O brave new quantum world!
To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox; whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies.
-Philip K Dick, VALIS
Here are a few old pictures which I thought I’d post.
The first is of house I recently moved into in South Pasadena, on Cawston Avenue. Apparently, Cawston was the name of the family which owned the famous ostrich farm in South Pasadena. I have looked closely at this picture and cannot find any ostrich feathers:
The second picture is of my mom at The Getty Mueseum:
The final picture is of the little stone pyramid I carved out of alabaster
This was my first attempt at carving anything. I learned that I need to buy a tool called a rasp in order to do some of the finer detail work.
Two Saturday’s ago (August 23, 2003) I went on a hike up Zuma Canyon. I left Pasadena around 8am, left a bike at the top of the canyon and drove down to the trailhead in Malibu. Here is a picture of the Zuma Canyon from where I left my bike:
The hike is quite beautiful, involving some simple bouldering and bushwacking. It took about four and a half hours of pretty serious climbing. The lower creekbed was very dense with brush, but the middle and upper sections were relatively brush free. Here are some of the boulder’s which I scrambled up:
The ride down from the top of the canyon on a paved road is a bit tight (the road has a few places where there is not much of a bikepath), but it is great to get to the bottom and to be able to go for a swim at the beach after such a strenuous hike.
Professor Chris Brennen has a nice description of this hike on his website.
Unfortunately, in spite of all the warnings on websites, I did not wear long pants or long sleeves and thus ended up getting poison oak. Not a serious case, but even today, nearly two weeks later, I still have some remaining rashes. Such is the price for my stupidity.
Here is the first post to my new blog “The Quantum Pontiff.” What should you expect from this blog? Well, quantum pontification, of course. But also skiing, stonecarving, poker, and other exciting stuff. Well maybe not so exciting for everyone. But I’m sure my mom will like the page.