I don't like to link news stories because they tend to expire too rapidly, so I'll mention the gist of the coolest news story in a long time. Researchers at Oxford, helped by technical advice from NASA (specifically JPL), are using multispectral imaging to read dirty and faded papyrus scrolls. The concept is that the ink has different spectral characteristics than the paper. What's particularly interesting is that this is how much it expands the knowledge of ancient Egypt and Greece. There's still a lot of work to do in decoding fragments and filling in blanks and so on, but deserves more news coverage as a positive science story.
Nothing so cool happens to me at work. I did run across the rather amusing description of an earned value graph as "the going out of business curve," but relatively few people can appreciate that. And I finished a draft of my conference paper, finally. I'm on schedule as far as getting things through the public release process, but I had planned to be done earlier.
The weather did cooperate enough for me to walk part of the way home a couple of times during the week. Which meant that I discovered a fundamental flaw with the Orange Line. Namely, the stations in Arlington are too close together. I'd thought Ballston was four or so miles from work, but it turns out to be only about 2.5, which is okay, but not quite as far as I wanted to walk. And I'm not entirely sure of the route if I get on the W&OD trail from Wilson Boulevard, so walking further west is a bit iffy. I'll have to dig up a decent enough trail map that I can correlate to the East Falls Church station. The trail does continue all the way to Vienna, but it turns north and ends up fairly far out of my way, so walking all the way home on it is a bit ambitious. It's the sort of thing I'm likely to do sooner or later anyway, but it's not as casual a decision as heading up Wilson Boulevard is. By the way, on Thursday I stopped in at the Whole Foods at Clarendon to pick up something and discovered that they sell Lake Champlain chocolates Five Star bars. The hazelnut ones are incredible - the most amazing American made chocolate bars I know of. And they're a lot cheaper at Whole Foods than they are at any of the other local pushers, er, sources. Still not a cheap indulgence, but this is dangerous to know about.
Fortunately, Passover intervenes, keeping me from eating normal food. To quote my Dad, "oy, who says everyone is so rich in America? Here it is Pesach, a major Jewish holiday, and we don't even have any bread in the house."
Finally, I am thoroughly in the throes of vacation daydreaming. It's not enough that I have various domestic excursions (Kansas City, Boston, Oklahoma City, New York - likely also Chicago and Phoenix) planned for the rest of this year. And the trip to Japan in August. And the conference trip to Germany (including an excursion to Stockholm), assuming that the travel gets approved. I want to see a total solar eclipse, and the one in March is nearly four minutes long and suggests several possibilities. I could be one of the first Americans to go to Libya. But, actually, I am leaning towards Ghana, because I'm fascinated by kente cloth and by Ghanaian coffins. At least it's nice to have options.
Copyright 2005 Miriam H. Nadel