Bubble Experience

  The highlight of our weekend was the bubble experience, a temporary exhibit at the old Toys R Us box store in downtown Bellevue, converted for what I assume is a revitalization effort. There were 8-10 rooms of surreal displays, some interactive, some not. In one we got to toss around large balloons like they were cloud droplets. In another we got to walk on a virtual seafloor where organic bubbles are manufactured. The highlight was a giant bubble bath full of little balls that you could wade through or submerge yourself in. I would lift the boys over my head and toss them in the bubble bath, making sure they were safe. At one point we were so engaged in fun that we didn't notice thunder and lightning descending on the bath from above. It was all a show of course but I rarely lose focus so much that I'm not aware of surroundings. I guess fun will do that as well as anything.

 There was another cool room where you could walk through a fractal of bubbles hanging from the ceiling. The bubbles would change color from red to green to blue and purple, sometimes a rainbow mix of them.  Finally, the kids got to color their own submarines and put them in a photo box that copies what you colored and projects it on an underwater scene with the drawings of other kids. It was a great way to end the event because it helps calm the kids down. Activities that require extra focus always do. 

This was a surreal and mesmerizing experience, worth every penny.

Pacers/Knicks Redux

 That really just happened.

 30 years ago, I watched Reggie Miller score 8 points and 9 seconds against the New York Knicks, who choked the game and the playoffs series.

 Today I watched Aaron Nesmith, a little-known shooting forward, make five 3-pointers in two minutes to bring the Pacers back from being 14 down against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. The same place Miller beat the odds 30 years ago. This time, to cap it off, Tyrese Halliburton at the buzzer shot a miraculous fade away that bounced straight up off the rim, hung in the air for five seconds- higher than the shot clock- then was gracefully guided back through the net by what seemed like the same higher power that guided the ball in that game 30 years ago, igniting one of the greatest rivalries in sports. These are two of the greatest moments in NBA history, happening in roughly the same circumstances 30 years apart. What made it extra special tonight was that Reggie Miller was calling the game for TNT in their last official series broadcast, though it is only game one. Halliburton made the same choke sign to the fans that Reggie made 30 years ago when the Knicks choked a different game. Unknown to Halliburton, his foot was on the 3-point line, sending the game to overtime. But the Pacers still pulled it off.

 I love the Knicks, but I don't care that they choked right now. That was something special to watch, a total deja vu replay of history. When Halliburton hit that shot, I went berserk, yelling "Did you see that!" to my son. God I love this game.

 What a magically fitting way to end things on Inside the NBA. The show was hilarious as usual; everyone was in perfect form.  I really hope to see the team back next year. It is the best show in sports and even one of the best TV shows overall in history.

Cup Slam

 Spontaneous joy of racing blasted us through a mushroom stadium
 Off the map, dangerous corridors of levitating stones,
 Under an amusement park floating on water,
 Meandering down a canyon that tunneled through a donut,
 You wanted to eat it, you said, swallowing pleasure
 Laced by enchantment of sweets intangible,
 The shriek of your laughter counting coins in the tumult
 Shell crash of thunder from a lightning strike you cast.
 You're in first, you said, sanctifying glory,
 Coating it in candy enamel pastries that glittered
 Frosty lights off the cracked eggs of your wheels
 Now coasting through an airport high on sunshine.
 In a purple city electrified by night bright strobe lights,
 Stripes and stars illuminated white,
 Your head turned inside out when the road forked,
 Split upside down by mirrored turnpike,
 Smashing your glee to smithereen disco chips
 Falling like confetti in a labyrinthine dome,
 Sedated by the pinball finish line sounding victory.

The Cantor Set in Genes: We Are Fractals

  The Cantor set is the most basic mathematical fractal. It starts from a principal line that bisects at eeach iteration into smaller lines that are 1/3 the length of the previous one:

 If we assign the second iteration with two lines a binary address, it follows that each iteration thereafter will have an infinite diversity of binary combinations. For instance, iteration two can be assigned L and R for left right. Iteration three would then have LL, LR, RL, and RR designations; and so forth.

 There is an intriguing analogy in genetics. After conception between sperm and egg, each time the cell(s) split, a new ladder on the Cantor chain unfolds to represent a new arrangement of genes, coded by recessive or dominant probabilities in gene expression. Each time the cell splits, we go lower on the Cantor chain to find the corresponding genetic code in an individual's genome.

 The analogy also applies to evolution. If we go far back in time, each generation is a step up the ladder leading to the most primitive set of genes. This includes the mother gene that started it all- a single line at the top of the Cantor chain. Somehow it split to form the two sexes and all the successive combinations down the fractal chain through the long history of evolution.

 Thus, all life is coded from the Cantor iteration structure. That is how we are fractals.

Sitcoms As Stages of Life

  There seems to be a hilarious sitcom for every stage of life. Each of my favorite sitcoms represents a stage of my own.

 "The Simpsons" is great for young teenagers as they develop a sense of stereotypes in a crazy world. Bart and Lisa are the consummate child victims at the center of twisted adult schemes in Springfield. Teens may not pick up on all the satire, but that's what makes it mysterious for them. It can be a good learning experience culturally.

 "The Big Bang Theory" is a late teen/early 20s romp, ideal for college, first job, or just moving out. It helps if you are a total geek or enjoy the company of one.

 "Friends" is perfect for people just getting their career started and living on their own, usually mid to late 20s or early 30s. It is definitely set before the family stage.

 "Seinfeld" reflects the 30s, either as a stage of midlife crisis or the yearning to start a family. It's best to watch it during this stage, as it pokes fun at all the social norms you have gotten so sick of that starting a family starts to sound good.

 "Home Improvement" is a great family show because it can teach you a lot about how to maintain one.  I peg this as a late 30s/early 40s show, but anyone who's getting in the prime of parenthood can relate. You can learn on a lot from Wilson, Al, Jill, and even Tim.  Having two boys make it even more relatable for me.

 "The Office" reflects the 40s, when you are deep in a career and going through the monotonous motions of it. There is a sense of tiredness, being sick if it all, and just wanting to make fun out of anything you can get away with.

 "Frasier" is great for late career in the 50s, when you are well-established as an intellectual in your field and still have some goals. The humor is refined and witty enough that you would probably only understand it later in life.

 "Parenthood" isn't a sitcom, but I believe it is the best for old age. This is when you can look back on a successful family you built, be proud of it, and offer a lot of seasoned advice to the generations in front of you.

Master of None

 Now that it's over I can catch my breath
 That polluted our home with foul stress.
 My dream was a mistake, a heavy burden
 Corrupting my connections, unbidden
 Remorse for running away, sinking bridges
 Built on charm and aspiring wishes
 Damning the past for the future,
 The way it sewed up a suture
 For that leak in my soul
 I so desperately sought to console
 With knowledge cast to infinity,
 An impossible cure for vanity.

Healthy Fast Food

  I was looking at menus for a new place to have lunch, a place with relatively healthy items compared to the usual fast food that I eat. The closest grill has a chicken sandwich, advertised as having "tons of melted cheese", as if the taste of chicken should be avoided at all costs, let alone any vegetables that go on it. It is sad that I can't find a non-Asian healthy option around here, while anything remotely close has an imbalanced topping that would quicken the heart rate I am trying to avoid. There is an idea I have for a restaurant that only serves healthy food. Better yet, a fast food restaurant that simply sells pre-made healthy food that has not necessarily been preserved. I wonder how many have tried this and failed. If Panera Bread can successfully advertise itself as "healthy fast food" and succeed, why can't others? I'm sure a lot of people like me would want a speedy option that isn't going to kill them over time. We as a society should stop demanding gross food with our dollar and fill the stores with anything healthy.

Antarctica and Astrobiology

  Antarctica is a continent layered by a sheet of ice that is two miles thick in some places. There is so much ice that the weight of it has sunk the continent substantially, resulting in an average height below sea level; at some locations it is below 1.5 miles (far lower than the Dead Sea), with miles of ice stacked on top of the ground.

 This makes for an interesting topography of subglacial canyons and lakes. Denman Glacier, the deepest point on earth, is an ice-filled canyon that stretches 11,500 feet below sea level. For comparison, the Grand Canyon is only 5,000 feet deep. The subglacial Lake Vistok would be the 10th largest lake in the world if visible on the surface. Ice cores from the two mile deep lake have been taken that reveal a potential ego system with microscopic life.

 That life can survive in such extreme environments as a subglacial lake at the south Pole buried under 2 miles of ice supports the idea that other ice planets and moons may harbor it. One example is Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, which globally iced over. Despite being more than twice as far from the sun as Earth, it may have environmental conditions that favor biogenesis. The more we can learn about these buried ego systems, the more we can infer that perhaps sunlight and oxygen aren't so fundamental to life after all.

Ocean of Peace

 I want to drown in an ocean of peace
 That calms my nerves, gives me release,
 Silences the disease of manufactured unease.
 La petite filet de la mer,
 Wandering a skylit darkness
 Between the edge of the deep,
 A galaxy of life swimming around me,
 Glowing through a dim current of hope.

The Chaos Game

  In chaos theory, there is a feedback iteration where choosing a random point reproduces random outputs among the following iterations. But over a long enough period of time, it doesn't appear to be so random. The shape the points make after thousands of iterations becomes a fractal- specifically the Serpinski Gasket. This called the Chaos Game. A better explanation with illustrations can be found at the Boston University math department here. 

A Sierpinski Gasket showing the outcomes of rolled dice over an infinite series of iterations. Mysterious gaps in the "landing zone" result in a classic fractal structure.

 It is one example of the connection between chaos and fractals; how seemingly random events inevitably lead to order within a larger structure. This could be applied to nature through the Bayes Theorem of probability, where the likelihood of an iteration having a given output is predictable over the course of time but not at the beginning. It serves the wave-particle duality of nature as tiny variations within a structure ultimately lead to the same result. It is the probability of particles forming an entity that lend it reality. Like the chaos of a fractal, any initial condition iterates to the same body plan, as if it was already there. That's where waves converge on particles, with the particles serving the plan and the waves serving the force. Together they create a probability distribution that "fractalizes" nature in real time.

Geology of the Grand Canyon

  The Grand Canyon, stunning as it is, goes often unnoticed for the epic geological story it unfolds. Visitors are taken aback by its sheer beauty, but are unphased or ignorant of the sheer history on its walls. Each formation is a standalone eon on the timeline of Earth history, filled with the fossils and sediments of a unique landscape.

 The bottom of the canyon is far back as we can see in the history of deposition that the Colorado River eroded. At this time it was mainly volcanic sediment. At other times it was awash by marine deposition, forming limestone surfaces under a prehistoric ocean. Later it was a great swamp, full of siltstone and amphibious fossils. Later still it was a vast ocean of tall dunes, rising at least 400 feet, as that is how tall this portion of the Canyon wall is, peppered by desert reptile fossils and sandstone. It was then overlain by another shallow ocean before being uplifted by major orogeny, the fault lines creating opportunities for new rivers like the Colorado to erode vast canyon-scapes of underlying rock and sediment.

 Each layer is like a snapshot in time, separated by a relatively short period of erosion. It is a magnificent architecture of earthen materials, folded intricately over time by God's patience. There is no greater place to study the history of Earth than here.

Using Social Media to Geolocate Disaster Spots

           On May 31, 2013, El Reno, Oklahoma experienced the widest tornado in recorded history (Ukusurri et al, 111).  Believed to have reached its maximum extent at 2.6 miles, it is one of the best-documented cases of a mass tornado evacuation in history (Hatzis & Klockow-McClain, 722).  As most tornado responses don’t involve an evacuation, this one was mostly due to its sheer size.  It was also compounded by a rough 2 weeks of severe weather for the city, which had started with the disastrous Moore tornado that killed 24 people on May 20^th that year.

What generated this monster tornado was the combination of a classic southwest dryline, a slow-moving front across the Great Plains, high surface dew points, unstable lapse rates, and high vertical wind shear (ibid., 722).  The supercell that formed from this combination tracked east over central Oklahoma.  Tornadogenesis was just south of El Reno, but the path alarmingly went in the direction of metropolitan Oklahoma City.  Fortunately, it did not reach the city, which is about 30 miles east.  It primarily passed over open country, killing 8 people (all in vehicles), including 3 storm chasers (ibid. 722) before stalling over I40 and dissipating. 

The official rating from the National Weather Service was EF3, but Doppler radar detected velocities that exceeded the wind threshold of an EF5 (ibid. 722).  Based on the size, intensity, and damage inflicted on things it did intercept, including a brutally mangled car, many believe the rating should have been upgraded to EF5. 

The El Reno tornado is known for having many traits that aren’t typically seen even among EF5 tornadoes.  When the tornado was visible, several sub vortices were detected by storm chasers, spinning around the main vortex like a top.  It also took a deadly turn just as it was doubling in size, causing many chasers to get caught in its path.  Because the tornado was rain-wrapped, it was difficult for many to see.  The deceptively wide base made it appear to be merely a rainstorm.  As it stalled on I40, poor visibility caused several people to drive right into it, including the driver of a semi-truck.  These anomalies make El Reno a highly unique tornado, and one of the most fascinating to study in recent history.

Reports of the tornado’s intensity led to a large-scale evacuation of metropolitan Oklahoma City, which had been reeling from the disastrous Moore tornado only 11 days prior.  The evacuation created major traffic jams that would have caused fatalities in the hundreds if the tornado had reached Oklahoma City (ibid. 721).  The traffic jams increased potential for a violent tornado hitting gridlocked traffic, especially as the tornado struck during the afternoon commute.  As vehicle fatalities account for 10-20% of all tornado fatalities (ibid. 722), a response that didn’t involve thousands of people stuck in their vehicles should have been executed by officials during this event.  Telling people who are already on high alert from 2 weeks of severe weather that they need to evacuate if they cannot get below ground can also lead to mass hysteria, putting more lives at risk (ibid. 733).  Any emergency communication network must clearly decide where a tornado is heading and prioritize the safety of individuals in its path without alerting a whole city.

            Two solutions to the communication problem are in the use of social media to monitor tornadogenesis, and the crowdsourcing of information by storm chasers and researchers.  In the case of crowdsourcing, storm chaser video can be collected and fixed precisely in time and location (Seimon et al, 2070).  Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can then be used to georeference storm chaser video (ibid. 2079) as it is happening.  Though this may be difficult to achieve in real time, it is possible.  While this provides a benefit to future researchers, it also presents an opportunity for emergency alert systems to track the speed and direction of tornados.  It would help respondents see any surprising developments or abrupt changes in direction on camera rather than relying on radar or ground reporting alone, which are vulnerable to delays.  In the case of El Reno, the tornado was crowdsourced extensively, but only after the event happened and not by emergency alert systems.  Even if this approach proves impractical in emergency settings, the added benefit of crowdsourcing a tornado is that researchers can reconstruct it to find behavior that led to any accidents and fatalities (ibid. 2079), thus helping emergency planners predict problem areas in future events.

            Another solution is the use of social media to geolocate disaster spots.  Twitter (now X) has already been used as a source of information for pinpointing disasters or social emergencies (Ukkusuri et al, 110).  Posts with hashtags can provide unique and valuable information toward ground responses, information sharing, and can also help with crowdsourcing.  Crucially, it accelerates the speed of information by the sharing nature of threatening situations (ibid. 110).  The information can help public and emergency management authorities improve the understanding of on-the-ground realities during emergency events like tornadogenesis (ibid. 110).  As some posts contain geolocation data, it is useful in identifying local hotspots of activity (ibid. 111).  However, posts that do not have this information would require a bit of data mining, which can be slow in real time.

            If these communication methods had been used during the El Reno event, it would have prevented the major traffic jams that put many lives at risk.  A whole city simply does not have enough time to evacuate from a tornado that just formed 30 miles away.  A small section of the city could, but even this wasn’t necessary for this tornado.  With improvements in crowdsourcing and data collection on social media, an evacuation for the El Reno tornado wouldn’t have been necessary, as respondents would have seen it hooking away from the city and slowing down near the interstate.  A real-time GIS generated map can provide all the functions of a spatially motivated evacuation plan, provided the emergency team has enough data from crowdsourcing and social media.

 

Sources:

Seimon, A., Allen, J. T., Seimon, T. A., Talbot, S. J., & Hoadley, D. K. (2016). Crowdsourcing The El Reno 2013 Tornado: A New Approach for Collation and Display of Storm Chaser Imagery for Scientific Applications. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 97(11), 2069-2084. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00174.1

Hatzis, J. J., & Klockow-McClain, K. E. (2022). A Spatiotemporal Perspective on the 31 May 2013 tornado evacuation in the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area. Weather, Climate, and Society, 14(3), 721-735. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-21-0106.1

Ukkusuri, S. V., Zhan, X., Sadri, A. M., & Ye, Q. (2014). Use of Social Media Data to Explore Crisis Informatics: Study of 2013 Oklahoma Tornado. Transportation Research Record, 2459(1), 110-118. https://doi.org/10.3141/2459-13