As far as cacti are concerned, I imagine you are paranoid about them: I would too… I think every part of the world has its dangers… I am thinking about “ricci di mare”, some animals that live on rocks underwater near the coast, covered with spines. You step over one, and you remember it for a long time…

I don’t think I’ll go to a balloon ride, the conference is too interesting after all!
Cheers,
T.

The risks in taking a tram ride are fairly small. But balloons are definitely not very safe. They will explain this to you when they make you sign the agreement saying that they don’t owe money to your heirs. Baloons have no control surfaces.

Several people have been given the excitement of choosing between death by burning and sky diving without a parachute. Then there is the rather frequent interaction between balloons and high voltage power lines. Even if the pilot manages to dump the excess heat in the balloon at the right time to land it in an unpopulated part of the desert there is still the opportunity to have the basket tip over on landing, and unceremoniously dump the riders into a cactus patch.

In the deserts near Albuquerque, the cacti can grow 8 feet high. They are covered with spines up to about 2 inches long. When I was a boy, we found out, (the hard way) that these spines can go all the way through your hand. But it isn’t the big spines that you’ll be talking about. It’s the thousands of really tiny spines that will drive you insane trying to remove them. The doctors say that these are too small to see and will be exceedingly painful for most of a year. The big spines aren’t that easy to remove. Imagine being covered with thousands of them.

Needless to say, in Albuquerque, a large percentage of the children fall into a cactus. However, I know of no one who has done this twice. An advantage of growing up in a place like this is that I can instinctively walk through the desert without getting spines stuck into me. I also have the ability to hike many miles through the desert without running into any rattlesnakes (by avoiding the spots that they find attractive).

Now I’m up in the Pacific Northwest. Up here, you eventually discover that you can’t take a 50m short-cut through the undergrowth. The exceedingly delicious razor sharp raspberry bushes will cut your clothes right off you and leave you bloody from head to toe. The reason so many serial killers operate out here is that these bushes make great places to hide bodies. They must grow a half meter per day because if you don’t remove them from your yard they will take over in a couple weeks with 3/4″ thick branches and will have to be logged rather than cut down.

Let’s see, there’s one other accident that only happens at most once to someone in Albuquerque. You handle the spicy insides of chile pods (peeling them before cooking i.e.), get the juice on your hands but fail to very carefully wash your hands for a long time. Then you touch yourself in a private spot. Ooops.

I kinda have hopes for the WIMP experiment, as I mentioned before that slowed down neutrinos could, according to my hypothesis, interact more readily with matter and would be therefore perceived as a WIMP. Where, accordingly it might be the primary vector of pushing gravity.

As for dark matter, as I have also discussed before, I don’t think they have a clue. The methods described above seem worthless to me. If its a non-spinning neutral particle millions of times smaller than an electron, as I believe that it is, they cannot find it using present methods. Instead they can see the energy of countless millions of them every day of the week via interactions in the ZPF, since accordingly it would be a primary source of this observed energy.. Secondly, they show up as long strings of dark matter in particle collisions which are now called quark jets. At least thats the theory.

One big problem with theories today, I believe, as you mentioned by way of Gausian analysis, if there is no clear and valid concept model based upon observation first, then the mathematics will almost certainly be wrong.

your friend forrest

T.

I think they find a result compatible with June 2nd at 1-sigma level. If I remember correctly (but I wouldnt bet on it) they fit something like 10 days before, with 10-day error. So indeed, June 21st might be excluded at 3-sigma.

Hi Amara,

I talked to Riccardo this morning (we had breakfast together and then I brought him to the conference with the car I rented). No doubt I will offer your greetings tomorrow.
Take good care of yourself!
Cheers,
T.

yes the first message had gotten caught by the (by now very aggressive) spam filter. Thank you so much for the advice. I will most certainly make good use of it.
I am presently debating with myself whether to go to sandia or take a balloon flight. As for the museum, I’ll do that.

Cheers,
T.

PS just had dinner at Scalo, and was impressed by the food!

The museum is next to “Old Town” which is the place that tourists visit in order to purchase useless but expensive doodads. There are places to eat there, but they are slightly touristy. The best places where the locals eat local food are where I just mentioned.

You can see a 3000m mountain east of the city. There is a tram that runs from the east part of the city up to the top. It runs all year long but gets the most use during skiing season. They claim that it’s the world’s longest aerial tramway. See http://www.sandiapeak.com/

Uh, try to avoid doing this trip on a windy day. In high winds, they will halt the thing and if they do this while you are on the peak you will be stuck there (or can hitch a ride down the east side of the mountain). Or worse, you will have a story to tell about the 12 hours you spent in a swaying gondola 300m in the air while the crowded tourists around you became sea sick – until you were finally rescued by something involving a National Guard helicopter and an air rescue sling.

This time of year, some of the cactus are in flower and if you have a camera these are worth seeking out. These are stunningly beautiful. The locals get used to them and a lot of them don’t even notice them. Remarkably, some of them will deny that cactus flowers even exist. Keep your eyes open.

By the way, the Albuquerque airport is unique in that it has several quite excellent places to eat.

And I always end up with at least two meals at Monroe’s. Get the menu order #00 green chile cheeseburger, along with “taco fingers” as an appetizer and a sopapilla as desert (bite a corner off of it, and put a little honey inside of it, then eat it with your fingers).

http://www.frontierrestaurant.com
http://www.monroeschile.com

Let’s see if this gets past the spam filter…