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Playing Go
This evening, I went to the university to play Go and when arrived Taco and Jan-Willem were
waiting without any playing materials. Taco immediately
made room for me so that I could play against Jan-Willem.
We agreed on a five stone handicap for him. In the third
corner where we played, I played an empty triangle, which
is almost wrong (especially for players at my level), and
in this case it proved to be wrong. Huub arrived, and it
turned out he did have a set with him as well, so he could
play against Taco. In the end game, I made some mistake,
and it turned out that one of my groups was dead. I resigned.
Jan-Willem estimated that I was about 10 points behind had
I not lost the group. He also found a way, inwhich I could
have saved the group. I went home around a quarter past ten.
First lucid dream
I think I did have my first lucid dream this morning. It
was in a kind of wierd dream that there was walking around
a boy, and I suddenly realize that I was dreaming. Of course,
this is not the first time that I realize this. I decided
to change something. They boy had a glass with red lemonade
and I wanted to change it to green. It became transparent,
and I reasoned that it had not worked because green is a kind
of unusual colour, but when I wanted it again, it became green.
I thought, this is kind of neat. At that moment the dream
faded. Later when I woke up, I remembered much more about
what I had been dreaming about. I also noticed that the boy
had vanished when I changed the colour of the lemonade. But
this has been the first time, as far as I can recall, that
I changed something at will in a dream.
Curly kail
This evening, I made some curly kail
with gherkins, pork cut in cubes, smoked beaf sausage, and red
unions. I did not eat the prok, but added some red unions to
which I had added some dark Pearl River Bridge soy sauce.
Li-Xia did not eat the gherkins.
Annabel of all of us, eat it in
the most traditional way with pork and gherkins.
Momolu Duwalu Bukele
Momolu Duwalu Bukele is the inventor of the
Via alphabet,
which consist of 229 different letters.
Actually, it should not be called an alphabet, because each 'letter'
represents a syllable in the Via language. The Via language itself is a rather strange
language with 12 vowels (of which five are nasal) and
31 consonants (of which nine are pernasalized or nasal).
In a sense the Via syllabary is somewhere between a language such
as Chinese, which has a character for each word, and most common
alphabets, which use letters for vowels and consonants. Although
it seems als Momoly Duwalu Bukele really tried very hard to create
a script without any logic structure, the script has been used
for almost two centuries. This is really unbelievable.
For more information see also the
Via Omniglot page and the SIL Vai font. And for some recent scientifical paper about
the script: Distribution of complexities in the Via script.
Humans will not evolve further
Humans will not evolve further says
J. Steve Jones. This conclusion does not come as a surprise
to me. More than twenty years ago, I already concluded that our
improved healthcare would have a serious impact on the average
quality of the genetic material in humans, and that as a result
humans would become more prone to all kinds diseases within
a few ages. But of course it is question if we will be able to
maintain our current level of healthcare when we run out of
relatively cheap sources of energy (fossil fuels). But even if
we would, there would also come a point were selecting embryos
might become inevitable and an accepted practice, and possibly
accelerate human evolution far beyond the natural speed.
This evening, Annabel told me that
she is no longer interested in joining me to play Go at the university. This did not really come as a
surprise to me. This evening, I decided to take the demonstration
board that she used during the talk on Friday, March 10, 2006, and which has been standing beside
my bed every since, and hand over to Rudi or Jan-Willem. I was
the first to arrive. Rudi and Taco followed a little later, and
I suggested that they would play while I would be watching them.
After Taco resigned, they spend a long time analyzing the game
and studying all the possible alternatives.
True Knowledge
This morning, I received some announcement from
True Knowledge.
After I logged-in, I asked the question: "does god exist,"
and it came back with the answer: "I do not know whether
Pachu Chembukave regularly performs the action exist," and
the remark that it understood my question as: "Determine
whether Amazing person who is a beast at everything is
someone or something that regularly performs the intransitive
action have perceptible existence at the current time?"
Appearantly some twenty year old quy with the name Pachu Chembukave
has described himself as: "Amazing person who is a beast at
everything." This shows that the knowledge engine has some
ability to reason, and that allowing anybody to enter "facts"
leads to strange answers.
Great Wall of China
Today, I started with my next Google Earth
project: Mapping the Great Wall of China. I made use of
some detailed maps I found on Wikipedia. I spend some time,
placing these on Google Earth. I first did some part of mapping
around Balading which I visited on the last time on
August 15, 2006. Then I started
at Nanhai, at the very east of the wall. While working on this,
I became impressed by the size of the Great Wall, although it is
not a single wall, and at many places is more a path between
watchtowers. My mappings resulted in this KML file.
Great Wall Forum
Today, I found the
Great Wall Forum where they have a very detailed KML file
(for Google Earth)
with all the "known" parts of the Great Wall of China, which you
can download after you have become a member. It is a truely
huge file, which dwarfs what I have achieved so far. The file
is copyrighted, but I don't think it means I cannot publish
my own findings after having seen this file. When I inspected
some of the trails that are included, it seemed they were
made with a GPS tracker, and did not so nicely follow the
wall as the tracks that I have created by hand. So, I could
still continue my search.
I also found Great Wall
Trek with information about the trek that Mark Scholinz made
in 2007. The site does include an interesting KML file created
with his GPS tracker while he made the trek.
Two other web sites are Great Wall blog, and
Walking the Wall.
In the evening, I studied the
Great Wall of China Mapping by
mke1963. I found some interesting straight in the West
of China.
Great Wall in 3D
I found two 3D models of famous parts of the Great Wall
of China, which can be viewed in Google Earth. These are
Great Wall of China at Badaling and
Great Wall of China at Mutianyu. Both models look
quite impressive, but I get the impression that the wall
is modelled thicker than in reality. And there also some
understandable errors in the model of the Great Wall at Badaling,
because there is a gap in the wall where the wall crosses a cliff
(somewhere between 20 and 30 meter high). See, for example,
this picture.)
The cliff itself is not visible in the terrain model of Google Earth.
I also found a KML file with about the
Great Wall of China during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
But the information in this file is already included in KML file
from Great Wall Forum.
The tracks are not exactly the same, but they match very closely.
It seems as if they are vectorizations of the same source.
I also did some additional tracking by myself.
Going into the city
This afternoon, Andy and I
took the bus into the city. About half-way some
mental-handicapped people and some leaders entered
the bus. Two of the leaders took places opposite of
us. One of the mental-hadicapped girls called "Andy",
which prompted on of the leaders to ask me if this
was Andy. When I affirmed this, she recognized him
from when he was going to the daycare center "Klim Op".
(He went there the last time on Saturday, July 12, 2003.) Then Andy also recognized
her as he went over to her and gave her a hugh. The
world of the mental-handicapped is a small world.
I am often surprised about the memory of some
mental-handicapped people, who remember names after
years.
I also went to De Slegte
bookshop and I bought five books:
- Duin (Dune) by Frank Herbert
- Vita (the Dutch translation) by Victoria Glendinning
- Redekunstige grondslag van verstandhoudingen by Frederik van Eeden.
- Amuse-gueule by Arnon Grunberg.
- Phileine zegt sorry (Phileine Says Sorry) by Ronald Giphart.
I have been think about buying the Dune book for a long
time, after I sold all of them on Tuesday, July 29, 1997.
Alzheimer's Disease caused by vascular inflamation?
Today, I came across the article
Optics Of Alzheimer's Disease which refers to
Chris B. Schaffer, PhD, and talks about how femtosecond
laser-induced microvascular clots trigger Alzheimer's Disease pathology. This again strenghtens the idea that vascular
inflamation could be one of the root causes of Alzheimer's Disease.
The fact is that Li-Xia has shown signs of
vascular inflamation and hemorrhages in the past. And I have often thought that these were related
to her current condition.
Storimans killed by Russian cluster bomb
Today, our Foreign Minister, announced that a government
investigation team has found that Stan Storimans, 39, was killed by
a Russian cluster bomb on August 12
on the central square of Gori in Georgia.
An investigative team was send to gathered forensic reports
and eyewitness accounts and determined that Storimans was killed
by munitions made and used only by Russia.
79.1 Kilo
This morning, when I stepped on the scales, it read 79.1 kilo.
My weight has been steadily increasing in the past months.
Usually, my weight is higher in the weekends and also the fact
that I ate more salt yesterday when we had dinner in the city
could explain some of the increase. I do not feel that I have
been eating more lately. It could also be caused by cause my
muscle mass has increased. Since the summer, I have started
biking much faster in order to improve my condition. I think
I should keep track of my waist.
Playing Go
This evening, I went to the university to play Go. I arrived almost at the same time as Taco, while
Rudi was already seated. Rudi suggested that he would play
against both of us simultaneously. We decided on a nine
stone handicap for my game against him. After less than twenty
moves into the game, Huub arrived, and we decided that I would
play against him. In the first game he got a three stone
handicap. I made a mess out of the game and lost with about
ninety points. In the next game we played with no handicap
where he got black. Again, I made some mistakes, when I was
playing too fast at one point, and an invasion of mine, was
cut of. I lost with 76 against 54 points. In a sense Huub
is much like Annabel. On a tactical level he is stronger,
but I am stronger on the strategical level. The games I
play against him are much different from the ones I play
against Taco and Rudi, who are much stronger than me. But
I did learn some things from the games I played against
Huub.
This months interesting links
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