A Different Kind of Feynmann Quote

A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." I don’t think we’ll ever know in what sense he meant that, for the poets don’t write to be understood. But it is true that if you look at a glass of wine closely enough you will see the entire universe.

There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. It evaporates depending on the wind and weather. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks and in its composition, as we’ve seen, the secret of the universe's age, and the evolution of the stars.

What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. And there in wine was found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nor can you discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it!

And if our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and all - remember that nature does not know it! So we should put it all back together and not forget at last, what it’s for. Let it give us one final pleasure more: drink it up and forget about it all!

-RICHARD P. FEYNMANN

NYC

I was in New York for a friends wedding back in October. The wedding was awsome! It was my first Indian wedding. So much music, dancing, food and boose...

I love this city, especially in the fall. The weather was perfect, crisp cool air with a nice balance of the warmth from the sun creeping through the clouds.
For the first time ever, I had a car in NYC. It sucked! I had to worry about parking, traffic, and the freakin' tolls in and out of the city - and it was boring. I missed the subway.

I checked out the Zaha Hadid exhibition at the the Guggenheim - first time at the Gugg, it's a pretty cool museum. The Hadid exhibit was awsome!

Bicycle Advocacy Groups in LA

Midnight Ridazz, Ride Arch, Critical Mass are the major organizations in LA for group rides. I highly recommend Midnight Ridazz, if you can make it to one of their rides you won't be disappointed. The last ride I went on was 1700 people strong! We stretched on for miles... Needless to say, cars hate us (but it's mutual so, all is fair).

Check out http://bikeboom.org for a great calendar of bicycling events in LA.

Tom Harrell

I had the most mind-blowing experience the other day (actually two weeks ago now). It was one of the most powerful feelings I had ever felt in my entire life. The intensity of it was more than I could handle, it honestly shattered my perception of the human mind and therefore was the single most powerful spiritual feeling I had ever felt!

I went with my best friend, Josh to hear one of my favorite jazz musicians play at a club, mid-week in Hollywood. I had a feeling it was going to be different from the typical "big-cat-in-town-from-New York" type of concerts by the way
Josh invited me to it. He spoke of this Tom Harrell concert as if it were some sort of secret, underground, almost forbidden performance that he didn't want anyone to know about even our other close friends
whom are jazz musicians. I later understood why.

Tom Harrell is a trumpet player who is now in his 60s. He headlines at clubs and festivals across the globe. His international fame among jazz fans is comparable to that of the giants of Miles and Coltrane which has led him to be called the "World's Best Trumpet Player". The thing is, he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.

I'm pretty obsessed about the power of the human brain. I love reading about neurobiology and brain psychology (Aspergers Syndrome etc...), it's a subject that fascinates me to no end - hence the book I was reading in China, "Why God Won't Go Away". Well, until that day I had never met or witnessed anyone or anything close to the things I was reading about. The experiments or the accident survivors/alleged freaks labeled outcasts of society-turned science experiment all paled in comparison to what I witnessed when I saw Tom play that night.


Well, the story is getting long and I haven't even started so I'll try to more concisely tell it and I'll let the pictures do most of the talking... His presence on stage was scary! Immediately, I felt nervous watching as he slowly and carefully walked across the restaurant area towards the stage, weaving through the tables and chairs with his horns dangling from the clutches his slender fingers that were peering out of his long black sleeves. He got on stage put down his horns almost dropping them, clumsily fumbled through his music and adjusted his microphone so that it was at eye level. The band started, he stood motionless front and center... arms at his side, stiff as a board with one of the most pained looks I've ever encountered on his face (see pic 9). His eyes were closed, his face tilted towards the sky and his mouth stretched ear to ear in the most
uncomfortable fashion. He looked pained, scared and lost. All I could think was, "this is what this man does for a living?" At this point the music was swinging hard, he didn't move an inch, no swaying, tapping, nodding - nothing... until, only moments before his cue, the horn hit his lips. Immediately the pained look on his face vanished - it was instantaneous. The person before was unrecognizable and it wasn't until now that I could see any resemblance to the pictures of
him from his albums. The transformation was very much welcomed yet still, oddly alienating.


He spoke no words the entire night, yet the entire audience understood everything he said. Blowing the most eloquent sentences from his horn, melodic line after melodic line, drenched with emotion. It was a sick display of flawless trumpet technique mixed with the most sophisticated lyricism that I had ever heard from an artist. His ears were everywhere. And then when he wasn't playing, immediately he would freeze like a deer in headlights and the pained face would
reappear. Or occasionally he would wonder off to the darkest corner of the restaurant and face the wall until it was his time to play again. I honestly didn't know such a transformation was even humanly possible. It was clearly his form of meditation and therapy from his worries.


Any ways, I included a couple of pictures from that night (the video speaks a thousand words but it's too big to email, I'll put it on my website) ...

Entanglement

'Entanglement' by Amir D. Aczel is a very interesting read, I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Physics (more specifically, in the subject of quantum philosophy). The author is quite successful in explaining this very complicated subject in such a manner that it does not limit his audience to just physics-savvy folks. I feel completely comfortable in recommending this book to a non-nerd. The phenomena of entangled particles has always fascinated me and I happened to stumbled upon this book right as my curiosity in this subject was peaking. So obviously, this is going to be a slightly biased review.

Born in Einstein's brain as a thought experiment to disprove the validity of Quantum Theory, entanglement grew up to become Einstein's most famous failure. While Einstein was a major contributor to the development of Quantum Theory, he was also considered it's harshest critic. He did not believe that it was the final description of particle interactions on the microscopic scale. Many exchanges through so-called thought experiments with Neils Bohr left the universal acceptance of Quantum Theory in limbo. Einstein left this world with a smile though, thinking he had proven Bohr's theory wrong by stating that locality was violated by the formulation of Quantum Theory and therefore it cannot possibly be correct. A spooky thing labeled "action at a distance" couldn't possibly exist - not relative to Einstein's universe any way. But at the time, this experiment could not be tested empirically only intuitively. Einstein's argument makes tremendous sense to the lay person. But as we discover, there is actually very little in Quantum Theory that is intuitive. And as it turns out, Quantum Theory has eluded even Einstein's intuition.

A brilliant physicst/scientist, John S. Bell, devised a method for bringing Einstein's thought experiment into the laboratory. With the help of Clauser, Horne, Shimony and finally the brilliant Alain Aspect experimental evidence started clearly showing support for Bohr's theory rather than Einstein's. The violation of locality is an actual phenomena, meaning that if two particles somehow become "entangled" i.e. they are formulaically indistinguishable, a change in one will instantaneously have an effect on the other. No matter how large the distance between them. This is a pretty heavy concept to swallow. How can an entangled particle react to something that isn't happening locally to itself? Intuitively, one would think that somehow they must communicate with one another by exchanging some sort of message via a particle or by exchanging energy. But this phenomena has been proven to take place instantaneously which violates the fundamental laws of known physics. More specifically it violates the laws of Einstein's most famous work, his Theory of Relativity which states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. If the two particles are communicating instantaneously then they must not be exchanging particles, so how does one know when something happens to the other? We simply don't know, but we do know that the formulation of Quantum Theory is still the undisputed champion of the microscopic world.

Triathlon

Some of my previous Triathlon results:

In 2004 I competed for the first time at the LA Tri. I consider this race to be my home course, since I live two blocks from the finish line. Futhermore, the bike route is very similar to my commuting route and the running course is my usual (easy) evening route. It was stricktly for fun/to see if I could even finish. However, I did much better than anticipated.

2004 LA Triatholon: (0.4 mile swim + 20 mile bike + 3 mile run)
MALE 25-29: Sprint Distance
Place O'All Bib Name Age City Time
10 74 1765 CHARLES LE_PERE 26 LOS ANGELES 1:54:15
TOTAL: 38 in age group and ~390 O'All

No Podium in my age group but not bad for my first race.

I learned from my first tri how addicting the sport is. I immediately signed up for another race, this time the Catelina Island Tri. I didn't do as well b/c I crashed my bike during the race. The course was rather damp from the early morning due and some idiot slipped and crashed right in front of me so I put my bike down (on my left side) so as to avoid him. It wasn't so bad the day of the race... but the road rash that followed SUCKED! Even though I was down for a 10-15 mins repairing my bike, I still finished in the middle of the pack.

2004 Catalina Island Triathlon: (0.5 mile swim + 15 km bike + 3 mile run)
MALE 25-29: Sprint Distance
Place O'All Bib Name Age City Time
47 468 444 CHARLES LE_PERE 26 LOS ANGELES 1:45:31

My bike pace was something like 9 min./mile because of the crash! Oh well...

I gave it another shot in 2005 and did pretty well dispite suffering from a recent injury. I hurt my leg while doing a century with a friend from work the month prior to this. It actually didn't affect my swim or bike that much, it did however, fully crippled me while running. Despite this injury I thought I would race again (like I said it is addicting).

2005 LA Triathlon: (0.4 mile swim + 20 mile bike + 3 mile run)
MALE 25-29: Sprint Distance Podium (Top Five)
Place O'All Bib Name Age City Time
1 11 1858 JOSEPH MESSER 28 HERMOSA BEACH 1:40:26
2 13 1841 JOSHUA KLINE 29 SAN DIEGO 1:41:20
3 19 1822 MATTHEW DICKER 26 SANTA MONICA 1:43:21
4 27 1847 DIMITRY LERNER 28 LOS ANGELES 1:46:28
5 30 1845 CHARLES LE_PERE 27 SOUTH PASADENA 1:46:58
TOTAL: 38 in age group and ~405 Men O'All

I missed that dude by 30 secs.... Dammit! I received the 4th place medal b/c on race day I finished fourth, they must have missed someone in the race-day talley. Oh well, 5th ain't bad in my opinion.

The only race I've done this year was a Duathlon (Swim/Run) at Playa Vist. I was in shape for the run but I hadn't sawm more than a couple of times that year. I felt good about my run, but it actually turned out to not be too impressive.

2006 Playa del Run (1 km swim + 5 km run)
O'All Bib Name Age Time
33 51 Charles Le Pere 28 00:38'54"59

There were no age group divisions, if there were I would have been 6th.

I will race again, I've just been too busy lately to focus on it.

Tour of California

I know most Americans hate the sport of cycling. So I have sad news for the average American who might be reading this, I love the sport of cycling. It's one of the most demanding sports on the planet.

So any ways, the world of professional cycling is going to make a stop in California this year. Amgen in sponsoring the first Tour of California which will be an eight day cycling event spanning 700 miles of beautiful California scenery. 16 professional teams will be competing in this event including Discovery, Phonak and T-Mobile. It should be pretty exciting, below is the map of the eight stages:

Most people in this country wouldn't even drive this far - can you imagine biking it? And at race pace (that's close to 30 miles per hour - on a bike!!!)?

Why we study where we do - a theory.

Recently, I've been spending a lot of time in libraries reading and studying. The three libraries that I frequent are the Technical Library at my work and two libraries on USC's campus (Doheny and Seaver). This last weekend I visited the LA Public Library and it was fantastic - what a place. But, it wasn't the first time I had been there, so it was no surprise really, that I enjoyed my time there.

So I went to my usual corner, found a desk, spread out my junk and started to study for my upcoming final. And then, as I drifted into my mental studying zone I recognized an out of place emotion. I was feeling kinda insignificant and unimportant, well more so than I usually do. This observation triggered a chain reaction of thoughts that have accumulated into this silly little theory. Large buildings create highly productive atmospheres simply because they make you feel small and insignificant. So in order to reassure your brain that you aren't worthless, you study and work harder to make that feeling go away. Then again, it could just be the delirium setting in as my final exam rapidly approaches.