Oct 292023
 

Every so often, a Google Calendar reminder that I set up ages ago reminds me to charge our old cell phones. This is to prevent their batteries from dying as a result of a deep discharge.

Old cell phones, you ask? Well, yes. When we swapped phones, we kept the old ones for a while, just in case. And then we kept them because wiping them securely seemed like too much of a hassle. And then we kept them because, well, what’s the alternative? Landfill? Yes, I know, some service providers accept old phones, might even give you credit. But what happens to those old phones? Who needs them? Who can use them, with their ailing batteries and, worst of all, the absence of software updates, including security patches?

Indeed, this end of support was the main reason why we ditched phones in the past. And it really is tragic. Never mind phones old enough to have outdated specs. I have here a few devices that have hardware specs that would be reasonable on the low end even today. The devices are perfectly functional. Yet they are worthless.

This is just… conspicuous consumption, forced upon us by a society that measures the health of the economy not by its stability or sustainability but by growth. Pointless, limitless growth.

Never mind that in the meantime, the middle class shrinks, the income and wealth gap widens, society is becoming more polarized, ultimately threatening the very foundations of our Western liberal democracies. Who cares about such nonsense when there’s a new phone out there with half a dozen camera lenses and who knows what other nonsense just to make you believe that they’re worth your money and that it’s perfectly okay to throw away a capable, quality piece of electronics that would have many more years of useful life left?

Darnit, I realize I almost sound like a grumpy old commie, when in reality what I worry about is the future of a healthy capitalist society, characterized by freedom of conscience, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and freedom of enterprise. But there’s a fine line between freedom of enterprise and the “tragedy of the commons”, and when free enterprise undermines the very foundations of liberal democracy, perhaps it is advisable to do something about it before it is too late.

By the way, I really liked these Nokias. What a pity we had to get rid of them. They still function perfectly, but without security patches, they’re not worth the risk.

 Posted by at 2:58 pm
Oct 212023
 

It was 82 years ago, back in 1941, that the country of my birth, Hungary, switched to driving on the right [link in Hungarian].

Streetcar with a large sign reminding the public to drive on the right

The decision has a sad history. It was prompted by the experience earlier that year when Hungary allowed the transit of Wehrmacht troops on their way to occupy Yugoslavia.

This was yet another step towards Hungary fully committing itself to the German effort, giving up any semblance of neutrality.

For Hungary’s prime minister at the time, Pal Teleki, this was the last drop [link in Hungarian] in the proverbial bucket. Early in the morning on April 3, 1941, he shot himself. His farewell letter to Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s leader at the time, simply stated, “I did not hold you back. I am guilty. Pal Teleki, April 3, 1941.”

Hungary went on to fight with the Germans against the USSR. When it became clear that the Germans cannot win, Horthy made a half-hearted attempt to extricate the country out of the war. Instead, he was removed from power by the rabid national socialist Arrow Cross, with support from occupying German troops, who in the remaining few months of the war assisted the Germans in the deportation and wholesale murder of hundreds of thousands of Hungary’s Jews. In the end, the country was liberated but at a tremendous cost: Much of Budapest lay in ruins, devastated by a brutal Soviet siege, with all the city’s magnificent bridges across the Danube destroyed by the retreating Germans. Eventually, Horthy’s worst nightmare became reality: The “Bolsheviks” took over and stayed in power for more than 40 years, which included the a bloody intervention by the Soviets in 1956 to crush an anti-communist revolution.

Meanwhile, Budapest’s “millennial” subway, the continent’s first all-electric urban underground railway, continued to drive on the left all the way up to 1973, when the line was rebuilt, new rolling stock were introduced, and these trains, too, were switched to right-hand drive.

 Posted by at 9:41 pm
Oct 192023
 

Last night, I received notification from the CRA about an upcoming small tax refund.

When I logged on with my business account, it appeared to show that I had 3 unread messages, though there was a funny smudge before the ‘3’ in the notification icon.

When I clicked, I saw only one unread message. When I went back to the main screen, I now saw a ‘4’. That’s when I realized that the smudge was… a minus sign.

Indeed I had four messages shown in the mail interface, all read. So instead of counting the number of unread messages as a positive number, the UI showed the number of read messages as a negative number.

I have not yet received the refund. I hope that when (if?) it shows up in my bank account, it will have the correct sign.

 Posted by at 10:15 pm
Oct 172023
 

Here are two images. The first is from 1943.

By way of explanation, the gentleman on the left is Admiral Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s leader at the time. The gentleman on the right with the famous moustache needs no introduction.

The second image is from today, October 17, 2023:

The somewhat overweight gentleman on the left is Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister. The gentleman on the right is well known I suppose.

I don’t think I need to comment on why I opted to post these two pictures together. All I have to say is that this second image will come to haunt Hungarians in the future much the same way as the first.

 Posted by at 3:52 pm
Oct 122023
 

I’m doing more work on gravitational lensing. In particular, the little ray tracing model that I developed can now use actual astronomical images as sources. Here’s a projection of a nice spiral galaxy as it would be seen through a pair of non-coplanar, imperfectly lined up lenses:

Somehow, I suspect, no astronomer would recognize (at least not without a spectral analysis) that these are four images of the same rather nice-looking galaxy, NGC-4414:

These lensing examples also demonstrate how difficult it is to reconstruct either the original view, or the mass distribution of the lens itself, when all we see is something like the first image above.

 Posted by at 9:35 pm
Oct 122023
 

As I watch the lamps of the post-WW2 world order go out, one tiny, flickering light at a time, I am compelled to remember something that happened more than a century ago: When Sir Edward Grey, Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary at the time, remarked that “the lamps are going out all over Europe”.

We are not quite there yet. There is hope that sanity will prevail.

Yet I feel that that hope is fading, that time is running out.

In 1914, the point of no return, the trigger was Germany’s decision to attack neutral Belgium. It compelled Britain to declare war, and ultimately widened that war into the world’s first (or maybe second — I think the Napoleonic wars might qualify as World War 0) global conflict.

What the trigger will be this time, I do not know. I am reacting in part to the announcement that the West warned Hezbollah to stay out of Israel’s conflict with Hamas. But chances are it will be something else.

But it is coming, of that I am near certain, even as I dearly hope that I am dead wrong, that my pessimism is unwarranted, my concerns grossly misplaced.

 Posted by at 2:17 am
Oct 082023
 

I am simulating gravitational lenses, ray tracing the diffracted light.

With multiple lenses, the results can be absolutely fascinating. Here’s a case of four lenses, three static, a fourth lens transiting in front of the other three, with the light source a fuzzy sphere in the background.

I can’t stop looking at this animation. It almost feels… organic. Yet the math behind it is just high school math, a bit of geometry and trigonometry, nothing more.

NB: This post has been edited with an updated, physically more accurate animation.

 Posted by at 5:35 pm
Oct 082023
 

The world is not heading in the right direction. Not by a long shot. The golden era that began in 1945 and saw an unprecedented number of people around the world find relative peace, prosperity, and security for nearly eight decades, may be coming to an unpleasant end. There is a Hungarian saying (“kutya is jódolgában megy a jégre”) that may have a loose equivalent in English in the form of the proverb, “you never miss the water till the well runs dry”.

Here are a few things that concern me, in no particular order:

  • Worsening wars: Russia-Ukraine, the (brand new) Hamas-Israeli war, hotspots elsewhere, China-Taiwan tension
  • The shrinking middle class, rising inequality and homelessness
  • Erosion of democratic values, faith in democratic/constitutional institutions
  • Rise of populism, ideological demagoguery and intolerance, political polarization, even violence
  • Rising economic instability, lack of economic and environmental sustainability

There are probably a few more that I have not mentioned, including petty domestic Canadian issues, such as the gloriously incompetent bills C-11/C-18 by which Canada tries to control online media.

Individually, each of these issues would be considered serious, but certainly not insurmountable. When they come all at the same time… The last time the world faced something similar was in the late 1920s, early 1930s. We know how well that turned out. Tens of millions of deaths, the rise of two of the worst totalitarian ideologies in history, a world war and the deployment of two nuclear weapons later…

Those nuclear weapons proved to be genuine peacemakers: Few can argue that they had a major role convincing all participants to play kind of nice, making sure that certain lines in the sand remain firmly uncrossed. But the inhibitions against their use are becoming weaker over time.

Am I being an alarmist? I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure the people who woke up today to the sound of air raid sirens in Israel, or found themselves at the end of the day in Hamas custody as human shield hostages do not think so either.

Earlier today, I was looking at amazing pictures of an abandoned Siberian town, Kadykchan. Built at the cost of the lives of countless gulag prisoners, the town lost its population after the breakup of the USSR, and now serves as little more than a sad reminder of entire chapters of 20th century history. I think one of the images of that town that I saw might serve well as a cautionary tale.

How about coming to our senses before it’s too late, before we turn much of the world into a similar post-apocalyptic wasteland?


PS: My AI friend Claude suggested toning down this post a little, to make it less alarmist. I don’t want to. I am alarmed.

 Posted by at 3:14 am
Oct 052023
 

I don’t know much about attosecond light pulses but my wife and I did note that one of the recipients of this year’s physics prize was a physicist who studied just a year ahead of Ildiko at ELTE (Eötvös University). She doesn’t recall if she ever bumped into Ferenc Krausz, though.

And of course one of the recipients of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine was Katalin Kariko, for her groundbreaking work in mRNA vaccines. Well-deserved indeed! I actually know (a little bit) more about mRNA vaccines than about attosecond physics, which might seem odd, considering that physics is my home turf, and organic chemistry is like an alien landscape. But the generation of ultrashort photon pulses is a very specialized field of study, to which I never paid much attention.

Anyhow, Kariko and Krausz are now added to that long list of scientists who were born, and studied in, Hungary, but who eventually ended up abroad, where they did the bulk of the work that earned them this recognition.

 Posted by at 7:03 pm
Oct 032023
 

Here’s my phone screen as of a few minutes ago:

That’s in Centigrade of course.

What can I say? OK, our balcony thermometer only shows 28.3 C. Even so… not exactly typical early October weather for Ottawa.

 Posted by at 5:08 pm