One Hour Into the Hike

In case you didn’t know, Albin Belar was also the initiator of the Triglav National Park, on the edge of which our hike took place last Sunday.  After one hour or so, we met this guy with his wife also hiking around there. This was our conversation.

Him: How is your new book?

Guy: Which one, there are a lot of them?

Him: The one about this very area.

Guy: I have discovered an old mine nearby, it’s 400 years old.

Me: An iron mine?

Guy: Of course. On the top of that mountain.

Me: Recently I heard on the radio, that there are plenty of those mines in Karavanke mountains [10 km to the north-east] but that there are only a few of them in the Julian Alps [15 km to the west]. He said that they used to collect iron ore in Bohinj, as if it was chestnuts.

Guy: Who said that? It’s not true!

Me: I don’t know who he was. He wrote a book about miners in Karavanke and Bohinj,  and I only caught that on the radio. I’m just quoting, I have no strong opinion on the matter.

Guy: Untrue. Bohinj was often conquered by different armies in the past, because of its advanced iron production.

Him: You have explored  a lot all over the Julian Alps, haven’t you?

Guy: Of course, I have also found megalithic structures high in the mountains.

Him: Where? What did you find?

Guy: Stone circles; the so called snake heads, which are particular stones to protect somebody’s house or animals; a lot of iron weapons and even some graves, which are probably Celtic.

Me: How do you know, they are Celtic? Did you run some DNA tests?

Guy: There isn’t any DNA preserved there.

Me: Must be. If they’ve discovered dinosaurian DNA, there should be a lot of Celtic DNA there also.

Guy: And I also found Roman refugia … [200 meters from where I live]

Me: What’s refugia?

Guy: Where some refugees were.

Me: I understand that, but which refugees?

Guy: Roman refugees, of course.

Me: When the Roman empire died, Romans escaped there?

Guy: Of course.

Guy: There is a story …

Me, thinking: This guy is full of shit! And I don’t see any point in archeological research without DNA analyzing tools anymore.

Guy: … the story says, every man in conquered Bohinj in the year 300 A.D. was about to be killed by these invaders. Every woman and child could freely go, taking one possession with them. So every woman took her husband and they went across the mountain to establish Cadr.

Me, thinking: Sure …

Then this guy and his wife left us, fortunately.

Me: Who was this?

Him: He is …

Me: Yea … I saw him often on TV, but he was much younger then.

Him: Fascinating guy, don’t you think so?

Me: No. A blue pill dealer.

Him: What?

Me: Never mind!

 

Hiking and Talking

Him: Hi, old friend and new neighbor, would you mind a walkabout these hills?

Me: It’s a Sunday afternoon, why not?

Him: Okay, let’s go to Sveta Katarina! Have you been there yet?

Me: Many times, but not on foot.

Him, 10 minutes into the hike: This is an inscription by Albin Belar!

Me: He lived somewhere near, didn’t he?

Him: Yes, we will see his house on our way back. His wife and children went to America, he stayed here.

Me: I know. He wanted to join them, but he somehow didn’t manage to.

Him: He died in 1930’s.

Me: In 1939, to be exact.

Him: You think so? This is an very interesting trail, especially when the Sun is shining, unlike today.

Me: It’s foggy November, what can you do about that. Never mind, I like it anyway.

Him: It’s warm though, winters are not as they used to be. When I was a child, we had one meter of snow every winter.

Me: You were just shorter, relative to the fallen snow.

Him: See down there, where the river is flowing. This would be a big lake of dirty water for a hydro power plant, had we not prevented its construction in the 1990’s.

Me: I was never a big fan of hydroelectric power, anyway. But if it wasn’t for you personally, there would be an electric power dam, yes, I know.

Him: Unspoiled nature is our biggest asset! Just look at those hills. They are remnants of the glacier which melted after the last ice age!

Me: It wasn’t the last ice age. There have been about 22 during last several million years, now we are going into number 23. Those hills were shaped by many different glaciers.

Him: You really think so?

Me: Of course, since our planet rotates at an ever slower pace, we have ever more severe ice ages.

Him: You really think that?

Me: I have no doubt. We could intervene and prevent the next ice age, but it’s surely coming.

Him: You don’t believe in Global Warming, I know.

Me: Sure I don’t, it’s just bullshit. The next ice age will be here in 10000 or so years. If we don’t change nature’s course, of course. But not with CO2 emission but by some ultratech.

Him: Scientists observed the warming because of CO2. No matter what you are saying.

Me: What scientists? Bunch of morrons. You should read my blog.

Two hours later.

Him: This is Albin Belar’s house!

Me: Beautiful!

Him: This rock in front of the house fell from a mountain during an earthquake 30 years ago. We brought it here as tribute to him as an seismology pioneer.

Me: Nice! See, Albin Belar 1864-1939, says the rock!

Him: Oh yes, you have  a good memory.

Supertask

Imagine, that you have a computer which speeds up by factor of 2 after every CPU tick.

This is a hardware needed to execute a so called supertask. Infinitely many operations in a finite amount of time.

Consult Google and Wikipedia about supertasks and come back, if you are not familiar with this topic.

Now, welcome back for those who needed Wikipedia’s advice. We are going to sort all the decimals of number Pi after the decimal point with a supertask, to get 3.

Pi is the input and 3 is the output of the super-sort-function.

Then we will sort the list of all natural numbers in the reverse order to get what? Which number will be the first in the now sorted list, when the super-sort-function has completed in 2 nanoseconds? There is no biggest natural number to be placed where number 1 used to be. And no the second biggest natural number to be placed where the number 2 used to be. And so on.

This is in a nutshell , my problem with infinity. That’s why I am a finitist. Cantor was a fool.

A Puzzle

You can infer from the street traffic alone, that this cannot be London, since everybody is driving on the right.

You can also conclude that it cannot be Paris, since everybody is driving on the left side of the road.

Parking near a road, here in continental Europe, I was observing the traffic in the rear view mirror, so it appeared as if everyone were driving on the left side of the road.

So I decided to drive for a bit, to see if this impression would persist. It should and also it shouldn’t.

It should, because what has changed if I am also driving instead of just standing there?

But it would imply that I would perceive the car behind me as driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. The same way as myself.

Do you see the traffic in the rear view mirror flipped or not? And why and how?