2009-09-23 0700: The FDA has moved to ban flavored cigarettes. This includes clove cigarettes. This brought to mind the one time I tried smoking a cigarette, a clove cigarette. I was about 20, and was under the mistaken impression that the clove flavoring had itself a psychoactive effect. I had been smoking marijuana for a year or two at that point, and had used psychedelic drugs several times, so I was curious to try this. What I immediately learned was that the clove was entirely beside the point; I felt strong effects from the nicotine, which were quite unplesant (dizziness and some nausea). I never intended to become a regular tobacco user, because I was well aware of its dangers. But certainly that experience would deter me from ever thinking of smoking tobacco again.
I had an interesting rationalization for my marijuana use, by the way: I used marijuana several times a week (at most), and a marijuana smoking session involved only several lung-fulls of smoke; but cigarette smokers tend to smoke all day long. Also, friends of mine who had used both say that after smoking cigarettes, they would wake up the next morning with a sore throat, but not with marijuana. I have read research since then that it turns out that marijuana affects the lungs differently than cigarettes, and consequently does not increase the risk of lung cancer. But I stopped smoking marijuana 25 years ago, partly to keep my head clear, but (at the time) mainly because I stopped enjoying the drug. I learned from experience that it can cause anxiety. Undoubtedly, I'm much better off in terms of health in any event, from not smoking anything.
2009-09-16 2200: I am reading the book Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne. While I've read any number of books on biology and evolution, I thought this might be worth a read because it's up-to-date. Indeed, it is a very good summary of evolution, well-written and convincing (but of course, in my case he's preaching to the converted). Coyne, a University of Chicago evolutionary geneticist, details arguments for evolution formulated by Charles Darwin in Origin of Species, updating and amplifying them with current knowledge; he reinforces the central message that evolution is a science that makes predictions that can be tested, by displaying predictions made by Darwin that have since been borne out.
One poignant detail Coyne mentions: even after discarding much of their equipment, the fatal 1912 Robert Scott Antarctic expedition kept 35 pounds of certain fossils they had collected. The fossils were of a broad-leafed conifer tree, Glossopteris, and were the first of this species collected in Antarctica. (Glossopteris grew in the Permian era, between 250 and 300 million years ago.) This anecdote interested me because it brought to mind one of my favorite pieces of music, the Sinfonia Antartica of Ralph Vaughan Williams (his 7th symphony). Vaughan Williams developed this in 1953 from a soundtrack he had composed in 1947 for the film Scott of the Antarctic. It is a sad and dramatic piece of music, scored for orchestra, organ, wordless three-part woman's chorus and solo soprano, and a wind machine (a wooden drum that rubs against a canvas sheet). Each movement begins with a brief spoken text (some recordings include these; others do not). One of these texts is from Psalm 104, "There go the ships, and there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein." But the last movement is marked by an entry from Scott's expedition diary: "I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint." It is indeed poignant to think of the expedition, that even when they understood their fate, they kept their burden of fossils because they knew the fossils were precious to science.
2009-09-12 1700: I had time to do the Thursday NY Times crossword puzzle this afternoon. I managed to get all but one letter correct, with some help from Google. But the theme was a lot of fun—the major scale of eight notes. These turned out to be the note names "do, re, me," and so forth, which had to be entered into certain squares. (It's not unusual for a NY Times puzzle to require the solver to put more than one letter in a single square, which are known as "rebus" entries.) The scale appeared in order, going up the diagonal from lower left to upper right.
2009-09-12 1215: This morning, I ran the Lanesville Heritage Festival 8 mile race. I finished in about 1:11:50. I was glad to have met my goal of a 9 minute pace, especially since I ran the race in 73 minutes a year ago. My present time is within a couple of seconds of my best time, 1:11:48, two years ago.
The weather this year was lovely, low to mid 60s at race time and sunny. Last year, the weather was warmer, mid 70s at race time, which may have slowed me down last year. The course is rural and very pretty, with corn fields and horse farms, but it is hilly. The first three miles involve some tough hill-climbing (I completed my first mile at 9:45), but one fun thing about the race is that the last two miles are downhill, and I finished fast. At 5 miles, I had a time of 55 minutes—a minute slower than the 54 minutes I would have ran at a 9 minute pace. But I gained that minute back during mile 7 and was able to finish in under 72 minutes.
One disappointment: Within an hour of completing the race, I had a migraine aura. Fortunately, this seems to have cleared up without much of a headache. I had the same thing happen after my 10 mile race last spring. Migraines can be triggered by fatigue and stress, as well as certain foods and alcohol. Perhaps I should try to be more careful with what I eat and drink, before a hard race.
2009-09-07 0830: The NY Times has an article about a new lighting technology: OLED panels. Organic light-emitting diode panels can be made into thin sheets of arbitrary dimension, and emit light in a soft, diffuse manner over the entire sheet. OLED lighting panels can be made one millimeter thick. Manufacturers (including Philips and GE) envision luminous wall paper in homes or cubicle dividers in offices. It is even possible to make transparent windows that become opaque and luminous when activated. OLED panels are very efficient and involve no mercury or other toxic chemicals. None of this is yet commercially available; GE and other companies are still developing inexpensive manufacturing processes. However, Philips already has OLED panels (in several shapes and sizes, up to 12.9 by 5.5 cm) available for designers and others to experiment with. These are very expensive (the base electronics needed are €70; the 12.9 by 5.5 cm panel is €566), which explains why the designer table lamp mentioned in the NY Times article is $10,000. (Philips calls its OLED panels "Lumiblade." See Lumiblade.)
2009-09-06 2130: I saw the first Louisville Orchestra performance of the 2009-2010 season last night, their "Fanfara" gala. It was a bit crazy—the traffic jam of everyone trying to get into the parking structure was entertained by the Male High School (Louisville) concert band playing on the steps in front of the concert hall. The same band entered the auditorium at the beginning of the concert, to play the Star Spangled Banner; after they left, the concert itself began with Fanfare for the Comman Man. The first half of the concert continued with Escales by Ibert, and concluded with Lalo, Symphonie Espagnole. The latter piece is a violin showcase, and the soloist was Joshua Bell. He was a young and charismatic performer; I was too far away to have a good view of him playing, but video projection screens provided closeups. After the intermission, prior to the second half of the concert, they showed a five minute excerpt from a documentary being made about the Louisville Orchestra. The Orchestra has a proud history of premiering new works by now-familiar composers. The documentary mentioned Robert Whitney, the pioneering director of the Orchestra, and after whom the venue for last night's concert was named. The concert concluded with "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" from Wagner's Götterdämmerung, and a thoroughly enjoyable performance of Respighi's Pines of Rome.
2009-09-06 2050: With plenty of help from Google, I solved the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle. The name of the puzzle was "Argonne," which immediately suggested that the theme was familiar cliches with a letter R removed. Indeed, this is what was going on. My favorite clue was "Word signed to a deaf toreador." The answer was NON SPEAKING OLE. I also like 1A: "E.g., Ends in a 'T'." The answer: HINT.
2009-09-05 0715: The Google logo today is sporting a UFO. I figured this must be the anniversary of the Roswell UFO incident, or perhaps of a classic Hollywood science fiction production. But clicking on the logo leads to links on unexplained phenomona. Left unexplained is why Google is celebrating unexplained phenomena today.