An evening with the nerds

I was out with some friends and colleagues tonight. We went to hear a presentation about the 16 official world champions of chess, from the first champ Willem Steinitz, to the reigning champion, Magnus Carlsen. Two weird guys who have written a book about these 16 champs presented the story. It was an evening with nerds. The kind of stuff I like. Very enjoyable.

It was a great presentation, the kind of stuff I enjoy, besides science, of course. The lecture room was filled with these people who watch the chess world championship broadcast, for hours and hours. Very cool.

And then we went out to drink some beers, and discuss chess, and science and mathematics and physics. All the good stuff that life has to offer, except skiing, which wasn’t much of a topic tonight.

And we discussed climate change in the way climate change should be discussed. The science, not just the political crap that we hear all the time, from people who don't understand how the Navier-Stokes equations works. Discussing climate change is a lot more interesting when you talk to people who are scientists and mathematicians, and who know more than just to repeat that stupid argument that all scientists agree. Consensus is not an argument in science. Remember what good old Feynman said:

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

The first beer was not so good. It had some grape juice mixed in. The second one was better, a clean pure IPA. And the I went home, and I felt this urgent need to write something.

(Picture taken tonight)

Christmas

Yesterday was the last day of work before Christmas. I left the office around 6 pm. I immmediately wished that it was 2. January so that I could get back to my equations and computer codes.

Fuck Christmas. I’m not interested.

(Picture taken today, when I was out on a short walk. Days are short in Winterland on this time of the year. It's hardly possible to take a picture in day light. However, the darkness outside fits with the darkness of my mind.)

Long day

It's been a long day. I left home before 4am in the morning to catch an early plane, and came back home after 11 pm. I went to our office in the capital to attend a workshop starting at noon. I thought it was a good idea to have some other meetings and talk to people I work with in other projects while I was there.

I just got the time to grab a salomon wrap in the cantina before the workshop started. The topic was exploration for metals in the deep oceans. Very exciting, to plan the activities which maybe, and only maybe, will be a big source of income in the future.

I got to meet people in our company who I normally never meet. The guys on the upper floors, the guys doing business analytics and stuff like that. They talk about business drivers, value chains, scalability and revenues. I only talk about science. That's easy.

It was dark when I took the train to the airport at 6pm. I had a shrimp sandwich and a beer, while waiting for my plane. The sandwich was incrediby expensive ($20). I thought I should pocket the beer glass when I left, as a revenge.

My plane was delayed. Late incoming fight. More time to kill. I sat for a while thinking about my dear soulmate, who I miss.  Then I went to the bookstore to look at the new books. That's the only stores I like. I saw a cute lady in tights. I walked over to the sci-fi shelf, pretending to be interested in intergalactic-war-fantasy-novels, just to see her from behind. Thick thighs, big butt, very nice. That's not an offense, is it? I didn't say anything, didn't touch. I just watched, and she didn't notice.

Maybe I committed a crime, or a thought crime. I don't know. It's strange times ...  >:)

(Picture taken tonight, while waiting for the train to the airport)

A day in the fall

Summer is over. It’s a rainy day in the fall. Rainy and dark. I’m on the way back home from a business dinner. Good food, fish of the day, and good beers. Meeting with colleagues I haven’t met before. New project, future value chains, it’s called. Research for the future. Very exciting.

I always volunteer for the new and exciting stuff that’s coming up in our company. I still work for the dark side, petroleum exploration. But the future is green, so they say. Electrified, renewable. Probably it’s a big hype, driven by the climate change scare from IPCC, The new "Jehova’s Witnesses", scaring about the end of the world.

Anyway, it gives me the opportunity to do some cool science, funded by tax money, partly. And I agree with the conclusions, we need to use renewables, recycle, reduce consumption, even though I don't agree with the arguments, and the big scare.

Doing new stuff, new science, that’s exciting. I’m quite good at this, grabbing the opportunities, at work. Not so much in my private life though. Sad but true.

(Picture taken  while walking back home from town)

Four days in Reykjavík

I spent four days in Reykjavík this week. Just going to meetings this time, no time to enjoy the Icelandic nature. It was cloudy, windy and raining most of the time. So, it wasn’t a big sacrifice to stay indoor.

We made some plans for how to proceed with the geoscience in and near the well we drilled one and a half year ago. It was the deepest and hottest geothermal well ever drilled, reaching more than 500 degrees Celcius (930 Fahrenheit) at a depth of 4.5 km (2.8 miles). 

In the evening we enjoyed the local draft beers  in the pubs. Walking back to my hotel in the dark and rainy night, I thought that I’m quite impressed and fascinated by this country.  They have plenty of fish, and plenty of water, both hot and cold. Except from that, naural resources are scarce. There are no trees and the climate is too cold for farming anything but sheep and horses. With a population less than 350,000 people, the Icelanders are doing great in science and in sports. 

When the country went bankrupt in 2008, they restarted the country and got through it with a shrug of the shoulders (to say it somewhat simplified). And they did it without prayers.

Some time ago, I read an interesting poll from the Pew research institue. It was about belief in God by age groups. Like the rest of Northern Europe, Iceland is very secular. Among adults age 50 and older, about 15 percent believe in God. The sensation was, however, for age 25 and younger, the percentage believing in God was none, zero. Iceland is about to come the World's first Atheist country. That would be a great achievement. It would still be worthwhile to see the Hallgrim's Church in Rekjavik for the cool architecture. 

The last night in Reykjavík, we celebrated meetings finished mission completed. We had a great dinner in a downtown restaurant serving exotic local food. We had puffin for starter, and whale meat for the main course. The pale ales we drank were excellent too >:)

(Picture taken in downtown Reykjanes this week. In the background of the picture, you can see the tower of the Hallgrim's Church. The Icelanders still have cars, though not as big as the SUVs they drove before the financial crisis.)

Travel diary of 2017

I usually write when I’m out traveling. That’s when I get time and space to do it, on airplanes, and in hotel rooms. As I mention some posts ago, I lost my dear notebook last fall, which means I also lost everything I wrote on my trips to various places, my travel diaries, kind of.

So, now I want to write it down from my memory, before it’s too late, before I forget. It’s not very important. It won't make a difference to the world. I do it just for fun, while enjoying a weekend alone, and wasting my time on whatever I want.

Moscow, March. 

Five-day work trip. I’ve written about this before, here.

Moscow, April.

Another work trip to Putin’s empire. We had a big meeting on a Tuesday, and I needed a full work week to prepare. This means that I had to stay over a weekend in Moscow, finally. I’ve been to Russia 25 times over the last 5-6 years, but never spent a weekend there. Just worked. Flying out Monday morning, going home Friday afternoon. That’s crazy.

Most of the time I worked, as before. I walked to the office in the morning, a nice walk along the river. It was colder than usual, according to my Russian friends. No nice and warm spring weather. Then I spent 10-12 hours twisting equations and interpreting data. Around 9 in the evening I went back to the hotel, had a beer and ate some borsch. Not too exiting. Wednesday through Saturday passed like this.

Saturday night I went downtown, to eat dinner together with the boss and another guy, at Vysota 5642. It’s a Caucasian restaurant, named after the summit elevation of Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe, though the French dispute it. We got some strange dishes. It was delicious. Going back to the hotel, we took an Uber taxi. It’s the best taxi service in Moscow, if you stick to drivers with a rating of 4.5 or more.

Sunday, I took a full day off. I travelled around Moscow on the metro. First, I went to see the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, where Pussy Riot made their famous gig by the altar (the video is is on YouTube). It’s a strange church. It looks old, but is almost brand new, decorated with neon-light signs on the inside. The original church was demolished by Stalin. Jesus Christ wasn’t very popular in the Soviet Union. The church was rebuilt 1997-2000. No objections. Stalin is dead. Putin and the clerics are buddies.

I happened to visit the church in the middle of a mass. I went in to watch the show. Very interesting. The mass was run by Patriarch Kirill himself, assisted by an army of holy men, all of them dressed in red and gold robes, and funny hats. The women in the congregation wore scarves to cover their hairs. Everybody kept their arms crossed over the chest while receiving the communion. They all drank the wine from the same spoon. Alcohol, or God, kill the bacteria, I presume. No photos allowed inside.

Then I went down to the Kremlin, to see the inside of the fortress. I have tried before but gave it up because of the long lines. This time I had plenty of time, and was determined to get in. First there was a one-hour line to get a ticket, then half an hour to get through the security check. It was worth it. I skipped the Historical Museum and St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square. I’ve been there before.

Tuesday was the day for our big meeting, with bosses from Big Oil and Huge Oil (the biggest, and probably the most corrupt, oil company on Earth). It’s kind of odd the way they do it in Russia. The bosses sat around the table in the meeting room. The technical guys, including me, were placed on chairs in the back, along the walls. We were supposed to present our technical work, and then shut up. I took the freedom to speak up whenever I felt like I had something important to say. I come from a country with free speech. The meeting was run with simultaneous translation between Russian and English. It’s somewhat tiring, everything is said twice, but you get used to it.

In the evening, I went out to eat and drink beer with my Russian friends. The next morning, I overslept. I ran to the Paveletskaya Metro Station, with my suitcase. I jumped on to the ring line to Belorusskaya Station, and got on the airport train to Sheremetyevo. I didn’t miss my flight back home.

Iceland , June.

I went to Reykjavik with a couple colleagues, on a quick business trip. Just two days, to discuss upcoming geothermal projects. The meeting was in an old hydroelectric power station. Nice building, nice location by the river. After the meeting, we went on a quick road trip to see the geothermal area, with two power stations, near the Hengill volcano.

Iceland is full of tourists in the summer. The airport is crowded, and hotels are expensive. I paid $400 for one night in a downtown hotel. Breakfast not included. If you ever go to Iceland, don’t forget to buy the Icelandic licorice candy, probably not very healthy, but very good.

Amsterdam, June.

Weekend trip to Amsterdam with the boys. Canals, bicycles, and the smell of marihuana from the so-called coffee shops. That’s Amsterdam to me, a city full of sin. The Dutch are probably the most liberal people in the world. Very good.

We went to see the Rembrandt Museum and the van Gogh Museum. Great museums, both of them. Mad men. In the Moco Museum they had an interesting street-art exhibition, with works of Banksy. Nobody knows who he is. Lucky guy.

There's also a sex musemum and a torture museum, which we didn't visit. I,ve been there before. Bizarre stuff, the latter. 

Sao Miguel, July.

Vacation on Sao Miguel, the largest of the Azorean Islands. The islands are located on a plate boundary, just like Iceland. The Azores popped out of the sea where the Eurasian, American and African crustal plates meet in a triple junction. We rented a car to get around. Craters and crater lakes, hot springs and fumaroles. Very cool, and hot.

We stayed in Ponta Delgada, the biggest town and capital. The neighboring town of Ribera Grande, has a geothermal power plant, with wells drilled by the Icelanders. There’s a lot of interesting geoscience on the Azores. I couldn’t completely forget my job.

We went on a whale safari on the ocean, to watch sperm whales and dolphins. They don't hunt the whales in the Azores anymore. In Winterland, we do. Why shouldn't we. The meat is delicious. We ate it regulary for dinner when I was a kid. Now whale meat has become very expensive.

The best thing about vacation is getting plenty of time to read books. I read “Capital in the 21^st Century” by Thomas Piketty, 700 pages, great read. Recommended.

Iceland, August.

We went to Iceland to do some field work. We studied the geology of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and measured the magnetic field and the acceleration of gravity. The weather was nice and sunny. We were lucky. Good weather doesn’t come too often on Iceland. That's my experience.

Iceland has 300,000 inhabitants (almost all of them are Atheists), and 1.5 million tourists every year. Getting a hotel is difficult in the peak tourist season. The first 3 nights, we stayed in a motel in Keflavik, near the international airport.  It’s a weird place in many ways: It’s probably due to the US air force base that used to be there during the cold war. The base is closed down now, but still the town is like a piece of America. Going to a burger place in Keflavik, feels just like being in a Wendy’s restaurant in Colorado or Wyoming.  

We spent two days in the lava fields in the geothermal area close to the airport. Then we drove for an hour along the south coast, and checked in to a hotel in the town of Selfoss. The next two days we worked in the lavas near the Hellisheidi geothermal area. Again, we measured the magnetic field and the gravity. I walked around like a shepard with the magnetometer in my hand. Magnetism is mysterious. Gravity is real. Neither are magic. It's just science.

It’s the anomalies that are of interest to us, because that’s where the subsurface geological information is hidden. After we came home, I’ve spent weeks and months analyzing the data. I’ve been digging into some really cool science, and I’m currently working on a publication. My masterpiece. No, just joking.

Salt Lake City, October.

I went to Salt Lake City to attend my first ever conference on geothermal energy, and presented some of our recent research. It was a good week. My talk was well received. I got some challenging questions from a French professor. That's the way it should be. I learnt a lot more from going to my first geothermal conference than I would have done on my 20^th conference on petroleum geoscience.

Salt Lake City is an interesting city, but also somewhat bizarre, with the Mormon influence on everything. I admire the Mormons in many ways, but I also think it’s the most stupid of all religions. It’s so obviously fake. That’s the drawback of a new religion. All the bullshit is more easily revealed than for an ancient religion obscured by 1400 or 2000 years of history.

I spent hours at Temple Square, to see the Tabernacle, and the visitor centers (there are two of them). I had some interesting and entertaining discussions with the missionaries, a holy army of polite young men and women. The nice thing about the Mormons is that they’re tolerant, apparently. They accept that you have a different view on their religion (I think it’s pure nonsense), but they disagree of course. At least they are peaceful, and don’t chop your head off.

The last time I was in SLC, alcohol was allowed only in private clubs. Now I was happy to see that beer was available in all restaurants. I had some very good beers, with funny names, like Polygamy Porter, and Latter Day Stout. Cheers. Maybe the Mormons have a sense of humor, or more likely, the heathens are playing jokes on them >:)

(Some pictures taken on the various trips)

Signed up for the A-Z Challenge

I signed up for the A-Z Challenge again this year. It's gonna be fun. This year I will go for a theme, but not sure which.

Today, I took a day off from work, and went up to the mountains with little boy and a couple of his buddies. The boys are already out skiing in the snow park, jumping on the big jumps.

I'm sitting in the cafe drinking a cup of fairly good coffee (not the best), and reading some work mail. We have another two days of skiing ahead of us, so I think I will skip the skiing today. I will try to get some work done, and think about a theme for the A-Z Challenge.

I should find a theme which is interesting, and doesn't provoke or offend anyone. No, I think I will reduce my ambition. I'll find a theme which is just interesting. There are som nice options in the sub-heading of my blog:

"about science, mathematics, skiing, drumming, black metal, opera, sex, summer, winter, Heaven and Hell"

Science would be a cool theme, with plenty of topics to write about: astronomy, biology, chemistry, dinosaurs, evolution, Feynman, gravity, Hubble ...

Maybe I should go for mathematics, which also has lots of topics: asymptotic analysis, Banach space, complex numbers, divergence theorem, error function, functions, Gauss distribution, Hilbert space ... Might be fun to write about, but maybe interesting to only a few readers.

Opera could be a cool topic, with posts about Aida, Bizet, Carmen, Donizetti, ...

No, I think I go for the last two options: Heaven and Hell, or some variety of it. Just wait and see till April >:)

(Picture taken today, when I sent little boy and his buddies off in the chair lift)

Disappointed?

Some days ago I bought a new pair of sneakers. I tried them after work today at the gym. I didn't run any faster. My endurance wasn't any better.

I was very disappointed.

Money can't buy me running ability, and happiness?  Tomorow I will go back to the store to complain.

After my exercise, I went to the university to attend a guest lecture on astrophysics and cosmology.

The lecture was in the big auditorium where I took my undergrad courses in calculus and complex analysis 25 years ago. Cool to be back.

I learnt that there are some 500 billion planets in our galaxy. Millions of them have conditions similar to the earth.

In the future, Mars will become like the Earth, and the Earth will become like Venus. On Venus the temperature is 400 degrees (Celcius).  The longterm weather forecast is not good. But this is still a billion years into the future.

The best things in life are for free; science, knowledge, maybe happiness ... and a couple of other things >;)

The land of the midnight sun

It seems like I’m back on my old informal blogging-schedule;  blogging while traveling. That’s when I get the time to do it, when I have the evenings  off, by myself. 

This year I have hardly been traveling at all. Yesterday, when I got to the airport security, I realized how much I appreciate being at home, with just a 10 minute commute to the office (thanks to the inventors of video-conferencing).

This week I’m up north, in the city known as The Paris of the North, and The Gateway to the Arctic.   

It’s quite some time since last time I was here for real. I’ve been here many times in transit. This is the town were I used to board the Antonov-24for Murmansk, when I travelled regularly to Russia. This is the transit stop if you want to experience the Arctic magic. This is where I have boarded vessels heading for the Arctic Seas, and where I slept over when I returned.

It’s great to be here in the summer, at 69 degrees North, well beyond the Arctic Circle. The mountains are still capped with snow, and the birches have just got a slight touch of leaves. It’s not very warm, but it’s light.  The sun shines around the clock. The last sunrise was 20^th May, and the next sunset is 25^th July. Two months of continuous daylight.

My hotel  (and all the other hotels in town) are down on the harbor, with a nice view to the bridge and the Arctic Cathedral on the other side. God present is here too, apparently. Religion is hard to get rid of no matter how far north you go.

The north is challenging for the Muslims. They all died out one summer when Ramadan was in the months of the midnight sun. I’m just joking.  The Muslims up here has a special permit (from God?) to follow the clock-times in Mecca. During Ramadan, they can eat when the sun sets in Mecca. Funny isn’t it?

Religion (all of them) is pure madness. That’s why I stick to science >)

(I took the picture above this morning. When I checked the last link above, I realized that I had basically the same picture 4 year ago. But if you compare, you will see that the weather is better today.)

Such a nice and sunny day

It's such a nice and sunny day. People are hiking
the trails along the fjord, and I'm sitting indoor in my office. Not for a long time, though. I'm just in for half an hour to print a student thesis that I have to read through, tonight on the plane to the North >:)

(It takes some time to print 170 pages. In the mean time, I took the picture above through the window, and wrote this post.)

War profits

BigOil is evil. That’s something everybody knows. BigOil co-operates with all kinds of corrupt regimes around the world. When conflicts escalate towards war, energy prices rice, and BigOil make more money.

I work for BigOil, doing technical work. The scientists and engineers are good guys. The evil part is taken care of by the corporate-strategy department.

However, I also own some shares in BigOil. I’ve been thinking about selling some of my shares for some time (we need the money to pay for the refurbishing of our house). This week I sold my shares, and the price was quite good.

The recent increase in the share price is of course due to the escalating conflict in Ukraine, and on the Crimean peninsula. This means I've become a war profiteer. That’s no good. What should I do with the added value of my shares? Donate the excess money to the Salvation Army, or just keep it? What would you have done?

(The cartoon is from The Moscow Times, which is a very good and interesting newspaper. I used to get it on the door of my hotel room when I travelled frequently to Russia. The Moscow Times is published in English. Therefore it has few readers in Russia, and is basically a newspaper operating under the radar of Putin’s regime.)

My bookshelf

There's nothing important I have to say. I just wanted to make å test, to see if I can write a post on my cell phone, including upload of a picture. I will need to check later how it appears on the computer. The picture is of my office bookshelf, a part of it. There are some science books, of course, and a couple of oddities. On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and the Quran. I bought the latter on sale for half the price. It's a pretty useless book. The two-volume green book is more useful. It's kind of my Bible >:)

My to-write list

It’s February already. January just flew away too fast, without a single blogpost. I was just to busy. Basically, I had three jobs. At daytime I did my regular job for BigOil, as usual. In the night I worked on the refurbishing of our house. Late night I was grading exams. It’s a Hell of a boring job, but I have to do it, since I have a part-time position in the university.

Now the exam-grading is done. Then I only have two jobs, and I hope I’ll get some time to write. I have many topics to write about. Just to remind myself, here are some headlines on my to-write list:

• The white gold
• Russia; good, bad and evil
• War heroes on the metro
• Mekka and Disneyland
• Jerusalem and Hollywood
• Some people still believe in God
• The importance if blasphemy
• Michel Houellebecq
• Haruka Murakami
• Management and leadership
• Monogamy
• I never got a Green Card
• Where does Satan live?
• Skiing in America
• My merits in battle
• Does size matter?

I don’t know in which order I’ll do the list. I’m open for suggestions.

Also, more than a year ago, I started on a one month blogging challenge; 30 posts in 30 days. I got half way through it. Maybe I’ll try to do the rest of it. But n

ot this month; February has only 28 days, it’s skiing season, and soon the Winter Olympics are starting up >:)

(The picture above is the huge Russian nuclear-powered ice breaker Lenin operating in the Arctic. I took the picture a couple of years ago. To be honest, I've never actually seen the ship. There is a big picture of the ice breaker on the wall in the reception of the Poliarnie Zori Hotel in Murmansk, and I took a picture of the picture on the wall, hehe.)

Back to basics

This fall has been quite busy, somewhat too busy, I must admit. It’s all the stuff going on at work, as usual. In addition, my handyman season has lasted longer than usual.

Living in a 100-year old house is like rowing a leaky boat. You need to bail out water continuously to keep it floating. That’s OK. I’m used to it. But this fall there has been more. We have refurbished the ground floor (still going on). We have ripped out everything, and rebuild it from the core; putting in insulation in the walls and floors, installing water-borne heating, and so on.

We have hired craftsmen to do the most difficult and time consuming things, but I’ve done a lot myself too. So, I’ve been working as a scientist at day time and as a carpenter in the evenings and weekends. It’s a nice combo actually. I rest my body when doing research in the office, and I rest my brain while swinging the hammer and saw.

In fact, I enjoy it. It feels like I’m doing some real work, not just fiddling around with physics and mathematics and computers. However, it leaves too little time for reading and writing. Things are too complex right now.

I don’t believe in any gods and superheros, and I think that from the beginning, the (pre)humans were much like any other species of animals. Our mission in life was very simple; to eat, fuck and die. We were supposed to spread our genes to the next generations, and then get our bio-mass recycled.

But at some point, our brains just got too big, and we started to worry about religion and science, and stuff like that. I don’t like religion, but I’m happy with the science.  

But there’s more. There’s no end to this craziness. We shop for hardwood floors and induction cooktops, and what the hell should we do with all the old crap that we have bought at the mall over the years? At work there are company strategies and deliverables and achievements, evaluation systems and key performance indexes (so-called KPI’s). Management is pretty insane. I've developed my own management theory. More about that on a later occasion.

Right now, it feels like I wanna go back to the basics. Fortunately, there’s the Christmas vacation coming up. I don’t like the Christmas part of it, but I do like a mid-winter vacation. Tomorrow we go skiing in the mountains for a week. Great!

To whom it may concern: Merry Christmas.

I prefer to say Happy Winter Solstice >:)

(The pictures were taken some years ago, when little boy was really a little boy. He had heard the Christmas Gospel in the kindergarden, and re-told it at home, in his own way. I made the clay models while little boy directed. There were Jesus and Mary and Joseph and the Holy Kings, and little boy insisted that they played soccer. This was unknown to me, but who cares. I just made it the way he wanted)

Higgs and other fields

 This week, Peter Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. More than 40 years ago, Higgs and his co-workers predicted theoretically the existence of an elementary particle known as the Higgs boson. In 2012, the Higgs particle was finally detected in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva.

In a popular-science book by Leon Lederman, the Higgs boson was nick-named the God particle. This name is strongly disliked by both physicists and priests, because it could give the false impression that God has something to do with it. That’s not the case.

Science deals with theoretical predictions and experimental confirmation (or rejection) of the theories. Religion is just a question of belief (or lack of it), and is outside the scope of science.

Lederman, in his book, first wanted to call it the Goddamn particle, because of the enormous efforts and billions of dollars spent in the search for the Higgs boson. But the publisher didn’t approve it

I thought it was really cool when the Higgs particle was found, because I used to work with this kind of stuff when I was a physics student. Elementary particles are the basic building blocks of everything, all kinds of matter, and even light. The weird part of theoretical physics known as “quantum field theory” is the mathematical description of elementary particles and their interactions.

For every particle there is a field, and for every field there is a particle, the observable quantum of the field. Even light has a particle; the photon. And of course, there is a Higgs field, associated with the Higgs particle.

In fact there are many Higgs fields, at least four. Three of the Higgs fields are busy, giving mass to other particles, by so-called spontaneous symmetry breaking. The 4th Higgs field is free (because light, the photon, didn't acquire a mass), and is observable as the Higgs particle.  

More than 20 years ago, I wrote my master thesis on an even crazier part of quantum field theory, something called super-symmetry. In super-symmetry, there are more Higgs-like particles, and a myriad of other new particles, none of which have been observed in the labs so far.  

Working with super-symmetry was very entertaining, but I’m not sure it’s useful. I was in doubt if I should continue with this, or switch to something else. Once, I discussed this with a professor I knew (he was an outstanding teacher). The advice he gave me is probably the best I ever got:

“It doesn’t really matter which wave-equation you solve, but for some you get better paid.”

So, I swapped field (literally speaking), from elementary particles to acoustic and electromagnetic waves. I did my PhD in applied geophysics, and started to work for BigOil. I never regretted, and I even think I’m useful to society, sometimes >:)

(The picture is a random page from my master thesis, written back, in 1992. I still have a copy of the thesis in my bookshelf. I haven't opened it for more than 10 years, until recently, when I wanted to refresh my mind on the Higgs stuff.)

Fun at work

It's summer, and it's time for fun at work. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Sure, it is. It's not about sex or anything like that, unfortunately. All the girls are gone on vacation, and all the bosses too. No meetings, no phone calls, no mails to reply to.

July is the best time to work. Hours and days undisturbed. Time to do some real science. Just doing the mathematical analysis, with a pencil and a notebook. Great! And in the end, new ideas often end up in the official research activities of the company.

July this year was as usual, at least for the first 3 weeks. Then they called from the Moscow office.

My one-year multi-visa to Russia expires on the 24. August. It's good for another trip to Moscow in mid August. Now I'm preparing for meetings. Bye bye physics, bye bye math. Back to Powerpoint.

Whatever, I won't complain. This what they pay me to do, and the weather is warm and the sky is blue. I plan to take some vacation the next couple of weeks.

Then I'm ready for Moscow. It's a very fascinating city, and always a pleasure to visit.

Maybe I will meet Snowden at Sheremetyevo, if he's still there, in the transit area. I read in the papers that he might get permission to leave the airport. I hope it's true. There are better places to spend the time in Moscow.

(I usually scan my notes and trash the paper original. It's a convenient way to keep track of things, just a file on the computer.)

Bar math

A couple of days ago I met with some friends and colleagues in a bar to have a beer.  We had a good meal in restaurant nearby, and then we went to another bar for another beer.

We discussed a science problem and some ideas for have to solve it. I found a pen in my pocket, and got a napkin to sketch up the solution. We had a good time with dark beers and some interesting bar math. That’s the kind of things we do from time to time.

When I jumped on my bike to go home an hour after midnight, it was still light outside. It's summer, and at this time of the year it’s not really getting dark at all >:)

(Picture taken with my cell phone in the bar)  

Gameboy in Texas

This week there’s a huge conference on petroleum technology in Houston. I’m not attending, and I don’t want to. First, Houston is not my favorite place to go. Second, the conference is too crowded (more than 50.000), too much business and politics, and too little science.

I have, however, been to this conference once, some 10 years ago. I was invited to give a presentation on some research we had done.

There was a somewhat complicating issue, because I brought older boy with me on the trip to the US. Back then, he was a little boy, only 8 years old. He was going to visit a friend who lived in Colorado at that time (the father of his friend was a professor on sabbatical).

Older boy looked forward to visit Denver (where we lived for a while when I was a student).

But first we had to go to Houston.

Houston is a big city with high crime rates (in some areas). It’s not a place where you want your kid to get lost. Also, he didn’t speak English. In case he got lost, he wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone.

This was a challenge when I was giving my talk at the conference.

After some negotiations with the conference management, I got a special permission to bring the boy with me to the technical-session’s area.  He was not allowed to visit the exhibition halls, where lots of heavy-duty offshore equipment was shown.

I went to the speaker’s preparation room, to upload my presentation and check that it was OK. I put the kid on a chair next to me, with some candy and a Mountain Dew, to keep him quiet.

Then we went to the auditorium where my session took place. When it was my turn to speak, I put the kid in a seat in the first row, right in front of the podium. I gave him his Gameboy (a Nintendo device), and told him to turn off the sound.

I gave my talk, presenting the mathematical model and application examples. All the time, I kept an eye on the kid from the podium, while he was sitting still playing a Pokemon game.

After my talk, we went straight to the George Bush airport to get on the plane to Denver. Then we went up to the Rockies to enjoy some slushy May skiing in Arapahoe Basin.

(For some reason, I've never used my camera when visiting Houston. I took the picture above by the I-70, west of Denver, where the highway starts climbing up the Rocky Mountain Foothills)

30.000 feet

It's been a while since I wrote anything here. Don't worry. There are plenty of good blogs around. You don't really need mine. I'm just writing it for my own entertainment.

I do most of my writing when I'm out traveling. This year I haven't been traveling much, so far. Before Easter, I spent a week in Moscow, working long days. Now I'm on the way to Milan, Italy, about to cross the Swiss Alps at 30.000 feet. 

The last three months have been quite busy. Too much to do at work, very interesting and important projects, but intense, and with tight deadlines.

Half a year ago we were reorganized. We've got new bosses, doing administration and micro-management rather than showing leadership. No problem, we get used to it. We just have to make up the visions and grand plans ourselves.

You can't really stop researchers, just slow them down, by setting up weird obstacles. I've come up with a new management model. How to utilize the various facets of corporate management in the optimal way. Maybe I will write a post about it some time.

Winter is the most busy time of year. It's skiing season, and we've been skiing a lot. I've got about 45 days on the slopes so far. The kids have more. The Easter was great, cold nights, sunny days, and great skiing conditions. April is the best part of the season. There's more to come, for another month.

Finally, I've got a new favorite author, the French rebel Michel Houllebecq. He's a very good writer; pessimistic, ironic and provocative, pointing to the sickness of modern society. Accused of being a pornographer, and pulled to court by Islamic organizations for offending their religion. That's a real author, with his mission. Recommended.

I've read four of Houllebecq’s books recently, just started on the fifth. So, I've done a lot of reading, but not much writing, except the science reports at work.

(April is the best time of the year for skiing. It's not me in the picture, but I know the guy quite well. The picture was taken and put together by one of his buddies.)

Ghostwriter

I've been ghostwriting the last couple of days. No, I'm not talking about the Holy Ghost, though we're just through the Pentecost. I'm talking about science and technology.

I often make slides for my boss, technical stuff that she uses in various settings. This time, however, it was kind of a special event. Today the Prime Minister, the Mayor, and the CEO of the company came to visit our research center. I've never seen any of these people in real life before, only on TV.

Three months ago, we made a fairly big oil discovery in the Arctic (we found oil worth some 50 billion dollars with current prices). The Prime Minister, the Mayor and the CEO came to hear about the role of research and advanced geophysics in this discovery. My boss had 13 minutes to tell the story (the time schedule was planned minute by minute).

My own contribution was, by all means, very modest. I was just involved in parts of the geophysical work. I made my four slides, as usual. But this time I did more than that, because I wanted to create a good story. So, I wrote down, in detail, a proposed wording (a monologue) to use when presenting each slide.

As I was doing this, I realized that, what the Hell, this is just like writing a short story or a novel. I need a good hook to start with, then build up the excitement before the grand finale (unfortunately they already new the happy ending). I also put in a teaser pointing to on-going and future work, like writing for a series. It was great fun to write, actually.

I did of course, tell my boss, that this is just my proposal, the way I would have presented it. Use it if you want to, pick pieces of it if you like.

(The picture above has nothing whatsoever to do with the oil discovery mentioned above. I picked it from my archive of past projects. It's a seismic image from the other side of the world, offshore South America, computed 7 years ago)