“Americans versus Canadians” or “How I am so happy and proud to be Canadian!”

The turn to answer the long lastingly annoying question of “who is better: Canadians or Americans?” has fell upon my fiancee and myself today. Little did we know, the answer was right in front of us.

Now, as it is customary to say, “viewer discretion is advised”, because the text contains intricate subject matter. Rated as SN (Somewhat Nationalistic). Before I make any further remarks, I would like to say that I certainly do not generalise the following image of an American person to the entirety of masses, for I happen to know plenty of people, who carry an American passport of their own, who at the same time happen to be extremely intelligent, interesting, educated and all in all very nice people and who deserve my deepest respect.

In our trip to the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory (which you can read about here), which is located here
I shall direct your attention that it is located very well on the Canadian side — this fact will come in handy in the discussion below.

Camp Oochigeas

My fiancee right now is volunteering at a camp for children with cancer, called Camp Oochigeas. All the kids are very small (4-8 years old), all of them are very fine, funny and great.

I am not going to say much, except a phrase that one child said that just makes you want to cry:

I don’t like drinking too much water, because if I do it tastes like those yellow pills they give us at the hospital.

If you were lately thinking of where to donate a few dollars, may be this is the right place.

Visit their web site: http://www.ooch.org/.

Russian and Georgian War

The Russia-Georgia War.

Answer me this: “Why can’t we live in peace together?” We, Russians and Georgians, both put our flag upon the Reichstag! This certainly must mean something!

And of course, everyone is telling a different story, as if both sides are talking about different events, not immediately connected. It is clear that Saakashvili is a good doll with strings pointing westward. But I am no political analyst, all that aside, can Russian government be that stupid to get into this war?..

I have a few Russian channels at home and in a summary form, here’s what is conveyed:

• There is genocide against Russian and South Ossetian people in the region
• Russian troops haven’t bombed a single civilian object. All the footages of bombed civilian sites are originated by Georgian troops themselves. To quote: “It is a very smart technique to destroy your own civilian object, make it look as if it’s been bombed by the opponent, blame it on the opponent, and complain about how a big and huge Russia attacks a small and week Georgia”.
• Russian citizens tried to leave Tbilisi, but the local police stopped them and restricted them to stay within the city.

What the Georgian government is saying you all know from the news. I have no information about it that would be conflicting with what’s conveyed by, say, BBC.

If you are curious about my personal opinion, then I really do not have much to tell you, except the fact that it is entirely sad that a bunch of gentlemen (if they can in fact be called so after these events) want to play toy soldiers.

I’ll try to update this post for any interesting or controversial information I might encounter.

As an arbitrator, who knows both Russian and English, and sees how the conflict is conveyed by the international media and the Russian media, I may suggest a few things:

• I recommend following BBC news (here), as they, to my mind, seem to be more or less objective and neutral.
• Check this blog for anything that is in conflict between what international and Russian news tell.
• I strongly do not recommend following CNN news, as their story is very flavoured with American position, which in turn is very-very subjective for understandable reasons…

Let’s sincerely hope this bloody madness…

Update: Russian troops are now moving into Senaki. Interestingly, both sides are calling for a ceasefire (Russians, according to Russian media, and Georgians, according to international media), but there isn’t any ceasefire.

“Landau” by Maja Bessarab

I have recently read the book by Maja Bessarab, entitled “Landau”.

It is a very small book (~120 pages). As guessed, it is about Lev Davidovich Landau — his life, who he was and how he was. It is written by one of his closest friends, Maja Bessarab. Probably the most valuable information that the book contains is not even the biography of Lev Davidovich (which can easily be found even on wikipedia), but the enormous amount of close, sometimes even word-to-word conversations of Landau with various people (Bessarab, Kora Landau, Niels Bohr, Evgeniy Lifshitz, and many-many others).

I do not know if this book is available in English, but it is definitely worth looking it up. It was published by Moscovskiy Rabochiy (Moscow Worker) in 1971 (although I suspect it may have had multiple reprints, possibly by other publishers).

I will quote some of the most memorable (for me) lines from the book. Will do so in Russian, to contain the spirit of Landau’s genius.

Главное, делайте всё с увлечением, это страшно украшает жинь. (из письма автору)

Есть предметы, по которым стыдно получать оценку выше тройки. (Ландау отцу по поводу своей плохой успеваемости по предмету словестность)

Проблемы важнее решения. Решения могут устареть, а проблемы остаются. (Бор из своих лекций)

Я люблю людей, кроме пресыщенных жизнью ничтожеств. (Джон Рид)

Без экспериментаторов, теоретики скисают. (Ландау своим ученикам)

Учёба — любимое занятие женщины. Я не принадлежу к числу мужчин, которые сильный пол ставят выше слабого. Однако, если бы у меня было столько забот, сколько у вас, я бы никогда не стал физиком. (Дау двум молодым аспиранткам)

Главное в жизни — правда, и во имя правды человек должен быть беспощаден к самому себе. Правда и труд. Бойтесь растратить отпущенное вам время на мелкие, недостойные человека дела. (Ландау ученикам)

Когда имеется конечное число экспериментов и бесконечное число теорий, то существует бесконечное же количество теорий, удовлетворящих конечному числу экспериментов. (Ландау цитирует Бора своим ученикам)

- Но согласитесь, в науке ведь есть необъяснимые явления.
- Нет! Любое явление науки можно объяснить. А жульничество — нельзя. В этом и состоит разница между ними.
(Из интервью)

Главное в жизни — дерзать!

Без вдохновления нет воли, без воли нет борьбы, а без борьбы — ничтожество и произвол. (Николай Пирогов)

Верховным судьёй всякой физической теории является опыт. (Ландау, Румер, “Что такое теория относительности”)

Quotation

It’s better to be hanged for action, then hanged for nothing. While it is better not to be hanged at all, action can often do a good job.

Excuse me…

Driving home the other day, I heard an advertisement on the radio, that said “Tired of taking a square root of an isosceles triangle?”

Are we diseased? Is it this hard to look up and say at least something that has meaning?..

Well, that said, the new movie, titled 21, has also quite irritated my already twisted convolutions of the brain. I first saw the trailer sitting in a movie theatre, which started by showing a young man, who is extremely good with simple arithmetics. And I thought “Oh, nice, good fella”. But then the voice over frame said that this young man “was the brightest and most successful mathematics student at [some] university”…

And not that that can’t be true (it of course can… it’s a movie anyway…), but the idea that “the greatest mathematician” is always associated with “he who counts fastest” just bugs bujizas out of me.

I know many very clever people who are not generally fluent with numbers. In fact, doctor Bar-Natan (~) is surely one of the most clever and bright people I know; he has “no experience in computation whatsoever”…

So… ?

Toronto’s Russian Consulate: Brain Boiler

A few days ago I had to come down the Russian consulate here in Toronto for some legal services. It was probably my nature of wanting everything to be nicely and professionally done, or the fact that I haven’t been to Russia for a little while now and hence had forgotten how all the legal processes are done there, or something else — I don’t know; but the fact stood: I was absolutely disgusted!

Oh those ravishing lineups that have no meaning, nor have they got the beginning or the end; oh those precious fights for who was there first; oh those splendid near-scrummage situations about various matters of mutual (dis)interest; oh those lovely looks on the faces of other people around you, as if you have slept with their mothers; oh those wonderful speaking manners and the beautiful expressions on the faces of the consulate workers, as if they are kings and queens, while you are just a simple peasant, who has forgotten to clean their toilet. Oh those happy-happy things!

I stood about half an hour in a line to get to the window, where a lady in a “very kind manner” said that the issue is to be addressed to another window. Having stood another 40 minutes in the proper line, I finally get an answer from another even kinder young lady: “Oh, we can’t do this for you, because of so-and-so” (something completely trivial). “Oh, yeah?” — I said — “That’s funny, because I just talked to a very-very kind lady in the nearby window, and she didn’t say ANYTHING ABOUT IT!”

You would think that the workers of a foreign consulate or embassy in an English-speaking country would be familiar with English language. You would think. But no, apparently these notions are dumb, and we have no understanding of what the real world really is all about! Nobody in the entire Russian consulate speaks decent English (only the person in the window concerning Russian visas can actually speak a little). A Canadian woman came to get a VISA to go to Russia; he went to pay for the service to the Cashier window. Another very-very nice and sweet lady in that window tried to explain to her things about the payment, but came disastrously unsuccessful, because her English was poorer than my grandmother’s. If it wasn’t for the nice gentleman, who was also getting his visa to go to Russia, that explained everything to that woman (by the way, huge complements and my great admiration towards the knowledge of the Russian language of the gentleman — truly amazing!).

So, can we be anymore pathetic?

I am just wondering…

… what is the meaning of a “consensus”?

Well, the Oxford Concise English Dictionary (which was the first ever English book I bought and did so in the rainy London, U.K.) defines it as a “general agreement”. The Answers.com gives a little more elaboration: “An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole”. While this is all quite fussy and fizzy, a consensus arises when two parties bear discussions over a matter and eventually arrive at a decision or a solution, which at least somewhat equally satisfies the two sides.

Here’s a perfect example of what is a consensus:

Party A wants to eat the whole cake.

Party B wants to eat the whole cake.

Parties A & B realise that they cannot eat a single cake entirely at the same time simultaneously.

Party A: “How about I eat 3/4 of that cake?”

Party B: “No, that won’t do, as I want to get at least half that cake.”

Party A: “Okay, a half is fine with me.”

Party B: “Alrighty then.”

Here, however, is a bloody example of what is not a consensus:

Party A wants to know what to do in this situation. They (carelessly) think about it and somewhat makeup their mind (let’s call their decision D, which doesn’t stand for “decision”). They ask (for whatever reason undefined) for an advice of party B.

Party B, meanwhile, had already done (fairly precise) calculations and made its mind up quite solidly and, shall it be forgotten, had already proposed their solution (let’s call their solution P, which doesn’t stand for “poor”).

At the first hearing, long before party A made up its mind, solution P was ignored by party A as being a low priority issue at the moment.

During the second hearing, at the time of the mutual “thinking-it-over” time, solution P was yet again poorly listened to, although an apparent attempt to be “nice” was acted by party A fairly well.

Party A appreciates the input of party B and refers to it as “yeah, that’s true” and decides that P is a good idea.

Party A decides to go ahead with the solution D and starts to execute it.

Halfway through the work done in solution D, party B comes into the “know” that solution D is taking place.

Party B exclaims its apparent disappointment and claims to have no further business with party A.

Party A answers with a cascade of insults and claims that party B does not understand the meaning of the word “consensus”.

A little while later, party B rubs its hands in consolation, as solution D proved deficient.

Here’s a question for a million: why do we always stick to the second example and never learn from it?

What is it about speeding anyway?

Yesterday I was driving on a highway (401 in Toronto) and saw something that I became indignant about. As the traffic was fairly condensed (even though it was Sunday afternoon), I already was driving at 120 km/h (75 mph) — which was the speed of the traffic flow, so it’s fine —, when a sports motorcycle literally flew by me. From my humble estimations, the speed he had was certainly over 160 km/h (100 mph)! And it was not at all the case that he drove in a straight solid line along a single lane, as it is in good freshman physics problems; instead, he wobbled from one lane to another, between cars, cutting this one and that one; like a chess-player on the road, that is. I do not know what happened to him afterwards, but I hope he got caught without serious implications to the surrounding drivers.

It also reminds me of how the other day (sometime in early last autumn), I was again driving the same highway, when a beautiful new Chevrolet Corvette flew by me at some 150 km/h (95 mph) at least. The car is convertible, so that guy sitting there was “so cool” that he felt very much superior to everyone else on the road and elsewhere (which certainly is the case, of course, no doubt…). Well, good enough, in a few minutes I easily caught up with him, when I drove by him; he was parked on the curb, while a police officer was quite eagerly writing something down (I wonder what). So, in a way, I have won that race, with a price of a few hundred dollars and a clean driving record; as did a thousand other drivers.

Today, as I was driving down to the subway station, the traffic was slightly packed (end of morning rush), and so again there was this other driver (a woman, I think it was), who so very much in a rush, because no one else was. So she changed lanes every second, cutting, accelerating and breaking at incredible rates. And so what do you know? I got ahead of her, because… yes, you guessed it, a policeman was again busy writing another I-wonder-what down.

Well, what’s the point? Why are you people speeding so much? I figure, it’s okay if you want to risk and endanger your lives — after all, you knew what you went for; but why are risking the lives of the surrounding drivers? What is it, the thrill of being in power of someone else’s being? Or what is it? Please, tell us know, as we are eager to learn.

No more alarms

Constant shortage of sleep keeps making itself more and more noticeable: what’s the optimum amount of sleep anyway? If I sleep 10 hours, this becomes largely over the limit, for I feel that the day is running sooo slooooowww, whereas in reality it actually runs faster than the clock thinks it does. On the other hand, if I sleep 5 hours, I feel completely lost, because I immediately feel that there’s no point in doing any of this; at the same time, each time I fail to answer my own question of “Why? Why is there no point?”. Now, as a proper physicist, I need to realise that if 5 is too small and 10 is too large, I should perhaps take a simple average and try it out (the famous “trial-and-error theorem” — works exceptionally well!). And what do you say? It doesn’t work! At times I feel very well, but at times I feel as if I slept 10 hours or 5 hours.

This puzzling behaviour of my mind simple is a real bugger! I guess the answer is that it all needs to be consistent (another famous physics theorem that “everything needs to be consistent”). Consistency will require setting myself in a horizontal position, centered at fluffy pillow, each day for some 7.5 hours within an error of half hour.

Alright. No problem.

But (and it is a large butt), how can I get consistency? Especially now that I’m still (still!) and an undergraduate?

And so the answer remains sought for. I hope I will find it afore retirement, if that’ll ever happen :)