Rubik's Cube

Link to more photos. 

I have a collection of Rubik's Cubes and similar objects, about 20 of them (See the photo album.)

When I first read about it, in a fourth-generation copy of an article in a German magazine, I couldn't see how it was possible —  how a cube of smaller cubes could possibly rotate slices in all three dimensions. 

At the time, they were only available in Europe, not in the U.S. My Occidental math faculty colleague Don Goldberg managed to get one from abroad, and I borrowed it for a day. In that time, I did learn how to fix one side, but that's all I could reliably do.

Sometime later, the May Co. department store was the first place in town to have Rubik's Cube to sell. As a promotion, they advertised that, for one day, they would be giving $50 gift certificates to anyone who could solve one side in three minutes.

I went there on that day as soon as they opened, and I was one of the first set of three people who were given a chance. Of course, I won a $50 gift certificate. As the day went on, more and more Oxy students were showing up and winning. They quickly cut back to one group of three contestants every hour instead of every thirty minutes, and long before the day was done, they stopped the promotion altogether. Oxy students who never got a chance protested, and there was even some TV coverage of it all.

In his 1981 book, Notes on Rubik's Magic Cube, David Singmaster writes, "A Los Angeles department store offered $50 to anyone who could put one face right in three minutes.  They lost $600 to a group of Don Goldberg's students at Occidental College."

For years afterwards, I bought and received as gifts many variations of the cube. I also participated in the Cube-Lovers email group (now long gone).

Anti-vaxxers

Weeks ago, my cousin Mark Weiss posted this on Facebook:

Vaccine mandates are leading teachers who don't believe in science to quit, nurses who don't believe in medicine to quit, and cops who don't believe in public safety to quit. I don't really see a downside to this.

I like that a lot, and I quoted it to others. Later, I decided I should send it as a letter to the editor of the LATimes. I first asked Mark whether it was his own or whether he was quoting someone else. He said, "I’d seen a couple of things out there that resonated with me, and that was my amalgamation of what I’d seen, though it may have been closer to one or another. That may not be a big help, but frankly, I don’t recall it in detail."

So I sent it to the Times, prefaced with "Recently seen on Facebook:" They didn't print it.

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta — October 2021

 

Link to more photos.

In 2019, I signed up for a Road Scholar trip to the 2020 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Due to COVID, that was canceled, and I then signed up for 2021.

We had a very good time. The weather was always my big concern for this trip, but it was mild, and no rain interfered!

The first day included no balloons. We walked to Albuquerque's Old Town, where I tripped, banged my knee, and limped back to the hotel. After dinner, there was a presentation on ballooning that was better than I expected.

I limped most of the rest of the trip, improving a bit each day.

The next two days, we left the hotel at 4:30 am (!) to avoid worse traffic and get to the balloons before they went up. In all, we went to the balloon fiesta three times, two mornings and once at dusk. One morning, we were at the Balloon Museum on a slight hill overlooking the balloon field. That evening, we were there again; fireworks were included. The next morning, we had breakfast at the Balloon Chasers Club and then we were on the field, along with thousands of other spectators, walking among the hundreds of balloons as they inflated and went up.

One day, after the morning balloons, we visited the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. Another day, because the Coronado Historic Site was closed, we went instead to El Pinto restaurant.

As we departed Albuquerque, we could see balloons in the sky while we were in the shuttle and at the airport.

Canyonlands, Arches, Mesa Verde and more — Sept. 2021

 

Delicate Arch (on the left) in Arches National Park

Link to more photos. (View the photos individually to see the captions.)

This tour took us to Canyonlands, Arches, and Mesa Verde National Parks, a narrow gauge railway ride, New Mexico's Ghost Ranch and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. It was supposed to include Taos Pueblo, but that is still closed.

We began with our first flight since COVID and an overnight stay in Salt Lake City. Our first stop the next day was Dead Horse Point State Park, followed by Canyonlands National Park, where the Green River joins the Colorado River. We took the Island in the Sky scenic drive to Grand View Point.

We continued to Moab and began early the next day lining up for nearby Arches National Park.  The park has plenty of spectacular scenery. We stopped at Balanced Rock, Delicate Arch (the symbol of Utah), Landscape Arch (the longest arch in the park), and the Windows. See the photos (link above).

We left Moab via the Million Dollar Highway and, in the afternoon, the 19th-century Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. At a top speed of 18 miles per hour, this was a 3.5-hour, 45 mile bum-rattling jouncy ride along the Animas River with beautiful scenery.

The next morning, we went to Mesa Verde National Park. I remember visiting it as a child. We viewed several cliff dwellings from across canyons, and also heard a presentation at the Pithouse Archeological Site.

Unable to visit Taos, we lunched at Ghost Ranch, and stopped at the sanctuary in Chimayo on our way to Santa Fe. I have visited Santa Fe several times, but decades ago. The highlight of our stay there was the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. 

Oddly, and in a first for me, this tour did not end in the city of our return flight. The tour ended after breakfast in our Santa Fe hotel, but we then needed to get to Albuquerque on our own to fly home. We took the train from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. Next to the Santa Fe Railyard, the Jean Cocteau Cinema is owned by Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. He commissioned this trompe l’oeil mural, Beauty in the Beast by John Pugh, for the back wall of the building. Click here to see its details and a better, complete picture (the last photo on the page). 

Yosemite & Eastern Sierras — Aug-Sept 2021

Half Dome, Yosemite National Park

Link to more photos (Click on the photos to read their captions.)

Travel is not yet back to normal. I first booked this trip in January 2020 for later that year. Covid canceled that, and I then re-booked in May of this year for August, by which time I thought everything would be fine. Nope. The mask mandates still due to Covid were no problem. It was the Caldor wildfire that really messed things up!

The tour, by Good Times Travel, was to include Mammoth, Mono Lake, two nights at South Lake Tahoe, and Yosemite. Three days before departure (!), it was clear that we would not be able to go to Tahoe, and GTT announced that instead of two nights at Tahoe, we would spend one extra night at Mammoth and one extra night at Yosemite. New activities would include Lee Vining and a ride on the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad. (I would have preferred visiting Manzanar and Devils Postpile.)

But the hits kept coming! On Tuesday night, while we were at Yosemite, the US Forest Service closed all National Forests in California due to continuing wildfire threats. The train trip was instantly impossible. GTT, scrambling to adapt, added a new activity for Thursday, but Wednesday became an open day of no group activities other than meals. 

So what did we finally get? On Sunday, the Museum of Western Film History in Lone Pine and a tour of some of the film sites in the Alabama Hills. On Monday, a gondola ride to the top of Mammoth Mountain, a tour of the June Lake Loop, the Old School House Museum and Upside-Down House in Lee Vining, and a visit to Mono Lake. See the photos (link above).

At our hotel for Sunday and Monday, our "room" was enormous! Instead of a room with two beds, we had a suite with two bedrooms, two baths, a sitting room, dining area, and full kitchen. Three TVs: one in the large room and one for each bedroom. And one bathroom was gigantic, apparently to accommodate wheelchairs throughout, including in the shower.

We spent all day Tuesday in Yosemite National Park, with a number of sightseeing stops, including completely dry waterfalls, and a bit of hiking. See the photos (link above).

I saw that our hotel offered a nature hike at 10 am every morning, but when I asked about it Wednesday morning, it had been cancelled due to the overnight forest closures. So Victor and I did a short little hike around the hotel area.

On our way back home, we stopped at the Forestiere Underground Gardens.

The weather was mild throughout. I'm very sorry we couldn't get to Lake Tahoe, but there was nothing anyone could do about that.

The £50 Turing banknote

I've got a £50 Turing banknote! 

I have written before about my interest in Turing. 

In 2018, the Bank of England decided they wanted a scientist on the new £50 note and invited nominations from the public. In six weeks, they received 227,299 nominations with 989 eligible names. With the help of public focus groups, their advisory committee determined a final shortlist of one dozen. The bank's governor, who makes the final selection, announced the choice of Turing in July 2019. The design was released in March 2021, and the bills were issued June 23^rd. 

Although the US Mint sells coins and bills direct to the public, the Bank of England does not. After declaring everywhere that I wanted one, a computer science teacher friend said she wanted one, too, and she asked another math teacher friend with family in England, and that connection worked.

Returning to travel

 

We now have multiple trips booked for the next year. Nothing international yet, but at least domestically, it's pretty much back to normal. Yes!

Gibbons & Forever Wild — April 2021

Link to more photos.

Our first travel in more than a year! Only local, and only one day, but still a bit of travel, and in a group! Now that we are both vaccinated, we joined a one-day tour of two nearby animal sanctuaries, both new to me. The tour company added plenty of COVID-related precautions.

In the morning, we visited the Gibbon Conservation Center and in the afternoon, Forever Wild Exotic Animal Sanctuary.

The trip went well. The weather was cooler than expected, and there were some threatening clouds, but it didn't rain.

Celebrity Trumps All ('21)

In the Los Angeles Times, Nicholas Goldberg wrote a column headlined "Caitlyn Jenner for governor of California? What a terrible idea"

My immediate response was one I've written about before. I sent it to the Times. They edited it slightly (adding "Donald" and "so"), and printed it today (second letter on the page):

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California, long before Donald Trump was president, I lamented, “Celebrity trumps all, so how can we overcome that?”
 

“Celebrity trumps all” is still the case, and I still don’t have the answer.

 

Impeachment

 I sent this letter to the Los Angeles Times (not published):

If the parties were reversed, if it were a Democratic former president on trial in a 50-50 Senate, he would be convicted.

 
I believe enough Democrats would have the courage to put country before party and their own re-election.

Green Card for Victor!

On January 5^th, we had the last step in Victor's green card application: an interview. When we finished, they told us the application was approved. Victor received the card in the mail on January 12^th.

With a green card, Victor can leave and re-enter the U.S. any time. 

This is all we have wanted since the mid-1990s! A simple tourist visa would have sufficed, but that was refused repeatedly in the 90s and refused repeatedly again in 2015. The fiancé visa worked (2019), but that's only a single entry. Now, in 2021, Victor can finally come and go at will.

What a waste of time, energy and dollars!

P.S. Of course, no sooner did he have a green card than COVID stopped all travel! Sigh.