Zadig ou la destinee

Another great story by Voltaire, 4/5 stars.

Candide ou l'optimisme

This play or the story summary version I read on the plane today is fantastic! I was laughing frequently all during the flight. 5/5 stars.

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mfw@wyle.org | 1.425.249.3936

Kaffir Boy

My daughter must read this book for her class at school so I wanted to see if the pornography law suit against school districts had merit.  The beginning is quite horrific.  And I suspect conditions in the region have not changed much since the book was published, despite the fact that Apartheid has been abolished.  The book is not well written; it is dated, extremely melodramatic, but important for the historical context.  2/5 stars

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mfw@wyle.org | 1.425.249.3936

max the demon vs entropy of doom

It's a graphic novel (comic book) to make thermodynamics approachable by non-physics majors.

I sponsored the kickstarter project because I selfishly want to buy and read the graphic novel.

The kickstarter page is here:

http://kck.st/2sL36PG

7/24 - 7/26/17 Photo updates

Gabriella's camera "saw Internet" when it came home to our house and uploaded the rest of the photos I had not secured previously, so we have updates to a few of the albums as well as photos from the trip home

She captured some amazing pictures out of the window of our plane rides, Zurich, Los Angeles, Seattle.

• Monday 7/24/2017:  Flights home

Hunkelers Geheimnis

The flight from Zurich to LAX had a good selection of audio programming​ and I listened to this excellent radio play.  The story, characters, acting, etc. were very good. 4/5 stars.

Microcosmos: Le people de cosmos

Fantastic documentary about bugs in the meadow.  Great close-up footage. 4/5 stars.

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mfw@wyle.org | 1.425.249.3936

Fwd: The rise and fall of D.O.D.O

I really like Neal Stephenson's books and also enjoyed his collaboration _Cobweb_.  This collaboration is not as good but is still ok. Time travel stories cannot be self-consistent always make it extremely difficult for me to suspend disbelief. The characters are fun and the plot is ok. 3/5 stars.

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mfw@wyle.org | 1.425.249.3936

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mfw@wyle.org | 1.425.249.3936

7/19/17 - 7/24/17: Switzerland wrap-up

Individual Daily Photo Albums

• Wednesday 7/19/2017: Speed boating Lake Zurich
• Thursday 7/20/2017: Walk around Lake Zurich and downtown
• Friday 7/21/2017: Wup Kusnacht, Pfannensteig
• Saturday 7/22/2017: Berner Oberland, Glacier snow, Barracks
• Sunday 7/23/2017: Berner Oberland, Bern, Laszlow visit in Muri   Album-2
• Monday 7/24/2017: flight home

I have fallen behind in keeping a daily update.  I blame Google blogger :-), that now rejects email originating from outside the USA to create blog posts :-(.

Wednesday 7/19 was a low-key hanging-out day where I finished editing my and my subordinates research papers, as well as the first draft of a conference presentation I am giving on 8/2.  We were on Lake Zurich speed boating for a short time and I was able to spend a few hours hiking the mountains above Herrliberg before a late dinner.

Thursday 7/20 called for rain and thunderstorms so we planned to play paintball but the paintball center was closed (and it was not raining) so we walked around lake Zurich.

Friday 7/21 I was up early and went on a 3-hour hike, then the family drove up to an old castle ruin on Wup and we hiked the region of the nearby river where my nephew tried (and failed) to shoot fish with his hunting bow.

On Saturday 7/22 we packed up two cars and 11 of us drove up to the Sustenpass (Swiss Alps near Bern) where we hiked mountain lakes, a glacier, played in the snow, and then slept in a military barrack with 12 beds all connected and crammed into a tiny room.  It was quite horrible as one might imagine because of snoring and other sounds that kept some of us awake most of the night.

Sunday 7/23 we got an early start and visited a cousin in Muri (very close to Bern).  The 15 of us had a great discussion, then hiked up the Gurt mountain and finally had a wonderful Italian dinner in downtown Bern before heading back to Herrliberg.

There was a bit of a panic when we discovered that Iceland Air (a second time) kicked us off our flight and did not contact us.  When I called, waited 71 minutes on hold, they realized their mistake and asked if we would fly Tuesday 7/25 since the flights were all full.   Instead were re-accommodated on another Swiss flight via LAX on Monday 7/25.  Final arrangements were made at 1:00 AM Monday for the Monday flight, ouch.

Monday 7/24 we flew home.

7/18/2017: Lichtenstein, Chaeserrugg

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We drove (for a few hours) to Chaeserrugg today, where we took the incline and a cable car to the top of the mountain and then hiked the ridge line at the top.  Despite the haze and fog that rolled in and out it worked out well and we had some spectacular views.

On the drive back we stopped at a bird sanctuary in Lichtenstein.

We had a fantastic (but late) dinner at home in Herrliberg.

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7/17/2017: Herrliberg, speed-boating on Lake Zurich

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Today we spent almost the entire day on Lake Zurich -- swimming, speed boating, water skiing, mon-skiing, "oreo" rafting, eating at an island restaurant, and getting sun burnt.

I took a break in the middle to go grocery shopping and I also configured a bastion network with all six security cameras in this house in Herrliberg as well as a VPN to access the camera functions for my brother-in-law.  It has become much easier with web GUIs and Fritzbox than typing iptables commands and editing arcane configuration files.  Now he can watch his house, inside and out from anywhere on his mobile phone.  Tomorrow we shall set up his home-automation system (that requires flash, yuck) for VPN access.

The weather in St Moritz and the Engadin region is stormy so we stayed in Zurich this week.

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7/16/2017: Regensberg

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Today we drove to Regensberg castle on top of a mountain and hiked for a few hours.  We made a fire at a camp site and cooked lunch, then hiked back to the trail head.   During the hike I had some time to chat with my youngest son and separately with my brother-in-law. The hiking trail had model solar system planets whose sizes and distances from each other are the correct ratio / size scale for a model solar system.

We attended an informal dinner party at a neighbor's house; it was very comfortable and low-key.

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7/15/2017 Herrliberg, Liestal, Solar-Bob

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We stayed in Herrliberg in the morning, herding the cats towards a hike in the mountains near Forch. In the afternoon we re-united with my youngest son, his friend, and the Basel contingent of in-laws near Basel.  We went to a small bobsled / ropes course that was much better than it appeared.

We had a fantastic bar-b-q dinner in Liestal with all the noisy kids and stayed late.

Eight years ago in a similar bobsled course, I was sitting behind my 4-year-old daughter while she drove the sled and we had a life-threatening wipe-out when we flew off the track:

This time, she drove by herself and had a great time.

It was great to see the family and have the cousins play together.




Photos & Videos

7/14/2017 Herrliberg, Zurich

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Friday was another "down" day of laundry, errands, jogging, short hikes, swimming, and "hanging out" together with my in-laws (my real purpose for this visit).  I was able to meet old friends in Zurich again.

Today we plan to get together with the Basel contingent at a ropes course.





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7/13/2017 Lac de Mont Salvans et Chateau Chillion

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We were up early and on the hiking trail after we checked out of the fantastic AirBnB apartment.  We hiked around the local lakes, along the lake trail, then we toured the Castle at Chillion.

Finally we drove back to Herrliberg through terrible traffic.




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7/12/2017 Switzerland Day 3: Murten, St Peters Island, . . .

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Today we drove for five hours to see the local sites. We started in Murten, walked the entire walking tour with all 20 sites; then we drove to St Peters Island (where Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote the philosophical ideas that became the USA's Declaration of Independence and the USA's Constitution). We hiked the entire length of the Island, which took longer than expected. We had lunch about a quarter of the way in. Then we drove to Grandson castle and finally drove home.  We went through four different Cantons and all of the locals are completely bilingual French/German. Our daughter decided to speak German. It was a long day. For dinner at 8pm I made local Raclette, salad, & some other stuff with local cheeses, other local ingredients in the awesome flat from AirBnB. The local dairy products are to-die-for awesome (Yogurt, milk, cheeses).

Tomorrow we shall make one or two stops locally on our way back to Herrliberg.






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7/11/2017 Switzerland day 2: Gruyer

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Last night we celebrated my birthday in Herrliberg.

Today we rented a car from a neighbor in Herrliberg and drove for a few hours to the French speaking part of Switzerland (Suisse Romande, Welch-Schweiz).  We are at an AirBnB that is probably the best place we have ever stayed in all of our years of using FlipKey, VRBO, HomeAway, and (recently) AirBnB. This condo is new, up-scale, extremely large, sleeps eight, has two large bathrooms, etc.  We cooked an amazing dinner for ourselves. . . Here.  We are very happy here.

We drove first to the Cailler chocolate factory tour, then to the Giger museum tour, then we hiked around the castle; then we bought the ingredients for dinner at a local (walking-distance) supermarket, and finally came back to our AirBnB condo to cook and eat.  It was awesome!!

French numbers and French conversations snaps into place quickly and easily.  Even my 13-year-old can function in simple French.  We should travel to French-speaking regions of the world with her more-frequently!


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7/10/2017 Herrliberg / Zurich Day 1

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Today was a laundry / rest day.  We slept in; I met up with a few friends in Zurich; it was too cold to go swimming in Lake Zurich.  I went for a long, 15 Km jog.  My daughter caught up with her cousins when they came back from school and we spent an enormous amount of time snacking, chatting, cooking, and "hanging out" with my in-laws -- our real purpose for coming here.

Our friends with whom we were in Israel arrived safely home and I posted copies of some of their pictures here.

It started thunderstorming / raining at 20:30 with beautiful lightning over the lake.

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7/9/17 Israel -> Switzerland

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Sunday was a travel day; we left our apartment in Jerusalem, drove to Ben Gurion airport.  We were four hours too early so we hung out at the airport all day and then flew in the evening to Zurich.  The airport has some cool posters:

On Monday I we plan to do laundry and hang out with in-laws.


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7/8/2017 Israel Day 12: Israel Museum & Old City at night

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Today we went to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and spent the entire day there.  The museum is very large and we had to skip many areas (buildings of the large campus) and zip through some interesting stuff.  It is similar to the British museum of London in that you cannot see everything in one day and there is something of interest to everyone.  We took a few hundred photos.  In the archeology section is the result of a dig in which my oldest daughter participated!

The display explains that the prehistoric Shaman lady was buried with her mystical tortoise shells. But the students who did all the work on the dig for the archeologists gossiped that they thought the hermit "cat lady" (turtle lady) was an outcast spinster shunned by the tribe.  Who is right?

In the evening we walked back to the old city to photograph the City of Gold at sunset.  We were not disappointed.

We walked along the ramparts to the Kotel and watched the Havdalah service there.  At our vantage point we participated in our own service with a group from Spain.  They had a flamenco  twist to the songs and prayers we know so well.  It was a lot of fun.

Tomorrow we fly to Switzerland.  We had a great time here and hope to come back again soon.


More Photos (some are still uploading)

7/7/2017 Israel Day 11: Yad Vashem

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How do you kill a million people in 18 months at one location?  How can you kill six million jews in three years?  The Nazis spent enormous time and effort on this "problem," running A/B tests and trying many methods, none of which scaled out to their purpose until they perfected their death camps.  Some of the Nazi methods were used by smaller mass murders before or after the Holocaust. Some of these methods include:

• Special-purpose teams were sent to round-up the jews, force them to dig their own graves, then shoot the jews, and move on to the next group (Islamic State, Yazidi)
• Barges filled with hundreds of jews were sunk in the middle of the sea.
• Buses had their own exhaust gas piped into the passenger compartments, killing the passengers.
• Death marches between locations (Turks, Armenians).
• Build a wall around a town and burn the town (Turks, Smyrna)

Here is how the Polish people and German Nazis accomplished their world-record numbers in the Holocaust:

Step 0:  Gather up all the jews from their homes and put them into internment camps.  The Poles had 1,000 concentration camps or ghettos  in Poland.  The french had about a dozen in France, and more in Morocco and Tunisia.  

Step 1:  Rail lines move tens of thousands of victims per day to the death factory:

Step 2: Upon arrival, deceive the victims and tell them they must be disinfected in a group bath, and have them enter the waiting area.

Step 3: Have them undress:

Step 4:  Pour in sufficient cyanide gas through the chimneys to murder all the jews inside:

Step 5: Other jews use hand-crank elevators to lift out and burn dead jews in mass crematoria:

The museum has many aspects of the mass murder to present and consider.  The first several exhibits spend some time explaining the history, motivation, ideas, and anti-semitism that led up to the mass murder.  One point they missed entirely is the complete passivity and assimilation of the victims: Many of the victims had almost no Jewish identity -- they were secular Poles, French, Germans, Dutch, or whatever.  The victims refused to believe their own people would murder them.  And even in the Ghettos as they starved to death they were waiting for the problem to blow over.

I liked the areas that celebrated the lives of each murder victim individually.  There are special buildings and exhibits for the 1.5 million children who were murdered.  You can read and see photos of individuals that makes the mass murder more real and personal.

The museum was overcrowded and we had to skip a few exhibits.  I was crying, of course.  We checked for our own murdered grandparents and relatives and found some of them but not all.  We are considering registering the victims with their photos, biographies, and official records.

It is really scary to me how the current 21st century upsurge in anti-semitism, usually masked in other terms such as anti-Israel sentiment or politically correct fear of offending anti-semites, has reached similar intensity to the feelings of the people at the time of the Holocaust.  And I will always refuse to record any ethnographic information about myself or anyone.

We ate lunch at the cafeteria there, then headed back to prepare for Shabbat in Jerusalem (everything shuts down).

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