resiliency amidst adversity

It is humbling to witness the generosity of the nations who have helped the Philippines recover from the adverse effects of typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda.  Support of any kind means a lot to the simple people of our country, and that equates to a big "Thank You".  Moreover, I thank Anderson Cooper for his inspiring and insightful words about the Filipino people:

"When everything else is taken away, broken, battered, soaked, raw, stripped, bare, you see things; you see people as they really are.  This week in Tacloban, Samar and Cebu, amidst the hunger and thirst, the chaos and confusion, we've seen the best in the Filipino people -- their strength, their courage.  I can't get it out of my mind.  Imagine the strength it takes for a mother to search alone for her missing kids, the strength to sleep on the street near the body of her child. 

We've seen people with every reason to despair, every right to be angry, instead find ways to laugh, to love, to stand up, to move forward. 

A storm breaks wood and bone, brings hurt and heartbreak.  In the end, the wind, the water, the horror it brings is not the end of the story.

With aid and assistance, compassion and care, this place, these people... they will make it through.  They already survived the worst.  They're bowed, perhaps tired and traumatized, but they are not broken.

Mabuhay Philippines!  Maraming salamat for all you've shown us.  Maraming salamat for showing us all how to live." 

from: "Typhoon Haiyan: Ruin and Rescue", Anderson Cooper 360° (AC 360), CNN, November 15, 2013

Probably, Filipinos are naturally resilient, but I think it's also about the unwavering faith in God.

“The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one.  But it will only grow in the mud.  In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud -- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death.  If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one.”

-- Goldie Hawn

do judge a storm by its cloud cover

Image Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team

The rule is don't judge the book by its cover, but in the case of storms, this rule doesn't seem to hold.  Recently, the Philippines encountered what was considered to be the strongest storm ever recorded to make a landfall.  How did they know? In the case of the United States, particularly on matters relating to strong storms in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean, aircraft reconnaissance measurements are performed to measure wind speed and atmospheric pressure.  In the case of the Western Pacific, perhaps except super typhoon Tip in 1979 (considered to be the strongest storm ever recorded in terms of 10-minute maximum sustained winds with the lowest recorded atmospheric pressure, and also the largest storm in terms of diameter), there are no aircraft reconnaissance missions to obtain on-site data about the intensity of the tropical storms especially those storms hovering over ocean waters. Speaking of super typhoon Tip, it has entered the PAR (Philippine Area of Responsibility). It was named Warling by the Philippine weather bureau PAGASA, but it did not make its landfall in the Philippines; it moved to the north direction and hit Japan instead.

Strong typhoons get a lot of attention from satellite surveys; and from the looks of the satellite images of super typhoon Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda), it is considered to be one of the strongest storms that one could ever imagine, judging from its cloud patterns.  So how did they determine the intensity of the storm so that it merits some world record?  We cannot judge a book by its cover, but meteorologists say that we can judge a tropical storm by its satellite images using the Dvorak technique.  Through the Dvorak technique, a forecaster assigns a T-number to a storm after a detailed examination of the satellite images; well, it has some subjective aspects depending on the skill of the forecaster.  However, in the case of a skilled and experienced forecaster, estimates through the Dvorak technique have been found to be reliable through comparisons with the empirical data.  It was developed by Vernon Dvorak between 1969 and 1984, and as time goes on, it has been subjected to improvements such as increasing its objectivity through the automation of the technique.  The current version is known as the Advanced Dvorak Technique and is even more reliable than the previous versions.

Image Credit: 

NASA/SSAI, Hal Pierce

Purple indicates the coldest and most powerful thunderstorms. Note: 273 K = -0.15 deg. Celsius.  
(Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Image Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team

Super typhoon Haiyan at its peak intensity (occurring on its first landfall in the Philippines) has been assigned a final T-number of 8.0 in http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/, which means it has winds of about 196 miles per hour or 315 kph (kilometers per hour).  You might be interested on the data found here: 31W-list.txt; and if you examine the raw T-numbers, a T-number of 8.1, which exceeds the upper bound of the scale, has been assigned.  Unofficially, this makes Haiyan the strongest storm ever recorded to make a landfall; and given the recorded 235 kph for 10-minute maximum sustained winds from JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency), it is the second most intense storm ever recorded after super typhoon Tip, which registered 260 kph.  Based on satellite imagery and its characteristics as a storm system, Haiyan is a wonder storm, but unfortunately, this is a destructive natural phenomenon that made its landfall in the Philippines on November 8, 2013.



More on the advanced Dvorak technique here: "The Advanced Dvorak Technique: Continued Development of an Objective Scheme to Estimate Tropical Cyclone Intensity Using Geostationary Infrared Satellite Imagery" by T.L. Olander and C.S. Velden, 2007 [pdf]

Braving the winds of Yolanda:

Image Credit: Ingo Vogelmann

on Perelman and the fate of the Universe

You might have heard of Grigori Perelman. This brilliant mathematician solved the "Poincaré conjecture" stated by Henri Poincaré as a question in his 1904 paper. The conjecture has been open for about a century before Perelman solved it through a series of arXiv e-prints in which the first one appeared in 2002.  It is one of the Millennium Prize Problems in which you will be awarded $1,000,000 for solving one of them.  However, the prize is clearly not the main motivation behind the attempt of solving one of these problems as a mathematician, a scientist, or any researcher for that matter.  With Perelman rejecting the prize after it was awarded to him in 2010, simply shows profound appreciation of the essence and relevance of the Poincaré conjecture in my opinion.  As Perelman put it in an interview:

"Why did we have to struggle with the Poincare conjecture for so many years? To put it in a nutshell, the essence of it is the following.  If a three-dimensional surface is reminiscent of a sphere, then it can be spread into a sphere.  It is known as the Formula of the Universe because it is highly important in researching complicated physical processes in the theory of creation.  The Poincare conjecture also gives an answer to the question about the shape of the Universe.",

one can see the philosophical importance of the problem.  When asked why he declined the prize, his answer was:

"... I know how to control the Universe. Why would I run after a million, tell me?"

This seems controversial, but he is clear about how valuable his discoveries were.  As for the phrase "control the Universe", one can see that this is more on the power of abstract thinking that through the solution of the Poincaré conjecture, one can fold the universe in a reversible process like crumpling a piece of paper into the smallest sphere possible and then unfold it back again.  Speaking of crumpling a piece of paper in the area of Physics, this process has mesmerized researchers in a sense that a process considered simple can be overwhelmingly more complicated than one would have thought.  To give you an idea, it is a very intricate process that requires massive force just like detonating an atomic bomb.  Just like the research on atomic bomb, a researcher should answer the "why" question first and consider its impact to humanity.

Nature can be that fascinating; kudos to the Creator of nature for that matter.

quote and quote and square brackets

Image Credit: Pietro Bellini (via flickr)

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
-- Isaac Newton



 

 

Image Credit: Sarah Ross (via flickr)

Image Credit: Lori Rielly (via flickr)

“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.”
-- Isaac Newton

Image Credit: Daniel Doan (via flickr)

"Science is knowledge which we understand so well that we can teach it to a computer; and if we don't fully understand something, it is an art to deal with it. "
-- Donald Knuth

Image Credit: Paul Savala

"If you find that you're spending almost all your time on theory, start turning some attention to practical things; it will improve your theories. If you find that you're spending almost all your time on practice, start turning some attention to theoretical things; it will improve your practice."

-- Donald Knuth

Image Credit: Thomas Hawk

"The major cause [of the software crisis] is that the machines have become several orders of magnitude more powerful! To put it quite bluntly: as long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem, and now we have gigantic computers, programming has become an equally gigantic problem. In this sense the electronic industry has not solved a single problem, it has only created them, it has created the problem of using its products."

-- Edsger Dijkstra

"One of the most frequently mentioned equations was Euler's equation:

Respondents called it 'the most profound mathematical statement ever written'; 'uncanny and sublime'; 'filled with cosmic beauty'; and 'mind-blowing'. Another asked: 'What could be more mystical than an imaginary number interacting with real numbers to produce nothing?' The equation contains nine basic concepts of mathematics — once and only once — in a single expression. These are: e (the base of natural logarithms); the exponent operation; π; plus (or minus, depending on how you write it); multiplication; imaginary numbers; equals; one; and zero."

-- Robert P. Crease on "Euler's identity"

when many things turn out well

... that's what we also get from getting the best out of the situation

Photo credit: Triangle Workshop (via flickr)

... the art of victory lies on the struggle that has taken place

Photo credit: Jeffrey Pott

Photo credit: Jeffrey Pott

... it is valued according to the quality of the struggle

Photo credit: Triangle Workshop (via flickr)

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”

-- Mahatma Gandhi

when many things didn't turn out well

... get the best out of the situation:

a restaurant with so many unsatisfied customers

Image credit: Elyse Bova (via photobucket)

an uprising against the latest weather disturbance

Image credit: Seth McGonigal (via photobucket)

somebody went nuts about the air-conditioning system (cold season is coming soon anyway)

Image credit: Tzi Ming (via photobucket)

 

futile thought experiments (nothing gets wasted actually)

Image credit (also for the artwork): Joe Meiser (via photobucket)
"Transcribing-Transposing"

a carpenter has gone wacko

Image credit (also for the artwork): Joe Meiser (via photobucket)
"On Shadows and Realities"

The world doesn't run out of opportunities to be creative.  Installation art arises from the rubble.

paint job gone wrong

It's simple; when a paint job goes wrong, then it becomes a painting.

by: drain (via flickr)

by: ario_ (via flickr)

by: Mark von Minden (via flickr)

turn the world upside down and you'll get antarctica

For now, we conclude the navigation of the icy lands on Antarctica, and then you'll encounter Amundsen again.  Going to the South Pole is a difficult expedition, but it seems spotting it on a Mercator Projection map is equally hard.  Perhaps even impossible, so better check a globe.

Antarctica seems to be best known for penguins.  So we have polar bears on the north and penguins on the south.  However, there's another "thing" that can be found in the home of the penguins.  If there's such a thing as a "dream product" in the manufacturing industry or in the field of materials science, e.g. something that can withstand extremely low temperatures, both extremely low and high pressures, and high radiation levels, then this "product" exists on Earth.  That's what we call as something durable, and even more remarkable if it's a living thing.  Adding another achievement to an already impressive track record is surviving the hard vacuum of outer space for 10 days.

"Tardigrade" anyone?  That's the name of the extraordinary creature.  It sounds like a chemical name or something that is inline with quantum physics.  These organisms can be found in Antarctica, and the adult ones are about 1 mm long.  They have four pairs of legs, which means they can crawl or something like that.  Small but terrible and amazing.


View Larger Map

moving even further to the east direction

Navigating towards the east direction from Greenland, we will come across Svalbard and the Arctic region of Russia.  Going east even further, we will reach the Arctic region of the West.  In this case, by just moving east, we can reach both the Arctic regions of the Western hemisphere and the Eastern hemisphere.  Seems amazing.  We can also do that by just moving west.  We now have a conjecture that the Earth is an oblate spheroid.  If we consider more possibilities in the navigation, then we might ultimately prove that the Earth is an oblate spheroid as well.  At least in this level of abstraction, that's the way how we prove things mathematically.

After the Russian Arctic region, we will encounter the American and the Canadian Arctic region.  It can be called the North American Arctic region in general, but since there's no South American Arctic region, it's valid to call it simply the American Arctic region.  That's ambiguous though because something "American" usually refer to the United States of America, probably because of the last word in the country name.

If you're looking for islands, then there are many of them at the Canadian Arctic region.  That's 36,563 islands, and three of them fall into the top 10 largest islands of the world.  Based on history, it seems that Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa have captured the interest of the polar expeditions more.  Perhaps the Canadian Arctic has more difficult topographic features than the Russian Arctic, or probably Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa was more accessible to European countries.  About the topographic features, think about the strong tidal currents on the narrow passages between the islands, rugged terrain, and then glaciers.  However, there were these so-called "Northwest Passage" expeditions, but they were more of a search for a possible trade route.  The first recorded successful navigation of the Northwest Passage is that of Roald Amundsen, but before that, there were three major expeditions from John Franklin.  Then, these were followed by expeditions in search of John Franklin.  It was indeed challenging to navigate the Northwest Passage because of the polar ice packs.  Even during the recent times, the ice packs prevented regular shipping most of the year, but times have changed.  The Northwest Passage has more navigable waterways right now because of reduced pack ice.  It's good news for the shipping business, but beyond that, this is a sign of an environmental problem.


View Northwest Passage in a larger map

Given the increasing importance of the Northwest Passage, or rather Northwest Passages, it's not surprising to know that there are sovereignty issues on these waters. Looking at the map, it is essentially within the Canadian territory, but many countries assert that these are international waters. On the Canadian side, they have mentioned environmental concerns on top off asserting sovereignty. I think that it is really something, at least environmentally speaking.

View 2013 Into the Northwest Passage in a larger map

look to the north and then to the east

View Larger Map

Looking eastward, there are other icy lands that are less known, but some of them were controversial lands.  Take for example Novaya Zemlya.  If you're familiar with "Zone A", "Zone B", "Zone C" and Kara Sea, then you know what I mean.  Navigating eastward from Greenland, you will come across Svalbard, Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa (Franz Josef Land), Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, and the New Siberian Islands.  Well, when I came across Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, I never thought that one of Santa's reindeer resides in Russia.  You will find Rudolf Island, but traces of reindeer presence were instead found on an island called Hooker Island (Ostrov Gukera).  In fact, the history of Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa itself is also interesting, which involves the race on legal footing between Norway and the former Soviet Union.  It was between Norway and Soviet Union, but the archipelago was named after the emperor of the former Austria-Hungary.  In fact, most of the islands have names of foreign origin (other than Russian) coming from five different nationalities.  Why is that so?  Were the people who have visited the territory looking for Santa?  Seems not a remote possibility since the northernmost islands are around 1,000 km away from the North Pole.  Setting the Santa business aside, this archipelago has been host to many bases and camp sites for polar expeditions.  The territory is uninhabited, but millions of birds, mostly sea birds, have built their nests on the islands.  That's a significant wildlife activity.  If you are doing research on the influence of the communist regime in the Arctic, then you might want to set an expedition to Severnaya Zemlya.  There's nothing more communist than October Revolution Island, Bolshevik Island, and Komsomolets Island.

The Arctic region seems to be a no-man's-land, and it's not surprising to know that it contains a lot of stories about human struggles and triumphs.  You might want to read about the stories of successful and failed expeditions.  In fact, there's a published diary entitled "In the Land of White Death".  Haven't read it yet, but the title tells a lot about the harsh side of the Arctic region.  It's not the best place for humans, but that's home for polar bears, walruses, Arctic foxes, and seals. 

the icy lands of the north

View Larger Map

From the map, we can see three large islands: Ellesmere, Baffin, and Greenland.  Ellesmere and Baffin are islands within the Nunavut territory of Canada.  We should be able to find Santa and his elves somewhere. 

far beyond: about going further

This is supposedly a song with the lyrics attached below. 
Let's just assume that it works.

Sorry, your browser doesn't support playing the attached file (The Odd Dawdler) in this post.

Instrumental track: "Far Beyond" (05:30), 2013


Far Beyond

when the wind blows
there the sky goes
in the glist'ning day
we will walk the way

beyond what you can see
eagle's flying spree
we will walk the way
we will walk the way
we will walk the way

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm-mmm
hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm-mmm
glide through the windy sway


when the river flows
there the rapid roars
through the waves of the sea
we'll shout our hearts to say

tell the world all the way
how much you mean to me
we'll shout our hearts to say
you mean a lot to me
like how God cares for thee

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm-mmm
hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm-mmm
loud, clear as it can be

always a lot of more
more like a sparkle,
more of a twinkle
far beyond, over and over
the expanse of the universe

always a lot of more
we'll walk to infinity
this isn't finite
more than the pace, beyond the flight

you and me
tribute to the Great One
infinite One, fa-a-a-ar (far) beyond

when the land holds strong
the earth sings a song

every single day
we'll hold on solidly
move through the mystery

when the wind blows
there the sky goes
in the glist'ning day
we will walk the way

when the river flows
there the rapid roars
through the waves of the sea
we'll shout our hearts to say

tell the world all the way
how much you mean to me
we'll shout our hearts to say
you mean a lot to me
like how God cares for thee

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm-mmm
hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm-mmm-mmm
far beyond forever

(c) gertics2013

generalized Super Mario Bros. is computationally hard

image credit: Christopher Furniss

An interesting paper by G. Aloupis, E.D. Demaine, and A. Guo has shown NP-completeness of generalized Super Mario and Donkey Kong Country. Also interesting is a paper by "V.V. Vargomax". Among the two, G. Aloupis et al., in their paper entitled "Classic Nintendo Games are (NP-)Hard" have shown a more serious proof; actually, we can set aside the work of "V.V. Vargomax".

The paper "Classic Nintendo Games are (NP-)Hard", which came out in March 2012, has shown at least the NP-hardness of certain classic Nintendo games. They have used a general framework for the design of a particular game level to which 3-SAT, an NP-complete problem, is reducible in polynomial time. NP-complete is a class of mathematical problems, and 3-SAT is a Boolean satisfiability problem, which answers the question about whether a particular Boolean expression returns true. What do these results tell us? They tell us that determining whether a level design of a particular game has a solution, that it can be finished from the starting point, is computationally hard. So if a computer will try to check deterministically whether there is a solution to a particular level, e.g. through brute-force method, it cannot do it in polynomial time unless P=NP. P is a class of mathematical problems that can be solved deterministically in polynomial time, while NP is a class of problems that can be solved non-deterministically in polynomial time. Therefore, obtaining a solution to the given problem is computationally expensive under the current theoretical conditions in which, of course, the practical consequences depend.

The results at least show that the difficulty encountered by the game designers is justified since their work revolves around how the obstacles should be arranged such that the level can be challenging enough for the players but a solution still exists. So in the case of generalized Super Mario Brothers, how can a game designer arrange the blocks, Goombas, Koopas, Firebars, and others such that it can be an interestingly difficult but playable level? No wonder it can be such a struggle to finish the levels of Super Mario. It is a game that requires creativity and ingenuity on the part of the players, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why the game is considered a classic. Right now, several versions of this game exist, but they owe it to the success of the earlier versions. In fact, arguably, Super Mario Bros. 3 is still considered to be one of the best versions of the game even though the newer versions beat it when it comes to the technical aspects such as graphics, world features, and the things that Mario can do.

talking about more ice

 

photo credit: Dave Marcus

photo credit: Dave Marcus

Moving further to the north direction above Iceland is another land called Greenland. Interesting name. Greenland is almost like Antarctica because of its polar climate. So does this mean that there's more vegetation here than in Iceland? With over around 80% of its area covered by the ice sheet, Greenland seems more icelandic or "ice-ish" than Iceland. But why call it "Greenland"? According to the Icelandic sagas, an Icelander was exiled from Iceland for murder. It was said that during his exile, he set out with his constituents to find a rumored land in the northwest. They found it, settled there, and named the land Grœnland. The name is translated as "Greenland". It was named as such in order to attract settlers. Hmm, also interesting. Were they successful? I'm not sure, but for a land with an area of about 2.2 million square kilometers, including the nearby islands, the population is a little bit more than 56,000 as of mid 2013. It is sparsely populated, but it can also be a feat already considering the freezing climate all year round.

Greenland is the largest island in the world in terms of land area since it is not considered to be a continent (think about Australia or Antarctica). However, considering the ice sheet, which is said to depress the central region to altitudes below sea level, Greenland was determined by a survey in 1951 to be composed of three large islands. We don't see it right now, but global warming can reveal that physically.

From climate reports, it was said that the average temperature all year round is getting higher. As a consequence, new islands are getting exposed; and in 2007, a new island called "Uunartoq Qeqertaq" or "Warming Island" was announced when a glacier had melted completely. Well that's probably another way of creating an island after a previous method called "series of volcanic eruptions". So we now have "glacier melting" and "series of volcanic eruptions". Kidding aside, melting of glacier is indeed a sign of a serious climate situation. Just like Antarctica, Greenland is also experiencing the pressure of climate change.

There is something green in that island indeed:

photo credit: Susan Liepa

on the way to Surtsey

 

 

photo credit: Le Jhe

 

photo credit: Bruce McAdam

 

photo credit: David in Derbyshire

Here we go, Surtsey. It's Surtsey for Surtsey Island, but wait, it is not open to visitors. It's only open to scientists, particularly those who are searching for life forms. How about visitors with scientific inclination? If it's a sort of scientific laboratory where cutting-edge technology is currently being developed with the race for some patent, then I don't think casual visitors are allowed. There's even confidentiality agreement in this type of research. So probably cutting-edge and crucial is brewing in that island, not to mention probably dangerous and unstable. This sounds like an isotope during the development of the atomic bomb. Anyway, we don't want to exaggerate things such as thinking about an island to be on the same level as the atomic bomb, but there are indeed novel things in that island.

As one may have read about this island, Surtsey is a brand new island in Iceland. Yes, there is this thing as a "brand new" island, and moreover a "geologically young land" description also exists. So that makes Surtsey Island a brand new island within the territory of a geologically young land called Iceland. From science books, a geologically young land during the early years of the planet Earth is characterized by boiling and molten substances. No wonder Iceland is characterized by geysers and active volcanoes. That's a sharp contrast to its sub-polar climate and name as "Ice" land. Also add to the mixture the names Hekla, Eldgjá, Herðubreið and Eldfell, which are the notable volcanoes in the territory. Given these, Iceland is indeed another interesting place on Earth.

Surtsey Island was formed in 1963 during a series of volcano eruptions from late 1963 to mid 1968. The geological developments in the island sort of surprised the scientists since varied land features like sandy beaches, lagoons, cliffs, and canyons were created in less than a decade. This is in contrast to what was believed to take thousands of years to develop geologically.

stigmergy: follow the leader

WARNING: This is an attempt to be a little bit technical.

We now describe the stigmergy among ants, and we present three models: A, B, and C.  The first model, model A, is a set of equations.  This model is considered scientific while models B and C are non-scientific (not sure if B and C fall under the "artistic" category though).

A:
Model A is an abstraction of the foraging behavior of the ants called the ant system.  Imagine that there is an undirected graph G = (V,E) such that V is a set of vertices or points and E is a set of edges.  The state transition rule is given by the following equation:

Equation 1 is the probability that the ant chooses to move to point s given its current position at point r. Note that r and s are elements of V with (r,s) is an element of E.

Through these equations, there is an indirect form of communication through the amount of pheromone on a particular trail, a form of memory not locally stored within the individual ants, and this communication is called stigmergy.

B:

C:
Instrumental track: "The Odd Dawdler" (03:40), 2013

Sorry, your browser doesn't support playing the attached file (The Odd Dawdler) in this post.

sail, sail, sail

Instrumental track: "In Peril" (04:18), 2013

Sorry, your browser doesn't support playing the attached file (In Peril) in this post.

Way of the Wind

A tree on a high cliff faced a strong wind resulting to the dispersal of its leaves into the countryside.  The leaves moved according to the way of the wind and glided above a waterfall, a dense forest, and then a vast plain.  Some of them landed on a river, and the river carried them for several miles until they reached the sea.  The story can go on and on until probably a surviving leaf has circumnavigated the whole world.  So this is an attempt to capture the moment of the tree's confrontation with the wind.

Instrumental track: "Way of the Wind" (03:11), 2013

Sorry, your browser doesn't support playing the attached file (Way of the Wind) in this post.

done within 110 seconds

{reading allowance: 16 seconds}
There was a highway chase.  It was a furious one with gunshots and engines roaring.  On the other hand, there was turmoil on three different locations.
A man woke up to find the door of his country house being hammered by the fists of two police officers, 
while in an affluent suburban neighborhood, a woman rebuked her husband for not doing anything despite a looming crisis within the family.

{read with the flute at 00:16}
In a house surrounded by evergreen trees, a father and his young son of 10 years old were packing things up hurriedly.
They left their house eventually and rode on a small truck.
The father started shifting to the top gear, and the vehicle moved at a high speed on a country road while passing through clusters of trees and alternate glimpses of farmlands.
With a skirmish of heated arguments, the woman and her husband have finally decided to go somewhere to investigate for themselves.

{flute played on higher notes and piano pause at 00:37}

On the other hand, the man searched his weapon, and hurriedly left the house through the back door. 
The rain has started to fall {00:42 flute} when he escaped; he ran into the woods. 
A police officer spotted him {flute at 00:46; don't pause!} and fired a shot, and a law enforcement team went after him.

The woman and her husband found themselves entangled on a highway chase, and saw the face of the fugitive that led the race.
They thought that he really looked familiar. {flute!} 
Unexpectedly, the woman surged with mixed emotions including impatience. 
She took over on the stirring wheel and started to chase the man for herself. 
Their car followed the three police cars that were consistently taking the second, third, and fourth places in the chase; sometimes there was a tie for the second or third place.
Then, the police eventually noticed that somebody was catching up with the race, and one of them fired a warning shot. 

A backup of two police cars seemingly emerged out of nowhere and trailed {flute at 01:15} behind the car that the woman was driving. 
Along the way, the husband thought that he saw somebody familiar on another vehicle that waited for the light to go green when he looked to the right.
He turned to look for the second time, and indeed somebody was familiar.
He started to yell at his wife, but she would never listen. 
The husband made an attempt {flute at 01:30} to take over the stirring wheel, while the policemen were shooting at the tires of their car.
They were eventually out of the race - disqualified. {finishing touches by the piano}


The Situation:

1.  The 10-year old kid found the woman's runaway dog (losing the dog mattered a lot) and took it home.  However, the dog was stolen by a
man living on the same sparsely populated neighborhood.  The man happened to have pending charges on theft and prohibited drugs.

2.  The husband saw the kid with the dog when he went for a leisure drive out of the city the previous day.

3.  The woman saw her little brother; he no longer looked like the "little brother", but this was true 15 years ago.  Did he become a mastermind?

4.  Attached is the backgroud music: "Chase Chain, Attempt No. 1 (Short Version)".  May the timing be with you! (no timer label though)

Sorry, your browser doesn't support playing the attached file (Chase Chain, Attempt No. 1) in this post.

Queries: Reality that Involves Infinity

"Transcend" means going beyond the limits of something.  Therefore, when you transcend reality, it means that you go beyond the limits of reality.  Does this necessarily mean fantasy? or perhaps fiction?  In this case, what are the limits of reality?  Does it mean something confined within the five senses: listen, see, touch, taste, and smell?  Perhaps it would help if the terms "fantasy" and "fiction" are defined.  "Fantasy" is about imagining improbable things.  "Fiction", on the other hand, means something invented; and therefore, involves things that are considered imaginary.  How about delusion?  Does the idea of transcending reality involve delusion?  How can you transcend reality without having delusions?

How about we apply this to truth.  When you search for the truth, will it involve transcending of reality?  When you do your search for truth, it demands something from your mind.  When you think about reality, your mind is always involved.  If reality is something confined to the five senses, and your mind is the one that controls these senses, how can somebody be sure that one is not having fantasies and living in fiction since the same mind is capable of something imaginary? 

Is reality a concept that is something relative, relative to the subjects involved, and in turn, relative to the minds involved?  If reality is relative to the minds involved, then is it some sort of a social convention, just like in the case of mathematical notations, such that there is the "reality of mathematics"?  Maybe reality is meant to be intertwined with imaginary things.  When one chooses not to transcend reality, e.g. being staunchly realistic, how can one be so sure that he or she does not imagine things?  Can this person be considered a conformist since reality is a relativistic social convention confined within a particular scope of subjects or group of persons for that matter?

Perhaps being perfectly realistic means conforming to a relativistic convention formed by an infinite scope of subjects -- yes, "infinite scope" is the term.  Reality is indeed a natural thing since it always involves nature.  If reality is a natural thing, and reality is a relativistic convention formed by a scope of natural subjects, is something supernatural still a form of reality?  Is reality, as a product of relativistic convention formed by an infinite scope of subjects, which may involve an infinite mind, can be considered supernatural?  Does this mean that being supernatural is something ultimately real?  Are we all designed to be supernatural since we have a mind that can imagine things?

That would mean that we belong to a family of supers.