USA and Socialism

 To continue on the same topic. True, USA is the country of an ultimate individualism. However let's talk about San Diego Balboa Park. The park is open to public and has a huge parking lot at Inspiration Point (300 spots? not sure ) plus plenty of free parking on the street along Park Boulevard, plus plenty of free parking at San Diego Zoo. Everybody can come and lay on the grass, picnic. There are plenty of museums, some expensive, some free. And here it is, the true diamond of Balboa Park: Balboa Park Recreational  Center.  This is the place to play badminton, ping pong and volleyball, 7 days a week.  It is an indoor facility! There is about 30 badminton courts there.  Here it comes... The facility is free to use by everybody. It is supported by property taxes and perhaps by some personal grants (?). You come, sign up and play. 

How does it compare to other countries?  Indoor sports facilities in Europe are expensive.  When I lived in Sweden, it costed about $5-$10 per hour  to play.   China is the badminton center of the world. Yet as I hear from my Chinese friends, playing badminton in China is expensive, it is the sport of the chosen few and rich.

The classical argument is: yes playing at Balboa Recreation Center  is free but only rich folks know about it and play there; the poor people are too busy to put their food on the table and are not there. However, this is not what I see there. This place is truly a melting pot of incomes, cultures, and nationalities.  You can see rich, very rich, poor and very poor people playing together.  You can see Chinese, Vietnamese, Filippinos, Indians and Whites all playing together. You can see young people, children,  old and very old people, all playing together.  Perhaps it is an illusion of a social peace, but it is there.

Deja vu from the past: similarities of the US and USSR

 1. Democratic Party.

In December of 2024, in the middle of the war between Ukraine and Russia, and between Hamas and Israel, a Democratic Party leader, 84-years old Nancy Pelosi was on an 'official trip to Luxembourg', to commemorate the WW2 Battle of Bulge.  While being on this trip, she fell and broke her hip; her hip has been replaced since then and she is doing OK.   I am assuming that the 'offficial trip' lingo means that all her expenses on the trip were paid by the Democratic Party.  Here is the list of my questions to Nancy

1. Is the trip to Luxembourg important and the highest priority for the Democratic Party, at the time of the two major international conflicts, and the loss of the presidential election?

2. Why a 84 year old woman choses not to be more concerned with internal US politics and stays home?

3. Did she participate in the Battle of Bulge (I am assuming not) or perhaps any of her family member did?  Why is she there in the first place?

2.Republican Party.

A few days ago, my neighbors  have seen a major cavalcade of police cars on our local streets - I was not there but the Nextdoor website  shows the video. 

This is what the neighbors say:

'So what VIP is in Carmel Valley right now? As I walked on Carmel Creek Road and approached the intersection of Carmel Country Road, I saw police cars followed by at least 10 unmarked black SUVs and a black van all with red/blue flashing lights plus an ambulance — all tailed by the two SD Police cars whose taillights I managed to capture in this photo taken as they drove down Carmel Country Road — maybe toward the Grand?'

Turns out that it was a  visit by JD Vance, the vice president, perhaps because of the family connections  (his wife is from San Diego).  JD Vance kind of plays the game of being a straight talking blue color guy. Why then  so much of security and entourage? Is it really needed? 

23rd piano concerto of Mozart

 It is great  music, perhaps, the best music that has ever been written.  There is a story about this concerto and Joseph Stalin. AI generated the text below that seems to be  correct:"Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, is notable for its connection to Joseph Stalin. In 1944, Stalin heard a radio broadcast of the concerto, performed by Maria Yudina, and was so moved that he demanded a recording..."

The question that bothers me is,  does  the  music go across the political, cultural and religious borders? Is it indeed a common language for all of us, good and bad, masters and slaves, tyrants and victims ?  Stalin was a tyrant who killed so many people, so many people who were good people and sometimes completely innocent.  And if Stalin has been touched by this, what does it all mean?  Does it mean that he had a flip side of himself? Is he  then a part of the European culture?  Perhaps, he is, in a twisted way. 

https://youtu.be/riRK7P_ynfc?si=4I_vHh0YXpuMNBBp

My inventions and patents

 I have quite a few inventions and patents; I do not remember how many? 30? 40? 50?  US industry in general pushes you towards this path, as the regular publications are discouraged.  I do not have a single invention I am truly proud of.  

I had some ideas that were good but were 'ahead of time' in a way, that is, it was an interesting idea but there was no true application for it at that time,  or we tried to apply it where it was not needed.  Dry lipid nanoparticles was that kind of invention, which was not needed till RNA technology came in, and brought COVID vaccines with it.  I tried it with the drugs that were stable and did not need the lipid encapsulation.

 Then I had good ideas that were killed and not patented because we had other priorities and had no resources to prototype it. Such an example was a chemical graft between rhodamine dyes  and metal complex dyes  (such as RR23 magenta dye). This dye would be photochemically stable and also stable to migration, therefore quite good for inkjet photo applications.  When we communicated it to our dye supply company, they said that they tried to prototype it and it did not work.   It may have been caught in the corporate politics, I do not know. 

There was a whole bunch of patents that were put together as  'defensive publications'  which provided a patent protection for commercially released products.   There is a lot of work behind them, but no 'inventive act'. 

Then there was a category of 'bad' inventions, those that looked like a good idea but did not work 'well'.

However I started to write this for a different reason. The year was about  1970 and I was 10 years old. I took a 10x 20 cm piece of a textolite board, covered it with a white ski wax  and put  a polyethylene film on top. The  wax layer was sandwiched in between the board and the film.  When squeezed, the board looked brown because the wax was locally squeezed out, but if not, it looked white.  The polyethylene film was then attached to the board on one side  by a tape, similar to  the book binding: the textolite was the back cover and the transparent polyethylene sheet was the first page.

It was possible to write on the polyethylene with a wooden stick, because the ski wax was pushed out by the stick. The text had  the color of ttextolite and the overall grayish-white layer of the wax provided the background .  In order to erase what was written, one had to lift the polyethylene film and then re-attach it, evenly distributing  the wax back in place.  

This made some kind of a scratchboard  with the contents that could be easily  erased and re-written down again. I used it for a while and then it was thrown away. It was not a bad idea, I think; not sure where did I get it from.

Now when I see an Amazon Reader  or a notebook with a touch sensitive screen, I think of it. The shape factor and, partially, the usage model were similar.

Roses

 There are between 320 and 350  roses species, and over 30,000 cultivars. Not surprising that the subject of rose growing is so confusing. There are so many roses!  Many look very similar but are technically different, which makes the identification difficult.  They say, only 10 species of roses were used in the production of cultivars.

Yet the variety of rose color and smell is incredible. Another variety is the shape of the flower, the size of it and the number of petals.

I have seen colors in white, yellow, red, purple color scheme with all the shades in between. There is no naturally occurring blue rose.

Cultivars of roses started to be produced in large scale in France (at least to what the European knowledge tells us). France is still a major source of rose cultivars.

Google search and artificial intelligence

 I find the quality of Google Search data to degrade with the artificial intelligence system in place.  In the old times, the Google search relied on a 'highly cited' webpage information, where  the actual human beings provided  the actual advices. That is, the experts in the field (or perhaps just smart ordinary people with experience) expressed opinions.   The problem with artificial intelligence is, its advices are given as based on 'plausible looking' or nearly 'linguistic' arguments, which are often wrong.  For example,  as I was fixing the laundry dryer with the sensor light blinking, the AI was consistently suggesting me to check if the sensor was broken and needed replacement. The point is, the humidity sensor cannot get broken. It has no moving parts and no electronics.  After some pain and trial and error attempts, I was able to find out  that the door switch was broken. As the dryer was trying to start, it sensed the 'open door'  and was stuck in the 'sensing' mode.

My thought is, in this case the AI not only did not help, but was clearly harmful. It diluted the true expert-based information on the web (which may have existed) with trivial, primitive, basic,  non-intelligent guesses. As there is no factual knowledge behind it, it generates a lot of wasted effort. It also dilutes the information on the web with plausible, nice-flowing bullshit.

Another dream about HP

 I am retiring from HP. This time,  there was a true retirement party, with about 100 people in the room, multiple dining tables -- it was a big crowd.  Viomesh Joshi (aka VJ) was there too- which is strange, because by the time of my retirement in 2020 he was already leading 3D Systems in San Diego.  Somehow I ran into  VJ  somewhere between the dining tables or maybe on the way to bathroom and started to explain to him why HP 3D printing technology is so deficient.  I had about 2 minutes of his time;  he was listening to my spiel with some amazement, but made no comments. I never  spoke to VJ in real life.   Interestingly, Skip Rung who retired from HP in about 1999 was also there and I saw him briefly.