We had a wonderful holiday with my wife’s family in Penryn. Lots of good food, good company, running, and animals! Not bad for the holiday now known as “Black Friday Eve”.
Pictures. Here is a bird
and a cat
We went to Nevada City and Empire Mine, here are some sensitive pictures.
Sensitive rose:
Sensitive fountain:
Several pictures of backlit autumn leaves, that will make you weep unless you have a heart of stone:
This book looks interesting. Bjork must be proud:
Yet another hedge fund manager explained Icelandic banking to me this way: you have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that each is worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets. “They created fake capital by trading assets amongst themselves at inflated values,” says a London hedge fund manager. “This was how the banks and investment companies grew and grew.”
I saw the university’s performance of Oklahoma on Saturday. I think maybe it stretched the talent of this fine institution a bit. But Curly was good! In future performances, I’d prefer it if they cut out that tortuous dream/dance sequence. Jeeebus I came here to listen to cowboys sing about surreys with fringes not to watch people dance around a mirror.
(apod)
There are naked-eye visible sunspots now, probably not best viewed by staring at the midday sun but maybe at sunset like this
We went to the Polynesian Cultural Center yesterday, attended our FIRST luau, and went to see their show HA! Breath of Life! The show was very very good, though the plot was The Lion King with polynesian people taking the place of lions.
That reminds me of this narration of an African safari:
“Meet the African cousin of the American mountain lion: the regular lion.”
Happy 11 day! And Veteran’s Day. I just got back from two consecutive conferences and helped at both. It was not easy and I’m glad it’s over. I think everybody had a good time in Hawaii. The latter conference was in Kauai, my wife attended the first couple days at we stayed at the Sheraton. We tried to hike the na pali coast last weekend but flash flood warnings kept us out of the mountains, probably a good call. Nonetheless we had a nice trip that included the Pu’u o Kila Lookout over Kalalau Valley, otherwise known as the picture that ships with our notorious ipad app:
The following photo may provide you with a clue as to our approval today for sale on a new platform:
Also we saw Waimea Canyon, a favorite of mine:
We got to hang out with one of our favorite Hawaiian natives: our graceful state bird, the Nene (we located them at one of their favorite habitats, a high school soccer field):
We did get to hike a couple miles of the Na Pali trail. Then we were stranded in Hanalei (home of Puff the M.D.) for a couple hours because of the flooding.
Kauai has a lot of wild Red Jungle Fowl, here is one of the prettiest:
The best thing about the Sheraton was the orchid garden nearby
We also visited Hanapepe with its art galleries, root beer floats, and swinging bridge
My patience for listening to talks waned after six days. On the last day this dude gave a talk about our current state of understanding of short-lived radioisotopes in the solar system, and he showed a plot of our knowledge of this field vs time. Our knowledge was increasing for the last thirty years until recently, and now it is actually lower than the last time we had this meeting in Kauai in ~2008. For proof of this decline in knowledge he showed a paper I wrote earlier this year. It was the highlight of my career.
Here’s the bunny
Noctambulator 