The Jura - Part II

Now what? Higher up, or back home?


The view just kept getting better and better.


Something about a wind-bent artifical-bonsai berry tree standing alone on the slope.


The whole world at my feet. 

Hiking Up the Jura

A beautiful autumn sunset as seen from my apartment.

Left to Right - Me, Bin Bin, Radu, and Clark, somewhere halfway up the route under the telecabine.


Nobody said "don't look down".


We passed like 15 of these on the way up. 

Exercises in Triviality

An amusing anecdote from today's Wikipedia session:

"A well known incident occurred in March 11, 2003 when the cafeteria menus in the three United States House of Representatives office buildings changed the name of french fries to freedom fries. The renaming had started in a private restaurant and had caught on after being reported in the press. French toast was also changed to freedom toast. (This echoed moves during World War I to replace the word sauerkraut with liberty cabbage and hamburger with Liberty Sandwich.) Most Europeans, and a sizable number of Americans, dismissed these name changes as "gimmickry" and "totally ridiculous".^{[citation needed]} The French embassy made no comment, except to note that French fries come from Belgium. "We are at a very serious moment dealing with very serious issues and we are not focusing on the name you give to potatoes," said Nathalie Loisau, an embassy spokeswoman. The term "French Fries" is not used in French - "Pommes Frites" is translated as "Fried Potatoes" - as "French" fries are credited to Belgium. In August 2006, the menus reverted to their original names."

My All-Time Hero!

It's been a while since I saw Rambo movies. I don't recall seeing one since I "grew up". Is it any wonder why Rambo had me fascinated for so long? For the Martians and Jupterians who don't know Rambo, to sum up, this is about a badass ex-soldier who has long hair which he ties with a headband, has muscles like a comic book hero, walks right into trouble with a huge gun, blows everything to bits, and jumps away the last moment before almost being overrun by huge flaming explosions. To top it all off, he pulls out sharpenel from his abdomen, and closes the wound by putting gunpowder on it and setting it ablaze. The best scene has got to be the one where he puts together his do-it-yourself bow-and-arrow set in a few seconds, walks the last few paces onto the top of a mountain right into the view of a gunship, and shoots the damn thing down with an explosive-tipped arrow. By this time I am so giddy I want to buy toy guns again. Come to think of it, I'm almost there with the hair. Now for the muscles. . .

What you find very interesting is how the movie reflects the US view at that time, where the Russians are the baddies. Just before the credits roll, you see "This Film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan." That alone makes this movie seem like something from a distant past to me. :-)

Awesome line from Rambo III:

The colonel(after Rambo runs through a wall of flame and meets the colonel) :"How are ya, John?"
Rambo: "Well done."

The Ultimate Truth of Life

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan

There. That's the ultimate truth of life. (Not to be confused with the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, which is "42".)

24 Nights

I just got the "24 Nights" DVD, and it's an awesome performance. The only Eric Clapton videos I had seen were from the "Unplugged" performance, which is also a fantastic DVD if you're into such things. He plays all songs on his acoustic and slide guitars in a very bluesy style (including a totally different, but still amazing version of "Layla") in the Unplugged DVD.

The 24 Nights performance is much earlier, but a lot of the performers are the same. The percussion guys Steve Ferroni and Ray Cooper, as well as bassist Nathan East and (Rolling Stones) keyboardist Chuck Leavell (in just one song) are the performers repeated in Unplugged.

What's cool is that Eric clapton actually plays some songs with a lit cigarette attached to his Fender "Fat Strat". Seeing how he plays the song "Sunshine of your Love", I'm really curious about what he's smoking. You also have "White Room", "Running on Faith", and some other Clapton greats in this performance. "White Room", I found out, was written by Cream songwriter Pete Brown and consists of phrases describing a train station through the eyes of someone who's reeeeally high. And I'm not talking about altitude. As if it's not obvious from the lyrics of the song.

If you're an electric fan, pick this up. If you're an acoustic guitar fan or a Blues fan, pick up the Unplugged DVD instead. I have to get the Crossroads DVD next.

CERN and Angels and Demons

For a lot of people out there, CERN is just a backdrop for the Dan Brown book "Angels and Demons". If you've not read it yet, leave this page, read the book, and come back. The book is about an ancient brotherhood called the Illuminati which plants an antimatter bomb (stolen from CERN) in the Vatican, and about a Harvard professor who plays detective. If you try not to think too much about what you're reading, you'll love the book. It's almost screenplay for a Hollywood movie. It'd be fun to see Tom Hanks running around Rome, and I have to see how they show the recreational vertical wind tunnel at CERN. Maybe we'll end up getting one after all! :-)

CERN maintains a fact-and-fiction page on Angels and Demons. This is of course, almost necessary. I can imagine lots of ignorant and/or uninformed people thinking of CERN as a place that has antimatter bombs lying around just for assassins from secret brotherhoods to come by and pick up. However, after being at CERN as an insider for a few months, some of Dan Brown's stuff seems hilarious; some just ridiculous.

Check out the fact-or-fiction page at CERN.
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

(Wikipedia)
Aedes Aegypti - this is the mosquito responsible for the spread of dengue fever. 98 deaths in India this monsoon, with 28 of them in the capital alone. Every year there's a monsoon, every year there's flooding, and every year there's some epidemic or the other. Anyone who has lived in Bombay will know precisely what I'm talking about. One wonders if these things can't be anticipated and pre-empted.

Star Trek Voyager

Three false starts, and I hope this time I will sustain interest in maintaining a blog. As with the last three times, I spent quite some time thinking "who on earth will actually read it?". Hopefully I'll stay blogging long enough to find an answer this time!














Saturdays for me are periods of vegetative existence. For some reason, I _cannot_ get myself to work on Saturdays. This Saturday, I had Niko lend me his "Star Trek Voyager" series. This is quite something. The special effects, the decor of the spaceship, and the overall visual experience is really fantastic. The stories are absolutely top-class, with the customary Star Trek-style metaphorical allusions to real-life situations.


I've been through Star Trek season I and II, and a few episodes of "Next Generation". "Voyager" looks and feels altogether different. First and most noticeable difference, they have a female captain commanding the Voyager (the name of the spaceship). Captain Kathryn Janeway ('Ma'am' is preferable, I personally prefer 'Captain'.") is amazing as the captain. She's got a strong presence, portrayed as being more human, and Kate Mugrew's acting is indubitably much more solid.

I have some traces of a male chauvanist in me (_ONLY_ affects my choice of captains for starships, agents in Her Majesty's secret service, and nothing else), so I was a bit skeptical about someone saying "Captain's log Star Date xxx.yyy." in a female voice. Trust me, it works with this lady.

I've been through a few episodes so far, which have involved getting thrown off course by 70,000 light years thorugh a time-space continuum distortion, injuring (and then suturing) a gigantic living organism of nebula-like proportions, an encounter with a civilisation that believes in an afterlife, and enough pseudoscience to fill Wikipedia several times over. Gotta love lines like "The Plasma Metafold is getting unstable. The antineutrinos must be the catalysts responsible for the space folding process!" :-)

Check it out if you're a Star Trek fan!