We want snow

This fall has been kind of special. Mild weather, no snow yet. At this time last year, the skiing resorts had been open for two weeks already.

Now the slopes are still green and yellow, with a pile of artificial snow here and there. The snowmaking systems start automatically when the temperature drops below freezing point.

In the meantime, the kids are going crazy, waiting for the white gold.

This weekend, we went to our cabin in the mountains. Little boy brought his skis. We made a small jump on a pile of snow under a snow cannon. Not much to speak about, but better than nothing.

Older boy was at home, in town. In the fall he has an after-school part-time job selling skis in an adventure-sports-store. He was working Friday and Saturday.

Sunday morning, we got a few inches of snow, even in town.

Older boy and his buddies went out for so-called urban railing right away. They shuffled up the snow around a long handrail of a stairway somewhere in town, and made a kicker at the top and a small landing at the base (Here are some previous urban-rail shots).

And he crashed. Face plant in the asfalt, and another concussion. It happens every winter; concussions, broken fingers, X-ray, his record of injuries is endless. This time he didn't bother to see the doctor. He says he feels the difference between a light and a serious concussion.

So far nothing has been really serious. He's always using helmet and back protection, but still it sometimes makes me a little bit nervous.

Snow is softer than asfalt, fortunately. We want snow, and we want it now >:)

(I took the pictures above this weekend. It's a snow cannon in the background, and little boy testing his skis on the pile of snow it has made so far. The snowmaking is very important to extend the skiing season, in both ends. It allows the resorts to open earlier in the fall, and to stay open longer in the spring. The artificial snow makes a strong and icy base underneath the natural snow.)

Satan's numbers

In my bookshelf I have a cool book titled Number Theory and It's History by Øystein Ore (Dover Classics series). I bought it many years ago, when I was a student.

Number theory is a subject for people with kind of weird interests. It's a branch of pure mathematics, dealing with fundamental properties of numbers; integers, prime numbers and fractions of integers (I prefer applied math).

Most interesting is the first part of the book, about the history of numbers.

People of ancient times have been dealing with number systems of different kinds. They seam to be linked to human anatomy. The common modern number system is base 10, which is the number of fingers on two hands (unless you happen to work in a sawmill).

The Mayas used a base 20 number system. That's the total count of fingers and toes (unless you're an Arctic explorer). Some African tribes have used base 5, the number of fingers on one hand.

The Babylonians used a base 60 system. I'm not sure why, but 60 is kind of a magic number, since it can be divided into all integers from 1 to 6. Still we have remnants from the Babylonians in our time keeping; 60 seconds per minute and 60 minutes per hour. Moreover, a full rotation around the clock is 6*60=360 degrees.

When we agree on a base 10 system, we know that, for instance, 123 means 1*100+2*10 +3. With a different base, the interpretation of the number becomes different.

In computer science, they sometimes use base 8 (octal) numbers, because 8=2*2*2 is closely related to the binary numbers (base 2) that computers use internally. In base 8, the number 123 means 1*64+2*8+1 (since 64=8*8).

From anatomy consideration, base 8 should also be the prefered number system of Disneyland. You have noticed the hands of Donald Duck and his friends?

In ancient Rome, they used the Roman numerals. They are still used in Hollywood to give the production year of a movie in an unreadable way. The Roman numerals were useful for counting, but hard to apply in calculations. About 1000 years ago, the Arabic numerals (which is what we still use) were introduced in Europe. They become popular because calculations with large numbers got much easier.

The Catholics didn't like the new number system (they have always been against anything new). The Pope stated that the Arabic numerals were the work of Satan.

It's fun that today even Catholics use Arabic numerals. It's one of the great victories of Satan >:D

(Watch out! Satan is everywhere, and he might be near you. I took the picture above on the motorway in Moscow this summer. Satan caught my eye, even if he was driving upside down.)

Moscow stories

The plane was an hour delayed. It was dark and cold when we arrived. But what can you expect? Moscow is cold in the winter. The Russian winter stopped both Napoleon and Hitler before they got into the city, but they were pretty close.

A driver from our company took us to the hotel. The traffic wasn't to bad, it took just about an hour. We checked in at the Swisshotel, and went straight to our office, We had things to prepare for the next day. Russian law is strict. We're not allowed to take geophysical data out of the country. All the work need to be done inside Russia.

Getting through the door to our office on the 14th floor is easy. The main challenge is to get passed the desk at the main entrance at street level when arriving off regular office hours. The security guys on night watch can be quite grumpy. They look at our passports and our company ID card. Sometimes they let us in without questions, sometimes they say "Njet!", and nothing more. No arguments can make them change their minds. Fortunately this was one of the lucky nights.

We worked for 3-4 hours, then passed by a restaurant on the way back to the hotel, and got some Uzbek food (plov of lamb) and some dark beer (Kozel). Very good.

The next day we worked in our office before lunch. Then we went to the Russian service company we co-operate with. A driver from our company took us to the office location, in the outer part of the city, close to some forests and a big power plant (I presume).

I was a little bit nervous. This summer, the boss of our Russian subsidiary ordered me to go to Moscow to inspect the processing center of Russian service company:

"You need to go there to check", he said. "Check that the processing center really exists, check that they have real computers, check that the computers are taken out of the boxes, check that they have software on the computers and people who know how to use it."

"Is this really necessary?" I said.

"I've been in this country for many years", he replied.

And since then, the service company has moved to a new office location. What should we expect now? Were we too naiiv? Fortunately, it was all fine.

Today we continued our meeting, working till 6pm, to complete our objectives. Then we went to an Azerbajdjanian restaurant and got some great food and beer, and vodka of course. I'm not used to drinking vodka in large amounts, and I don't like it. So, I'm always very careful in the vodka relays. I'll tell more about that some time later.

By the way, the title of this post was inspired by the book Sebastopol Stories by Leo Tolstoy. It's a collection of stories from his time as an officer in the Russian army during the Crimean war. Very good book >:)

(No time for sightseeing in Moscow this time, just work all day, tired when returning to the hotel at night. I took the picture above from the window in my hotel room. Moscow by night.)

Not a virgin anymore

Recently, we've got a new translation of The Bible. This happens every 20-30 year or so. The purpose is to bring the old book closer to contemporary language, and make it easier to read.

Most important, in this respect, was probably the German translation by Martin Luther, and subsequent translations to all other languages. In 1517, Martin Luther nailed up his 95 theses on the church-wall in Wittenberg. He argued that for most people, it would be more useful to read the Bible in their own language, rather than in Latin, which they didn't understand.

This sounds like a reasonable argument, but the Pope got pissed and didn't agree. That's hardly a surprise. The Pope is always against any kind of change.

Back to our new translation of The Bible: One of the most remarkable changes is that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is not a virgin anymore. In the new translation, "virgin" has been replaced by "young woman".

(I don't speak Hebrew, but I suspect that "virgin" and "young woman" translate to the same word in Hebrew, more or less.)

This is good news. I never believed in the virgin-story, and I've been arguing against it ever since elementary school.

When I was a kid, we had a Christian school system, and Christianity class had a preaching purpose. Most teachers were pragmatic about this, but in 3rd grade, we had a teacher who was very serious about the preaching. Our first conflict came up when I refused to believe in the Original Sin. I refused to believe my little baby brother was a sinner.

She got angry and yelled at me. Actually, she said that she wasn't angry, but God was:

"GOD IS ANGRY WITH YOU ... MWUUHAAHAAH ... YOU LITTLE HEATHEN."

This was kind of scary, of course, for a nine year old boy. After a couple of days, however, I realized that nothing happened, and nothing was going to happen. God was probably too busy to punish me, or maybe he just forgot. He's known to be a revengeful God.

Anyway, I never worried about God's anger ever since.

Later, when we learnt about the Virginborn, I immediately rejected it as a rediculous idea. The older kids in the street had explained to me how babies are made. They even showed examples, in some magazines they had hidden in a buried metal case.

I supposed that Jesus had been made in the same way.

Now it's nice to see that even the bible translators rewrite the virgin story. Maybe God is angry with them? At least the Pope is >:)

By the way, here's a great song: The Virginborn by Gorgoroth. If you like slow and doomy old-school black metal, you should click on the link. If not, don't do it; God may get angry with you >:D

(That's little-boy Jesus and his mother, the young woman Mary in the picture. I took it in Kotor, Montenegro last summer, when she was still assumed to be a virgin.)

Women who struggle with Pi

I have these two novels that I'm working on; the first is a crime novel, and the second is a road novel that I write longhand, when I'm out traveling. The progress is somewhat slow. It feels like I'll never get my writing up to speed.

I have some reports and a science paper I need write before Christmas. But that's my job, and it doesn't really count. I enjoy writing the science stuff too, and my amateur fiction writing is improving my science writing, which is fine.

So, I thought that maybe it would be wise to do some smaller writing projects, just to practise, before I return to my novels. Recently I got some ideas for a series of three or four short stories, with a common vague theme: Women who struggle with Pi, you know, this math constant 3.14159265 ... and so on.

The protagonist in all the short stories is a nerdy math teacher. He is very clumsy when it comes to women, and he has realized that he will never reach to the level of his heroes, the great matematicians like Gauss, Cauchy, Leibniz and Emmy Noether.

Does that sound like a good idea for some short stories? I don't know. We'll see >:)

(I found the picture of Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) on the Internet. He's well known for the statistical distribution that carries his name (the Gauss curve). He also discovered the Gauss theorem in Calculus (the Russians call it the Gauss-Ostrogradsky theorem), and the method of Gauss elimination in linear algebra. Gauss is considered the last complete matematician, who mastered all the mathematical sub-diciplines of his time.)