To Russia With Anticipation

So, having typed a couple paragraphs, what I'd written vanished. Why? Cosmic editing of fuzzy writing is the only plausible explanation. Though, this is in keeping with how preparations for this trip have unfolded. Akin to the vanishing airline reservation specifically. I had my confirmation . . . I even had a seat assignment on Delta . . . and then when I called Alitalia to request a seat assignment, I suddenly didn't have a ticket, nor a reservation. Thank you Alitalia for not having online seat request capability. Otherwise, I'd be showing up at Logan this morning with my bags and a smile, and no chance of getting on a flight to Moscow.

As it turns out, I'm now on a train to NY, to get to JFK, to get on a flight to Moscow. It all worked out. As long as this unexpected loss of power and forward movement in New London proves temporary.

Appropriately, it was snowing this morning as I walked over to Back Bay Station. Just enough to whiten the ground, but I appreciated the gesture. It appears that the weather has finally turned wintery in Yaroslavl, too. This makes me happy. It wouldn't have been quite the genuine winter welcome I was hoping for without snow around.

My 46 Pimsleur Russian lessons now seem wholly inadequate. I just now got to, "How's the weather?" And, I had to look up snow on my own: снег. Pronounced: Snerg. You can see in this small example one of the principal challenges in trying to tackle Russian as a second language. The alphabet is on one hand familiar, but full of amusing misdirections. с = s; н = n; г = g. And, then there are the extra letters that are more hieroglyphic in nature: жфю. I am glad that Cross Cultural Solutions will have a translator nearby at all times!

Thinking of all I don't know how to say, and even more how limited my ability to comprehend anything said in Russian, I feel compelled to return to Lesson 1 and try to reinforce the most basic and essential components: "Do you speak English?" "I don't understand." "Please help me."

Adding to the Really Baffling . . . Let's Mutate Bird Flu to Make it Airborne

The logic apparently is that by manipulating H5N1 to become transmissible between ferrets (which are, appropriately, nature's closest stand-in biologically for human scientists), we can ferret out (too irresistible to not have a little pun with these creatures while we kill them) how the bird flu virus might mutate in the non-laborotory world.

Not that we can do anything about the resulting pandemic should it occur. Though presumably we could establish a vaccine protocol that might be effective in impeding the virus's ability to infect.

So, developing a way to make H5N1 transmissible to and between humans will enhance our ability to warn anyone who hasn't already seen the videos of folks succumbing to bird flu that a killer virus is loose?

Of course, now we'll never know if we loosed the killer virus on ourselves or if it was a result of nature doing what nature does.

But at least we can be certain that many ferrets are going to suffer and die, and how can one argue that this is not a good thing?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/science/scientists-to-pause-research-on-deadly-strain-of-bird-flu.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

Method for Enhancement of Surface Plasmon Polaritons to Initiate & Susta...

This would be revolutionary . . . I wonder why it won't be?

Industrial Beauty (or Two Pilgrims Watching the Sun Set)

Physicists and Theologians Unite!

Here's an interesting update on the latest crisis facing physicists. To make sense of the fact that our particular universe is attuned to the precise conditions that have made life (as we perceive it) possible, an increasing number of physicists are guessing that we must be citizens of one of a countless number of universes.

If the number of potential universes is infinite, then one of them would have the conditions we find ourselves existing within. That we most likely can never test this hypothesis is a concern, of course. We're being asked to take it on faith that this must be the logical explanation for why things are as they are . . . and why, consequently, we are.

God (or whatever) works in mysterious ways!

Momentary Celebrity (Sort Of)

Ambushed by the local Fox News station, I stammer through a series of probing questions about the proposed hike in fares to ride the subway and/or bus in Boston. Oddly, I almost always walk to and from work . . . partly because I am cheap, but mostly so that I get some exercise. And, besides, I am lucky that my "commute" entails walking through Boston's Public Garden and across the Common, past the State House on Beacon Hill, and down past King's Chapel (a diminutive, stone edifice from the 18th century), before arriving at the late 20th century granite, steel, marble, and glass high-rise where I do what I do to pass the days and make a living.

MBTA riders face fare hikes as high as 43 percent: MyFoxBOSTON.com