I reached a milestone today, hitting 4 million viewers:
Since my first blog on 29April2008, there have been 6792 postings. Thus, an average of close to 600 readers/day. 221 countries have visited this site.
Actually, in October of 2020 I reached the limit of how many labels I could use, so in parallel I initiated a different location, which began accumulating another set of viewers, and this blog is up to 172,000 viewers. So you have an option to read this second site, which has the same content, but looks different. One of the photos I used in that initial 10October2020 posting was of Phil Spector. Why? My #80 favorite song was featured, To Know Him is to Love Him, and he started performing by writing that song and is one of the three Teddy Bears. Then he later developed his wall of sound background music for which he is famous, married Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes and became mad, as in crazy. Incidentally, if you are already only accessing this new blog, the original can be found at this site.
After re-reading my posting of yesterday, I observed that I missed a few other somewhat adventurous periods in my life that added to my mostly prosaic professional career.
- The notion of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, evokes visions of flying saucers and fanciful space films.
- True SETI research is one of the ultimates in science and far removed from UFOs.
- Leading the effort in the mid-1970s was the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
In the 1970's one telling question was why bother with SETI when science had not yet confirmed even one planet outside our solar system. So in 1976 NASA created Project Orion and brought together 19 faculty members from throughout the Nation to devise methods for detecting extrasolar planets. Most the group worked together to design an interferometric system to indirectly find extrasolar planets. I was given an opportunity to develop a direct method, called the Planetary Abstracting Trinterferometer (or PAT). Click here for the full details. I have thus followed this effort now for nearly 40 years.
That above blog was posted a dozen years ago, so I have now been involved with SETI for nearly half a century.- As indicated above, I was able to investigate my personal project, for which I enlisted the assistance of Charles Townes, who had just won the Nobel Prize and moved to the University of California at Berkeley. I thus drove a lot to that campus. The concept we developed was his idea that planets with an atmosphere lased, meaning that all we had to do was design an instrument to track monochromatic lights to first determine this was an extrasolar planet, but as a by-product, obtain the atmospheric content of that planet.
This was only a summer escape, so I had loads of opportunities to enjoy the area.- Lived in Escondido Village, a premium studio for married students on the Stanford Campus, close to my freshman dormitory, Wilbur Hall.
- Took a wine tasting course in the evening.
Rented a large 36 inch TV set to watch the Montreal Summer Olympics.- Golfed 9-holes almost daily at the Palo Alto Municipal Golf Course. This summer job only met for a couple of hours in the morning, after which we did research, or anything you wanted to do.
The second adventure opportunity occurred twice. I spent two 6-month sabbatical periods on the campus of the Tokyo University of A&T (a national university called Nokodai).
- My wife and I were housed in married students housing on campus for a very low price.
My office was at the top of a new building with a picturesque view of Mount Fuji.- I joined the lab of Professor Tadashi Matsunaga, who went on to become Dean of Engineering, President of this university, then on to work for the Prime Minister of Japan.
I had previously hosted Dr Matsunaga at the University of Hawaii as the First International Professor for the Blue Revolution.- I had thoughts of truly learning Japanese, which did not happen.
- When on sabbatical, I was free to do anything, and at the end of the period was asked to give a lecture on whatever I wanted for the engineering faculty, which both times featured the Blue Revolution. If you know nothing about the Blue Revolution, watch my TEDx talk given three years ago.
- Attorney General Pam Bondi continues to waffle on the Epstein documents.
- Don't expect any full release, for there is reason to believe that Donald Trump himself was involved in the Epstein follies. One wonders if DOGE actually succeeded in slipping the truth to Musk.
“Time to drop the really big bomb,” Mr. Musk wrote on social media. Mr. Trump, he said, “is in the Epstein files. That is why they have not been made public.” Mr. Musk did not offer any evidence, but soon added, “The truth will come out.”
Musk did delete that above post, but on Friday indicated he will be forming the American Party.- While Musk's new party candidates will not win any election, they could influence the results of the general election by pulling enough Republican votes to give more Democratic victories.
- Although Tesla stock value has dropped, apparently Musk is still the richest man in the world. His money could well make a difference in swinging control of Congress to Democrats.
My sense is that Elon Musk tells the truth, but Donald Trump must hold the world record for most recorded lies. Appropriately enough, today is TELL THE TRUTH Day.
- Just in his first presidential term, he lied 30,573 times.
- Wikipedia has a long page on False or Misleading Statements by Donald Trump.
I should mention that Typhoon Danas struck Taiwan yesterday:
- Jan 5 50 MPH
- Jan 6 105 MPH
- Jan 7 45 MPH
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