Siete años

Aqui sentado con mi cuarta cerveza Regia.
Escuchando canciones que me dan nostalgia.
Nostalgia del capítulo que termina.
En El Salvador.
Mi casa de casi siete años, vacía excepto por una cama y una maletas por llenar.
Y mis dos gatos, los muy mugres, uno de los tesoros que me llevo de El Salvador.

Tesoros: las memorias lindas de un pais que he llegado a querer. 
Tesoros: los amigos y amigas que logre tener, que a pesar de que son pocos, son estrellas que siempre brillarán con tanta fuerza que puramente pensar en ellos me iluminará.
Tesoros tambien lo que aprendi: que hay gente que puro habla pero al momento de apoyarte, no están ni estarán. 

Tristemente, aprendí a desconfiar, de otros y de mi mismo.
Pero la lección ya me ha hecho más fuerte.
Aprendí que a veces el esfuerzo no es suficiente, ni en el trabajo o la amistad; que a veces hay que aceptar y dejar ir.
Después de mucha lucha conmigo mismo, aprendí que no soy mis errores; no soy perfecto, pero tampoco soy malo, a pesar de lo que piensen y hablen de mi.
Me afecta, siempre me afectará, porque no hay nada que yo quiera más que la gente a mi alrededor esté bien, y si no lo están, que les pueda dar un granito de luz a sus vidas.
Porque toda persona merece felicidad; toda persona merece una sonrisa.
Pero no lo logré, y lo acepto.

Aqui solo en mi casa, como pasé días y semanas y meses durante la pandemia. Una noche más, pensando (principalmente...) en lo bueno que pasó, en todo lo bueno que viene, los desafios, agradecido a Dios por los siete años y por lo que vendrá.

Y ya decidido a que tomaré esa quinta cerveza Regia, otro tesoro que me llevo de El Salvador.

Paul Ehrenfest

I have just started reading the book “The Maniac”, by Benjamin Labatut. The first chapter, referring to the theoretical physicist Paul Ehrenfest made a deep impression. 

Ehrenfest was an Austrian theoretical physicist working in the early 20th century, the golden era of theoretical physics. A Jew born in Vienna in 1880, he had experienced discrimination although he was a declared Atheist, while never denying his Jewish heritage. In fact, as he was completing his studies his declared Atehism prevented him from positions at the university in St. Petersburg in 1907. 

Ehrenfest had initially started studying chemistry, but had become fascinated by theoretical physics from his mentor at University of Vienna, Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906), who sadly killed himself by hanging in 1906. By this point, Ehrenfest was already advancing in the field; he had been at the University of Gottingen, one of the main universities in Germany, and had there married a Russian mathematician, Tatiana Afansyeva (1876-1964), with whom he had four children; his youngest son Wassik, born in 1918, suffered from Downs Syndrome, but was loved by his parents. 

In every respect Ehrenfest was a leader in his field. In 1912 he secured lecturer at University of Leiden in the Netherlands, where he became one of the most respected professors, teaching later giants such as Jan Tinbergen (1903-1994), Hendrik Casimir (1909-2000), Gerard Kuipier (1905-1973), as well as working closely with Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), Igor Tamm (1895-1971), Robert Oppenheimer ((1904-1967), Ralph Kronig (1904-1995), Werner Heissenberg (1901-1976) and Paul Dirac (1902-1984). His wide circle also included a close friendship with Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Niels Bohr (1888-1667). Einstein used to stay at his house in Leiden, even in 1923 when he was fleeing death threats in Berlin. He often tried to mediate between Einstein and Bohr in their ongoing discussion about Quantum physics, and in the 1928 Solvay Conference, when the greatest Physicians met to discuss exactly the issue of Quantum physics, Ehrenfest was chosen as the main mediator because he was admired widely “...not only his critical and intellectual capacities but something rather different, a virtue that is usually lacking among giants: ethics, character, as a well as a deep, some would say overwhelming, desire to understand, to grasp the core of things” (Labatut, p. 6). 

All his colleagues admired his for his great teaching skills and way of facilitating the difficult questions of physics being debated at the time. In fact, Einstein said: “He was not merely the best teacher in our profession whom I have ever known; he was also passionately preoccupied with the development and destiny of men, especially his students. To understand others, to gain their friendship and trust, to aid anyone embroiled in outer or inner struggles, to encourage youthful talent - all this was his real element, almost more than his emersion in scientific problems.” (Cited in ut of my later years, p. 236, on https://web.archive.org/web/20140312224422/http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/history/Einstein_archive/Rowdy_Boeyink_website/). 

In every respect Ehrenfest seemed like a success. Respected by geniuses in the time of so many geniuses. A great lecturer, and a wife who loved him and four beautiful children. 

But behind the charm, the intelligence and incredible energy, Ehrenfest suffered from deep depression, and it all ended in tragedy. 

Einstein had already written to University of Leiden in 1932 out of concern for Ehrenfest for them to lighten his workload. But to no avail, as Ehrefest refused to lighten his work, and continued being the excellent lecturer he had become. 

Already a deeply emotional man, Ehrenfest was deeply affected by things happening around him: he was, as Einstein, deeply troubled by the apparent irrationality of Quantum theory, especially troubled by Heisenberg’s uncertainty. It was not that he rejected the theory per se, in fact at Solvay he had appeared to accept Bohr’s arguments, but rather he was troubled by the philosophical implications that appeared to advocate that everything was irrational, disorganized and not able to be ordered in a logical and rational sense. This appeared to deeply trouble him as his personal life was also falling apart, and he saw himself in need to seek a divorce from Tatiana despite her expressing his love and even accepting that he was having an affair. 

She was seeing his slide towards the bottom, and there was nothing she could do... 

The rise of nationalism was also troubling him; as a Jew he saw the rise of Nazis in Germany with alarm, and with the Nazi takeover in January 1933, he soon traveled to Germany, where his son Wissek was in a care home to take him out and take him to Amsterdam. This happened right after the Nazi euthanasia laws that led to the murder of thousands and thousands of people with disabilities. 

But things only appeared to get worse, and in August 1933 he visited Copenhagen and Niels Bohr, and in a private evening with Paul Dirac (who went on to win the Nobel prize later that same year) he appeared deeply troubled, and even expressed to a confused Dirac (who was not the best “people-person” in the world) that he had lost the will to live. p

It was to be a tragic prelude to what was to happen: On September 25th 1933 Ehrenfest traveled to Amsterdam to visit his son Wassik in the care home at the Waterink Institue. He proceeded to shoot his son and then shot himself in the head. 

The murder-suicide deeply affected the world’s leading scientists. But in my view also showed the mental struggles (I refuse to say "Instability”) of a brilliant mind and person. 

I am no Paul Ehrefest, but when reading the first chapter of Labatut’s book I just deeply identified with the mental problems, because mental health is a real issue, is a real problem, and not to made fun of as I have experienced here.

Beer never broke my Heart

 I have had my heart broken so many times that I think that there is not much left by a broken, rotten plump of meat. But one thing is real, is that beer has never broken my heart, just as Luke Combs sings in his fantastic song, which I have tried to make a small homage to:

My 2022 Lego Cristmas video

The story of this video: it was a spontaneous manuscript as I had prepared a different one, but I became inspired by my participation in the Budapest-Bamako rally this year, and even added many pictures of a lego car I brought along for the rally. 

Anyway, here it is:

Benedetti

 I recently visited the beautiful city of Montevideo, Uruguay, and dwelt into some of the famous writer who have called the city home: Eduardo Galeano, Horacio Quiroga, and not least among them the great poet and writer Mario Benedetti.

Besides his books and poems, Benedetti is admired for his immense number of one-liners that inspire and awaken. Many are about the passions that assault us when in love. Not just the unhappy kind, but more about the happy desperation that another person can cause in you, as in the following one-liner:

I was very happy, perhaps very inspired when I made the drawing (pencil and marker), giving it some crazy touches. Despite this imaginary woman having a beautiful smile, it will never compare with a real smile!
 

Tollundmanden

The local museum in the Danish town of Silkeborg is not one of the most impressive museums you can visit in the world. Silkeborg's history is relatively recent and the town does not have had the central role in Danish history as other towns have had, and thus the museum focuses mainly on the town's industrial history, as well as the many artifacts in the central Jutland area from the Iron Age. 

But it is regarding the latter that the small museum is world famous: it contains one of the most extraordinary Iron Age finds in the world. Tollundmanden is the mummified body of a man from the early iron age; it is estimated to be from around 400 BC. 

Tollundmanden was found by peat-diggers from the Højgaard family in Tollund in a peat bog at Bøllingsø, an ancient dried lake by Moselund, near the small village of Engesvang, in 1950. The Højgaard family were from the nearby town of Tollund, and thus they inadvertently gave the name to the mummy, despite it coming from Moselund. My family knew the Højgaard family well, and they often joked that Tollundmanden was so ugly that he must be a family member... 

All this said, the body they found was so well-preserved that Højgaard family members called the police, who quickly realized that the body was not the victim of a crime, and called archeology professor Peter Vilhelm Glob (1911-1985) from Århus university, who had the body taken to Copenhagen for scientific research and dating (after significant protests from Silkeborg, the body eventually ended at Silkeborg Museum in 1952).

The body is well-preserved, and in particularly the head appears in perfect condition: as a man sleeping quietly, with all details in his face clearly outlined. The body is less well-preserved: when he was found there was doubt that they would be able to conserve the entire body, and the head was taken off to make successful conservation efforts. 

Most of the rest of the body was cut into pieces, and parts were scattered in different museums (for many years only the head could be seen at the museum). However, throughout the 1980s, the body parts were assembled, many were in very bad condtion, and a partial reconstruction of the body was made, which is how he can be seen today. Interestingly, the feet are also almost in perfect condition, but a toe was missing and was only found in 2016: in an effort to preserve the body, B. Brorson Christensenm one of the conservationists in 1950, took a toe off (meaning that one of the toes is reconstructed) and never returned it: the toe was only found in a desk drawer after his death.

It has taken time and technology to determine many things about who Tollundmanden was, but many questions remain. He is estimated to have been around 40 years old by the time of his death, and he had once broken his hands; injuries on his feet point that he walked mostly barefoot. It was only determined in 2021, with the use of modern technology that his last meal had been porridge with barley, flax, wild weed seeds, and some fish, giving us a glimpse of the food they ate in northern Europe 2500 years ago. 

It is also clear that he died by hanging or strangulation; the leather rope around his neck is very tightly bound, and later examinations have concluded that he was likely hanged due to the distention of the tongue (which is common in hanging). 

Then what are the theories about this man? 

Initially it was thought that he was a criminal, since he had been hanged. This has been discounted by many historians and archeologists, who indicate that the careful fetal position he was put into, his eyes and mouth closed, as well as the fact that he was clean-shaven, fed, and not any other injuries, may rather indicate that he was rather sacrificed. He is estimated to have died in winter or early spring (due to the lack of fresh fruit or meat in his last meal), a time when food may have been scarce, and when sacrifices may have been a way to appease the gods (nothing is known about their religion, but Roman writings about northern German Barbarians some centuries later mention that some tribes practiced human sacrifice in bogs). 

Interestingly, while the body was so well-preserved, his DNA has not been preserved; or at least not enough to make more detailed estimates about where his group came from or where descendants are to be found. This has also made it speculation on his skin, hair and eye colour. Although a recreation by a French artist in 2019 (which can been seen in the museum) makes him blue-eyed and red haired, this will remain mere speculation until and if new techniques are developed. 

Although surely Tollundmanden is the most famous, around 800 bog-bodies dating to the Iron Age have been found in bogs in Denmark. One is worth mentioning in this context, namely Elingekvinden, which can also be seen at Silkeborg Museum. 

She is less well-preserved than Tollundmanden, with the face almost gone, but an elaborate braid of her long hair can still be seen. Just as Tollundmanden she had also been carefully been laid to rest after being hanged (and she was around 25 years old), and was found only 80 meters from Tollundmanden (in 1938). Ellingekvinden is estimated to be perhaps around 100 years younger than Tollundmanden (355-205 BC), but the proximity and the similarities would also point towards the theories of sacrifices. 

Tollundmanden remains a fascinating (if not slightly macabre) exhibition: a quiet, sleeping man, carrying his message to us from 2500 years ago

 

My 2021 Christmas video

I have finished my 2021 Christmas video. Ten years since I started making these videos, at first because I had nothing to do and impress a girl (obviously didn't work), and it has become a bit of a habit, even though I am the only person who sees these videos, which are generally stupid and boring, but I have that small neurotic pride that at least I have done something creative in my life otherwise devoid of creativity and anything near intellectual challenges.

This year I have been a bit more ambitious, trying new cameras, angles, and technical tools, most notably lip-movement. The inspiration is one of my favourite movie characters; Indiana Jones, and the video has many small personal touches that only I will see, but which makes this stupid creation mine.

Anyway, the link is this:  https://vimeo.com/657164131/57bd4393d4