MY FALL 2019 TRIP TO JAPAN

On Saturday, my posting ended with Princess cruises.  I'll continue, for I will be on a Diamond Princess cruise from November 29 to December 7.  Leaves from Yokohama, and stops on the  Okinawa main island, Ishigaki and Taiwan.

The ship was built 15 years ago in Nagasaki at a cost of half a billion dollars.  The crew of 1,100 serves 2,670 passengers.

As 60% of the passengers are typically from Japan, the offerings are somewhat catered to their needs.  Available are a design-your-own ramen bar and a make-your-own-sushi station, as well as miso soup, tofu items and other Japanese-influenced dishes.  In addition, there is a specialty-dining Japanese restaurant.  Something close to an onsen is available.  Karaoke sessions are popular, and there is also Hawaiian entertainment.

Our trip will also include a one-week, green car, Japan Rail Pass adventure. beginning on November 22 to view Fall colors, stopping for the night in Tokyo, Sendai, Matsumoto, Nagoya, Kyoto and Hiroshima.

Let me know if you wish to join us for one or the other or both.  I can send you our list of hotels and tour details.  It's alway a lot more fun with friends on board the ship or train.

I've never been on a Princess cruise, but lower cost is a desirable factor.  I'm not much of cruise fan, but have been on Crystal to and from Auckland-Honolulu, Tokyo to Honolulu and Vancouver-Alaska.  Holland America through the Panama Canal, Royal Caribbean in the Caribbean, Oceania throughout the Mediterranean, Tauck European rivers and a couple of Norwegians around the Hawaiian Islands.

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We would have huge problems if this were to occur two months from today, when we board the Diamond Princess.  Typhoon Mitag, now at Category 2, will mostly miss Taiwan, batter Okinawa islands like Miyakojima, bring rain and some winds to China south of Shanghai, then head for southern South Korea, with Cheju Island at risk.

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THE PREQUEL: Why is there Anything?

I'm very close to completing Dan Brown's Origin, a fascinating story pitting creationism against science.  Can you imagine someone actually determining the answers to:

• Where do we come from?
• Where are we going?

You remember Brown, of course, for he wrote The Da Vinci Code, condemned by the Vatican.

I have just started reading The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far:  Why are We Here?, by Lawrence Krauss.  He also wrote A Universe from Nothing.  His latest asks, Why are We here?

Those are the questions where religion and science have totally different answers.  I will more closely analyze these variations when I review these books some Sunday in the future.

Today, I explore the prequel:  Why is there anything?  Forget for now the Big Bang creating our Universe or the matter of Who created God or how life began.  But as an aside, just to impress upon you the impossibility of this seemingly "simple" event:

Just think about one essential machine that copies the DNA instructions for making each protein.5 Then let’s take just one protein component of that machine, less than 10% of the total. This protein is 329 amino acids in length. What would be the chance of getting this one protein by chance, assuming that the correct, and only the correct, amino acid ingredients were present? Calculate it this way: 1/20 x 1/20 x 1/20 … 329 times!6 This is a probability of 1 in 10428 … a number with 428 zeros after the 1! Even if every atom in the universe (1080—a number with 80 zeros) represented an experiment for every molecular vibration possible (1012 per second) for the supposed evolutionary age of the universe (14 billion years=1018 seconds), this would allow ‘only’ 10110 experiments—a long, long way short of the number needed to have a ghost of a chance of getting just this one protein to form,7 let alone the over 400 others needed.

So, again, why is there anything?  The God hypothesis lacks logic:

It isn't coherent to argue that the universe was created by God, but God was in turn created by God to the second power, who was in turn created by God to the third power, and so on. As Aristotle cogently argued, there must be a reality that causes but is itself uncaused (or, a being that moves but is itself unmoved). Why? Because if there is an infinite regression of causes, then by definition the whole process could never begin.²

Even Wikipedia has a topic entitled Problem of the Creator of God.

Could there have been no beginning?  One theory is The Big Bounce:

According to some theorists, when Einstein’s theory of gravity is combined with quantum theory, the Big Bang could really be part of a Big Bounce, in which the collapse of a previous, and perhaps very different, universe is followed by the creation of our own. While speculative, these theories do at least resolve the otherwise tricky question of what existed before the Big Bang.

Stephen Hawking provided an explanation of how this could happen:

According to TechTimes, Hawking says during the show that before the Big Bang, time was bent — "It was always reaching closer to nothing but didn't become nothing," according to the article. Essentially, "there was never a Big Bang that produced something from nothing. It just seemed that way from mankind's point of perspective."

If that sounds too much like nothing, here is one that has a little more scientific substance:

Bottom line: Most of us understand the Big Bang as the idea that our entire universe came from a single point, what astrophysicists call a “singularity.” But we might not need a singularity to have a Big Bang, according to a new study by Ahmed Farag Ali in Egypt and coauthor Saurya Das in Canada. The catch – according to astrophysicist Brian Koberlein – is that, without the singularity, this model predicts that the universe had no beginning. It existed forever as a kind of quantum potential before collapsing into the hot dense state we call the Big Bang.

Well, that seems a tad more meaningful than a BBC foray into the action:

Their admittedly controversial answer is that the entire universe, from the fireball of the Big Bang to the star-studded cosmos we now inhabit, popped into existence from nothing at all. It had to happen, they say, because "nothing" is inherently unstable.

Huh?  Further:

This idea may sound bizarre, or just another fanciful creation story. But the physicists argue that it follows naturally from science's two most powerful and successful theories: quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Reading further, the beginning was not a singularity dot but a bubble.  Explained, of all people, by that same Lawrence Krauss who wrote The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far.  Then, these speculators explain this is why the Universe is flat, which, theoretically, is the only way something could have come from nothing.  

As Krauss puts it, "The laws of physics as we understand them make it eminently plausible that our universe arose from nothing - no space, no time, no particles, nothing that we now know of."

The article ends with:

Those universes might be profoundly different to ours. The universe next door might have five dimensions of space rather than the three – length, breadth and height – that ours does. Gravity might be ten times stronger or a thousand times weaker, or not exist at all. Matter might be built out of utterly different particles.

So there could be a mind-boggling smorgasbord of universes. Linde says eternal inflation is not just the ultimate free lunch: it is the only one at which all possible dishes are available.

As yet we don't have hard evidence that other universes exist. But either way, these ideas give a whole new meaning to the phrase "Thanks for nothing".

Maybe I should go back to church.

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ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT ATTENDING THE 2020 TOKYO OLYMPICS?

Known as the Games of the XXXII Olympiad, Tokyo 2020 will begin on July 22 with a few preliminary events, and end on August 9.  Have you ever been to Japan during this period?  It is hot, humid and prone to typhoons.  

By the way, the 2022 Winter Olympics will be held in Beijing, from February 4 to 20, making it the first city to host both Olympics.  Coal use peaks during this period, and air pollution will be horrendous.  Then again, most of the skiing events will be held in Zhangjiakou, which is 120 miles away.  However, there will be a new railway with trains going 217 MPH, taking only 50 minutes either way.  By then, the Beijing Subway will be 620 miles long and the brand new Beijing Daxing International Airport will be operational.

Returning to Tokyo 2020, baseball and softball will be back, for the first time since 2008.  There will also be a new event, 3x3 basketball.  Did you know this is the largest urban team sport in the world?  There is now even an international world tour.  The current world champs are U.S. men and Chinese women.

Interestingly enough, the central venue for Tokyo 2020 is their National Stadium, which was where the opening and closing sessions were held in the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics.  The capacity was increased from 50,000 to 80,000, and this will be a completely new facility.  The marathon will be held on the Imperial Palace Gardens grounds.  Soccer preliminaries will be held as far away as Sendai and Sapporo.

People must be planning to attend, for I looked at the hotel room availability at many of my favorite hotels, such as the Marriott/Sheratons...and they were ALL sold out.  So I went to Booking.com, and the Daiichi Hotel Tokyo, a nothing of a place to stay, costs $2317/night.  You can get a room there tonight for $132.

Does this mean you're shut out?  Nope, all you need is money.  Roadtrips will take care of you for $13,025/person at the Park Hyatt, double occupancy, or, effectively, $26,050 for two.  You get free breakfast, some shuttle service and good advice.  Tickets are extra.  

ESPN reports that ticket demand is unprecedented, with demand exceeding supply by a factor of ten.  But companies have glommed on to tickets and offer luxury packages:

• $60,000:  opening and closing ceremonies and finals of the men's and women's 100-meter races and 4x100-meter relays.
• So you want to go golfing, instead?  $7,195 for a 4-day package.  Baseball package:  $3,270.
• $840:  gymnastics PRELIMINARIES.

You might want to, instead, go to Expo 2020 Dubai, where an entrance ticket will cost $33, for which you get 60 live shows daily and the architecture and excitement of any World Fair.  Oh, if you're under 5 or over 65, ENTRANCE WILL BE FREE.

Details?

• 20 October 2020 to 10 April 2021
• Theme?  Connecting Minds, Creating the Future.
• Expected visitors:  25 million.
• Numerous hotels can be booked for under $100/night, with typical Hyatts and Marriotts not much more than that.  I think there are 43 Marriotts just in Dubai.  

Renewable energy will be featured, with a 700-MW solar facility (to be expanded to 5000 MW in 2030), plus hydrogen transport.  Dubai has plans for 75% solar by 2050

Their new cruise terminal will begin operations just around the time the Expo opens.

What about then a Princess cruise from Dubai to Los Angeles, leaving on 15 March 2021 and arriving on 9 May 2021?  Transits the Suez and Panama Canals, with stops in Muscat, Venice, Rome,   Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Casablanca, Santa Cruz de la Palma, Fort Lauderdale, Cartagena and Puerto Vallarta.  Balcony $13,124 (each for double occupancy) for 56 days ($234/night).

This is, actually, an around the world itinerary, which stops in Honolulu, but only spends one day in Dubai, and the individual rate from Los Angeles on 17 January 2021 is $27,999 in balcony:

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The Last RAMBO and First AD ASTRA

My weekend movie treks have been cancelled by NCAA football on Saturdays and NFL football on Sundays.  Thus, I went to a twin-bill in the middle of the week.  Wow, no one goes to the movies on Wednesdays.

These Rotten Tomatoes ratings practically say it all:

                                                 Rotten Tomatoes       My Rating

                                            Reviewers  Audiences

Rambo: Last Blood                   26               84               B

Ad Astra                                    83               42               B-

I pretty much always agree with the audience.  

There have been five Rambo films, beginning in 1982 (38 years ago) with First Blood.  If Rambo 5 does really, really well, the series could approach $1 billion in box office revenues.

Of course, this is all Sylvester Stallone doing serious damage to a Mexican prostitute/drug group.  The production is gruesome, bloody, and all that.  Yet, this was a greater experience than Ad Astra, which I found drifting and sometimes boring.  I did say this was the last Rambo, after all, he is 73 years-old.  But maybe not, as Stallone is thinking about a prequel.

Also too, wonder if there will be another Rocky?  Well, just this week he appeared on the Kelly and Ryan morning show and hinted that he is thinking about one.  Stallone will want to reach a billion dollars.                               

Ad astra means to the stars in Latin, in case you were wondering.  Was it slow and obtuse or mesmerizing and minimalist?  Lavish or not?  Those are terms from reviewers, who liked the film.

Brad Pitt did well, and Tommy Lee Jones is getting old.  In short, the production had to do with son seeking hero astronaut father lost on Neptune by choice.  But our government thought he was a renegade with a mission to kill him.  There was some mumbo-jumbo about improved technology, but Voyager 2 took 12 years to get there, while Pitt got there in 80 days.  All in all, it did not have the grandeur of 1968's 2001 nor the authenticity of Gravity.  No sequel here.

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WHO IS THE WHITE HOUSE WHISTLEBLOWER?

No name, yet, but the whistleblower apparently is a CIA agent detailed to the White House.  His name will soon be divulged because everything he has done has been documented, but more, he has agreed to testify before Congress.

Here is what CNN knows as I create this post:

What we know so far

• Whistleblower's complaint is out: In it, the whistleblower says President Trump tried to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election, and the White House tried to cover it up.
• 3 documents to read: The full whistleblower complaint. The Inspector General's letter on that complaint. And the White House transcript of the call between Trump and Ukraine's president. 
• A hearing: The acting director of national intelligence testified on Capitol Hill this morning. We have those key moments here.

Further from CNN:

The whistleblowers' complaint: It was released this morning. In the complaint, the whistleblower says Trump tried to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election, and the White House tried to cover it up.

Spy chief testimony: Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified before Congress about the whistleblower's complaint this morning. He called the case "unique and unprecedented," said the whistleblower "acted in good faith" and admitted he doesn't know the whistleblower's identity. (You can read more highlights from the hearing here.)

The impeachment inquiry: More than half the US House of Representatives have now said they support an impeachment investigation into Trump. It's an important milestone because a majority of the House would be needed to vote to impeach the President in order to send the process to the Senate. 

How Trump is reacting: The President railed against Democrats, saying they are "making up stories" and what "doing to this country is a disgrace." Earlier today, he called the person who gave the whistleblower information “close to a spy," according to a report from The New York Times.

The above did not mention that Joseph Maguire testified twice this morning, the second a closed House hearing.

The reaction from President Donald Trump?

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Liddle’ Adam Schiff, who has worked unsuccessfully for 3 years to hurt the Republican Party and President, has just said that the Whistleblower, even though he or she only had second hand information, “is credible.” How can that be with zero info and a known bias. Democrat Scam!

8:13 AM - Sep 26, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

CNN panels of course reinforced all the above.  I thought I'd watch the Fox New Channel, expecting just the opposite.  Initially, there was nothing about the Maguire hearing, focusing ONLY on the fact that Joe Biden and his son should be investigated by the U.S. Senate.  Then, after a commercial, there was a panel of three, what appeared to be a moderator (I didn't get her name),  Greg Gutfeld of the Trump re-election committee, and co-host Juan Williams, a Fox political analyst for 22 years.  A journalist, he also has had a long history with the Washington Post, and has won an Emmy for television documentary writing.

While the other two panelists followed the conservative, pro-Trump line, I was stunned about Williams' reaction.  It was like he crystallized the essence of CNN and calmly provided counterpoints.  I was impressed.  He has been with Fox for 22 years.

Here is just one interchange:

“I think, just listening here, I think boy those talking points, they’ve made the rounds,” Williams told the panel before co-host Greg Gutfeld angrily interjected. 

“What does that mean? Are you saying that I got talking points, Juan?” Gutfeld questioned Williams. “You’ve got to answer to the accusation.” 

“Asking a foreign government to investigate a political rival is illegal. It's illegal. It’s a violation of the constitutional oath,” Williams said, prompting Gutfeld to interject, “Unbelievable.”

Apparently what happened, and hard to believe this is true, there was a reason House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went ahead with her impeachment decision before reading any official document.  She was reacting to these talking points about Ukraine, which were ACCIDENTALLY emailed to her.

Here is what I think:

• The whistle blower got his information second-hand, which means there are others in the White House who were also involved.  These are the ones Trump says are spies.  He does not run the White House like a democracy.  He is the Mob Boss.  Anyone who, even for the good of the Nation does something right, is a rat.  

• This whistleblower incident seems oh so similar to the Watergate hearing when White House Deputy Assistant Alexander Butterfield mentioned on television that the White House taped discussions.  President Richard Nixon refused to release those tapes, which led to initiation of an impeachment process.  However, he resigned from office before they proceeded.

• Why were these documents released?  Some say there was some Republican pressure, but I suspect what happened was that Donald Trump actually felt he was not doing anything immoral or illegal.  Refer back to Mafia connection.  He has totally different standards of right and wrong, legal and illegal, moral and immoral.
• As in the Nixon resignation, it was not the crime itself that was pivotal.  It was the cover-up process.  The Trump White House is again covering up.  Worse, this incident is one of many that will be exhumed when the "other" classified calls with other world leaders are made public.  And if Trump refuses to release them....that was the incident that led to Nixon's resignation.

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THE END OF THE KILOGRAM

I have always known the kilogram as the unit of mass in the metric system, equal to 2.20462 pounds.  It is convenient that the kilogram is almost exactly the mass of one liter of water, and for that reason in 1795 became the standard of equivalence.  But note that almost exactly, which means something is awry.

Thus from 1889 (during the French Revolution) until last year, a kilogram was an actual chunk of platinum-iridium alloy stored in a climate-controlled safe in Sevres, France.  But a further change was necessary because this piece of metal actually lost 50 micrograms (weight of an eyelash) over the past 129 years.

At the same time the kilogram was standardized more than a century ago, the meter was accepted to be one ten-millionth the distance from the North Pole to the equator.  A metal bar was then crafted to be exactly one meter long.  But the shape of the Earth is changing, so too that bar.

So back to the kilogram, it is now merely an item linked to the Planck constant, which never changes, anywhere and anytime into the future.  I did not say this makes any sense at all, but:

The kilogram, symbol kg, is the SI unit of mass. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the Planck constant h to be 6.626 070 15 × 10-34 when expressed in the unit J s, which is equal to kg m2 s -1 , where the meter and the second are defined in terms of c and ∆νCs.

What the heck is a Planck constant?  Simply, it is the matter release energy of a quanta.  How can something which starts with a decimal point followed by 33 zeros be measured?  They use a Kibble balance:

Invented by British scientist Bryan Kibble, it equates the mechanical energy exerted by the mass of an object with an equivalent amount of electrical energy.  You arrive at the Planck constant by using this balance and these equations:

This process works because, as in Einstein's energy equals mass times speed of light squared, mass and energy are alike.

The meter also underwent a similar re-standardization.  Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second.  Forget that distance between the pole and equator.  Now the meter is the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.  Now, this length will not change, like that bar of metal did.

Now, there is no need for a government or governing body to tell exactly what a kilogram is.  The kilogram is now a fundamental truth which anyone with the proper equipment can determine.  Look for a high school student to soon build a miniature version of a Kibble balance to do so.

Chances are that your feeble mind got the drift of how a kilogram or meter was determined. Few in America understand the metric system, and virtually no one can comprehend something like the Kibble balance.  A kindergarten student can visualize that one kilogram alloy in France.  Stephan Schlamminger (that's him to the left) an American scientist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, went so far as getting this tattoo:

The conventional International System of Units (SI, because of the French way of speaking) actually had more than mass and distance:

• the kilogram (kg), for mass
• the second (s), for time
• the kelvin (K), for temperature
• the ampere (A), for electric current
• the mole (mol), for the amount of a substance
• the candela (cd), for luminous intensity
• the meter (m), for distance

But scientists as of 20May2019 re-defined the SI system to the following:

the caesium hyperfine frequency Cs; the speed of light in vacuum c; the Planck constant h; the elementary charge e; the Boltzmann constant k; the Avogadro constant NA; and the luminous efficacy of a defined visible radiation Kcd.

I can't identify with the above.  The kilogram was my link with science.  Here is the statement that rendered me obsolete:

As part of the redefinition, the international prototype kilogram was retired and definitions of the kilogram, the ampere, and the kelvin were replaced. The definition of the mole was revised. These changes have the effect of redefining the SI base units, though the definitions of the SI derived units in terms of the base units remain the same.

The USA, of course, is different, for we still use the British imperial units, like pounds and ounces.  The UK has converted, we have not, because big business dictates so to the Congress, and we lead, we don't follow.  How foolish.  Only Liberia and Myanmar follow our lead.  However, at least I know what a pound represents.  While Donald Trump has done everything possible to ruin it, we are still the greatest nation on Planet Earth.  But are we becoming obsolete?

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