Rachel, Leza and Fifi

2012

Tomorrow is the End of 2012.

I turned 63, and I still feel I have some time left.

The most Relevant Science I learnt this year is the massive migration of humans to more temperate climates. Two dear friends of mine recently moved North. There are close to 11% of the US population coming from Mexico. Obama got elected by an unprecedented 10% of Mexican-American voters, that overwhelmingly (more than 70%) voted for him.

Mitt Romney was a phony, and my people saw through him.

I am planning to make 2013, the year when WE move in!

Christmas Eve Adventure

Today we went to pick up our son for Christmas. Chicago can be tricky if you don't know your way around.  Union Station, what can be easier right? Wrong, he did not take the train but a bus line, which is not Greyhound Lines. Better and cheaper service, he said. Anyway, there I am at the appointed time at the corner of Jackson and Canal. I did not bring my down jacket, I was getting cold, I spotted an old wool hat on the floor, and donned it.

Finally I see the bus at the other side of the corner I was at; there I go looking for him. I didn't find him, finally I do, we hug, and start looking for his mother. She was at Starbucks, Clinton & Adams. We are all together now. Where is the car? I asked: nearby, answers my wife, in the parking lot, we walked over there, and a BMW is blocking the way!  Nobody in sight and near freezing temperature. My son and I go in the car. She finally calls from the Church in the corner. They have Christmas Eve mass, and they already announced to get the owners to move the car.

Since nobody comes we decide to go to Union Station and wait. My son has a McDonald's treat, and Mary tells us that even though she told them her name, they didn't invited her in, because it was jam packed. How ironic we thought. Here we have Mary, her husband and son, on Christmas Eve, and they don't let us in!

Oh well, we are home now. I am so happy, since he is cozy under his down blanket on his bed.

We found a surprise gift from his grandma in the mailbox!

Push and Pull

In the previous note I proposed a possible migration north because of the better conditions. One should not forget though, the presence of a push force, from the emitting country to the receiving one; that I believe is represented by the crime wave surrounding areas in climate distress. The Sahara desert is growing, causing the death of millions of people in "ethnic" wars. I hereby propose that the Sonora desert is also growing.

That is the push force!

Complexity

Bejan says, "flow is such, that next time around it is easier". Obviously this observation does not come from fundamental physics, because there is no next time around in the basic Laws of Nature, so far postulated by physicists. Bejan is talking about emergent properties.

I am reading Leen Decin's beautiful review "Late Stages of Stellar Evolution - Herschel's contributions", one learns there, about the emergent complexity discovered with the space observatory Herschel.

Even the small galactic magnetic field, one thousandth of the Earth's field, gets into the natural game of making, "flow easier".

Amazing!

Massive Human Migration?

I found a dear student from Mexico in Portland Oregon!

She has moved looking for a better future for her future children. Another student I met several years before is already in Canada. These are anecdotal data points. What is more relevant is the 10% of Mexican-Americans who voted for Obama this year, and who do not like the GOP extreme views exposed recently through the Tea Party movement, and the Minutemen.

It seems to me that we are witnessing one of the biggest human migrations in history. From tropical dysfunctional states, to temperate cosmopolitan regions.

Be it as it may, I am happy with my two beloved children in the U.S. of A..

Beautiful Leza and Rachel