Animal Life...

     One of the wonderful things about this area-and I admit I don't report on them enough-is that one occasionally sees wild life near town that simply does not exist in more populated places. So as I sat in the parking lot of Walmart waiting for the light to change, a bald eagle flew directly over the car, flying as unhurriedly as if it were in the wilds of Alaska. That is not a common sight but neither is it rare, for they nest right on the edge of town, feeding in the Allegheny and Conewango rivers. This individual likely was returning from the latter to the mountains right behind the store. On the 24th I had to restrain the dog from chasing another porcupine, which are abundant locally and one of which had stuck her face with quills about five years ago. Apparently she did not remember the experience for I had to yell several times to call her back, otherwise she would easily have caught its slow moving form and suffered the same consequence. We also see deer and black bear in town and coyote anywhere, and the streams contain native trout. Fortunately, two life forms that are rare in Warren are ticks and mosquitoes, which is surprising given the abundance of water. It is possible to go an entire summer without seeing more than two or three-and I am not one to sit indoors during the warm months!

Reality

     Below is a recent article from the online site 'Science Daily' outlining the weirdness of quantum physics...I like to remind people that our brains are constructed of this stuff, and to follow the Buddhist advice not to cling too tightly to anything-including opinions...

        

>>The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured.
Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have conducted John Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave. Wheeler's experiment then asks -- at which point does the object decide?

Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe wave like behavior (interference) or particle behavior (no interference) depends only on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey. This is exactly what the ANU team found.
"It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.
Despite the apparent weirdness, the results confirm the validity of quantum theory, which governs the world of the very small, and has enabled the development of many technologies such as LEDs, lasers and computer chips.
The ANU team not only succeeded in building the experiment, which seemed nearly impossible when it was proposed in 1978, but reversed Wheeler's original concept of light beams being bounced by mirrors, and instead used atoms scattered by laser light.
"Quantum physics predictions about interference seem odd enough when applied to light, which seems more like a wave, but to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness," said PhD student Roman Khakimov.
Professor Truscott's team first trapped a collection of helium atoms in a suspended state known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, and then ejected them until there was only a single atom left.
The single atom was then dropped through a pair of counter-propagating laser beams, which formed a grating pattern that acted as crossroads in the same way a solid grating would scatter light.
A second light grating to recombine the paths was randomly added, which led to constructive or destructive interference as if the atom had travelled both paths. When the second light grating was not added, no interference was observed as if the atom chose only one path.
However, the random number determining whether the grating was added was only generated after the atom had passed through the crossroads.
If one chooses to believe that the atom really did take a particular path or paths then one has to accept that a future measurement is affecting the atom's past, said Truscott.
"The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence," he said.<<

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Ahh...Spring...?

Finally some sun and warm air, so we have been able to get out on the mountain bikes a few times. Unfortunately, this being Western PA there are snow showers and a high temperature of 45 predicted for the end of next week...POSTSCRIPT: April 23...Snow overnight continues today, accumulating an inch in town and 3 inches in other places...April snows are not uncommon around here and fortunately are short lived. POSTSCRIPT: May 2...Saw the first butterfly yesterday, a Spring Azure blue, and today the first cabbage butterfly and also an American Copper. Two to three weeks later than most years.

January Revisited

No doubt I beat a dead horse regarding the weather around here, but as a warm weather person I am astounded ( disgusted...)by  how crummy it can be. These pics were taken an hour ago about 1/2 mile from downtown Warren at a place called Morrison Run. The creek, which flows through a wooded valley then underneath the railroad tunnel beside the road,  empties into the Allegheny river a quarter mile further downstream.The ice ledge in the last photograph is two feet thick and the snow in the woods is about a foot deep. The road itself is solid ice covered by last nights dusting of snowfall, and because this area is shaded by Hemlock trees and the steep  terrain, it likely won't fully melt for another three weeks. The dog and I had been unable to access the road for almost two months because of the snow( her legs literally are not long enough), and only the past two weeks of moderate melting have progressed things this far. The snow has melted elsewhere except for  plowed piles, thus coming here is like entering a separate micro climate-as if we had risen several thousand feet in elevation. Although I do appreciate the beauty of winter, after four months it grows tedious, and I long to wear short sleeves and ride my mountain bike...
POSTSCRIPT: March 31st- Five more inches of snow so far this morning...Really? I mean..really?

Winter 2015 Postscript

Coldest day of the year with about 1 1/2 feet of snow on the ground...nothing compared to Boston but much worse than Denver or even Billings, Montana...Global warming lately has meant cold and wet east of the Mississippi and warm and dry to the west...The Conewango river empties into the Allegheny river just beyond that last bench, both of them frozen solid enough for ice fishing. A 93 year old woman says that she cannot recall such a prolonged cold spell in Warren although she does remember the river freezing in the past. The coldest local temperature this day was about seven miles from here at -32F. If the temperature goes above 32 F next week it will be the first time in weeks.
POSTSCRIPT: March 21st-The map illustrates global temperatures for the 3 months of December, January and February. It indicates that-unlike most of the planet-the area east of the Mississippi is in some kind of polar trough that has broken all previous records. Of course, some east coast people dismiss the concept of global warming because of this anomaly, and prefer to mock Al Gore etc. Personally, I prefer to trust the science, although I must admit that I am not all that concerned about the eventual effects of climate change. Carbon dioxide levels have been much higher in the past during which time temporal forests and dinosaurs survived near the north pole. Certainly present day life will have to adapt to the changing environment, which means that Florida and Manhattan may eventually be underwater and the west will have to import water or substantially increase desalination and other measures. Granted, I do not see the political nor personal will in most people to address the problems voluntarily( ..hence the resurgence in truck and SUV sales as soon as gasoline prices went down last month), but I assume that societies will adapt by necessity rather than choice, which is typical  human nature...That is, if the oceans and other ecosystems do not crash completely and kill all of us...

Furguson or whatever...

Heard a voice on the radio claim that cops killing black men may amount to modern day lynching, which made me think 'wait a minute'..... According to studies conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011 there were 279,384 black murder victims, of which 262,621 were murdered by other blacks-a 94% figure. As awful as that statistic sounds, the rate of black people killed per 100,000 persons has dropped from around 50 murders in 1976 to around 25 as of 2005. That is still way more than the white rate of around 5 murders per 100,000 in 1976 which had dropped to around 3.5 in 2005. Despite the street protests and genuine grievances in some cases, the bulk of the violence remains black on black, so the real outrage should be directed to that continuing problem.
POSTSCRIPT: April 2015~It seems as though the recent murder of the black man by the Charleston cop-eight shots in the back- WAS a lynching by gun... Ignorant white trash...makes me wonder about justice including an eye for an eye...just tell the guy to start running...So no doubt racial problems still exist, but don't forget that we fought a civil war over this issue and that half of the 500,000 white guys killed were trying to improve the situation...
POST~POSTSCRIPT~ An inspiring book is 'THE PACT' by Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt describing their journey through medical school as they raised themselves from the projects of Newark, N.J.by sticking together and focusing on the positive.

Snowden and the NSA

    I am reading a book by Glenn Greenwald titled "NO PLACE TO HIDE" about Edward Snowden and the NSA, and I recommend it to anyone wanting to know the truth about his whistleblowing. One reason there was so much blowback from our government was that Snowden was no hack, rather a highly competent, informed cyber security expert who simply became morally disturbed by some of the things that the U.S. was and is doing. He seemed to be fully prepared to be ostracized and perhaps imprisoned for his actions, but felt morally compelled to inform the public about the extent of the governments spying. For instance, our government has the capability to remotely turn on your cell phone and use it as a listening device. So assume that for at least ten years every single phone call, email, and online action has or could have been tracked and saved to a massive database. Snowden's fear was that most of us would just shrug and say 'well, we figured that was happening' and not care, or feel powerless to change things, which has happened to some extent. But he wanted the public to be informed and make that choice rather than the rich and powerful cloistered behind the cloak of  "terrorism threat". No doubt some plots have been thwarted by the NSA, and I am no paranoid skeptic regarding our government, but as we witness the sheer incompetence of so many people in power, it heeds us well to be aware of the potential abuses.
        More information from the book:  People complicit with the NSA, such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Senator Diane Feinstein, say things like "people have gotten really comfortable not only sharing information of different kinds, but more openly and with more people" and 'the collection of metadata does not constitute surveillance because it does not include the content of any communication'. Yet neither one would willingly make public their E-mail contacts and passwords nor allow video cameras into their homes. Mr. Zuckerberg spent $30 million dollars to buy the four houses adjacent to his Palo Alto home in order to assure his own privacy. So both the government and those people directly responsible for intruding into the average citizens privacy have gone to great lengths to hide their own...just more hypocrisy among those on power. I'm not sure where all this is heading, but as the 1% amasses over 50% of the world's wealth in the next few years, you can be sure that they will do all the can to preserve it.