Shaking the Tree

Whether you base your family tree on Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia in 1974, or on Eve from the Garden of Eden, you would have to conclude that we are all related.  Still, it’s interesting that current presidential candidate Mitt Romney is related to six previous American presidents.

Here’s the story from  ancestry.com

How many Commanders-in-Chief can you get in one family tree? When it’s former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s family tree, the answer is six.

According to Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, Romney’s family tree connects him to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Pierce, Herbert Hoover, and both George H.W. and George W. Bush.

Romney is connected to Presidents George W. Bush (10^th cousins, twice removed), George H. W. Bush (10^th cousins, once removed) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (8^th cousins, twice removed) through Ann Marbury Hutchinson, a key figure in the development of religious freedom in America and early settler of Rhode Island and New York.

Romney is related to Presidents Calvin Coolidge (10^th cousins), Herbert Hoover (10^thcousins) and Franklin Pierce (6^th cousins, 4 times removed) through Thomas Richardson, a landowner in the late 1500s in Hertfordshire, England.

Romney isn’t the first presidential candidate with burnished political roots. “We find in these politicians’ family trees links to the foundations of the country—early settlers seeking freedom and opportunities, Revolutionary War patriots, and even American legends,” said Anastasia Harman, Lead Family Historian for Ancestry.com, of the discovery. “Time and again American politicians have family ties to our country’s founders and past leaders.”

Astroturf

When Reliant Stadium was being built in Houston, a lot was made of the fact that the new field would feature real grass instead of Astroturf, the artificial turf from Monsanto that was part of what had made the Astrodome the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

Now, Reliant is getting its own carpet at a cost of $1.2 million. 

The new stuff, known formally as AstroTuft GameDay Grass 3D60 Xtreme, is built in two layers — a 17⁄8-inch-high series of polyurethane grass-like fibers woven into a plastic base and a network of shorter plastic fibers known as the “root zone” that holds in place about 200,000 pounds of pulverized rubber that approximates dirt and provides cushioning.  It is designed to provide a safer, more natural feel than the old Astroturf.

The Texans will continue to play on real grass, but the artificial surface will let Reliant host back-to-back events such as high school playoffs that would destroy the real grass.

When not in use, the new carpet will be rolled up and stored in the Astrodome.

R.I.P.

I was trying to track down an old friend last week, and was saddened to learn that he had passed away on October 22. 

That was hard enough, but as I read on I was devastated to see that his death occurred October, 22, 2003 – nine years ago.

Johnny G. Stuckey was my best friend in college – one of the best friends I’ve ever had -and although we had only seen each other occasionally over the years, each time we were together we picked up right where we left off, as though we had only been apart for a few minutes instead of years.

Johnny's son Chris created a memorial page on Facebook, where he describes his dad as a:

Renaissance Man of the Truest Order!
Musician, Songwriter, Writer, Tattoo Artist, Painter, Designer, Architect, Engineer, Radio and Television Broadcaster etc... and the List Goes On!!

The one thing he doesn’t mention was that John was the truest friend a man could ever want to have.

God rest ye, Johnny.  You gave this old world a Hell of a ride.

Another Day, Another Earthquake

A violent earthquake, measuring 7.7 on the Richter Scale,  jolted British Columbia's north-central coast last night, frightening residents and forcing many to temporarily leave their homes for higher ground ahead of a possible tsunami.

Tsunami warnings were issued for British Columbia's North Coast, the Haida Gwaii islands, parts of the central B.C. coast, the coast of Alaska and as far away as Hawaii.

Early this morning the warnings were downgraded to advisory status, meaning evacuations were no longer necessary, and they were cancelled altogether a few hours later.

Brent Ward, an earth scientist at Simon Fraser University, said the earthquake was the second largest to hit the country since 1949, when another earthquake was recorded in the same area with a magnitude of 8.1.

"It's an earthquake in an area that gets a lot of earthquakes," he said. "It's a tectonically active area."

Ward said the area is known as the Queen Charlotte fault, where the earth's plates slide horizontally across each other in a strike-slip action, similar to what happens along California's San Andreas fault.

"Stresses build up because of that movement, and every so often we get the release of that stress in the form of an earthquake."

Ward said he wasn't surprised the tsunami warning was short-lived because the strike-slip movement along the fault doesn't generally trigger large tsunamis.

"To trigger a tsunami you need to have a vertical movement of the sea floor, and it's that vertical movement that displaces water and triggers the tsunami.

The tsunami did reach Hawaii this morning (actually about 10:30 p.m. Hawaii time) but was pretty small. 

Authorities had earlier ordered at least 100,000 people on the island to move to higher ground.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the first wave was three-feet high and less forceful than expected. Some forecasts had predicted a wave of up to six-feet high.

"The tsunami arrived about when we expected it should," senior geophysicist Gerard Fryer told reporters at a news conference, adding: "I was expecting it to be a little bigger."

The Danger of Prediction

It has been about a year – OK, closer to 13 months – since I began saying a major earthquake would hit California soon. 

So far, it hasn’t happened, but I’m sticking by my prediction.  After all, history tells us that it will happen eventually, and the longer I am wrong, the closer I come to being right.

I think I should be congratulated on my bravery for continuing to cry wolf – especially in light of what’s happening in Italy.

This past week, a court in L’Aquila, Italy, convicted seven men -  six scientists and a public official - of manslaughter, and sentenced them to six years in prison.  Their crime – failure to accurately predict an earthquake that killed 309 people in central Italy back in 2009.

In L’Aquila, the scientists presented a risk assessment in late March 2009 after small seismic events made the public anxious. They found that a major quake was unlikely. Then on April 6, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake devastated the area.  In addition to the 300 plus death toll, the quake injured an additional 1,500 or so and left more than 65,000 people homeless in and around the city of L’Aquila.

The city is in an area where earthquakes had been recorded since 1315. They had a another big one back in 1703. L’Aquila is built on the bed of a dry lake, so the soil tends to amplify the motions of the ground.

These facts, however, do not alter the truth of the scientists’ claim that earthquakes in the area are extremely rare.

Several members of Italy’s National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks resigned Tuesday after the conviction. Luciano Maiani, a physicist, resigned as president of the commission, saying  “The commission can’t carry out its functions in this situation, which borders on intimidation.  It’s impossible to work with serenity if you’re afraid that if you give an opinion that turns out not to be right you can be punished.”

Hearing Color – Seeing Sound

Recently, I’ve seen two distinct references to people who can “see” sounds or “hear” colors.  The first was in a novel, and the second in a TV news feature. 

Both treated the ability as a disability – the product of scrambled wiring in the brain due to an illness or injury – but I’m not so sure.  Maybe it is an enhancement, rather than a loss.

Scientists tell us that both sound and color (light) are simply vibration, two sets of waveforms.  Although the frequencies of the electromagnetic waves that we see are much higher and the wavelengths infinitely smaller than what we hear, the similarities probably outweigh the differences.

Russian composer Alexander Scriabin thought that he could feel the relationship between color and sound, and he wrote his symphony, Prometheus, Poem of Fire, based on his belief, using the color chart below:

Other sources disagree, but – right or wrong – he made some pretty impressive music.

The Rosicrucian Society does not think C is red.  Their chart places C closer to the middle of the visible light spectrum:

 

The C above middle C on the eight note scale common to Western music is twice the frequency of middle C, so taking a purely mathematical approach, we could simply keep doubling the frequency (or halving the wavelength, which is just another way of saying the same thing) of C until the product lands somewhere within the range of visible light. If we do that, C ends up being a shade of green.

That puts C near - but slightly to the left of - the center of the visible light chart – about where middle C lies on the keys of a piano. That may or may not be significant – I did find it interesting.

A music scholar named Charles Lucy produced a chart based on frequency doubling that looks like this:

There a couple of things I find strange about Lucy’s chart.  First, the key of F falls outside the visible spectrum, and while F-sharp is infrared, F-flat appears on the other end of the chart at ultraviolet.  I am not questioning that; I assume his math is correct.  It just seems odd.

Second, his “Lucy Tuned” scale shows notes like A-sharp and B-flat as distinct notes with separate frequencies.

Hmmmmn. – That might be true if you’re playing a Theremin or a steel guitar, but on a piano, they share the same key.

Of course, none of this takes into account things like resonance and harmonics.  We know, for example, that E-flat played on a xylophone sounds different from the same note played on a trombone.  I can’t help wondering if it looks different, too.

Elec- tWicity

I once had a chemistry professor named Dewey D. Davis, or, as he liked to call himself, 3-D.  He did admit that since he had his PHD, 4-D (Doctor Dewey, etc.) was probably more correct, but he had been known as 3-D forever, and it just felt right.

With heavy horn rimmed glasses, bow tie and a white short-sleeved dress shirt complete with pen-filled pocket protector, Dr. D was the quintessential geek.  He could have (may have) served as the prototype for the Robert Carradine character in Revenge of the Nerds.

Note – I haven't heard anything about Dr. D in years, so I tried a Google search.  Amazingly, I learned that Texas has had two professors named Dewey D. Davis.  The other was a professor of education, and the first faculty member hired at UT San Antonio.  There is also a felon named Dewey D. Davis, currently being sought on a bond- jumping warrant.  Didn’t find anything about my Dr. D, but he definitely wasn’t either of those guys.

Dr. Davis was extremely bright, and knew his subject inside and out, but he had a couple of jarring quirks of speech that made it difficult to concentrate on his lectures.  He consistently said proglem – with a g - instead of problem, and he always said electwicity.

I took it as long as I could, then finally asked for a meeting in his office.  I told him that I found the matter embarrassing for both of us, but I wondered if he was aware he was mispronouncing those words, and if so, if he was doing it on purpose.

At first he didn’t believe me, but I assured him that it was true, and particularly shocking since he did not seem to have any sort of speech impediment.  After all, I had heard him correctly say electron, electric and electrical. I had even heard him call a questionable statement problematic.  I told him that I was afraid it was hindering his effectiveness as an instructor.

Finally, he said thank you, but it was a frosty thanks.  I felt that he was never quite as friendly after that meeting, but that may have been my imagination.  To his credit, he always treated me fairly and I got a good grade in his class.

I did hear him say proglem once after that, but only once.  When he said it, he stopped, cleared his throat, and corrected himself.

I never heard him say electwicity again.