Highs and Lows of Life on Norwegian Epic

Highs and Lows of Life on Norwegian Epic

First, the bottom line: if we were billionaires, we might well spend about ¼ of the rest of our lives on Norwegian Cruise lines. As it is, living off a pension but with platinum status and with Luda finding good deals, we will probably continue at about one cruise per year. This year, we went on two cruises within the past few months, each very different. The highs and lows would be very different for different people, at different times, on different ships. On this cruise, the food, the drink and the spa were the high points on board the ship for us. The clear, absolute low point was the setup of the room, with nothing but a thin glassy partition between the sleeping space and the toilet, forcing all kinds of gyrations for all three of us at night.

       On our previous cruise, on Norwegian Escape to the Caribbean, I spent a lot of time on the ship meditating, especially about deep issues in basic physics. All three of us (Luda, me, Chris) used the rope-climbing system on the ship, and other exercise options. The setup of the room was no problem. To our local Quaker Meeting, I described the experience as “being at the quiet fulcrum of four great forces of nature – the sun, the stars in the galaxy, the ocean of life, and Luda.” But this cruise was quite different. With 13 days on board the ship, and only 4 sea days, I decided to focus more on the unique opportunities on-shore, which Luda organized and optimized to a degree which would curl the hair of people who believe in orderly predictable robust control (except on Majorca, where we walked into the ship two hours before the all-aboard deadline). This time, the ship was more for food, recovery and sleep – though we did see two live shows, both of which included interesting dancing girls and other engaging skits. Because I am scheduled for prostate surgery in 9 days, I resolved not to let hormones flow in my bloodstream the way I used to when watching such sights, but there was still a lot of room for the normal, safe flow of thoughts and qi.

            We arrived at the ship on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 16, taking the local port bus from Barcelona city center. The lines seemed long to me. (20 minutes?). There were friendly local girls managing the lines for NCL, and they did not implement the fast lines for gold and platinum customers we had used before. When we finally got to a check-in position, however, the girl was quite friendly and asked what we had seen in Barcelona. “The new cathedral, the arc de triomphe, the far market, the Picasso Museum, the street from the plaza down to the harbor circle, the whole path down the middle of Joan of Arc boulevard, and ...” “How many days did you spend here?” “Oh, we just arrived this morning, by overnight Alsa bus from Madrid.” Ah, the look on her face! And the feeling of pain in my feet... I had agreed with Luda that I needed to build up my body for the coming surgery, so I followed her intense itineraries all the way, and felt pain in my feet every single night... and often more than just my feet.

            On board, they were unusually religious about blocking entry even to the floor of our stateroom, before all assigned cleanups were done. (I never saw that before on Norwegian.) So Luda and I went straight to O’Sheehan’s, where we ordered Thai chicken wings and I ordered Newcastle ale. (Norwegian now offers four types of chicken wings, of which Thai is the spiciest. They were very good, and we came back many times on later days. I slightly preferred their older system, with just one type of wing and a spicier dipping sauce, but it seems most customers do not want as much spice as we would.) O’Sheehan’s food is free for everyone on Norwegian ships, and available without reservations almost any time of day, but the ale would have cost money – except that Luda had gotten a special deal including unlimited free food and drink for all three of us all days. Just that day, they did not have Newcastle, but they had Guinness and Boddington as backups. By the way, Chris went up to the Garden Cafe up top, where there was a broader selection and a great view, where he could have his personal freedom.

            I don’t like the geometry of O’Sheehan’s on Epic, with a noisy bowling alley visible close by on the good side, and noisier video games on the other side. I preferred the old “Ocean Blue” from earlier ships. They say that Norwegian will be renaming O’Sheehan’s back to Ocean Blue in the future, maybe because other folks felt the same, but I doubt they will be able to fix this geometry on Epic! Whatever... It wasn’t so bad, and the food tasted great right then.

            As I eased my feet, Luda eased into some news she worried about. “Well, Paul, we got the food and drink packages free, and we are paying less than half what other people paid for our kind of stateroom, so... I hope you don’t mind... it only adds up to $15 per person per day... I ordered the total spa packages for both of us for the whole cruise.” A month earlier, I would have said.. “better not.” In fact, Luda did ask my feelings in advance, and I pointed out that we have a much better spa right in our own neighborhood (“Spa World”), and that we would have other uses for our limited time aboard ship. But I also told Luda years ago, without reservation or retraction, that she could have absolute top control over our finances (in part because she really knows how to add and subtract a lot more than most people do).           At that moment.... with serious pain in my whole body...I was very relieved to hear we could go straight from O’Sheehan’s to hot showers for both of us, and a jacuzzi and so on. But we decided to go to our stateroom floor first, and were pleased that it was open and Chris was already there. He could use the one (exposed) shower in the stateroom, while we headed up to the spa. After we checked in at the spa, we each went to sex-segregated areas first, for bathrooms and showers. (The plumbing was great and modern, but the water was never as hot as I would have liked – or even needed for sore feet in need of lactase purging – and at a few times not hot at all. Still, on most days, the hottest water was ... OK, I guess... even when I pressed the safety buttons to get to the meager hottest water available.) Next, wearing robe and bathing suit, I entered the common area, where there were oranges, fruity cold water and hot water for tea at the entry. I went straight to the mid-sized baden pool, my rendezvous with Luda. It had six traditional jacuzzi jet stations, three of which had jets as powerful as the average home jacuzzi system, enough to be useful in massaging my feet and knees and other places I didn’t even realize needed it... It also had a bubble pool, much better than other bubble pools I have experienced even in Spa World, powerful enough that I could let my whole legs float and really benefit. And it had a traditional hot tub jacuzzi kind of enclave, an overhead shower post in the middle, and a long row of pipes set up like a very wide water chaisse... (something I never saw before) which is where I met Luda on most days. Our normal routine was for me to start with a shave, a prilosec and some glucosamine, then go out and get sore feet ... and come back to spa and then dinner.

            After the baden pool.. on later days we would go to the dry saunas with spectacular view of the sea and shore (from port side of the ship), one hot and one moderate, and the wet sauna, ending up on the big aft outdoor deck with fresh air and even better view. (Other folks used the regular chaisses and warm chaisses inside, just to read or rest, but not us. We preferred to read outdoors when we did read.)

            Dinner was the main time we used our unlimited meal package to go to specialty restaurants, which did require reservations. (But we were able to switch reservations the same day, on the one day when we wanted to.) For four dinners (starting on day two, coming back from Cartagena), we ate at Cagney’s steakhouse, which was the favorite for Luda and Chris. Chris especially loved the two-pound porterhouse steak, for many reasons – flavor, macho challenge of eating it all, and a good quick breakfast for the next day on the one day he couldn’t eat it all. On our first day there, I did have the two-pound prime rib, which was quite good, but not quite as flavorful as the very best prime ribs I had had decades before; I gave some to Chris’s breakfast plate for the next day, but still I ate too much. The brownie desert with port wine was excellent, as was the appetizer... but the next day my blood stream felt as awful and scary as it did a few years ago when I had too much coffee. I started to worry about sudden onset Type II diabetes... but it was a sea day the next day, and I worked hard on the treadmill, limited food, and went to LeBistro instead of Cagney’s that day. I swore I would not overeat like that again, and the strange blood feeling did not come back; it reassured me that I had survived that feeling with coffee in years past, with no long-term problem, so long as I learned my lesson.

            Later at Cagney’s, I had surf and turf, 12 ounce strip steak with oysters Rockefeller, and 18 ounce bone-in rib-eye without desert or appetizers – all with no ill effect. Luda said those oysters were the best she ever had anywhere. Luda and I agreed that none of the lobster anywhere in the ship would be worth trying again, but we are both spoiled by our memory of really fresh big lobsters and lobster stew we had before in Maine. It may be that the lobster in the lobster bisque at Cagney’s was the best lobster we had on the ship, but the liquid reminded me more of typical bland gravy than any lobster bisque I ever had.

            On the next day after that first Cagney day (i.e. dinner of our first sea day), we went to Le Bistro. I really looked forward to ordering bouillabaisse, which I once viewed as my most favorite food. (Life has spoiled me with many other great meals, but I still love a good bouillaibaisse). I was still cooling down from overeating, but I figured that bouillabaisse after a day of exercise and less food would be OK. It was, but the bouillabaisse was quite strange. They made a show of it, first dumping a big pile of seafood into my bowl, and asking if I wanted any fluid with it. It was good seafood, but not at all what I think of as bouillabaisse. They were surprised I asked for all of the fluid. (“How much gravy does the guy want on his pile of seafood?”) It reinforced a certain stereotype of what kind of customer they might be catering to, but no, not the ugly Americans; Americans were very much a minority on this particular cruise. (We have lots of memories of Australians, British, Irish, Iberians, even Russians. The Australians complained more than the others, but the Iberians used more body language to get what they wanted.) I enjoyed the French onion soup and the escargots much better than most of what I have experienced elsewhere, but I only ordered them that first day, as I gradually resolved to eat less. The escargots were especially tasty and calorific.

            The dinners I enjoyed most myself were in the Brazilian restaurant, Moderna, the churrascaria. This was the old Brazilian custom, where they come around with meat again and again until you turn over your card to red, which means “stop.” No need to overeat. Many excellent choices, which you can sample and return to, at least if they are on a good mood. At one time, in the spa, a fellow passenger asked: “How do you like the restaurants? Some people say they like the food, but not the service especially in Moderna.”  Well, the food was so good in Moderna that I still preferred it, and I did not mind spending more time there. The people were also very friendly, but only half the time were they happy to make sure to offer more of whatever we liked most. Especially good was the picanya, visibly pink/red. I had bad luck the first time with filet mignon, medium (too well cooked for me), but later they specifically came to me with filet mignon medium rare. The cooked pineapple was a nice surprise. There were other good meats, though the ribs were really, really overcooked. The salad bar was also an amazing spread, but oh did I make a silly big mistake the first time taking an innocuous looking green pepper from the salad bar. I also liked the Acai cocktail, which really did soothe my mouth a lot after that burning green pepper (but not enough by itself).

            Beyond Cagney’s... there was a time when Chris might have said that Tepenyaki was his favorite. He loved the basic (asuka?) surf and turf hibachi dinner, with filet mignon marinated in soy sauce. I ordered that too, but next time I would probably have ordered what Luda did: “edo”, a combination of really delicious jumbo shrimp and scallops, maybe even the tastiest scallops of my life. The “surf” part of akura was lobster, cooked OK, but when lobster is not fresh enough, that’s like stale sushi. The cocktails were both very tasty, and Luda declared the miso soup to be the best she ever had. (Well... I have had more miso soup in my life.)

            On sea days, for lunch, they also opened a sushi type bar, “Wasabi.” Even with our plan, we had to pay $7 total per person to gorge ourselves on their stuff, but we got more than our money’s worth. In fact, that was the best food of all, to my taste. Luda and I began with their cocktail and with a plate of salmon and hamachi sashimi. A restaurant in McLean has the best salmon sashimi we have eaten anywhere on earth (including Japan and China), but maybe this was next best. But the hamachi was unearthly good. (Chris also loves salmon sashimi and was excited by the hamachi, his first.) After that first round, I ordered “Hawaiian poke,” but the chef was wise enough to serve me hamachi poblano instead. That was not so large, but it was probably the best tasting dish I had in this entire trip. Later (we didn’t just run away from this place!), the chef on the second shift actually served real Hawaiian poke – probably better than any other poke I ever had, in mainland US or Hawaii, but still not as great as the hamachi poblano.

            The menu at Wasabi was a little confusing, however. I never saw any normal sushi rolls. Chris got a nice array of (Niri) sushi, but the only rolls I saw were the kind I think of as American supermarket fish-free rolls. The poke was listed on the rolls page.

            We also ate at La Cuchina, the Italian specialty restaurant, a couple of times. On a previous cruise, I had ordered osso buco at La Cuchina – and was a little surprised it was so different from the osso buco I had before in two restaurants in Italy. This one had more meat, like a big veal shank, which Luda liked, but it was a bit heavy for me. I tried the lobster diavolo, which Chris liked... but I didn’t. Uninspiring lobster and big pile of noodles I also found uninspiring, with spice-free red sauce.

            On the previous cruise, I spent a lot of time in the garden cafe, especially for a “cruise ship breakfast,” with hot tea, smoked salmon, herring, stewed berries in fresh yogurt, and accoutrements like tomato slices, lemon and capers. The smoked salmon in Norwegian is still much better than in the old days, but I didn’t feel like gorging on it as much this time, in part because I couldn’t balance it out as much as before, and in part because of our tough schedule on this trip. The herring was still excellent, better than what we get at home, but I ended up balancing it out with a strip of sausage (and tomato slices). BUT – the horror story on yogurt, milk and berries was one of the greatest disappointments on this trip, second only to the bathroom geometry. In all fairness, Luda did note something new and good – fresh blackcurrant berrries, with redcurrants and whitecurrants. OK, but I only felt like a little. But the only milk and yogurt was in horrible plastic little packages, much more plastic and tasteless than even the worst supermarket yogurt one can find anywhere in the US. (It reminded me a bit of the “wimpy” hamburgers one would find in the “Wimpy” chain in England in the 1960s, which made McDonald’s look like porterhouse steak by comparison.) Not EXACTLY tasteless... the assertive taste of chalk was pretty strong.   

            Does that cover it all? Well, not quite. Especially, what of that unlimited drink package? What a double-edged sword that is! On the earlier cruise... it almost seemed that “waste not want not” would call for us to get our money’s worth, and consume the most alcohol we could. But really? Still, we did have a fair number of drinks on most days. We missed the wonderful wine bar on Norwegian Escape, which let us enjoy sampling across all the wines onboard, but we remembered what we liked, even though they used a trick of making many wines available only by the bottle (for which they charge even under unlimited drinks!). Sometimes they let me order my favorite moscata on the package, sometimes not. The standard ship mai tai was a lot blander than the usual average real thing, but SOME nice bartenders would listen to Luda when she asked for a specific improved recipe. (My favorite Mai Tai is not Trader Vic’s, which is still quite good, but the special blend at a restaurant called Peking Gourmet Inn near our house. Luda could come close...). I also liked the Hazelnut Pina Colada up at the H2O bar, and even the Long Island Ice Tea which Luda ordered on several days.

            Onshore, we did buy a few bottles of wine to bring back as presents to friends. The ship would not lose anything if we were dumb enough to buy wine onshore instead of consuming their wine at no cost to us, but their “corking” policy has no exceptions even for people on the unlimited drinks package! So we checked in the wine on each such port visit as we entered the ship. Their policy says we can’t get it back until the morning we disembark; that would have caused us real risk and trouble in our case, when we needed to depart early on Monday March 28 to make our flight, but they made an exception and allowed us to pick it up and pack it away the night before.

            What of the nice pool and slides in the picture? (No rope climbing here.) Luda did use the slides, and even went to some of the late parties. I joined her half-conscious at some of the atrium events (like big trivia and karioke contests) in the evening, but mostly went to bed earlier and exhausted. I used the pool just once: on the day we embarked, as the pool was just filling up with cold water, about three inches deep, I used it to cool down my aching feet, actually before we went to O’Sheehan’s.

            About half the time when we went to O’sheehan’s, they tried to seat us on the bad side, by the arcade machines, where most seats were high bar type seats. But I remember Chris’s shock when the  menu there did not include his Chicago style hot dog, his favorite in that place. The waiter took us back to the seater, who then offered us a choice of “sharing table” or bar-style high table in the good area... but changed her mind, and let us have a normal table. Later I asked for sharing table (a big round table where they can seat multiple groups).

            That’s all I can remember of significance of the on-board part of the trip. Probably Luda and Chris remember more... well, we had a nice balcony with a view of the aft and room for two chaisses and a couple of chairs... part of Luda’s agile advance planning, and monitoring of the ships and the company.

            Our first cruise, long ago, was on Carnival. That prevented any further cruises for years. But once we started on Norwegian, we had little interest in trying other lines. We are open-minded in principle, but...  

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Later addition: oh yes, no internet and very limited TV. On the previous cruise, we did pay for a few minutes of internet at the business center, just to print our boarding passes, but it was a huge mess. No more. Chris had MSNBC on a lot, while he also tried to catch up on school assignments in the room, but he hated the really strong liberal commercials. The BBC News available was much more sports than news, and there was nothing like the France24 we watch at home when CNN goes off course. But MSNBC certainly covered the terrorist bombings in Belgium and Pakistan, which made us wonder how our own airport might be affected. Some things made no sense until we got home and got more information. The solid free wifi at Barcelona airport was in many ways our first news in weeks (not counting the brief mobile wifi in a van, discussed in my blog post on Positano). That helped make it a real vacation, though it was interesting to hear what Australians and Canadians thought about the US primaries, at the sharing table in O'Sheehan's.

Even later: for completeness, I should have said something about the garden cafe and the Chinese restaurants, and more about the garden cafe. The Garden cafe, on the top floor, is in many ways the core of NCL's free style dining strategy; we also think of it as including the food and tea stands just outside of the cafe proper, by poolside, open for more times. In past cruises, we spent a lot more time in the Garden Cafe and Manhattan Room, but this time we mostly would just grab a quick plate at the garden cafe for breakfast, because of our port day plans. There were a lot of choices aimed at a general audience; the eggs benedict were something of a lifesaver for me, but I also was able to take the cottage cheese and blueberry compote just once. We had breakfast at Manhattan Room just once, on a sea day, but only used specialty restaurants (and the circus show) for dinner. Luda was very happy when they advertized a Latin American dinner night at the Garden Cafe, and gave it an early try; she liked the pork, but there was no sign of anything like the sopa da mariscos, the food I really enjoyed most in Mexico.
     I'm not sure what it would be constructive to say about the Chinese restaurants. We have learned that there is not just one "true authentic" style of Chinese cooking, but even the poorest rustic Chinese restaurants we have visited, or American strip mall Chinese restaurants, have a certain flair or tang. These did not. Chinese cooking does deserve to be on the ship, but we only went once to each of these restaurants, and later felt sad that we wasted time in the attempt.

Positano: From Misty Spirit to Comedy/Surgery

Positano: From Misty Spirit to Comedy/Surgery

Positano was just one of three or four places we visited on one day of our 16 day visit and cruise to Spain and Italy. No politics, policy, science or heavy philosophy. Just looking at beautiful sights and relaxing – a window into the ordinary life of this cruise. March 23. (Don't know why camera says March 22.)

We came to Positano as passengers in a van, starting earlier in Naples and going to Sorrento before Positano. Besides Luda and Chris and me, there was a couple from Ohio, three folks from Texas (including the guy who made the arrangements) and a driver, Giovanni.

            As we came towards Positano, Giovanni pulled over to place where we took many beautiful pictures, like this one. But no two-dimensional picture can capture the full breadth and scope of the full experience. (Click on the picture to get full detail.)

Giovanni told us a lot of things about Positano. For example, he told us there are many stories about where it gets its name. Greeks lived there before Christian times, but Giovanni was not an historian or archeologist (unlike our guides in Sicily and Tuscany). We had heard that the name might have something to do with Poseidon, but he told us that the Greek Temples were dedicated to two goddesses (Athena and Vesta I think), and even the main Christian Church is dedicated to Maria. One story is that the city was founded by Greeks moving along the coast from a sister city dedicated to Poseidon. Another story, the favorite in the city itself, is that a ship with Christian passengers got into a terrible storm, and that the icon painting they were carrying magically said “posi! posi!,” teleported itself to the beach you see in this picture, and thereby led them to safety. “Ever since, they have an annual boat parade carrying that icon, now in the main church, and named the city “Positano in its honor.” It is curious to me that people believe that so much when they know the city was settled before 0AD. We do have a picture of that icon, but I am stretching things to include three pictures.

            But humble human reality: while we all experienced this great view, I quietly walked up to Giovanni and asked: “Is there a WC I could use in that little restaurant here?” He said: “Not really, and we are on a tight schedule. But don’t worry, we are going down to the center, and there are places there.” From leaving the ship to “all aboard” was about ten hours – and I am in the embarrassing position of having a prostate problem, actually prostate cancer, for which I get operated on April 11. More on that below.

            Giovanni told us that there is actually only one road for cars in the entire city – mainly a one-way one-lane loop road. Naturally, it is not a 60mph road. When we got down as close to the center as one can get by car, he pulled off into a paid public parking lot, and told us how much time we had on our own, to get back there. So much beauty... but time had passed and I really, really needed to find a WC. “Giovanni, where is that place you mentioned?” “Oh, he said, just down there... and if that doesn’t work, there is also one down by the beach.” “Down there..”... I walked as fast as I could, down stairs after stairs.... and then... when I felt I would burst... I saw it, to my left... and it was a machine operated turnstile to get in, requiring exactly a 50 eurocent coin.  Luda, back at the parking place far away, had all the coins packed somewhere... so... OK. People had told me that recovery from prostate surgery is a whole lot quicker and more reliable if one does kegel exercises BEFOREHAND, so I took this as an opportunity to put in energy to do those exercises intensely and firmly for awhile. So I walked back up, exercising firm control, and got back to the parking area where Luda had been a bit puzzled about my disappearance. I did say I needed to find a bathroom, but only briefly, and tried to avoid compromising the experience, as we walked down more picturesque stairs towards the main church and the beach, looking at lots of things and taking pictures on the way down.

            Near the bottom, at the church, we took the picture of the icon inside (through the closed door/window), and then looked for a way to the beach – an urgent issue for me at that point. Two stairs went down – one on the right, away from the water, with a sign saying “beach”. The other actually went to the left, where the beach was. So with some urgency I went to the left, which led to a long narrow pedestrian shopping street and finally to the beach.

        Luda and Chris then looked around, and enjoyed that area immediately, as you can see in the rich next picture:

Please look closely. Luda is in front, and Chris is closest person to the left of her, looking at the water. Behind Chris is a long, wide stone pier. Towards the right side of that pier are two yellowish big announcement boards, under a restaurant-cum-hotel called “Saracen’s Cove.” But the sloped pedestrian street/ledge leading up to that restaurant and beyond to a small fort/tower is called something like “road of the Americas.” Near the middle of that pier, behind the other people, is a big anchor and a kind of special dedication from the city. Later, on that pier, I felt the maximum level of qi or spiritual input I did in this whole episode (not close to the maximum at Rome). I wondered if perhaps this really had once been a kind of powerful shrine to Poseidon, and certainly I remembered my concern for what H2S-producing archaea might do to the oceans of the world starting within just a few decades. I also remembered Orson Scott Card’s “Alvin” series, where Alvin always feels attacked by bodies of water – rather different from the story with me and my ancestors (one of whom, Mortimer Donohue, gave his relative Commodore Barry the ships which were the first mainstay of the US Navy). Maybe Card’s community, for all their great good intentions and positive aspects, still have very bad karma related to political causes which unwittingly make the H2S risk a whole lot worse; “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

            But before that, though I still tried to be open to other things, I focused my mind on alleviating the sheer physical pressure becoming harder and harder and more painful. “Where is that WC Giovanni promised me?” Just to the right of Luda, behind, you see two very small buildings and a stairway to their right. I saw the word “WC”! I ran, ran to the door at the base of the stairs... and there was no knob. Only an odd piece of rope to where the knob was supposed to be. A man came over and said, “No. No WC. No more.” That blended with the physical pain!! “HOW can I find a WC SOMEWHERE.” “Oh... go to the park (he said, pointing to the beach and the water)... and follow the yellow.”  Then he turned away.

            So I ran that other way (past Luda, after she dug out two 50 eurocent coins for me just in case) and looked frantically all around, seeing nothing. At the far, far end I saw the Texan in our group who had made the arrangements and knew the area, but he had no idea. I saw a row of beach lockers a bit inset, and hoped THEY might be something else, and even tried a door... no. Coming back... I saw no yellow markers or park, but I did see a couple of restaurants, as in the picture below, taken after I recovered a bit:

 Fortunately, this was not the crowded dinner hour, and many restaurant people knew a bit of English, so I walked into the restaurant you see on the right and asked for WC. (Now I know I should have used the word “toilet.”) A guy pointed in a fuzzy way up to the left. I went, and saw nothing. Another person sent me to the restaurant on the left. They sent me to the right, up towards stairs away from the beach to the city. (“Uh-oh! Yes I know there is a WC ‘way, ‘way back up in the town... oh no... I hope that is not it... enough to bust my entire time budget for the city!”) But as I was about to despair... there were yellow arrows on the stone stairs! And they did lead to a nice, free public municipal WC, deeply surrounded by city buildings, otherwise not marked. I wondered: does lack of clear marking help that other guy by the beach, for times when there are more tourists and he chooses to open his cash cow?

   Anyway, I then walked back calmly to the beach, where Luda took that third picture, and many others. We did have some time, but also had to run hard up the long system of stairs (a little shorter this time, coming up the right stairs to the church). Giovanni next drove us to the restaurant Costantino overlooking Positano, with a fantastic view (more pictures!), where Chris had a Neapolitan pizza and Luda and I shared “fried fish”. Chris and Luda loved that pizza, and even used the phrase “best pizza in my life”; they let me have a slice, but I prefer lots of others in the US. But the “fried fish” did include a lot of the best tasting calamari I have had anywhere, by a big margin. (Later in Rome and Tuscany, I had cappuchinos which were also much better than anything I had anywhere else, which surprised me, since I have been to pretty good places in the US.)

            Then back into the van, where we saw the sad lengthy efforts of some busses (including the poor official tour bus from our ship) to navigate the one and only road. (In better shape was the regular city bus which some people use to get to Positano.) We even had mobile hot spot wifi for a little while, my only internet connection during the whole cruise, and I whipped off just two brief urgent messages on my Galaxy Tab, which turned out to be extremely handy on this whole trip (less than half the cost of new cell phones!). Next stop Pompei, then return to ship. 

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I did promise to say more about the prostate issue and surgery. I already posted some things about that issue on this blog, so I won’t go too deep now.

With any cancer, it is extremely important to catch it before it metastasizes. Because mine was caught early enough (“overall Gleason score 3+3”), everyone agrees that there is less than a 10 percent chance that I will ever have to worry about this cancer again after the operation. How much less than 10%? I don’t feel inclined to agonize over that number. The actuarial stuff predicts an expectation of 20 more years for me, but the percentage of uncertainty will grow with time so long as I live. I worry more about the survival of humanity as a whole and of our “spiritual” component, for which there is at least some chance of long-term survival and growth.

I recently discussed this with a guy who used to run the US public health service, and the health programs of DOD. He said: “Sooner or later, we all get prostate cancer, if we live long enough.” Actually, my PSA blood score was only about 4 a year ago, just before we took a trip to India. The discrete jump up to 8 occurred after our return, and I remember a surprising hard day just a couple of weeks after that, and wonder about the connections. But I suppose I should not get too far into that, as it again reminds me of Orson Scott Card’s world. (He has his karma, and I have mine; I have adapted, but still need surgery.)

            Luda tells me that John Kerry already had exactly the same kind of surgery (RP), years ago, and it’s clear that it is not incapacitating!!! And she has found other examples.

            Per McCallum’s great book on prostate cancer for regular folks... I also expect the unpleasant side effects of the surgery to be temporary, with probability more than 90%. But we will see. Soon enough. 

Cruising, Madrid and Rome and Beyond

Cruising, Madrid and Rome and Beyond

I write this on Easter Saturday, on a tab computer without wifi here on the Norwegian Epic. For me... this cruise offers me a unique chance to get closer to the people, cultures and spirit of the places we have visited - Rome, Pisa, Florence, Madrid, Cagliari (Sardinia), Cartagena, outskirts of Naples (Positano, Serrento, Pompei), Sicily (Agrigento to Palermo).  But on the ship, both research questions and MSNBC coverage of the primary elections also suggest a lot to report on.

We visited many churches, including Vatican Square, but the police would not let us in St. Peters. (Luda applied for tickets well in advance, but some council of American bishops denied it.  Our discussion of that goes beyond the scope of this post). Thus in Rome we went into 4 churches - Carmelite church near Vatican, a different Peter church (containing Michelangelo's portrayal of Moses), 432AD Maria church, Teutonic church . And Capitol Hill, Trivi Fountain , Fermi's old lunch place, statue of Giordano Bruno and various walk-bys.  Couldn't help notice how the sadness of Rome in 432AD was a direct result of decisions and chaos on Capitol Hill and a hoped for rich Savior on a white horse which were similar to things on the Capitol Hill where I worked myself in 2009. Could a higher more authentic and balanced spiritual evolution allow the US and the earth avoid a rerun? I hope so.. but back to simpler things.
In the Carmelite Church (chesia) Chris saw me meditating and asked why I behaved there the way a true Catholic would, though I am not a Catholic. This time I briefly said I was "meditating," though activities of the soul are even more diverse than those of the body, and only appear simpler when seen from naive outside observation or self-preservation at a fuzzy level of consciousness. The point is that simple words like "meditation" or even "prayer" do not identify what is really going on; they leave open so many different possibilities!  Still, I was surprised at how reasonable the Carmelite flowchart of ten steps or so was, shown in a leaflet in the church - though for each step it is important and challenging to do the best, most enlightened and most effective job one could do.
Earlier on this cruise, Luda urged me to write down a dream, which I did also on this tab. We had very brief access to wifi while on the van from Positano to Pompei, so I hit "share" in Memo, which let me post to Google plus only and limited length. Here is what I posted:


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Holy Monday Approaching Palermo

A dream... One which Luda suggests I write down.
It is 3am here on the Norwegian ship Epic, holy Monday, soon to dock at Palermo. Yesterday, a sea day, as we ate breakfast in the luxurious Manhattan room, Luda noticed I showed almost no typical emotional response to tepid tea and an extra plate of fatty food I did not want to eat. I did not eat them, but felt no indignation at all. Why?

The dream: one of the many dreams I have experiencing the life of someone else. That person viewed himself ASA normal employed member of a community who had recently lost his job but still was the same person in the same community. He felt no resentment at all that he now must sleep in a tent (about the size of a pup tent).  He always enjoyed a bit of camping, and he felt it would be foolish to resent this shift in a world where so many suffer so much worse. But at one point it became a bit cold and rainy. There were three holes in the tent, a bit of a problem. He mentioned this to members of his old community, who tended to look away, but one woman gave him a taro to cover the tent. He really looked at her in a kind of seeing loving way, very much the kind of look which Yeshua gives at his best. She looked back at a kind of angle, so sad in a way he felt sad for, and determined and maintaining her order. (Recall again I was seeing through his eyes). He was generally content then, but one unhappy event did occur. One big officious guy walked right over his tent, acted challenging, and even grabbed a precious essential woolen sweater. "Is that really yours? Can you prove it?" He opened it, and pointed to blueish letters saying "To Keith.." But then he scrawled his own big red print letters there on the inside of the sweater. This was sad, but the guy did then leave.
 
After such a dream, it would have felt so silly to feel even slightly cheated by such minor disappointments as mine at that time!


My comments at the time:

Could I even guess who it was? That is usually not clear; humans have so much in common with other humans, and many circumstances can trigger the kind of gating of souls this represents. Certainly not me in this case! But as I mentioned this to Luda, I immediately saw a strong logical possibility. The day before this (this being Palm Sunday), she led us through Cagliari (Sardinia) on the old traditional 14 stages of the Cross, where the first stop was the church initially dedicated to a Saint Horta. I was seriously curious about that guy, a Catholic priest escaping from the Inquisition in Spain. A few days before, in Madrid, we had walked through the main plaza of the Inquisition and discussed parallels between concerns about Moslems there at that time and emerging similar concerns today. So why did a Catholic priest have to flee? I reached out a bit in my curiosity and interest, seeing a remarkably photographic picture of the guy as we entered his church.. and a Mass was in progress. (Not in English, and Chris chose to wait outside.)


At the end of a major sequence..they have a custom of shaking hands, as Quakers do. We were standing in the back, and two parishioners also in the back shook hands with us with sincere positive energy. One of the two really struck me.. Gaunt unshaven and poor looking but also strong and wiry... a combination very often accompanied by some level of criminality or hostility in most of the world.. but he was surprisingly free of such things, sincerely warm and open and friendly. So.. Hmmm.. did their laying on of hands actually work this way?
I noted him at that time, but after we left that church we focused on many other things, such as the story of the Ozieri in the archeological museum and anarchifraternity with a neat bird statue on the altar next door.
I suppose this played into another recurrent theme in practical life. I have several times been reminded of those relatively high Japanese Buddhists who say that the most evolved people still stuck on earth have a primary mission of taming or overcoming two problems ... irritability and pride. But software cuts me off.

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The most important omission here is discussion of what it takes to avoid something like a rerun of the collapse of Rome in the US today. Groping for options - one might hope for Kasich emerging from a brokered convention, leading to a more enlightened and cleaned up Republican party. But Chris quoted stuff on what has happened to quality of public education in Ohio, and it is easy to see how his sequestration budget deal in DC led to cutbacks and problems all over the US. His balancing act in DC was essential to stabilizing the system, a bandaid without which the patient might already be dead.. but it postpones the core challenge of where to find real efficiency improvements necessary to avoid crushing loss of education and true military strength and other crucial things. Balance is essential but not sufficient.  Looking for big numbers, we get back to tax loopholes of the nonproductive type and medical systems, though efficiency in energy and national security also offer huge opportunities to rise above today's trends of entropy and decline. Exactly as with today's Supreme Court vacancy - the need is to avoid extreme swings to solipstic left or right positions, and I worry how behavior on the right might induce a left extreme which is not presently so realistic. Balance.
That last paragraph is a feeble attempt to summarize a more complex and precise stream of material I may have time later to get into. Its importance was underlined by an accompanying note on what to add to Higher term.

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This covers just one aspect of two days in more than two weeks, all very full! In Madrid, walking to the Egyptian Temple, we also walked through the big gardens next to the royal palace, where I was reminded of the princess now in legal trouble, and of how sad it was that her people did not know of the specific low-cost solar technology which could have both made more money and been a huge relief to the economy of Spain. On Easter Sunday itself, we walked to the cathedral of Palma on Majorca, where we accidentally bumped into the King of Spain. Perhaps I will edit this post later, to add the two pictures (of thousands!) which best fit this text: (1) picture of the King and cathedral; (2) picture of meditation chapel at church of Maria Maggiore in Rome, the site of strongest qi flow in this entire trip.

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What have I omitted here? So much... the actual contents of meditation activities. Learning about the Ozieri, "our people" (megalithic boat people) who occupied at least half of Sardinia in the old days,

and about details of Hawaian old culture we did not know before. (Yes, some folks still know how to read the older petroglyphs). A chance to discuss Wilczek's multiple histories paper and the doors it does and does not open up, and some new insights into how time works. Various new aspects of intelligent systems and mind to write up later. Visit to various outposts of Phoenician culture and better understanding of it. (Lots of other folks already know about "the purple people," Phoenician or Punic, but it was still great to stand in their ancient temple dominating Carthagena and feel the environment. We also need to look up Monte Sacro, where the energies today are less clear.) In Sicily... from Empedocles to the detailed politrics of the mafia, but more energy with the former. Positano, Sorrento, Pompei, Pisa, Florence, Vino Santo... two cappucinos much better than anything I ever had in the US even in fancy places... the spirit of modernistas in Barcelona, and lots of luxuries (and comic logistics) on the boat.   Exercises maybe well tuned to my coming surgery on April 11. 

From DOD question about research priorities to larger issues about our freedom and our future

A guy from DOD recently posed a question to one of the leading lists in computational intelligence and to many others:

My question for you is as follows. Putting all political stances and ideologies aside, what is the scientific problem most in need of a solution, broadly defined (e.g., utilitarianism)? My answer to that question follows. May I invite you to share your (dissenting) answer with everyone on this list? Please feel free to expand the list of contacts as you see fit.

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My reply:

This is an enormous question. Today, at lunch with a former ass't secy of defense, we agreed: "We are called above all to learn how to drink from a firehose." That does not exactly mean generating a wider spectrum of input data, at all levels which come to us; rather, it means working as hard and as fast as we can to COPE effectively and properly with that spectrum of data, in part by every one of us pressing our limits as to what we can handle, not only in terms of volume but in terms of diversity and depth.  

To be completely honest, I felt seriously moved by part of what Hillary Clinton said in her victory speech in South Carolina, when she said her top goal was to help every single one of us to fully attain our "God-given human potential." In almost all of my talks lately

(e.g. slides posted at top of www.werbos.com/Mind.htm), I include my "flag of neural networks and COPN", which includes an arrow from the brain icon to an icon representing human potential -- a rose on top of a yin-yang. The neural network field, especially, can develop the kind of fundamental mathematical understanding we need to better understand ourselves at all levels, to reconcile complementary viewpoints on the same issue, and help us be more conscious (more self-conscious really) and more effective in this most important of goals. 

But... in my recent IEEE summer school talk (slides posted there), I do mention other important areas for application, related to issues such as making human life both on earth and in space settlements more viable and sustainable for the long-term. (Also part of the "flag" slide.) Someday I might contact one of those places which makes meter-by-meter glass or ceramic images, and ask them to put the "flag" slide on such an image, to hang up on an outside wall and an inside wall of my house. 

All five of the big arrows on that slide represents a major, complex area of research, in need of many more specific contributions flowing into the larger picture. For example, my paper in IEEE CIM magazine on the intelligent grid listed about twenty new research projects we need just in that one part of the field, any of which I would have been happy to fund when I was at NSF (retired one year ago).

We also talked about fuzzy and evolutionary computing at that summer school, but the neural part was enough to take up most of the hour and a half allocated to me. A big subject here.

Best of luck,

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 He then made various comments offline, and here is part of that next stage:

He said:

I visited, http://www.werbos.com/Mind.htm
Your comment, "the psychopathic human defends its ego by a misuse of words
(like ideologies and dogmas) so as to avoid learning anything except more
collections of meaningless words and pointless tricks"
reminds me of the problems with the medical establishment. Here, ego-centric
behaviors and greed seem to roadblock scientific advancement.

My reply:

This in turn reminds me of a discussion just yesterday about someone working hard to be responsive to Congressman Lamar Smith, and about the guy wanting to know who this guy Smith really is and what he has been doing to us all. Smith has a long public record -- but I reminisced yesterday about the reporter who asked him "As you take over the House Science and Technology Committee, what is your background and interest in science?" His reply(as best I recall): "The only science which really matters, Christian Science."

"Yet," I said, "He doesn't really represent that spiritual tradition. The record at that time said he had advanced lots of things making money for the medical establishment, very much at variance with the things which Mary Baker Eddy said. It seems as if his real religion is money..." And then I remembered his huge emphasis on pushing Brain Computer Interface, and what Khargonekar said at a conversation depicted in one of the colorful slides I posted yesterday at

  http://www.werbos.com/Neural/ADP history/NN_BigData_2016_v2.pdf

. i.e. this link here . 

They even sent out a wide diktat the other day telling lots of people to discuss BCI with the press, because of someone's great sensitivities. They really want to make a lot of money on this, just as the drug folks did with cocaine and heroin, and don't want it to be discussed just how awful it is. 

The issue here is not about one Congressman caught up in the larger Washington system. The bad impact of corruption based on money from that source goes well beyond the BCI risk (huge as that risk is). 

Last night, as I listened to the Republican debate (much, much better than all of its predecessors)... I was sad that no one seemed to understand the reality and validity of what Trump said specifically on the deficit, in the discussion of social security. He mentioned defense contracting, not the medical sector, but similar issues apply. (In defense contracting, what really concerns me is our failure to move towards low-cost access to space, badly needed for many reasons, in the face of other little deals Lamar Smith has been involved in. Much more than the deficit implications, I am concerned about the loss of capabilities. McCain has been asking good questions lately, but the gatekeepers and filters are rather intimidating, and friends of mine wonder whether even he may be totally helpless in the present situation, even himself caught up in something too big for him to do anything about. 

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As I post this, I first think of some caveats and explanations, and then I am reminded of the larger dialogue for and against freedom which is a very big part of life and the noosphere today. And yes... believe it or not,

in the "conversations with God" this morning, God really did have very positive things to say about Hillary Clinton;

it surprised me at one level, but I get the idea now.

Caveats and explanations: excessive power of money over politics in DC has roughly three types of terrible effects:

(1) busting the budget of the government, through inability to reduce either the rate of growth of medical spending without loss in efficiency, or to reduce large nonproductive types of tax loopholes for corporate welfare -- the main reason why all the Republican candidates except Trump want to cut social security and some would adopt policies likely to cause a global great economic depression; (2) changing the mix of RD&D -- a hugely important factor in shaping our future -- away from things that could increase our chances of avoiding species extinction and assist our spiritual growth, towards things which may endanger and oppress us far more than most people realize may be coming; and (3) by reducing choices and freedom available to all but a very few people (themselves caught up in sticky chains of their own making), directly impeding spiritual growth. Notice that, unlike Trump, I did not point towards DOD contracting as an important part of (1); however, a stronger CEO leadership and demand for honorable competition (bringing back Admiral Steidel even, with some discussion of missions first??) could help a lot with serious low cost access to space, a technology far more important than most people realize and far more endangered than the usual PR money grubbers let you know. 

Some might say that Sanders and Trump have been far more clear about how serious the problem of legalized corruption has become in DC, and how it calls for really focused action. Hillary can see how awful the things are which hit her directly and personally, but does she understand that it's a lot bigger than personal and that it requires SOME kind of systemic approach? Is she capable of an effective but constructive systemic approach? That's a serious question which has worried me. Some of us eased up a bit on Sanders just recently, because we really need a clear dialogue on that issue. Yet... in the conversations-with-God discussion... I have to admit that Hillary's victory speech in South Carolina, with the memorable news clip of what she said about everyone attaining their god-given potential... (I only saw that clip...)... that's even more fundamental and essential, and it fits into item (3)!

==========================

So, before I got out of bed, this entire "homework assignment" was fleshed out in detail in my mind, but then came a bit of a zinger, a jangling memory of where we REALLY are here on this earth.

The issue of human potential, human freedom and human empowerment is still a cause at issue, and not well understood by people.

For example, at some level, freedom is all about choices. There are folks who think: "We want to defend and advance freedom, and to make that secure, we will create a world where no one has any choices. People don't REALLY want choices. They want to be told what to do." Ironically, part of the problem is that there are people who say they want freedom, and in some cases came to the US to get more freedom, but carry with them much of the culture of other places, where they do not really respect the possibility and need for other people to be more empowered, all of them, and have more choices in their very own lives. Such people pay more attention to the freedom of factories to put poison into the water or the air, into the "commons," than to the freedom of people in everyday life. "It is easier when you know what you are supposed to do."

I suppose I do not have time this morning to get really deep into this large and important basic issue, but I should note a few aspects.

First -- in discussions between Yeshua ben David this year (something like an avatar of peace and love, from an old Jewish family which has tried really hard to teach that to the world) and myself (animated a lot by the spirit of truth and the search for truth, more even than anyone I ever met at NSF or leading universities, perhaps the best place to look in recent decades)... I began to realize that the principle of Rational Impedance Matching (RIM) may even be co-equal in importance to these others. Impedance matching.... we are ALL called to stretch our spiritual limits in learning to handle more and more... just as we are called at a lower level to push what our physical muscles can handle... to strengthen them... but not to push beyond the breaking point. We each of us need to maintain a balance, between stretching but not spraining... AND WE NEED TO WORK AS PART OF THE NOOSPHERE AS A WHOLE to do the same for others.

But what do we stretch? Certainly we aren't supposed to do the kind of stretching that Chinese aristocrats once imposed on their women, tying their feet up in tiny knots. That's unnatural and destructive, in a serious way, and preventing such destruction is one of the greatest spiritual imperatives in our world today. Minds and brains are meant to be used, and strengthened... and making choices is part of what they do when used. Tyranny is tyranny, whether implemented by government or by the private sector. It is difficult to foster the kind of national cultures and corporate cultures which truly nurture and support human choices and empowerment and growth, but that's what it is about.    

=========

Am tempted to say more about the candidates, but then I remember privacy rules, which are also part of RIM. There are illegitimate and dangerous secrets in this world, but there are also serious considerations justified at his levels. 

Best of luck

 

 

Learning the reality of the physics of thermonuclear devices and beyond

Today I will try to explain in simple, everyday terms how I learned what really goes on at the nuclear level in “low to moderate energy systems” like thermonuclear explosions. This may sound like a dangerous subject for an open (though obscure blog), but for me it is actually a break from things which I view as far riskier. Just an instructive romp through the realities of science life today, and of what we know about the universe. Yes, it involves thermonuclear devices in a very practical way, but if you think H-bombs are scary, you have no idea what else is on the horizon today in ever so many directions! (Yes, the H bombs still could kill us all, but that’s more a story about politics than about physics at this point.)

Last week, I gave a heavy, dense seminar to pure mathematicians on the current status of our effort to understand how the universe really works. It was such a pleasure to go back and speak in my native language, mathematics... but don’t worry, I won’t inflict that on you here (though maybe I will post those slides somewhere at some point). Instead, I will tell some stories... which came up during the seminar...

Mainly I will tell the story of how my thoughts and my life were changed by reading a book called The Skyrme Model, by Makhankov, Rybakov and Sanyuk (MRS), which came out from Springer in 1994. The yellow book... At that time, I had some other connections through to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia (JINR, Dubna), the “Los Alamos of Russia,” where Makhankov was a division director, but I will spare you the distraction for now (sigh). That yellow book was a huge turning point for me, in many many ways.

MRS was the hardest book to read and understand which I ever read in my entire life, and that’s saying a lot. A whole lot. On the first day I started reading it, I went to bed deeply and vastly discouraged. “I imagined I could make some contribution here, in developing the mathematics to explain what protons and neutrons really are, but as I read this book, it looks as if I won’t even be able to understand what has ALREADY been done in Russia on that subject.” But about 3AM that night, in my bedroom in College Park, I engaged in my usual nightly practice of “cosmic consciousness” or “conversations with God” or “posthuman state” or whatever you may call it. (At this moment, I am almost finished reading a sci fi, Count to a Trillion, by John Wright, which uses that last term... familiar issues... ). In that state, I saw an image of what MRS **MIGHT** be talking about. The next day, I cross-checked, and yes, it was exactly like that theory! MRS were not like mathematicians, proceeding from axioms through logic to predictions or theorems...  but by doing it right in my own mind, I could get to the same place. Finally, after three or four really intense days, I was able to disentangle it, and see further than the authors on some important aspects.  I don’t remember ALL of what is in that book....but what I do remember is important enough.

Some parts of the book were easy to understand. I will simplify a little... and laugh to myself at the idea you might try to read it yourself. Please read the cautionary tales first if you do...  

“We in Russia, like physicists in America, will of course begin our sacred proceedings with a prayer to that great God in the sky, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD)...”

In case you don’t know about QCD, here is a quick summary. You probably know already that human science knows about five types of basic force in the universe – electric force, magnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and gravity. By the start of the twentieth century, even before quantum mechanics was developed, physicists learned that electric force and magnetic force are really just two sides of the same force, electromagnetism. (Can’t I display just one iddy-bitty covariant vector field here? No, I promised everyday language.) Weak nuclear force is basically what comes out when radioactive material decays to a lower state; over time, that radiation can kill you, but it’s not explosive. Strong nuclear force is what holds the nucleus of an atom together, and also what propels an H-bomb. In the 1950s, three people (one of them Schwinger, one of my teachers at Harvard) got the Nobel Prize for developing Canonical Quantum Electrodynamics (QED or KQED), which is the modern quantum mechanical theory of how electromagnetism works. QED is the real workhorse of the electronics and photonics industries. But now, we recognize that QED is just a useful approximation, like Newton’s theory of how gravity works. NASA still uses Newton’s theory to predict the orbits of planets and spacecraft, and industry still uses QED, but we know that those theories are not the exact truth. Mainstream physicists today talk a lot about the current “standard model of physics,” which is a pasting together of two quantum field theories: (1) Electroweak Theory (EWT), which is an extension of QED to predict weak nuclear force and electromagnetism, in a unified way; and (2) QCD, the “second quark theory,” due to Gellman, used to describe strong nuclear forces. There is a lot of debate about how to paste together or unify the standard model of physics with gravity, which seems to be well-described by Einstein’s theory of general relativity (GR), but GR is not a quantum mechanical theory.

MRS: “We know that QCD works very well in predicting what happens at very high energies, like two particles colliding at enormous energies in big accelerators, but because it is so complicated it cannot be used to predict what happens at low to medium energies. ‘Low to medium energies’ includes thermonuclear devices like what we develop here in Dubna, and so we cannot expect this great god in the sky to come and help us. In the real and humble engineering task of making predictions for what happens in humble experiments here in this lowly real world, beneath the level of lofty metaphysicists, we therefore use what they call ‘phenomenological models.’ We in Russia have less faith in the invisible gods than people in the West do, but really, that is not so important, since ‘phenomenological models’ are what we use for prediction of experiment anyway. “

“We are amused that interest in the Skyrme model (a phenomenological model of what a proton or neutron is) was very low in universities in the West, because of its religious incorrectness, until someone showed that the Skyrme model is equivalent to QCD in the limit where 3 equals infinity; this made it possible to call it an approximation to QCD, and discussable ... to a limited degree.”

Maybe here I should say more about just how important “phenomenological models” are to nuclear technology. In some fields of technology, like drug development or battery development,  people have gotten away with mindless trial-and-error approaches on a huge scale. Try out a thousand possible drugs in the laboratory, and just see what happens. Computer simulation can help in those fields, but thousands and thousands of experiments are still used. (This reminds me of how China is far ahead of the US in battery development for now, but far behind in some other fields, like access to space, where a more analytic approach is needed.) But with nuclear weapons, trying out a few thousand designs without knowing what to expect is not such a good idea! For this reason, computer simulations have always played a very central role in nuclear technology development, civilian and military, in US and Russia (the two nations I know the most about on this subject). But what kind of model actually gets used in these computer simulations, to make predictions? Not QCD. The accuracy of phenomenological models is in fact crucial to the development of nuclear technology! It is not a coincidence that the biggest supercomputers in the US have been at two nuclear labs, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge. My very first tenured job, at DOE, involved oversight of some of the computer codes at Oak Ridge. (I still remember my boss at DOE who said: “I used to be a strong supporter of nuclear power, but now that I know what kind of computer tools they use to ensure their safety, I am a lot more worried...”)

But back to MRS:

“We dedicate this book to the great British physicist, Tony Skyrme, one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century, who is widely known and respected in Russia but almost unknown in the West. How did this happen? Skyrme worked at A.E. Harwell, the most deeply secret of all the British nuclear places, and he wrote his brilliant models and mathematics in a notebook, which he kept under lock and key in that secret facility. That is why the work became very widely disseminated and used in Russia, but almost unknown in the West. We hope that this book, in (broken) English, will help bring him to the higher level of recognition he deserves in his homeland..”

How did they get away with writing this kind of thing, discussing Russian nuclear S&T? In the early 1990’s, the US and Russia had a kind of honeymoon period, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and hopes that the US and Russia could become strong allies. At NSF, we were encouraged to fund Russian scientists to work in collaboration with US universities, through subcontracts to grants to US universities; everyone (or almost everyone) in my Division at NSF did some of that, and I funded some people at Dubna. Now, under Putin, things have changed... but let me return to the science.

Before going further, I need to say a bit more about what the Skyrme model actually is, in the bigger picture. In traditional quantum field theories (QED, EWT and QCD!) the elementary particles are modelled as perfect billliard balls of zero radius. For example, the electron is modeled as a point in space where there is mass and velocity, and electric charge. The electric charge results in a “Coulomb field,” the simple field of repulsion which pushes away other negatively charged particles or atoms. But it turns out that the total energy (=mass, by E=mc**2) of the electric field in those models is infinite. QED handles that by assuming that there is also an infinite negative mass located at the center of the electron, offsetting the positive infinite mass in the Coulomb field. Plus infinity plus negative infinity adds up to whatever you want it to add up to. (I still relish the wonderful look of disgust on the face of one of the pure mathematicians as I reviewed that.. and emphasized that I have been looking for another way.)  In physics, “soliton” models are models of particles which implement a different picture. They model particles as whirlpools of force, spread out over a “large distance.” (In this case, a large distance is about a femtometer, a millionth of a nanometer. Atoms vary in radius from about a tenth of a nanometer to about three-tenths of a nanometer.)

By the way, if you doubt what I am saying here about QED... I cited Mandl and Shaw in my seminar. The “infinite negative mass energy” is called dM, a “mass renormalization.” Sometimes people say “It isn’t really part of the theory, it’s just a number we put in there to make the calculations work out.” A number put in there as part of how predictions are made. Hmm. It reminds me of a talk I once heard form a guy named Aharonov at NSF: “My viewpoint yield totally different predictions from the usual ones, but I am still assuming the same theory. I just INTERPRET the theory differently...” When I learned about the scientific method, they would say that two different systems which yield different predictions are different theories, not just different interpretations. That’s part of the definition of the words “a theory.”

As the slide illustrates... there are three kinds of “soliton” model of interest in physics. Three ways of trying to describe or explain elementary particles as whirlpools of force. Mathematicians do not like to call these whirlpools “solitons,” because they have their own definition of the word “soliton,” different from what physicists use. So I said: “Hey, we agree that a sea horse is not a horse. So a topological soliton or a chaoiton (chaotic soliton) does not have to be a soliton.”

Many years ago, I defined a new concept of “chaotic soliton” or “soliton” in papers in the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals. It was a very natural concept, like what a mathematician would expect here. A “chaoiton” could EITHER be a stable fixed pattern of forces concentrated in a small region of space, a pattern which goes off to zero far away from that region, or it could be a stable SET of patterns, oscillating between each other but still staying there and not just dissipating away.

But then I read the yellow book, MRS. MRS actually described TWO types of “topological solition,” the Skyrme model type and the “BPS” type. Both are a bit of a stretch for a mathematician. Both model an elementary particle as a kind of “knot” in space, a knot which simply cannot be unitied, because the knot connects the particle all the way to space infinitely far away from the particle itself. The force fields describing the particle include at least one field which does NOT go to zero far away from the particle.

MRS even included a “theorem,” the “Generalized Hobart-Derrick Theorem,” which argued that objects like chaoitons simply could not exist in ordinary models of physics without hard-wired topology. I looked at the two page “proof,” and did not believe it. I wondered whether  Rybakov or Sanyuk might have worked out more of the details in their original work in Russian, or at least more explanation of what they were talking about.

And so, I tried to get more information. I spoke to the guy whom I funded who had a subcontract to Dubna, and visited the place often. He tried hard to bring back lots of information, but he really had nothing to say on this. But then... here in the US, at a conference, I met Ludmilla Dolmatova... whom I later married, but who did return to Russia and France in the meantime. In that mean time, she visited the offices of Rybakov and Sanyuk at Moscow State University, and obtained what they had, and had some good conversations --   but it did not really change the picture on that “proof”. (Yes, this was a huge thread in my life... but... back to the book...)

Can chaoitons exist, and could they be a possible model of electrons or quarks?

I made contact somehow with Prof. Pego of the University of Maryland, whose work on... solitary waves?... was perhaps the closest in the world then to what I had done with chaoitons. He had a PhD student, Lev Wertheim, whom I knew from Adelphi Quaker Meeting, who was also an all-Soviet mathematics Olympiad winner. We all agreed on a possible thesis project for Lev: to try to prove or disprove the alleged “Generalized Hobart-Derrick Theorem.” He already had access to my papers and Pego’s, through the usual US systems, but he needed, above all, the two pages of MRS stating the alleged Theorem and proof.

I intended to give Lev just the two pages, but life was very complex for me at that time, and I wasn’t able to get the xerox in a timely way, so as Quaker meeting I handed Lev the book and said: “Lev, I apologize, but I have to ask that you xerox those two pages yourself, and then return the book. But before I do, I want you to promise, PLEASE do not try to read the rest of the book. It is like a Godel-Escher-Back painting. It will drive you crazy if you try to make sense of it.” He promised.

A few days later, I was informed that he had been hospitalized, and I was invited to visit his apartment where his suitemates would return my book to me. “What happened?” I asked. “Well, he seemed normal and alert and intelligent as always, when he returned from Meeting. But then he sat down in that chair, and started to look at that yellow book.  At first he looked at it, and then away, as if he was very torn about whether to open it. But then he did. He started paging through it... slowly at first... page by page... and his eyes started glazing over. And then... well... we had to call the mental hospital.” A few days after that, they reported that the mental hospital had decided he had to go back to Novosibirsk (Siberia) where his family was, and he never returned to physics after that.  What kind of music did he take up then? I do not know. I imagine mournful old Jewish songs on ... old type string instruments.

So... reader beware.

For the seminar, I displayed instead a newer book, by Nicholas Manton of Cambridge University, which I hope would not be so risky for mental health. I do not know how easy that book would be to understand, for a first time reader, since I already knew much of the stuff when I bought it, and I read quickly up to chapter 11, which had some very exciting advanced new stuff. (Also some stuff much scarier than mere thermonuclear devices, for those who understand.) Manton talks BOTH about the Skyrme model and about the family of models related to the famous BPS topological soliton. And he talks about EWT, which makes contact with real experiments and predictions much more than QCD does.

Manton may well be the most important thought leader in the Western world today on the Skyrme model, and on ways to use that model in real nuclear technology. He is mainly known for a huge cross-cutting consortium, which uses the Skyrme model to predict properties not just of proton and neutron but also of small nuclei. Predicting nuclei... is meat and potatoes for practical places like Dubna and Livermore. His consortium has done very large-scale computer simulations, all simulations of the Skyrme model in just three dimensions of space... which is a lot easier than computing with a theory like QCD which requires lots and lots of dimensions. But the accuracy is not so impressive. Errors on the level of 20% and 40% compare well enough with other phenomenological models, but they aren’t exactly correct. What’s more, even if we question the exact details of QCD, we do know very well from high-energy experiments that the proton and neutron are made up of smaller and harder elementary particles, called “partons.”. (Basically, these are scattering experiments, like what Rutherford used to show that the atom has a small nucleus. The word “parton” is a good search term to learn more about those experiments.) So the Skyrme model is useful, sort of, maybe, but we should be able to do better. The “quark” model is just one of many possible models of what partons are like.

After years of digesting MRS and other things... I now believe quite strongly that our best hope of understanding electrons and partons is to model them as the OTHER type of topological soliton, the “BPS” family. The Skyrme model has limited accuracy, and does not really model partons anyway. The mathematics is less rigorous than the BPS mathematics, and “less rigorous” really means “lots of stuff that may be dead wrong.” I now have a much better idea how to construct examples of chaoitons in simple, ordinary field theories... but I am not as motivated now to resolve that issue, because I don’t think they are as plausible as the BPS type of model. Above all, in real physics, we see a very amazing quantization of electrical charge, the exact same unit of charge for all kinds of particles and compound bodies. In principle, that quantization COULD be just an emergent outcome of field statistics... so maybe the electron could be a chaoiton after all... but for now it seems both easier and more promising to work with the BPS family, where the quantization of “charge” (the winding number of the knot in space) is strict and easy and natural.

The key to the BPS model is the inclusion of a term called the “Higgs term” or the “Higgs force,” which is similar in a way to the famous Higgs boson, but NOT EXACTLY THE SAME. The Higgs force is the one which does NOT go to zero even infinitely far away from the particle. The “knot in space” is the knot formed by the vectors of the Higgs field, considered in spheres surrounding the particle.

The BPS family of topological solitons, using Higgs terms and assuming Higgs fields, is very well known in physics. In addition to Manton’s book, there is a simpler review paper written by Erich Weinberg of Columbia University. The physicists assume they have proven “well enough to be sure” that all these Higgs type topological solitons are rock hard stable, just like the electron, but no, they haven’t, EXCEPT for the one specific case of the BPS example, which is the limiting case of a simple model in the case where the Higgs term actually goes to zero! (A mathematician at Harvard really proved stability for that case, I think, basically using special boundary conditions INSTEAD of a Higgs term.) Even if I think more like an engineer than a physicist these days.. even engineers often have higher standards of proof here. I can imagine how these “stable” solutions might actually collapse into a point, or diffuse away into nothingness, even without any change in the “winding number.” I am not convinced by the existing “proofs” that this would not happen for some of the Higgs types theories. I really wish a solid mathematician would get in here, and either PROVE what Weinberg says, or provide a counterexample, and give us some guidance about WHICH Higgs-field models actually work.

But none of that is all electron or a parton yet. **IF** we had a good Higgs-type model of the parton, we could use that for practical nuclear simulations, just what Mantyon has been doing, but hopefully a whole lot more accurate. I could imagine using such a model “tomorrow” to improve Livermore’s ability to predict what actually happens when a laser pulse hits a deuterium/tritium pellet target, a subject of immense importance in trying to develop a new safe energy technology here. (I hear that Livermore’s laser fusion work is funded based on its spinoff value in making nuclear weapons design easier and more reliable. I suppose the new model could be useful there as well.)

In fact, I do have two candidates for what that model might be, much better than the earlier candidates I played with in past years, published in various places. These two new models basically fix some problems I found when I studied the earlier models. (When I first learned about the BPS model itself, I had some hope for it; I had to fully understand WHY it is not a good enough model, even for grand unified theory, before I knew how to do better.) I have not published the new alternatives anywhere, in part because Luda has urged me not to do so until/unless a higher impact journal agrees to publish the details. I did include them in a paper I showed to Marlan Scully and a couple of other people, and I included one of them in the slides I showed at Memphis last week. A lot of very basic work is needed to work out what stable soliton solutions these two new models have, and what properties they predict for nucleons as combinations of such partons. (I have of course studied a lot of what is known about strong interactions as a filter here, EVEN THOUGH I still propose that we use EWT itself with changes only in the Higgs term and in the representation of what the key B and W fields couple to.) Of course, such work might point to a need for further upgrades or tweaks, before such models could actually do better in Livermore than what they already have. We could still simulate the new model in three dimensions, as with Skyrme model, but partons are a bit smaller than protons, and one would have to use multiscale modeling to make it as routine and easy as the present models. (It is still in three spatial dimensions, however, making it a whole lot easier than simulating QCD!)

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That all is the normal part. If I were in graduate school, I would happily see how this could be a worthwhile life’s work... but as someone retired and  close to 70, scheduled for cancer surgery next month, I just write it up and hope no one else will have to put in so much effort as I did to see how the pieces fit together.

A couple of quick notes. My old teacher, Julian Schwinger, had a different theory of what the partons are. I believe it is very important that we NOT have premature religious commitment to either his model or QCD at this early stage. Some Higgs-field models based on extending EWT would yield solitons more like quarks, and some more like Schwinger’s dyons, but it is too early to restrict our choices. The basic mathematics and tools need to be further developed, and we should start with the simplest models

(like the two I now have) which seem like they might work for now. Yes, we could insert many topological charges to fit QCD more precisely, but why? For now, two might work; it is easy enough to add more, if and when we have solid guidance on what kind of tweak is needed of that type, if it should be needed. (I doubt it.) Some Higgs type models of the parton (and electron) would also predict a rigid conservation of what physicists call “baryon number,” but others, like the Russian work described in chapter 11 of Manton’s book (probably held secret now in Russia) would not. My two versions probably would not. If not... as Manton describes, and many Russians attempt... then it may be possible to “burn down protons and neutrons themselves” for energy. Basically, that would allow construction of devices like thermonuclear weapons, but about a thousand times as powerful, potentially using any materials at all as fuel.  Manton observes that this would require a special kind of coherent radiation as a catalyst. My slides for Memphis describe an extension of the Glauber-Sudarshan coherence theory  (the basis for designing lasers) which would be applicable here. I am amused that one of the key Russian places working on this, according to Manton, is the Institute for Nuclear Energetics in Protvino, where Luda obtained her “first PhD.” But no, she did not work on that project. There is also some connection here to the lower-energy lower-frequency stuff which Schwinger worked with in the last years of his life, also pretty wild. See http://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2016/02/korean-rocket-and-navy-lenr-illustrate.html  . But hey, that’s for the further future. Testing the new Lagrangians mathematically and aiming to assist Livermore type of work is all I would write about at all, if I were more confident about either my personal long-term survival or the long-term survival of key actrivities in the US.

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Final note: this whole post elaborates on some aspects of the first part of a 3-part presentation with 33 slides in all. Another slide elaborated on the various concepts and measurements of the radius of the electron -- after noting that the "radius" of a whirlpool can be defined and measured in a variety of ways, and noting how MRS discuss the different values for the radius of the proton, all valid, explainable by a topological soliton model.

The second part dealt with distribution functions in Fock-Hilbert space, basically explaining my paper at arxiv.org on my extension of the Galuber-Sudarshan methods to three and four dimensional space. Part of that is a theorem showing that the energy levels we get from simple computer simulations are close to identical to those predicted by canonical quantum field theory (and maybe exactly identical, depending on how we interpret the usual self-energy corrections, like what people use to predict the Lamb shift).

The third part dealt with more recent work, which is what my own thinking is drawn to more lately. I mentioned my joint paper with Ludmilla in the journal Quantum Information Processing, which came out just a few months ago. More people at Memphis also expressed interest in the third part, because it has a connection to their work in graph theory, stochastic graphs, and emergent behavior like sudden phase shifts (which they see as analogous to the sudden drop of an electron from a high energy level to a lower one in the atom). TBD. 

Unthinkable things which might happen in North Korea and elsewhere

North Korea has put its missiles and nuclear capabilities on hair-trigger readiness, in reaction to the new UN sanctions.

The new stronger sanctions were based on a reasonable conclusion that present trends in North Korea are 'way too risky to neglect, and that we need to bite the bullet on what happens there. Nevertheless, when we bite a bullet... will we get badly hurt, as part of the price, and will we ever be free of the worst case?

We should not be intimidated by those people, but what happens if in fact the guy is as crazy as we think he might be and he actually does launch something as his internal situation gets worse and worse? (Or, on another level, what does he see of our vulnerability?)

It is good that the US is deploying more antimissile capabilities to the area, but if all we get is hit-to-kill over the ocean or over South Korea, will a lot of people die in South Korea itself in any case?

This reminds me of how we COULD have had affordable space-based boost phase intercept by now,
above all if sheer corruption had not blocked our development of low-cost mass access to space. It makes a big difference whether the interception occurs over South Korea or over the launch site (North Korea or at least close to North Korea). If a major part of North Korea becomes a sea of glass as a consequence of THEM launching a nuclear missile (soon or ten years from now), that is a whole lot different from a major part of South Korea being fried that way. The world would be rather shaken up if the US replied to a North Korea strike on South Korea by turning North Korea itself into a sea of glass; it would be a whole lot less unpleasant if North Korea did that itself as a direct result of its own nucs, with far less damage to South Korea. The difference between today's antimissile capabilities and boost phase intercept is really huge, when we get realistic about the kinds of dilemmas  we may be facing in the future,

Why don't we have this capability? I remember when Lockheed and others discussed this option at a meeting in the Marshall Institute, and I went back to the legislative director for Senator Specter (on the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee at that time) to ask about it. "The reason we don't do it is very simple. Too much cost." The cost would be orders of magnitude less if we implemented
a design for reusable launch vehicles, initially developed by Boeing but refined by Ramon Chase of ANSER about ten years gao, backed up by lots of peer-reviewed publications in AIAA venues and elsewhere (including rigorously peer-reviewed NSF-funded work). The cost estimate of $200/pound-LEO (and near term availability) withstood very intense scrutiny... and with that... we could have gone ahead and had protection from the very, very serious problems emerging here and now (and not going away soon).  Not perfect protection, but enough to prevent the much more serious worst case possibilities in play more and more. A factor of ten reduction in the likely cost to humanity of such bad things, which would cost a whole lot more than the new RLV, which would have many other profitable civilian benefits as well, important to sustainability in the larger picture.

Makes me wonder: would anyone in South Korea be interested in developing the core launch capability which the US should have done many years ago, and did not because some folks wanted to use the NASA budget as a cash cow jobs program and wanted to keep the world from following up on really serious alternative technology? (I saw quite a bit in my personal presence.)

At one point, I was hoping that maybe Donald Trump might crack down on the kind of corporate welfare legalized corruption which has prevented the US from developing what it could have... what we lost when Senator Shelby asked for Admiral Steidel's head on a platter.. but this week, a Politico story said, roughly: "Since Trump says he will be the new Teddy Roosevelt, cracking down on legalized corruption... the debate asked him how. He said 'just abolish EPA and Department of Education.'" Oops!! That's not what would get us a new RLV or boost phase interception!! It's more like what Lindsay Graham said ... a choice of a firing squad, versus the other guy's poison... and a third guy's calm support of Cheney style stuff which risks World War by another direct path.

Best of luck. We really need it.