaint and cool experience to have someone tell a story in real time straight from their mouth into your ear.  There is still a special joy to be had during these times, but it is not the usual way we receive a story anymore.  Music is the same way but an in-person experience is still highly valued even if it is by far the more rare way in which we experience music these days.  (I could argue that a lot of the appeal of going to live music is less about the music and more about the experience of the event, but I'm not sure about that so I won't).  We still go see and enjoy plays as well, but (again) not the standard way in which we enjoy performance pieces anymore is it?

So my prediction is that AI enhanced Deep Fakes will not replace music and cinema as we know it, but it will become the de facto production method in the future (or at the very least, a prominent element in the product).  We will, however, still honor and enjoy the quaintness of non-enhanced music/movies and, even more so, the occasional in-person live event. 

Unavoidably, future novels, music, and movies will all have AI written/enhanced elements to them unless it is marketed as an "organic" product as a novelty.  Perhaps future generations will look at this decade as comparable to the invention of the printing press or the record player.  The change in paradigm was not overnight but the societal impact was deep and profound.  Fear of the printing press was real and similar to fear of this AI revolution, but I'm guessing we will settle into a new normal and be just fine with it... 

So even though I am slightly put off with dead actors and musicians putting out 'new' work, I'm thinking I need to get over it. I'll try to acclimate by enhancing this 'organically' written post with some AI generated art:

AI generated from the prompt "Fear of an AI future"

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On the other hand,  Nick Cave says we should fight AI tooth and nail: