Golden Christmas balls

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Figure 1 - Golden Christmas balls, Natick, MA. (C) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Golden Christmas balls, Natick, MA. (C) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 is another photograph of Christmas. These are golden Christmas balls. And of course, there are connotations or memories that they invoke. An obvious one is bubbles, perhaps a soapy foam. But for me, as a scientist, I cannot help but think of molecular packing. Spheres will tend towards close backing, and this reminds me very much of a crystal lattice, perhaps the molecular packing of a gold nanoparticle, and, of course, of planets.

Crystal packing is like its opposite, the random fractal. The crystal is supreme order and like the fractal occurs at all scales. And then there is the curious paradox that, in general, crystals are assembled by the fractal random process of diffusion. It is the ultimate example of order out of chaos. The structure of the crystal is locked within the physical properties of the individual atoms and they assemble like so many Legos according to physical law.

In search of Christmas

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Figure 1 - Silver Christmas Balls. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Silver Christmas Balls. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I have gone in search of Christmas and I have brought my Iphone along to record the moment. It is an odd year in America and has been since the election. There is a glum resignation that has proven grinchlike and the malls and houses just don’t seem decorated in the usual optimistic way. I will except from that the hot air figures that people place on their lawns: the santas, the snowmen, the nativity scenes. I mean a blow-up baby Jesus is just the thing to ring in the season.

But I decided to wear a positive attitude and see where Christmas lay hidden this year. I smirked as I passed a store with a tee-shirt saying “I’m grumpy today and only speaking to my pets.” That was just as i felt and I thought of my cat who had greeted me this morning with a meow, a kiss on the nose, and a request for an ear rub. There was a little boy with his father, both all dressed up. They were headed to have breakfast with Santa. Many years ago my father and I encountered Santa at the Automat. All of this points to the obvious fact that “Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus,” I have seen him at the mall.

“and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  May that be truly said of us, and all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!“

Yeah, Yeah! Hmm, I am not there yet! But I did find and delight in the little silver balls on a silver Christmas tree of Figure 1. I like the IPhone for its ability to get in really close, and it is an important point that you have to get in close in photography and in life to avoid the distraction of unrelated background. As with all things, I went to see if Christmas can be found, or at least, is explained somewhere on the internet. There I found this from humorist Dave Barry, which seems very much to leave Dickens to the side and gets very much to the point,

“In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it ‘Christmas’ and went to church; the Jews called it ‘Hanukkah’ and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘Happy Hanukkah!’ or (to the atheists) ‘Look out for the wall!”

The moment we knew we were going to the moon

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Figure 1 - US Navy Destroyer USS Noa hoisting John Glenn in his capsule Friendship 7 onto the deck, February 20, 1962. This file is a work of a sailor or employee of the U.S. Navy, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain in the United States.

Figure 1 – US Navy Destroyer USS Noa hoisting John Glenn in his capsule Friendship 7 onto the deck, February 20, 1962. This file is a work of a sailor or employee of the U.S. Navy, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties and in the public domain in the United States.

This week marked the passing of Astronaut and Senator John Glenn. I found myself deeply saddened. For nerds and geeks of my generation his journey on the Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962 was a defining moment. This was a true American hero, really for the ages. This was the epitome of that “American Exceptionalism” that Putin hates so much.

I was amazed at how many Facebook postings remembered John Glenn, and these brought back to the surface all the imagery remembered. We watched the launch in our elementary school – a giant television having been wheeled in for the occasion. We listened on the PA system to the moments of retrofire and return. I remember ever so vividly the pictures of him weightless in space. Those are really the iconic images that captured the moment – first in black and white, then color in Life Magazine.

But there is something else and that is the otherwise unremarkable photograph of Figure 1. It shows Glenn’s capsule, the Friendship 7, being hoisted aboard the United States Navy Destroyer USS Noa (DD-841) off the coast of Haiti on February 20, 1962. We had sent a man into Earth orbit, extracted him again, and brought him safely back to Earth. That was the moment that we knew that we could break the bonds of Earth, the moment we knew that we were going to the moon.

Hand silhouette

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Figure 1 -Hand silhouette, IPhone photograph, (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 -Hand silhouette, IPhone photograph, (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I took the image of Figure 1 a few weeks back. It is an image in a store window that is trans-illuminated – essentially a shadowbox. The hand is meant to be a backdrop to a collection of clothing and hand bags. I have chosen it to be the subject of the photograph. I like the elegance of the pose and the purity of the black and white. It is quite literally a “black and white photograph.” It is striking that a hand alone can portray a dramatic sense of animation and beauty. The absence of color and, well, the rest of the body creates a hint of mystery about it. We wonder what exactly is the meaning of the pose. And at another level, we look down at our own hands to figure out exactly how the thumb had to be placed to be absent from the shadow. You will notice also that there is a certain ambiguity of the edges. You know that they are sharp, but somehow they seem not quite right, as if they are fuzzed out. This I suspect is a combination of optical illusion and digital aliasing. It seems like the hand of a ballerina or more precisely of classical Indian dance, of which I learn that there are eight traditional forms. The eyes are meant to be the “window to the soul,” but here the expressing hand takes over.

Spuds

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Figures 1 - SPuds. IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wold 2016.

Figures 1 – Spuds. IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 is of spuds, fingerling potatoes to be more precise. It is, needless-to-say taken with my IPhone during a boring moment buying vegetables at the local farm-stand. What is appealing about potatoes photographically is their surface textures: cracks, bumps, crevices, and eyes. Eyes indeed, because that is the other point. They seem to take on magical shapes. The large one in front I imagine to be a fish or better still a manatee. The double tusker at top is certainly a walrus. And the curly one in the middle is perhaps a ghost. And, of course, the most appealing point of all is that we get to see the magical in the most mundane.

Steve

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Figure 1 - IPhone portrait of Steve. (c) DE Wolf 2016

Figure 1 – IPhone portrait of Steve. (c) DE Wolf 2016

Figure 1 is of Steve, a bull mastiff who visited our offices this morning. Despite my aversion to cute and cuddly animal pictures, his face was so wise, knowing, and wrinkled that it seemed to demand me to photograph him. The IPhone did an amazing job of capturing the texture on his nose and the hairs on his face. He was very interested in my pants legs which carried the smell of my cat, and I think that I offended his sense of politeness, the sacred canine-human pact forged so many millennia ago, when I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cellphone instead of a treat.

War on a cyber-plane

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Figure 1 - This artistic work created by the United Kingdom Government before June 1, 1957 and is in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Mark 2 Colossus computer that was used on the high level Lorenz Cipher code named Tunny by the British at Bletchley Park. This artistic work is from the Wikipedia and because it was created by the United Kingdom Government before June 1, 1957 is in the public domain.

I wanted to continue today our discussion of the “cyber other.” The “cyber other” is a kind of alter ego universe of man-machine that we have created. We call it the internet and we are increasingly allowing this abstraction to control our world. So let’s begin in the beginning. Figure 1 is historic. It shows a Mark 2 Colossus computer. The ten Colossi were the world’s first (semi-) programmable electronic computers. The earliest dates from 1943, and these were used by the famous World War II code breakers at Bletchley Park. Essentially Figure 1 captures the birth of the internet, the birth of the “cyber other.” And really it represents the first salvo in the future of warfare – cyber warfare.

Well the good news is that it does not appear that the 2016 US Presidential Elections were hacked.

The bad news lies is in two quotes. First we have that when asked if she ever wiped her email server clean,  Hillary Clinton jokingly responded “with a cloth?” Wonderful! the concept of such a private server shows an amazing naivete of how the modern world functions. It’s not criminal, but it shows a total lack of understanding about the cyber threat that we all face. And yes, we all! All of us are walking around with devices that can be hacked to all sorts of devious ends.Your power systems, laptops, business servers, cell phones all are vulnerable. Let me ask one question. How does Google Maps know what the traffic patterns are. It knows by GPS tracking of millions of phones.

But I will point out that candidate Hillary Clinton is now yesterday’s news, and at some point Trump supporters are going to realize that no one any longer cares about what they think about her, but rather what they have wrought upon us. Which brings us to the really bad news.

“I notice, anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say the Russians are — she doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia. And the reason they blame Russia because they think they’re trying to tarnish me with Russia. I know nothing about Russia. I know — I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia.”

This friends was candidate Trump on the impending cyber war and we are forced to hope that President Trump isn’t candidate Trump but rather some kind of great chameleon savior. But regardless, the next world war started with Figure 1. It is to be a cyberwar and, prepared or not, it is coming.

In June of 2010 it is reported that Stuxnet, a 500-kilobyte computer worm infected the software of at least fourteen industrial sites in Iran, including a uranium-enrichment plant. And it is widely believed this blew up enrichment centrifuges by throwing them out of balance. The government of Iran has not confirmed this event and it is variously thought to be the work of the US and Israeli intelligence. It really doesn’t matter. The point is … Here is a link to a list of the twenty-five biggest cyber attacks: The Canadian Government, the Indian Government, Paypal, the Church of Scientology, Citigroup… The hackers are flexing their muscles like a newborn creature in the movie Aliens. And it is important to say that I know that you Apple users think you are immune. You are wrong, bigly!

The more we tie ourselves to the “cyber other,” the more vulnerable we become. And tie is the right word. The “cyber other” has become real and tangible. Vulnerability is why scientists are so fearful of scientifically ignorant and denying politicians: the creationists, the disbelievers in climate change. The growth of the “cyber other” and our connectivity with it is inevitable and truly unstoppable. It is time to forego “old time religion” in favor of informed government. We should approach the coming cyberwar with the singular goal, winning.

 

 

Music of the spheres

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Figure 1 - Music of the spheres, IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Music of the spheres, IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I wanted to share another IPhone photograph. This is simply a pair of folded paper spheres. In actuality they are white Christmas ornaments. I think that I am getting better at framing with the IPhone, an acquired skill, and I cannot complain enough about all the images that people post on Facebook with tilted poorly composed perspectives. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not really that difficult. I also think that some image processing is critical, particularly to be able to crop, set levels, and apply a curved look-up-table to the image. Of course, I also like converting first to black and white and then sepia toning. And this takes me back to the opportunity of this image – one of my favorite themes to explore – the pure tone-on-tone, white-on-white. The IPhone offers the advantage of being always with you. It is also more innocuous. While I don’t see any posted restriction, places like the local shopping mall may frown on DSLR photograph.

The pond in a November light

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Figure 1 - The pond in a November light, Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Maynard, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – The pond in a November light, Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Maynard, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Years ago, I would drive every morning past this little pond or lake. Of course, I was caught up in the rush hour desire to get to work. Still every morning the combination of sky and water struck me, and I imagined stopping at exactly the same spot every day and taking a photograph. I was certain that no two would be the same, and that many would be dramatic and striking.

Yesterday, I went back to the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge for the first time in about a month. It was, as I have said, dreary and dull. But it seems always the case that there is something interesting and dramatic to be seen on the pond. Figure 1 is the aspect from yesterday. Reeds coming out of a moody, surface, reflecting clouds and sky. I had imagined the scene in black and white. But as is often the case, I wanted capture the muted colors, the angry blue reflections and the ever so subtle redness of the reeds. I studied my results, afraid at first that I had over dramatized the scene, but in the end I found it true to the vision of the moment.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 109 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/3200th sec at f/7. with no exposure compensation.