I'm Singing in the Rain

Ne Me Quitte Pas

Moonglow

Michael

Crazy Lovable French

After rewatching the insane kamikaze car drive clip, I was so intrigued I could not keep it off my mind. Determined to get to know more details, I hunted for and found the interview of Claude Lelouch. Unfortunately, it's in French and needs to be translated for you to follow. Reading his narration of the drive, I realized this is deja-vu for me. I've done something like this before although not as crazy as in this event. Of course, most French men behaved this way when they found themselves behind the steering wheels of their cars: they always "floor it!" Just like Lelouch did: "pied au plancher" as he said it. His car's speedometer was "bloqué à cent quatre-vingts" which means his car was going as fast as possible at top speed of 180 Km/hour, about 110 MPH. But there is more to this story...

110 MPH is not so fast with today's standard, but in the 70's that was quite fast. What was really insane, and in French, it's called driving "a tombeau ouvert" meaning driving at "open coffin" speed, was that he did in Paris! That was crazy, driving like that in the streets in Paris. So it became intensely interesting for me to find out the route he took and especially how that was planned and carried out. He was crazy, but not stupid, so he chose to do the stunt in August, at 5:30 AM so traffic should be light. He started from "Porte Dauphine" and drove across Paris to the North East corner of "Place du Tertre" near Montmartre where you find the world famous "Sacre Coeur" church. To appreciate the craziness, you need to look at the street map of Paris, here the great on line Google map is used:



He started at the "Porte Dauphine", at the left edge of this first map and remember he was "flooring" his car all the time, 150 - 180 km/h (to get km/h to MPH, divide by 1.6) on avenue Foch to Place de l'Etoile where you see the "Arc de Triomphe." Then he hooked a slight right to maintain high speed of 130 -150 km/h down "Avenue des Champs Elysees" to the "Place de la Concorde" reaching 200 km/h, negotiated it at 150 km/h and proceeded to "Quai des Tuileries" along the right side of the river "Seine" on the next map:



This is where he pointed out during the interview the most dangerous place for this kamikaze drive: at the Louvre museum, called "les guichets du Louvre." If you ask me, I will tell you it is insane the entire drive, from start to finish! So, watch the clip again, imagine you are behind the steering wheel. Another car can come out of nowhere and you will have to react at that speed, while your right foot was "on the floor!" Crazy pure and simple! And he knew it!

He said that after the Louvre museum, it was smooth sailing. Not quite! After passing the "Opera", he proceeded North to Trinite which is seen at the lower left on the next map. From there, he needed to proceed to "la place du Tertre" where I placed a "Red Heart" to mark the place of the Rendez-Vous on the map for you:



It doesn't matter which route he took, most of the Paris streets are tiny cobble-stoned streets to where the "heart" is. There are no straight streets to Montparnasse/place du Tertre! Now, watch the clip again to really appreciate what you are witnessing: real life macho driving, no tricks, no stunts! You can see the streets he mentioned in the interview: rue Lapic, Boulevard de Rochechouart ... A few times, he had to go the "wrong way" to avoid obstruction by a bus, a garbage, and a delivery truck.

In a nutshell, he valued punctuality, and had the idea of making a movie about a guy not wanting to be late to the rendez-vous with his girl, speeds through traffic to her. After the filming of his latest film, he had left over film material one of which was for about ten minutes worth, so he decided to realize his dream clip. There was no way to block Paris traffic for the entire shooting take so he did it without. After consulting with a stunt driver about the risks, he decided to take them, mapping out two major technical difficulties: the timing for the girl to greet him at arrival and the dangerous blind spot at the Louvre museum. The entire thing must be done only once, under 10 minutes before the film runs out, and there will be no reshoot! He had planned for a watch out assistant at the Louvre to warn him of incoming traffic but the walkie talkie did not work. He didn't know it until after all was said and done. He took risks, and got this clip for his movie fans. Amazing! That is why this work was very much sought after over the years. By the way, he could not afford to stop at traffic lights because these stops will destroy his film, and he would never have made it in time. Count them, the drive ignored 18 red lights, no less!

Below is a recount of reports of interviews of Claude Lelouch in French posted on his web site here

Go to this link:

here

Scroll at the film icons at the bottom to select that of "C'Etait Un Rendez-Vous" to see the first narration by

Lelouch:

------------------------------
Visa n° 46 452
Durée : 9 minutes
© 1976 Les Films 13

Un plan-séquence de 9 minutes. La traversée de Paris en voiture. Un film culte !

Disponible en bonus sur le coffret DVD "Claude Lelouch, Les Géants du cinéma, volume 1".

Claude Lelouch parle du film :

"Je roule comme Trintignant dans "Un Homme et une Femme", pied au plancher, compteur bloqué à cent quatre-vingts, prenant tous les risques. Et même d'avantage, puisque je ne suis pas au rallye de Monte-Carlo, mais en plein Paris. A côté de moi, mon chef opérateur contrôle la vitesse de la caméra accrochée au pare-chocs. Nous brûlons systématiquement tous les feux rouges. Les rues et les avenues défilent à une vitesse terrifiante.

A ce moment là, je me dis que les spectateurs seront collés à leurs fauteuils, écrasant du pied un frein imaginaire. Car c'est un film, bien sûr, que je tourne. Neuf minutes trente secondes. Neuf minutes trente secondes de pellicule, c'est ce qui me restait à la fin du tournage de "Si c'était à refaire", au moment des rendus. Trouvant dommage de laisser perdre ces précieux trois cents mètres de pellicule, j'en ai profité pour réaliser un projet qui me tenait à cœur depuis longtemps : un film en un seul plan-séquence où la caméra traverserait Paris à grande vitesse, son regard étant celui d'un homme qui conduit comme un fou parce qu'il est en retard à un rendez-vous.J'avais eu cette idée un jour où, moi qui suit toujours ponctuel, j'étais dans la même situation. Comme il était vital que j'arrive à l'heure, j'ai traversé Paris à une vitesse hallucinante, brûlant des feux rouges, empruntant des sens interdits, prenant des risques insensés. Comme je suis entrain de le faire en ce moment même. Cinq cent soixante-dix secondes, pas une de plus, c'est le temps que j'ai pour effectuer le trajet porte Dauphine-place du Tertre. Avec deux principaux problèmes techniques. Le premier consiste à coordonner le parcours de la voiture avec l'action des dix dernières secondes, quand Gunilla, ma compagne de l'époque (qui est aussi la mère de ma fille Sarah) s'avancera vers le véhicule qui s'arrêtera devant elle. C'est le bruit du moteur, à mon approche de la place du Tertre, qui l'avertira qu'il est temps de s'avancer jusque dans le champs de la caméra. Le second problème réside dans l'impossibilité d'assurer la sécurité de l'opération. J'ai limité les risques en tournant ce film cascade au mois d'août, à cinq heures trente du matin, au lever du jour. La circulation est donc quasiment inexistante. Je n'ai pu cependant obtenir l'autorisation de bloquer les rues débouchant sur mon parcours. Un véhicule peut donc déboîter devant moi à n'importe quel moment. Ci cela se produit, je prie pour avoir le coup d'œil et les réflexes nécessaires pour réagir au quart de seconde. L'étape la plus dangereuse du parcours demeure le passage des guichets du louvre. Il n'y a aucune visibilité à la sortie. Si une voiture surgit à ce moment devant mon capot, la collision sera inévitable. J'ai donc posté mon assistant, Elie Chouraqui, à cet endroit stratégique. Grâce à son talkie-walkie, il me parviendra en cas de danger. J'arrive à la hauteur des guichets du Louvre. Aucun signal de la part de "Chouchou". Je fonce. Le reste du parcours s'accomplit sans problème. Je ralentis place du Tertre, et Gunilla, avec un chronométrage parfait, s'avance à ma rencontre. Un quart d'heure plus tard, je retrouve Chouraqui, en train de bricoler son "talkie".

- Qu'est ce qui se passe ?
- C'est cette saloperie ! me dit-il en désignant l'appareil. Il est tombé en panne au début de la prise !

J'ai un grand frisson d'angoisse rétrospectif.

Debout dans le bureau du préfet de police, j'ai la sensation d'être un enfant puni. Je m'apprête d'ailleurs à l'être et sévèrement.D'une voix de procureur, le préfet, qui m'a personnellement convoqué, dresse à mon intention la liste de toutes les infractions que j'ai commises pendant les quelques minutes de tournage de "Pour un rendez-vous". Elle est interminable. Quand il a fini, il lève sur moi un oeil noir et dit en avançant la main :

- Remettez-moi votre permis de conduire, s'il vous plait. Le moment serait mal choisi pour discuter. Je m'exécute. Le préfet de police s'empare du document, le contemple rêveusement pendant quelques secondes, puis... me le rend avec un large sourire.
- Je m'étais engagé à vous le retirer, me dit-il. Mais je n'ai pas précisé pour combien de temps.

Devant ma stupéfaction, il ajoute :
- Mes enfants adorent votre petit film !"

Claude Lelouch

C'ETAIT UN RENDEZ-VOUS

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You can read the transcript of the interview
here

Scrool down and click on the link ["C'était un rendez-vous" toujours culte ! (20/03/2006)]

here

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"C'était un rendez-vous" toujours culte !
20 mars 2006

"C'était un Rendez-Vous", court métrage réalisé en 1976 en plan séquence par Claude Lelouch, parait susciter de très nombreuses interrogations suite à la diffusion grandissante du film sur le net, que certains d'entre vous découvrent et que d'autres redécouvrent avec plaisir …

Qui était au volant ? de quelle marque était la voiture ? les rues étaient-elles bloquées ? … En somme, comment a été préparé et dans quelles conditions le film a pu être réalisé... Voici les réponses à vos questions...

Préparation du célèbre plan-séquence...

Dans quelles circonstances avez-vous entrepris "C'était un rendez-vous" ?

Je venais d'achever le tournage de "Si c'était à refaire". Quand un film se termine, on effectue les "rendus". J'ai donc demandé à mon régisseur quel métrage de pellicule il nous restait. Après inventaire, nous avions pas mal de chutes, entre 3000 et 4000 mètres au total. Beaucoup de petits rouleaux de 30 ou 50 mètres, mais aussi un magasin de 300 mètres, qu'il était prévu de rendre. Moi, j'avais envie de faire un court métrage que nous aurions placé en première partie du film. Depuis longtemps je voulais raconter l'histoire d'un type en retard à un rendez vous qui commet plein d’infractions pour arriver à l’heure. Pour moi , être à l'heure est une obsession. Je suis capable de prendre des risques inouïs pour ne pas être en retard. J'ai suggéré à mon opérateur Jacques Lefrançois, l'idée d'un plan-séquence, la caméra accompagnant un type qui a rendez-vous à Montmartre avec une fille. Comme il est à la bourre, il traverse Paris à toute allure, en grillant les stops et les feux rouges.

Dans le film, le conducteur prend-il le chemin le plus direct ?

Si un Parisien veut aller de l'avenue Foch à Montmartre, il n'est pas obligé de passer par les guichets du Louvre...Il va prendre l'avenue de Wagram, bien sûr. Mais, Vous vous en doutez, je voulais en même temps proposer une sorte de reportage. Mon problème était d'élaborer un plan qui n'excède pas dix minutes et qui trouve son intérêt à la toute fin avec la fille qui arrive sur les marches.J'ai réfléchi au projet. J'ai demandé à Elie Chouraqui, mon assistant à l'époque, de voir quelles autorisations il nous faudrait obtenir. Nous nous sommes vite rendu compte qu'un plan comme celui-ci nécessitait de bloquer tout Paris. Ce n'était même pas la peine de demander nous n'étions pas prêts à mettre en œuvre les moyens d'un long métrage pour réaliser un court. J'ai interrogé un cascadeur : « Si je filme très tôt, qu'est-ce que je risque en grillant les feux rouges ? » Il m'a expliqué que c'était de deux choses l'une. En arrivant à un feu rouge, s'il n'y a personne dans le champ de vision, le risque n'est pas bien grand de passer en force : il faudrait qu'au même moment, un même cinglé déboule à la même vitesse. Et s'il y a quelqu’un dans le champ de vision, il est toujours possible de freiner. Je suis donc parti du postulat que si je roule vite et que je ne vois rien, c'est qu'il n'y a rien ... Le seul inconvénient majeure c'étaient les guichets du Louvre. Ils me faisaient peur à cause de leur absence de visibilité. Pour le tournage, j'ai demandé à Chouraqui de s'y installer avec un talkie-walkie et de me prévenir au moment où j'arrivais. S'il ne me disait rien, c'est que tout allait bien. C'est la seule véritable précaution que j'ai prise. Pour la beauté du film, il fallait vraiment que je ne m'arrête pas. Que je stoppe à un feu rouge, et le film disparaissait. Il y avait d'ailleurs neuf chances sur dix pour que nous n'arrivions pas au bout.

La caméra est fixée à la calandre de la Mercedes. Comment la voiture était-elle équipée ?

Nous avons accroché la caméra sur le pare-chocs de la voiture, une 6,9 litres Mercedes. A l'intérieur nous étions trois, attachés comme des mulets : moi-même au volant, mon chef machino, et mon chef opérateur pour éventuellement changer le diaphragme. Au dernier moment, il a fallu régler un diapo moyen. L'image devait être au ras du sol pour être encore plus spectaculaire. Nous sommes en plein mois d'août. Bien sûr, nous avions décidé de sacrifier le film et de tout arrêter au premier danger. Nous roulions vraiment vite.

Quand vous dites "Nous roulions vite" vous parlez de quelle vitesse ?

La montée de l'avenue Foch, entre 150 et 180 km/h. Les Champs-Élysées à 130 à 150 avec une pointe à 160 km/h au niveau de Franklin Roosevelt. Puis jusqu'à la Concorde, comme c'était bien dégagé, j'ai dû monter à 200 km/h. J'ai pris la place de la Concorde à 150. Sur les quais, j'ai franchi les 200 km/h. J'ai pris les guichets presque normalement, c'est-à-dire à 80 ou 90 km/h. Comme Chouraqui ne m'appelait pas, je suis passé sous les guichets à fond, 100 km/h, car le passage est tout de même assez étroit. Je ne savais pas que le talkie de Chouraqui était en panne ! Je ne l'ai su que le tournage terminé. Puis j'ai remonté l'avenue de l'Opéra. Le carrefour était bloqué par un bus. Pour éviter de ralentir, j'ai dû passer de l'autre côté de la chaussée, des voitures venant en sens inverse. Place de I'Opéra, pas de problème ! J'ai ensuite pris la rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin vers Clichy. Je suis tombé sur des camions-poubelles que je n'ai pu dépasser qu'en montant sur le trottoir. Je croyais ne plus avoir de problèmes. Mais en arrivant rue Lepic, j'ai été bloqué par un type qui livrait. J'ai pris de l'autre côté, vers le paumant Palace, en destruction à l'époque. J'ai remonté l'avenue Rochechouart, ce qui me rallongeait énormément. Je ne savais pas s'il allait me rester suffisamment de pellicule. J'ai donc pris des rues en sens unique pour arriver à Montmartre dans les temps ...

Vous aviez effectué des repérages ?

J'avais fait le parcours une fois, lentement, pour bien déterminer les passages. Je disposais de l'équivalent de 9-10 minutes de pellicule ! Il me restait 15 secondes pour couper le moteur descendre de voiture et prendre la fille dans mes bras. Nous avions convenu que lorsque je klaxonnerais elle monterait deux marches, pénétrant ainsi dans le champ. Le plan-séquence ne pouvait être réussi que sur ces dernières secondes. Je m'étais dit que si je ne réussissais pas la première prise, je ne recommencerais pas. Par superstition. Si le miracle devait avoir lieu, il aurait lieu ... Et il a eu lieu. En forçant quand même le destin, puisque nous avons grillé dix-huit feux rouges.

Comment expliquez-vous la notoriété de ce court métrage, qui est devenu un film culte, ce qui est plus que rare peur un film court...

J'ai montré le film un peu partout. Il n'a pas toujours été très bien accueilli compte tenu de son manque de sens civique flagrant, ce que je ne saurais contester. Mais il a aussi ses fana. Quand j'ai montré le film pour la première fois à Los Angeles, où le non-respect des règles de conduite est toujours fortement sanctionné, le triomphe s'est mêlé à d'incroyables sifflets. "C'était un rendez-vous" a toujours suscité la polémique, mais il montre aussi tout ce qu'on aime dans le cinéma. Comme j'aime le cinéma plus que la loi ... Je savais que je tenais un morceau de bravoure. Je me disais, en toute modestie, qu'il y avait là la possibilité de faire l'un des plus beaux plans de l'histoire du cinéma. Les plans-séquences de dix minutes sont rares, en raison de l'étroitesse du magasin de la caméra. Même Hitchcock dans "La Corde" a anticipé ses changements de pellicule.

Vous avez repris ce principe de courses sous différentes formes.

Dans "Un homme et une femme : vingt ans déjà" , mais c'était sur un circuit, tout comme dans "Partir Revenir". Pour "Le Chat et la Souris", réalisé quelque temps plus tôt, nous avions expérimenté la chose. Mais le tournage était bétonné avec des flics devant et derrière. Pour "C'était un rendez-vous", nous avons fait un truc de voyou.

Qu'est-ce que vous risquiez ?

D'abord, un accident ! Ensuite, les conséquences d'un tournage sans autorisation. Enfin un retrait de permis de conduire. Le film est beau par sa prise de risque. S'il a eu autant de succès et qu'il prête tant à discussion, c'est qu'il est risqué.

Vous aimez les courts métrages ?

D'une certaine façon, il est plus difficile de faire un court qu'un long. Economiquement c'est un cauchemar. Artistiquement, il faut être dans l'essentiel. Quand on regarde un court métrage, on sait tout de suite si son signataire a de l'avenir dans le cinéma. Quand j'ai vu le court métrage de Xavier Giannoli par exemple, j'ai su qu'il s'agissait d'un vrai metteur en scène.

Entretien réalisé par
Yves Alion et Jean Ollé-Laprune
pour le livre "Claude Lelouch, mode d'emploi"
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Oh La La!

The urban legend had it that...

"1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a Formula 1 racer drive it at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris, reaching speeds of nearly 140 MPH (225 Km/h)."

The following clip is a mini movie (that even received an award) made actually in 1976 by a well known French movie director, Claude Lelouch:

C'était un rendez-vous (1976)

* The film was shot in a single take, without any special effects or stuntmen, with the director driving the car.

* The idea for this film came to Claude Lelouch after hiring a gyro stabilized camera mount for a film he was working on at the time.

* The film is nine minutes long because the film cartridge in the camera could only hold 10 minutes of film and it was taken in a single shot.

Over the years, various sources claimed an F1 formula driver was at the wheel of a Le Mans Matra 675, Ferrari 275 GTB, or an Alpine A110. However, Claude Lelouch confirmed on his official website in March 2006 that it was he who was driving, and it was a 6.9 litre Mercedes. Later the sound of a Ferrari 275GTB was dubbed over to give the impression of much higher speeds, that of a Ferrari.

The route taken in the film is 10.42 km long (6.48 mi). It takes the driver 7:57 to cover that distance, giving him an average speed of 78.64 km/h (48.86 mph). Calculations made by several independent groups using the film show that the car never exceeds 140 km/h (85 mph.)

Lelouch was arrested shortly after the film was screened but was later released without charge. It helps to be a well known celebrity anywhere.

The above information came from a well known internet movie database, and the entire movie clip came from here

The movie is available on DVD and can only be obtained here

Here it is. If you know Paris, you can easily recognize its famous landmarks.

Enormous Schwanstugel!

Heeeere's Johnny!

"R" rated! Very Intense! Not for the faint of heart! View at your own risk!

Time To Die

Rhapsody in Blue

Dance Dance Dance

Assassin

Cucurrucucu Paloma

Em Oi Ha Noi Pho

1.. 2.. 5 Holy Pin!

Alcoba Azul

Una Emocion

Nude Madreselva

This clip was done a long time ago. A newer clip that is longer with subtitle gives you a better glimpse of this movie. It is here.

Gradisca & Miranda

Delicatessen

Orpheus & Eurydice

This has been revised on Aug 26, 2011 to add the lyrics of the song sung by Orpheus, which is Manhã de carnaval. Music by Luis Bonfá and Brazilian Portuguese lyrics by Antônio Maria:

First, if you are interested in the original sound track, click on the MP3 player below. The lyrics you hear is different than the verse used by Orpheus that you will hear later in the video clip:

This is the original sound track of Manha de Carnaval, and its lyrics is below:

Manha, tao bonita manha..... Morning, such a nice morning!
De um dia feliz che chegou!..... Of a happy day that has begun!
O sol no ceu surgiu..... The sun has risen into the sky
E em cada cor brilhou..... And shone in every heart.
Voltou o sonho entao..... Then dreams have returned
Ao coraçao..... To the heart.

Depois deste dia feliz,.... After this happy day.
Nao sei se outro dia virá,..... I don’t know if another day will come,
E nossa amanha,..... And our tomorrow,
Tao bela afinal amanha..... After all such a beautiful tomorrow
De carnaval..... Of carnival.

Canta o meu coraçao..... My heart sings.
Alegria voltou. Tao feliz..... Joy has returned. So happy
A manha deste amor..... The morning of this love!



In the video clip, the lyrics is different:

Manhã tão bonita manhã!..... Morning, such a nice morning!
Na vida uma nova canção,..... In life there’s a new song,
Cantando só teus olhos,..... Singing only of your eyes,
teu riso, e tuas mãos,..... your smile and your hands,
Pois há de haver um dia,..... For there has to be a day
em que virás..... When you come.

Das cordas, do meu violão..... From the strings of my guitar,
que só teu amor procurou..... Which seek only your love,
Vem uma voz,..... Comes a voice to speak,
falar dos beijos,..... Of the kisses lost,
perdidos nos lábios teus..... In your lips.

Canta o meu coração,..... My heart sings,
alegria voltou, tão feliz,..... Joy has returned. So happy,
na manhã deste amor..... The morning of this love!


A new blog of this movie that has the second famous song Felicidade is dated August 26, 2011, here.

Jack Rabbit Slim's

The Producers

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Battle Of The Bands

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Bill Kills

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Oceanic Funeral

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Operatic Divas

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Glass Symphony

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Amarcord

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Malaguena Salerosa

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Buzz buzz....

I have a headache! Mind you, I am not trying to figure out what is the meaning of life, nor am I pondering about the profound fact of whether life is worth living. I just bought a book for that question, not that I expect to find the answer there but no doubt I will read it because I was out US $15 paying for it.

No, I have a headache because of bees. No, more precisely, because of what I learned about bees from the news! I was forced to think so hard about these bees, my head hurts all morning even today. "New homeland security buzz: Bomb-sniffing bees" was the headline of a news article posted on line two days ago. That sure got my attention. The story highlights were:

• Scientists train honeybees to sniff out explosives from dynamite to C4
• Researchers say bees could spot car bombs, IEDs, suicide bombers' belts
• When a bee finds explosives, it sticks out proboscis, the tube it uses to sip nectar
• Similar research done with wasps in past, but scientists say bees do better

Hmmm... I don't know about you, but I was quite curious about this and wanted to know more. So what was the buzz all about?

After digging a bit more about this intrigue, my old memory rushed back with a vengeance. This is the kind of research I used to be involved with, not the exact same kind, but having the same flavor, that was being sponsored by a mighty US federal government that controls a huge annual budget that can be renewed yearly with ease. In particular, part of this bee research was/is sponsored by a famed branch of federal research agency named Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA.) Trust me, if you have any most outlandish, never heard of, out of this world, weird, inconceivable, unbelievable, far fetched idea to promote, you probably have a very good chance to get funding from DARPA. I know, I've been there, done that. I am not talking about chicken feed here. I am talking about BIG BUCKS, with lots of zeros in the check you'd receive monthly to do the proposed research. The kind I did was too embarassing to recount so I will spare you, and especially myself the embarassment for the explanation. So, let's just get to the honey bees.

As it is now the in thing in the US: preoccupation with terrorism and the like, it is not surprising to see this news coming from a prominent US weapons laboratory. With the aid of DARPA, this laboratory worked hard to train bees to sniff out explosives. Although I am not privy to the original proposal for this research, I am sure it contained something like this "This project could have far-reaching applications for U.S. homeland security and the Iraq war."


Here is an excerpt from the news article, used here in the context of "fair use" so I do not have to ask permission for reproduction:

"Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said they trained honeybees to stick out their proboscis -- the tube they use to feed on nectar -- when they smell explosives in anything from cars and roadside bombs to belts similar to those used by suicide bombers. The results of this Stealthy Insect Sensor Project was published a few days ago, on November 27, 2006.

By exposing the insects to the odor of explosives followed by a sugar water reward, researchers said they trained bees to recognize substances ranging from dynamite and C-4 plastic explosives to the Howitzer propellant grains used in improvised explosive devices in Iraq.

"When bees detect the presence of explosives, they simply stick their proboscis out," said one of the research scientist of the lab who is the project's PI (principal investigator.) These findings followed 18 months of research at the U.S. Energy Department's Los Alamos facility, the nation's leading nuclear weapons laboratory.

They said the bees could be carried in hand-held detectors the size of a shoe box, and could be used to sniff out explosives in airports, roadside security checks, or even placed in robot bomb disposal equipment; and that the next step would be to manufacture the bee boxes and train security guards in their use."

Lo and behold, I found another company (http://www.inscentinel.com) that seemingly is in a more advanced state of affair. It is not American, but British! I am quite surprised to see that these two works do not reference each other. Apparently, the British company already has a prototype called "vapour detection instrumentation" that holds trained bees in a "safe" and "controlled" environment, which can be operated in a range of external environmental conditions. Sample air is delivered to the bees for recognition of specific odours. The bees are held in a special cassette and specially designed hardware and image recognition software monitors and records detection by the bees, converting their response into an electronic form. The electronic output can be given in a simple yes/no, green light/red light form.



From this small image, I hope you can see, so you can commiserate, how the bees are being treated! This seems to be worse than the French's cruel and unusually harsh treatment of geese for their "foie gras," or that of the veals. Although I did not spend anytime looking into this, I am sure that the recognition software they talk about is to catch the bees when they stick out their tongues.

I remain very skeptical about all this, knowing how DARPA works, so I did what came naturally, buzzing around the internet and look what I found in 2 minutes...

http://jeb.biologists.org/ which publishes on line articles from "The Journal of Experimental Biology." This is a LARGE organization with scientists from various countries such as Switzerland, Canada, the UK etc... so I think what they say may be very believable, and what one of their research project says is this: "FRUIT FLIES STICK OUT TONGUE TO BREATHE."

This study was about the question whether small insects like fruit flies, bees etc... breathe (or ventilate, speaking scientifically) and if they do, how. Its conclusion is that they do breathe, by sticking out their tongues, using them as pumps.

To me, this casts a giant shadow on the bee research. Could it be that these poor bees, when exposing to weird air environment, were simply suffocated and they were trying their best to BREATHE? If I were one of these bees inside my box at an airport, and they stick some shoes from some guys up my nose, I will stick out my tongue and that is no explosive that I smelled!

I am going back to my research mode and submit a new proposal to DARPA. Stay tuned as I will publish my research results here!

I am so lonesome I could cry!

Some poets wonder if rocks feel pain. They think so especially when they are love sick and tend to project their suffering onto inanimate objects in hope that these objects somehow help shouldering their sorrow. Now, that is an obtuse way for me to justify the several hours spent last Wednesday, November 8, 2006 participating passively in the celebration of a rare celestial event: the transit of the planet Mercury. If you read on, you may see the connection.

In case you do not already know, Mercury transit is a real physical astronomical event, and not some bus or subway train in some city of some country in this world. If you remember the early days of your life when you were in grade school, you will recall that we live in the so-called Solar system, and we are "the third rock" from the sun. There are two more rocks, Mercury and Venus that orbit closer to the sun than our earth. For this reason, once in a while, sometime a long while, from earth, either Venus or Mercury can be seen streaking across the surface of the sun. That is called a transit. Last week, on November 8, the planet Mercury did just that.

Thanks to human's ability to perform complex mathematical calculations, we know when these events occur and where to look so we are always prepared to witness them in action.

Mercury transit is a BIG deal. Every astronomer in the world has prepared for this event for months and they were all ready last week. The last transit was on May 7, 2003 and the next one will not occur until May 2016. This year, the year 2006, a live webcast from Kitt Peak National Observatory's exploratorium was set up to let the world participate in this event. Of course, I took some time off my busy schedule of doing mostly nothing to watch this rare event. The webcast used a Mead 16" telescope with special solar filter as a main tool but it had two other telescopes with different viewing equipment.

Watching the sun is never an easy task. I remember as a kid, I was taught to watch solar eclipses by looking at a dimmed reflection from a bucket of water, or through a piece of exposed film. Nowadays, the world has grown much more sophisticated and we have more gadgets to fit our fancies to do these things. I do have a telescope, but not about to deploy it for this event because without special solar filtering equipment, I do not think my retinas will survive the ordeal. So the webcast was such a nice gift. Thank you, Kitt Peak observatory! Knowing this being a LONG event, I was prepared for a planned 5 hour+ session. Here is the story book:




As way of background, the time is UT ("Universal time") or GMT ("Greenwich Mean Time") which is five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time (EST) for people who live in the Eastern seaboard of the US like myself. As seen here,



not everyone on earth could see the transit the same way. Most of the area surrounding the continent of Africa could not see it at all. Australia and Western Pacific saw the transit at sunrise while most of North and South America could view a portion of the transit during sunset. Kitt Peak was ideally positioned to see this Mercury transit in all its entirety.

The webcast was ably commented by expert astronomers who took turns explaining what was being shown. Even these seasoned professionals got all excited when the planet Mercury started its trajectory across the surface of the sun, called first, second third and fourth contacts. Three telescopes were fitted to display views of the sun in white light with orange filter, in hydrogen alpha visible light and in excited calcium wave length. Needless to say, all images seen during the webcast were excellent, one of which appeared like this:



Truthfully, after about an hour, the webcast looked pretty boring because all you see was a round dot inside an orange square. Every now and then, the experts would come back on line to engage the viewers. At one time, they gave a tour of the edge of the sun, which was great because I do not think you can get that kind of tour from any travel agency on earth. I went for the distance and stayed with the webcast until the bitter end when it signed off, after Mercury finished its final fourth contact, egressing the surface of the sun and bid it goodbye until the year 2016.

OK. So, how was it, you ask? Was it time well spent or a total waste of 5 hours plus? What's the point in all this? If you revisit one of my previous blogs, on September 17 of this year, you can watch a pool table trick shot. If you understand French, you may hear a comment by a woman spectator: "... the exhibition serves no purpose and it is an unbelievable waste of time," to which there are some potent male chauvinistic replies from the French men that will not be repeated here. So, the answer is "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," which on its own merit can be subject of another blog. I may do that in the future, who knows?

Scientifically speaking, many experiments were being conducted during the transit because it offered unique opportunites to use the sun as a backgroud that aids in the study, for example, of Mercury's sodium content in its atmosphere that is not possible otherwise. You didn't know that Mercury has an atmosphere, did you? See? Time NOT wasted!

Me? I have a totally different take. I felt so sorry for our poor planet Mercury watching its transit. Undoubtedly, many times in one's lifetime, one cannot help but to feel lonesome to some degree. Such potentially devastating condition of the human mind can be detected in many well known literary authors as reflected in their books, theatrical plays, movies and other art forms. One famous such work was a song written in 1949 by Hank Williams, bearing the same name as the title of this blog. If you listen to the rendition of that song by country singer Johnny Cash, you probably would want to die. If you think that human loneliness is bad, think about the poor planets in our poor solar system that includes our own poor earth. We are all but a collective mass of matter destined to wander eternally without hope of escape in the boundless, empty, cold and dark void of the universe until death dawns. The fact that we are a thinking species makes it much worse. Can we be better off being just rocks? Are we sure rocks do not feel pain?

So, please take a look at a composite of the now history Mercury transit that lasted 5 hours +:

.

That is a LONELY trek that repeats for an eternity. How sad! Now that you can see it, perhaps you can feel it!

Gravity pulls!

Before the ink on my last blog dried, I received a new suggestion for a superior selection of a choice spot for "the mother of all free falls:" the Glass Bridge, also known as the Skywalk. This is supposed to be on a site within the US' Grand Canyon, looking down on the Colorado river.

To be fair, know that this is a new project under construction that has suffered some setbacks and it is slated for a grand opening toward the end of the year 2006. Mark your calendar and get your airline ticket if you want to be the first in line for a spungy jump. However, remember that the pictures you see below are "artist's rendering" of a "soon to be built" structure. Let's hope they do not run out of cash in the middle of the construction that is taking place right at this moment.

Of course, I cannot let this candidate off the list I already cited in my previous blog, so here it is:



You can see in the insert that a jump from this beauty easily dwarfs all that from the top of all the known skyscrapers of the world. To scale, the US' Empire State Building on the left is seen with its puny 1,252 feet. To the right is the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101, towering at a mere 1,671 feet. But look at this:



Do you see the tiny Colorado river below? You think you can hit it? Or will you miss it? Did you consider wind shear? Now, a new calculation is in order. It will take you a LONG, LONG, LONG 15.6 second to cover the whopping 4,000 feet of height. By the time you reach your destination, you should be traveling at the speed of 350 miles per hour. Thankfully, we are on earth, and the precious air we use to breathe slows you down to about a mere 130 miles per hour or so, depending on your weight and a few other physical constants contained in the consideration paid to what physics calls "terminal velocity." That hurts!

Do you know what I think? This structure is catered for insane people! It has a glass bottom, sticks out 70 feet into nothingness, you have to pay to be scared to death stepping on the glass bottom cantilever with no cable support from above or beam support from below. Make sure you do not wear your hat on a windy day and hang on dearly to the glass side rail!

A positive final departing note: I am sure that the mere fact of taking one step out on this structure and look down once will be enough to erase all dark thoughts from your mind. Suddenly, you will think that life is so beautiful and please, please, please, let me get back to the safety of the rock side. What was I thinking?

M*A*S*H 1977

I do not really know why people get more depressed at the approach of holidays in the US. I am not even sure if this is true worldwide, and would be amazed if that is so. In any case, so called US experts would assert they know all the reasons behind this perceived trend which they name SAD for "seasonal affective disorder." Very appropriately, a documentary movie is recently released named "The Bridge." This documentary film deals with the most popular suicide destination in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, USA. After learning about this film, my memory flashes back several decades to my youth from which I can recall vividly one question I had to which I did not readily have answers at that time. I know I can dive from a diving platform into a swimming pool. The question was: can I dive into an ocean from a very high altitude (like jumping off an airplane) to gracefully split the water to win a gold medal as the world's best Olympic diver? According to "The Bridge:" No! Over my dead body! Actually, that's what the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge is famous for: that's how you commit suicide, jump off that bridge.

You see, it's all in the physics of how things go in this universe. Curiously, it involves the second law of thermodynamics and Shakespear, but I am in a mellow mood now and will spare you that highly philosophical tirade. Let's talk low order physics:

From the bridge escarpment, you are about 250 feet above the ocean surface below. From elementary Newton's calculation, it takes you a mere 4 seconds to free fall and reach the water with a velocity of about 90 miles per hour. On reaching the surface of the water, unfortunately, you carry with you a lot of baggage: your kinetic energy! By the law of conservation of energy and momentum etc... regardless of how your body meets the water molecules, this energy is converted to other forms such as heat and forces that want to interact with every molecules of your body, some of which are your skull, your femur, fibula, tibia, humerus, radius, ulna, clavical etc...

Although your bones are hard as steel, they are no match! There are fascinating engineering studies of how the 206 bones in a human boby break under the stress of stretching, compression, torsion etc... the bottom line is, under appropriate stress, they all break. At 90 miles per hour impacting the water molecules, many of the bones will break, leaving the internal organs exposed to the environment. The bottom line is

“jumps from higher than . . . 250 feet over water are almost always fatal.”

"Jumpers who hit the water do so with a force of about fifteen thousand pounds per square inch. Eighty-five per cent of them suffer broken ribs, which rip inward and tear through the spleen, the lungs, and the heart. Vertebrae snap, and the liver often ruptures."



Interestingly, it is not always fatal because some suiciders have second thought during that 4 seconds so they chose to go feet first and their skull may remain intact. With some cooperation from lady luck, they can survive to tell.

Below are two very interesting graphical representations of studies related to "The Bridge:"

The first one shows the distribution of the locations from which suiciders jumped off. They like the location of light pole numbered 69, facing the East side of the bridge, and at about mid-span.



The second graph shows the distribution of suiciders over the years since the bridge was first constructed in 1937. 1977 had the highest number of 40 persons jumping off the bridge. It is not clear how many survived, not too many.



And you know what? Take a look at that year, 1977, one of the most popular television shows was: "M*A*S*H" whose theme song was by Mike Altman and Johnny Mandel. Its title? "Suicide is Painless."

Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be,
The pains that are withheld for me,
I realize and I can see...

That suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.

The game of life is hard to play,
I'm going to loose it anyway,
The loosin' card I'll someday lay;
So this is all I have to say...

That suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.

The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I'm beat
And to another give my seat
For that's the only painless feat.

That suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
And you can do the same thing if you please.

Copyright (C) 1970 by Twentieth Century-Fox Music Corporation,
8544 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90069
Twentieth Century-Fox Music Corp. Ltd., London W1, England
International Copyright Secured
Made in U.S.A.
All Rights Reserved
AJS

Not so, according to my analysis and recorded facts at "The Bridge."

Let's see, if things do not go so well, where else can one go? To start... The Empire State Building (102 floors, 1252 feet, 381 meters high,) the Duomo, St. Peter’s Basilica, Sydney Harbor Bridge and the eternal city of light with its Eiffel Tower! I am sure you do not want to see my analysis of how the Young Modulus of bones behave when bones hit the concrete.

Cheers! Don't be so gloomy, please!

I am afraid, really really afraid...

Everytime I have the yen for a juicy barbeque steak (is this spelled right? barbeque??? need to check it out...) and prefer to have it done myself rather than to go to an expensive restaurant, I am faced with a mortal fear. So, today, I decide to get to the root of this mental block that has plagued me for as long as I can remember. Then, I need to look for a cure!

First order of business, scientifically speaking, is to analyze the situation and discover the roots of this problem. Roots? Looks like I need to dig!

Starting with just the letter "A," I can already think of at least 60 reasons contributing to my consternation, too numerous to tell you about all of them. Systematically though, I want to gather and list some of the possible causes that may contribute to my anguish:

Agliophobia or Algophobia are definitely suspect. And please, please, please, please do not confuse these with Agraphobia or Contreltophobia.

Now, Agrizoophobia is definitely in the hunt... although Aichmophobia comes close to being a possible candidate.

How about Amychophobia? Hhmmm, possible, possible!

Definitely, I need to consider Aphenphosmphobia but Apiphobia may be unfounded!

Are you ready to proceed to the letter "Z?"

Batrachophobia, Belonephobia, Blennophobia, Bufonophobia. Chiraptophobia, Cnidophobia (definitely, brrrr... this really, really scares me!)

Not to forget Doraphobia!

Enetophobia, Entomophobia, Haphephobia, Helminthophobia, Herpetophobia, Homichlophobia, Melissophobia, Microphobia, Molysmophobia, Mottephobia, Musophobia, Myrmecophobia, Myxophobia, Nosophobia, Odynophobia, especially Ophidiophobia!!!

Panthophobia, Parasitophobia, Pathophobia, Pediculophobia, Phobophobia, Phthiriophobia, Ranidaphobia, Scoleciphobia, Spermatophobia, Spheksophobia, Stenophobia, Suriphobia, Taeniophobia, Traumatophobia, Trypanophobia, Verminophobia
and finally, I know we eventually come to it... Zemmiphobia.

If you have not been able to figure out thus far what I am talking about beside the nebulous "obias," take a look at what I need to do! This is serious, and I am not talking about cleaning the cooking utensil! That's the easy part!



Once in a blue moon, I do get the urge to fire up my trusted 2 person BBQ and have a memorable cookout. I have all the tools and supplies conveniently tucked away inside my patio so it is a simple matter to start the process. However, to start, I need to get the charcoal out of the bag! This bag may have lingered outdoor for many moons and God only knows what may have transpired since it was last touched by a human. Now, how one would do this? What are the risks one encounters venturing one's hand inside this dark and forbidden space to retrieve the brickets? You know what I mean? What creature may be ambushing in there ready to strike without warning?

After seriously twisting my poor brain, here are a few possible cures, none of which I think will work:

1. Dump content by emptying into BBQ pit
2. Use long tongs to retrieve carbon brickets, one by one?
3. Use thick and heavy protecting gloves
4. Use transparent bag to contain charcoal.

It's a tough problem. 1 no doubt will give me a fit of C6FallingAllOverThePlacePhobia, 2 will trigger YouVeGotThreeOf42BricketAreWeThereYetPhobia, 3 WhereAreMyFingersThisWontWorkPhobia and 4 ItsAllBlackUCantSeeThruPhobia. Nah! I told you, none shall work!

I'll keep the status quo to enjoy the heart pounding adventures everytime I poke my hand in this unknown black hole. To be sure, I won't use my right hand. Wait a minute! I need to make sure I am not sinistral or southpaw, in which case I need to "not to use my left hand." One can never be too careful. Life is so stressful!

Fun videos

Bu San

(81 minutes)(2004)(Not rated)

Tonight, taking a break from doing nothing, I decided to take a peek at a new movie I just added to my vast collection of movies. It's a foreign movie and I had no idea what it was about. The English translated name is "Goodbye Dragon Inn." It is always fun to peek into a movie without any prejudged idea of what it could be. Of course, I had my share of unpleasant surprises, and forced to watch movies of dubious quality. Once in a while, it's a good one, but that is rare. This one? I am still trying to decide. You be the judge!

After about 15 minutes into the movie, I thought there was something wrong with my DVD player. It seems like the playing is in slow motion. This can't be. What is this? Time to look it up on the internet. I like a trusted movie site (imdb) that seems to have detailed information about any movie that you would ever need to look up, so I go there to get this:

SYNOPSIS
The subject of cinema, of the mix of loneliness and connection that is part of being in a movie audience, is the concern of this sad, beautiful, minimalist composition by Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang (WHAT TIME IS IT THERE?). The action takes place Inside a Taipei movie theater operated by a lonely clubfooted woman (Shiyang Chi-Chen) whose slow steps echo through the empty corridors and aisles, as if measuring out the feet of celluloid that make up the film itself...

MPAA RATING
Not Rated

RELEASE DATES
Theatrical: Sep 17, 2004
Video: Feb 15, 2005

RELEASE COMPANY
Wellspring

GENRE
Foreign Films, Chinese/Mandarin, Action, Theatrical Release, Cinema, Film About Film

So, for a start, this is saying the movie is good! Really? I couldn't tell and I am watching it! So, the next natural question is: What does "Rotten Tomatoes" say about Bu San?

To my big surprise, it got a high rating: 81% as it is rated a rare "Fresh" as in "Not Rotten." Wow! There is something I am missing here!

Fresh 81% by Rotten Tomatoes

So, let me try to convey to you a taste of this strange movie in the hope that you would be incited to look for it and watch it yourself, if you would dare. In this movie, one character is a woman (later it turns out that she is quite attractive looking) with a pronounced impediment in her right leg so she walks very slowly in the manner a person walks with a prosthetic limb.

In one of the scenes, I sat to endure the director showing this woman walking up three flights of stairs, one slow step at a time to end up following a long corridor and finally disappearing behind a door whose shot lingers for more than a minute. Each scene cut must last about 2 to 3 minutes.

But that was not all, in a following scene, the movie shows a wide shot of the inside of the theater which is the main subject of the movie where the woman starts at the X. Step by step, she stumps to A, turns left to B and proceeds to C, all in one LONG static shot.

This first scene starts at 02 minutes 19 seconds...


This scene above ends at 06 minutes 53 seconds so this long static shot lasted a whopping 4 minutes 34 seconds!

Then the frame above is shown another 3 - 4 minutes where NOTHING happens. I thought my player froze!

With infinite patience, I was very curious to see how all this turns out, so I sat through this movie in its entirety. The end, after 81 minutes, was worth it and I was rewarded with a nice song that ended the ordeal. If you listen to the sound track of the song Chong Feng rendered by Ge Lan below, you can get a flavor of the pace of this strange movie by noting that the song began after almost a minute of rain audio.

The words are from the subtitle, and I hope that it does say what the song says...

Chong Feng
by Ge Lan

I remember
Under the moon
I remember
Before the flowers
So much of the past
Lingers in my heart
Half is bitter
Half is sweet
Year after year
I can't let go
Can't let go
Can't let go
Under the moon
Before the flowers
Can't let go
Can't let go
I'll remember with longing forever

I remember
Under the moon...

Amazingly, the first line of dialogue appears 40 minutes into the film. For me, this is a first.

Below is what the page from "Rotten Tomatoes" web in which expert movie critics opined about "Goodbye Dragon Inn:"

A droll gem that celebrates movie love with feeling and deadpan humor.

It certainly stands as Tsai's most skillful work -- he manages to keep viewer attention for a full 81 minutes with a minimum of action and dialogue.

A movie of elegant understatement and considerable formal intelligence.
This is one of the most gorgeous and maturely composed movies you'll see this year.

Its simple, meticulously composed frames are full of mystery and feeling; it's an action movie that stands perfectly still. What really sticks with you is the picture's aura of twilight vibrancy, and the deep pleasure Tsai takes in savoring subtle emotions that other filmmakers might not even register.

Though the film's deliberate pace is sometimes frustrating, it casts a quietly powerful spell and the memory of its images lingers provocatively long after they've flickered into darkness. A masterful meditation on both the singular and collective experience of going to the movies. Tsai's elegy to a now-departed Taipei theater is also a beautiful love poem to the movies.

Ming-liang writes an eloquent billet-doux that has the heart-felt sensibilities and emotions of what loving and living with film are about.

Hypnotic in effect but ultimately rather irritating, Goodbye, Dragon Inn will entice those viewers who like oblique, allusive cinema.

This is a funny, sad, stunningly smart movie about the end of movies, made in Tsai's inimitable, unblinking style.

Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang's stunning "Goodbye, Dragon Inn," which takes place in a faded, decrepit Taipei movie palace on the night of its last-ever showing,

"Goodbye, Dragon Inn" is virtually wordless
The theater in which Tsai filmed the movie -- it's called the Fu-Ho
"Goodbye, Dragon Inn" is openly elegiac, and yet it's far from depressing.

Bu San won quite a few awards, so the critics were not alone in their rave:

Special Jury Award
Chicago International Film Festival Gold Plaque
Chlotrudis Award
Golden Horse Award
Golden Tulip
Award of the City of Nantes
Venice Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize

I am quite puzzled and I know what I need to do: watch this movie a few more times. Do you believe me?

What to do? What to do?

Days like these, actually months like these make me want to cry, or better, consult Nostradamus. This guy, who lived in the 16th century, wrote in quatrains, and he may have written to advise me what I ought to do, because I am at my wit's end. I am at a loss, I am in the mist and my compass is not pointing North. For at least three or four weeks, I have been fighting a monumental problem that profoundly affects my life, making me losing sleep, ages me prematurely. Me worry? Since when? Since I learned that there is something in my garage that eats my trash! I hate that!

What to do? What to do?

The first clues I got were when I examined the cherry seeds, from the delicious cherries we had, neatly packed away in the trash bin awaiting to be hauled to the curb for trash collection the next day. These cherry seeds were picked sparkling clean, to the core, and instead of being neatly packed, they were all over the garage floor! Must be a mouse, or heaven forbid, a rat that sneaked into the garage. I hate these animals, especially when I have to go to the garage at nights, alone! I still have goose bumps when I think about the white of the eyes from the giant rat in "Lady and the tramp." Brrrrrrr!!!

Reluctantly, I dug out a rat trap, and shuddered at the unpleasant chore of setting it with apetizing bait. I don't like this, but it's him (or is it her) or me! For a few nights, the yummy peanut butter was eaten clean and the trap triggered with nothing to show. Wow! A smart rat! One time, the trap was dragged a good 10 feet from one location to the next. Must be a BIG rat! After observing the trap being mistreated in this manner, I had second thought, but had no idea what to do next, that is until one fateful night. I had to venture out to the garage in the dead of the night, and heard noise on the top shelf.

Who's there? A possum big as three giant rats combined, that's who! She (yes, it's a she. How do I know? read on,) looked at me with disdain and showed a mood of picking a fight. No problem, I picked up a long and BIG stick and we engaged in a duel for about 10 minutes. The garage door was wide open but she was always retreating in the opposite direction. Run, run, run inside to clear the garage for a more advantageous battle field, I told myself. By the time I got back with two sets of keys and moved the two cars out. She possum was nowhere to be seen. Vanished into thin air!

First puzzle: did she escape out of the garage? Wishful thinking, or was she still ambushing me from the comfort of a warm and dry large rent free palace? Can't tell. So, I called it the night. Next day, second puzzle: did she escape out of the garage? Wishful thinking or was she still ambushing me from the comfort of a warm and dry large rent free palace? Still can't tell. What to do? What to do?

If you read one of my previous blog, you may remember that I mentioned an episode I had to deal with and evict a family of critters living in my roof's crawl space. I still kept as souvenir a possum/racoon trap so now it comes in very handy. Piece of cake, and this is a very humane solution, I like it! According to law, once a critter is trapped, by law you MUST "dispose of" (meaning terminate) him/her and NOT PERMITTED to release him/her to the wild because it is illegal! I don't know about that, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

This is a smart possum! After a few nights of eating my half bananas without triggering the trap, I gave up the battle of wit and let her hibernate for a while. But my savant neighbor told me that the poor critter may die of dehydration! More work for me now that I have to supply free refreshment as well. Oh well! Not the end of the world.

Then I was distracted by other depressing events such as rainy days without end for several days in a row, a pseudo hurricane Ernesto that fizzled and vanished without leaving a trace. Our poor possum was demoted in importance to secondary, and I forgot all about her until this morning, when my son, all excited, woke me up with the earth shattering news that WE GOT THE POSSUM! Sure enough, we got a critter in the trap, very nice! But wait a minute, what is this? Is this possum some kind of a Houdini? It was a lot bigger when we put up the big midnight fight in the garage. It is now much smaller!??? It's a baby, that's why! Arrrggghhhhh.... I am sure I now have a family of possum in my garage! The mother is so darn smart she ate the bait out of the trap every time, and all we managed was to trap a baby. How do they grow so quick? Wow! Take a look at the baby that was trapped:



Needless to say, I did the unthinkable, I realeased, with all its illegality, the baby in my backyard. The poor fellow was fierce and tried to put up a fight, but I ignored his/her provocation. Please get out and go free. Take good care of yourself. I hope he/she does not come back and sneak into my garage to be reunited with his/her family.

Now, the battle will be raging. How many to evict? It ain't going to be easy, and where in the heck do they hide? I emptied my garage twice and made a ruckus twice, looking for tenants to no avail. A true mystery! Invisible critters! That's all I need. I am thinking of consulting Nostradamus to see what he has to say. Although dead, I am sure he can reach beyond the grave to give me a clue as to which of his quatrains I should consult.

Let's see... quatrains, quatrains...

Here's one in Century # 2, Quatrain # 24:

Bêtes farouches de faim fleuves tranner;
Plus part du champ encore Hister sera,
En caige de fer le grand sera treisner,
Quand rien enfant de Germain observa. (II.24)

Translated by some obscur scholar as ...

Beasts ferocious from hunger will swim across rivers:
The greater part of the region will be against the Hister,
The great one will cause it to be dragged in an iron cage,
When the German child will observe nothing.

If you want my honest opinion, his French was not so good, but that's what the internet people believe so I am just going with the flow, with tongue in cheek, I must say.

I din't know that they are Germans, these critters, but nonetheless, the German child is gone because I released him/her earlier today so "the child will observe nothing" True! The great one will no doubt be dragged in an iron cage. Didn't know her name was Hister! I am not sure about the rivers this Hister mother had to swim across to land here in my garage, but it could conceivably be true.

Wow! Nostradamus saw this coming a few hundred years ago. It was written! It was to be done! Like Ramses II would say!

I know I have bought a dozen surveillant cameras that I never bother to deploy. This is a golden occasion to use that money spent. OK. I'll do it. I plan to install the motion detector and a couple of low light video cameras in my garage to find out where they are hiding. With some luck, I can record the invaders' activities and will post the clips here.

Watch out! Here I come, ready or not!

Ernesto is coming...

I am speechless...


so... let the symphony begin...




Are butterflies free?

Spring Rain

Instead of getting all worked up with the frenzy of another hurricane heading our way: Ernesto, yes, again, I decided to meditate and let you join in watching my Spring Rain. You should right click your mouse, zoom in to see the droplets splashing on the surface of the water. You may want to use the hand icon to pan around different parts of the river. It's therapeutic! But... you may have to click your left mouse button first to activate the rain. Do you know why? That was because Microsoft got sued, and they had to make changes to their web browser, resulting in havoc and more work for all of us. Click here, click there, patch now, patch later... It's fun.

What do I use? Opera 9, it's a neat free browser that has very nice features. Try it, you'll like it.

Eeew! That's gross!

Yesterday, I came across a news item that got my attention! "FDA approves viruses as food additive bacteriophages meant to kill harmful bacteria on lunch meats." Now, if that does not get your attention, it certainly did mine! Since I am a meat eater, and for lunch too, I must come to the bottom of this to understand what this is all about.

Virus additive in my food? Over my dead body! Well, come to think seriously, it may very well come to that. If I remember correctly my Latin lessons, "virus" means "poison!" The news goes on to say that "A mix of bacteria-killing viruses can be safely sprayed on cold cuts, hot dogs and sausages to combat common microbes that kill hundreds of people a year, federal health officials said Friday in granting the first-ever approval of viruses as a food additive. The combination of six viruses is designed to be sprayed on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products, including sliced ham and turkey."

In addition, "The special viruses, called bacteriophages, are meant to kill strains of the Listeria monocytogenes bacterium, the Food and Drug Administration said in declaring it safe to use on ready-to-eat meats prior to their packaging. The viruses are the first to win FDA approval for use as a food additive."

So, if I understood this correctly, these people will spray the ready to eat food with a cocktail of six viruses, no less, then package the food to sell in super markets! And they say this is safe, and good for the consumer. Wow! How does this work? Let's see...

First of all, these things are really tiny, so you can't see any of them but you can be sure if this is true, there are billions of them inside the package, and following is how it works, pretty much like what you saw in the original movie Alien.

The targets are bacteria, and the bacteriophages are like the terminators. They also look like teminators:



The bacteriophages have legs specially designed to hook onto the taget bacteria they are supposed to hunt, inject their own genetic material inside the host cell, multiply and simply burst and kill the host. Don't you think it sounds familiar to the Alien creature? And we are going to eat these guys? Eeew!

What these people selling this product do not say is after they have done their deed of exploding the bacteria to bits, what do bacteriophages do? Do they just float around inside our body in a dormant state? I want to know how long these guys are expected to live, if they do live. It is no comfort to also know that these virions can remain in this dormant state for extended periods of time, waiting patiently to come into contact with the appropriate host. Tracing the history of bacteriophages, their early discovery had origin in the former Soviet republic of Georgia! I am not sure I would trust this technology. Greek root word phagein, meaning "to eat" and I sure do not want to have billions of potential "eaters" floating around dormant inside my body.

To make money using these terminators, commercial biotech companies manufacture or harvest the bacteriophages all over the world, including countries of Europe and harvesting sites from Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

What won't they invent next? Safe to eat billions of needle wielding terminators ready to inject and burst? Will they mutate or go berzerk like Hal? Who knows?

Joe photo remembered!

I was making my way into my office early today to discover a nasty surprise that lurked overnight. It was like stepping into an oven. What happened? No air is what happened! This must be a sympathy gesture from "hot and humid right smack in the middle of the hurricane season with tropical storm Chris gathering strength out in the Caribbean moving West/NorthWest threatening to become a baby cane" Miami sharing the grief with the rest of the US in the steaming heat wave that overtakes the country at this moment. With the war raging in the Middle East, many people say this is Armageddon, and it sure feels like it right now in my office.

What a great way to start a day, an ordinary day. OK. You can handle this. Pray for the A/C to come back on fast.... Done! Turn on your laptop, go check your email, make yourself a hot cocoa. Hot cocoa??? No way! Get a cold diet soda instead! OK! Settle down. Calm down, this is NOT Armageddon, OK?

What's this? An e-card from somebody? Must be from my secret female admiror from the past. Let's see... "Click here to pick up your birthday eCard!" Oy my God! It's my BD! I forgot about it all together. Last night, I received ONE eCard from a cyber anonymous. It was so moving and touching I was at a loss for words. I must be a very popular guy to have received so much lavish attention on my banal BD! Just one eCard! Not that it wasn't a great one, actually, I love it! Of course, I had received another symbolic and reliable year in and year out gift in the mail, but that was expected. In all honesty, I forgot all about it this morning, the fateful morning of it all, my BD. And this unexpected eCard is right here, personally hand delivered to my in box.

I am not too concerned this eCard is a cheap trick from some virus wielding, Trojan horse trading, back door sneaking hacker in the cyber space trying to trick me to click on their link, because this seems to come from an old friendly company who
remembers me and is trying to lure me back for business. But that's OK. I like that.

OK. Do not click on it yet! Check it out first... what's this thing's URL? Hmmm... looks OK to me. Let's see what they have to say...

It's from Joe photo! So, dear old Joe photo still got me in his database and their business is smart enough to pull it out just in time. Good PR stunt. If you wondered what I got, here it is...



It comes with a full orchestration of "Today is your BD, happy BD to you ..." etc song in full live blasting sound. My office next door must think we are the partying type! Naturally, I grab the HiFi sound that accompanied my gift. After all, it's mine now and I converted it to MP3. Thank you Joe photo! If I can figure out how to place that MP3 here, I will so you can hear it too.

And here it is:

Happy BD To Me!

Unexpectedly, a telephone call came to say that I am getting one more year's worth of wrinkle uniformly distributed over my body and soul! Hmmm... Where did that come from? I am happy to hear it!

That made my day. Now, if the A/C would hurry up and send in some cool air, I can start working. May be I should go to buy something from Joe photo??? Nah! Next year!

Looking back at the date of my last blog, it has been so long ago. where did the time go?

Memory...

I would love to understand how the short term memory works in a human person, me, for instance. I am not so ambituous as to want solving the complete mystery of how the memory works. The problem is too large and may become intractable in a flash. I can count using the fingers of my two hands the different kinds of memory: short term, long term, conscious, unconscious (unconscious memory??? really???) implicit, explicit, procedural, semantic, episodic... and other types I can't remember their names... So, how does the short term, my short term memory work? I need to understand this in a hurry because I think it is failing! Because of this failing, I paid a heavy price this morning.

These days, I have to get in and out of an eight story parking garage several times a day for reason I would rather not dwell into now. Of course, mere mortals always get the treatment given to mushrooms. The first two floors are reserved for very important persons. The next two floors are reserved for valet parking persons to park the cars belonging to the second type of very important persons, but not high enough in the importance scale so they cannot park in the first two floors. Any unseasoned drivers who do not respect this rule run a huge risk of wandering for hours in search of their cars on exit, not knowing that they have been "towed at owners' expense." Not me, I am smart enough to skip the first four floors and fight for an invisible empty spot to park at higher up levels, five, six, seven and eight floor.

In lieu of regular exercise I do not do because I found a water tight excuse: I am way too busy, I made a solemn promise to myself to use stairs and never to set foot in elevators. That is my exercise regime and I always find reasons to climb stairs in both directions, up and down. Let me tell you another secret right here: count the steps when you climb stairs. It's great for memory. This of course leads me back to why I started this blog in the first place, my short term memory is waning... and I need to do something about it.

I am usually very absent minded. When I go to a certain place and park my car, upon return, I would have a terrible time to remember the place I parked it. I can affirm to you that that is a most perplexing thing that can happen to you. You can stand in this huge parking garage, or this boundless parking place, and God forbid, if you went to a big event like a football game, in this sea of cars, scratching your head wondering where your car may be. It is a hopeless problem to untangle. So, experienced as I am, I invented and patented a most ingenious way to solve this embarrasing misadventure. When I leave my car, I spend at least a few minutes to mentally mark the surroundings and write them in, you got it, my short term memory. For instance, I will note that my car is at a location where I can see the highway with the water fountain to the left of the Holiday Inn sign, and definitely not on the side of the beautiful scantily clad lady selling Victoria Secret wares. But the most important piece of information is THE FLOOR NUMBER if it happens to be in a multi story parking garage. However, it is never so simple. If you only remember the floor number, you will be pleasantly surprised that, surprise, they may have different colors! Yellow, red, blue and green are the most popular colors, so you'd better remember them too. If you do not write in your short term memory location 6 YELLOW, and only write 6, you'd spend at least an extra 30 minutes before you can get out of the garage.

OK. So what was the problem this morning? Did the patented method to remember parking location fail? No, it did not. What failed was my short term memory. I am sure I wrote it in there, but by the time I retrieved the information, my car wasn't there! Where the heck was it? Hmmm... Let's not panic and try to figure this out logically. It says here 5, and there are only two 5s. One going up, and one going down. Piece of cake, let's walk up first. Nope. Let's now walk down. Nope! What? This is seriously bad. I now realize it is a good thing this garage reserved the first 4 floors to important people. By process of elimination, I need not worry about 1, 2 and 3 and 4. So, my car must be at 5, 6, 7 or 8. But it is not at 5 as my short term memory is reading. I really hope I did not park it in 4. But it is very unlikely it's there.

For some reason, the city of Miami makes stair steps that are not uniform. You'd think since all the floors are of the same height, the number of stair steps would be the same, but they are not. Some floors have 8, some have 9, some have 10, but rarely more than 10 steps. Also, to give the climbers a break, or to give them the illusion of "you are almost there, buddy, keep it up," the stairs between floors are broken up into two stages so while climbing the stairs, you would have to step up or down an average of 17 steps or so for each floor. Eight floors will tax you with about more than a hundred steps. That's a lot when you work against gravity in the up direction.

After a lot of systematic steps, I found my car on the seventh floor! Seven! I was exhausted and determined to have my head examined. How could my memory miss the mark by so much? OK. Where is the short term memory center's at? Time to look up the map. So I asked a radiologist's friend of mine and he obliged. He gave me an off hour free CT scan of the appropriate part of my body and the answer is clear as day:



There is no screw loose, but the dual fans are clearly in a "stop" position. Overheat! No wonder it's faulty! A quick short research detour reveals that short term memory works just like RAM memory in computers. Scientists widely believe it is 7 chunks in length and is vulnerable to interruption and interference. Lo and behold, this memory decays as time goes by. Let me be realistic and assume that I am only average, capable of using 4 chunks. So, floor 7, down, overlooking sexy model only use 3 chunks with room to spare... but somehow it didn't work today. May be I only have the capacity of one chunk! I know what I'll do next. I'll go on line and look for a homing device... Let's see... Let's Google "car homing device." A mere 163,000 pages came back in 0.17 seconds.

Let's forget about the short term memory problem. Life is too short! I'll get myself one of those WAPs!