Harley and Triumph

Several years ago I became a motorcycle enthusiast. On weekends I pull my bike from the garage and cruise around. Zipping on the freeway at eighty miles per hour is very satisfying. There is a touch of danger, a lot of excitement and a temporary illusion of being somebody else. Is it the best one can do? Can such a make believe world blend seamlessly with the reality? Until recently I thought I had it all figured out…

Fast forward to the present day. I am reporting live from Warsaw, Poland where I am attending my mother-in-law's eightieth birthday. It is a grand celebration which coincides with her retiring from teaching at Warsaw University. It is a big deal, a gala attended by her colleagues, friends, family and her fiancee. There is lot to report but I'd rather stay 

with the motorcycle theme. Why? Because if my mother-in-law was a motorcycle she would be a Harley. Let me  explain - Harley is an iconic bike with  stunningly good looks, lots of torque, resulting in an impressive takeoff, and an acoustic footprint recognizable from afar. It may not have the best turning ability but there is no better bike for going straight ahead, and my mother-in-law would not be wasting time on turning figure eights in a parking lot!  If we follow this line of thought then her fiancee would be a Triumph. Now, Trumph is a somewhat different animal. It has solid British roots, is a bit lighter  and more powerful, and on the downside, it is endowed with a carburetor that frequently produces vast quantities of smoke though his pipe. While each bike prides itself on its individuality, what sets them apart is that they leave competition in the dust and they go together so well.

Harley's motto is "Live to ride" and I always thought it is a bit odd. Somehow the phrase implies anticipation, waiting, putting it off - in short, it  resembles my own weekend riding experiences. With these  two it is the other way around. They reversed this slogan and "Ride to Live" is what it is. And what a ride it is! I am talking about going eighty at eighty and doing it 24/7.  I am full of amazement and admiration, but I also yearn to use these metaphors and analogies to better my own understanding. And in the end, I come up with this - when distilled to simple elements we are at most one or two things, and knowing this obliges one to make the best of it. So when you find yourself being a Harley or Triumph  you just run forever into the sunset because that is what you are! 

Perhaps not the deepest thoughts, but it is good enough for me. I do not want to sit in the garage and shine my bits any longer!  I want to go outside, get blasted by the elements and perhaps get a ding or two. I am inspired and supercharged, and the road is endless.

2012: Annus mirabilis

The Hubble telescope is widely considered a pinnacle  of scientific ingenuity in the exploration of cosmos, and political battles to prolong its life and install its successors are long, brutal and not entirely successful.  So it came as a surprise when in the middle of the year an obscure spying agency offered to NASA two of their spare Hubbles. One man's floor is another man's ceiling but it still comes as a shock when one of the most treasured tools of the astronomical community is found in the army's broom closet. Apparently  Hubbles were just a surplus after the already deployed flock of Hubbles was found sufficient to make  an hourly  one-to-one digital copy of  the politically sensitive areas around the globe.
Suddenly, the scientific community was galvanized. Indeed, the military is a black hole swallowing two orders of magnitude more money than the budget of the entire NASA and a possibility that some of the money is spent  for advancing science captivated everybody. The idea that scientific discovery could be something akin to an egg hunt become very real. Show_me_the_money.org was created by underemployed postdocs and graduate students and faculty are joining in en masse. The organization went on a frantic search of  hidden scientific treasures.
It did not take long to wait for the first results, and they were spectacular. In the early summer graduate students from University of West Virginia found a quantum computer in a woodshed of the late senator Robert Byrd. It is a fully functional machine, which judging by the age of the parts, was made in the mid 90's. Apparently, senator Byrd, who was a champion of earmarks for both military and scientific spending, received it as a souvenir. Graduate students who discovered the machine note that it is a 300 qubit model which comfortably factors 150 digit integers under 2 minutes apiece.
Two weeks after this discovery, Google, which turned out to be a civilian arm of NSA announced the Lost File Program. In a simple ad, they promised to return  every computer file lost within the last 50 years, whether it was saved on a 5.25 inch floppy, perforated tape or sent by e-mail. The program got much publicity when Toni Morrison confessed to Oprah that her long lost book manuscript is being considered for a second Nobel prize and she pledged half of the prize to the Department of Defense. On a darker side, a spike in suicides and early retirements among executives and industry leaders was a clear indication that  some files better remain lost.
After that, the events cascaded beyond control. Area 51 was was open to the public in Arizona in early fall and finally the animosity of this state to  aliens became completely clear. This turned out to be a bit of a hoax as the site looks exactly like in the movie Independence Day. But the biggest surprise was related to the global warming. It turned out that the Global Warming is human caused and his name is David  Petraeus. Apparently the Army has the hardware to dial up the climate to any desired setting. Here the story gets a bit murky, but it appears that one of the former first ladies and her astrologist expressed a wish to crank up the heat in Texas. This coincided with the Army's desire to test the equipment and so here we are, no big deal really. The test is over now and in a few years things will be back to normal, but the hostility of the government to the climate community turns out to be well grounded.  This discovery called attention to other cases where the government turned out to be particularly stingy with their science dollars and the scientific community started looking at the gravitational wave detectors (that for years detected absolutely nothing.) After a few weeks of gumshoeing the truth was revealed, the waves and the corresponding technology exists and it is actually quite useful. Levitation and space travel  are clearly identifiable applications. However,  gravity is the only effective force against obesity and since the government declared a war against obesity the discovery of gravitational waves was dropped from the unraveling schedule. To prevent the scientific community from an accidental discovery a shoe-size gravitational wave generators were installed in the proximity of the detectors to obscure the natural phenomena just like the noise cancelling technology.
In the middle of winter, first sombering analyses started to appear. Scientific community was traumatized by the vast discoveries that the Army has made. Suddenly it became clear that the money pumped into the military complex was not wasted as everybody had previously thought. Quite contrary, army loomed as a super academy of sciences where scientists can work undisturbed by the need to publish, teach or participate in senseless faculty meetings.  The centuries old paradigm of combining research and training lay in ruins, partly because of the exponential growth of parasitic university administration that throttled any leftover traces of ingenuity. On the other hand, the Army with its discipline, 16 hour workdays interspersed with intense physical training, and (what is being whispered around) endless hazing and intimidation of weaker scientists, turned out to be an ideal environment for fostering innovation. With the bottomless purse and no accountability it took years where  the civilians took centuries. Thousands of university professors suddenly realized that even their measly salaries are an unjustified burden on the society.  Massive wave of academic retirements ensued. There were big changes in the Army as well.    One and half million of ordinary soldiers  turned out to be a result of an outreach program for minorities and low income  citizens, and an effective cover for  several thousands of super-scientists working anonymously.
In the end, the truth set us all free. By December the stock market doubled, first such case when it happened in just six months, and after the collapse of euro,  Europe started making overtures to join the dollar-zone. Turning on the planetary AC seems to be working and everybody is very happy.

Well, maybe not everybody. As often mathematicians are grumpy and bitter. While the search revealed many wonderful devices, there must be theories and spectacular mathematics hiding behind them. But so far, no paper or equation has  turned up, and Riemann Hypothesis is still not settled. While every sergeant in the army knows that it is true, the mathematical community is clinging to an old concept of a proof and does not have the capacity to move on.