Staycation

I have lived a Summer Staycation with my family and friends here in Herrenberg which is a place new for us, while was always a place for vacation for us. And now is our home town and our place.
With Nonno and Nonna visiting us, Blaubeuren @ Guni’s Klassentreffen, Calw, Opa and Oma, Pauline and Almi, MaisLabyrinth, Salvio, Herrenberg Naturfreibad, Tübingen, Spielplatz, Spielplatz, playing football with Diego and Wanda, Spielplatz, Spielplatz, Diego, Wanda, Guni.

A Summer full of love and happyness. I have been enjoying the kids 24 hours a day during the Kita closing period.
And today, that the Kita and my work start again, with a feeling of nostalgia I have been walking alone along the same path around home – from home to the bakery and playground – which Wanda Diego and myself walked together many mornings this summer.

With Salvio!

È stato dolce ed emozionante vedere i miei figli interagire con il mio migliore amico Salvio, durante i tre giorni incui è stato qui.

Mi rendo conto che ricevo da loro, da Diego e Wanda, così tanto che sono io a crescere e cambiare insieme a loro. Imparo ogni giorno di più da loro, ogni giorno una lezione nuova, una dimostrazione dell’amore e di ciò che è giusto e che conta. Come oggi il palloncino a forma di unicorno per la piccola, dolce, immensa Wanda. Domani, spero, farò un errore in meno. Domani, spero, sarò migliore di oggi. Grazie a voi, piccoli miei.

Country Comfort

Soon the pines will be falling everywhere
Village children fight each other for a share
And the 609 goes roaring past the creek
Deacon Lee prepares his sermon for next week

I saw Grandma yesterday down at the store
Well, she’s really going fine for eighty-four
Well she asked me if sometime I’d fix her barn
Poor old girl, she needs a hand to run the farm

And it’s good old country comfort in my bones
Just the sweetest sound my ears have ever known
Just an old-fashioned feeling fully grown
Country comfort’s any truck that’s goin’ home

Down at the well they’ve got a new machine
The foreman says it cuts manpower by fifteen
“But that ain’t natural”, well so old Clay would say
He’s a horse-drawn man until his dying day

Now the old fat goose is flying ‘cross the sticks
The hedgehog’s done in clay between the bricks
And the rocking chair’s a-creaking on the porch
Across the valley moves the herdsman with his torch

Songwriters: Elton John / Bernie Taupin

black sand dunes

“qui arriva l’idea straordinaria, il puro genio: il campo gravitazionale non è diffuso nello spazio: il campo gravitazionale è lo spazio. Questa è l’idea della teoria della relatività generale. Lo «spazio» di Newton, nel quale si muovono le cose, e il «campo gravitazionale», che porta la forza di gravità, sono la stessa cosa. È una folgorazione. Una semplificazione impressionante del mondo: lo spazio non è più qualcosa di diverso dalla materia: è una delle componenti «materiali» del mondo. Un’entità che ondula, si flette, s’incurva, si storce. Non siamo contenuti in un’invisibile scaffalatura rigida: siamo immersi in un gigantesco mollusco flessibile. Il Sole piega lo spazio intorno a sé e la Terra non gli gira intorno perché tirata da una misteriosa forza, ma perché sta correndo diritta in uno spazio che si inclina. Come una pallina che rotoli in un imbuto: non ci sono misteriose «forze» generate dal centro dell’imbuto, è la natura curva delle pareti a fare ruotare la pallina. I pianeti girano intorno al Sole e le cose cadono perché lo spazio si incurva. Come descrivere questo incurvarsi dello spazio? Il più grande matematico dell’Ottocento, Carl Friedrich Gauss, il «principe dei matematici», aveva scritto la matematica per descrivere le superfici curve bidimensionali, come la superficie delle colline. Poi aveva chiesto a un suo bravo studente di generalizzare il tutto a spazi curvi di dimensione tre o più. Lo studente, Bernhard Riemann, aveva prodotto una ponderosa tesi di dottorato, di quelle che sembrano completamente inutili. Il risultato era che le proprietà di uno spazio curvo sono catturate da un certo oggetto matematico, che oggi chiamiamo la curvatura di Riemann e indichiamo con R. Einstein scrive un’equazione che dice che R è proporzionale all’energia della materia. Cioè: lo spazio si incurva là dove ci sia materia. È tutto. L’equazione sta in una mezza riga, non c’è altro. Una visione – lo spazio che si incurva – e un’equazione. Ma dentro quest’equazione c’è un universo rutilante. E qui si apre la ricchezza magica della teoria. Una successione fantasmagorica di predizioni che sembrano i deliri di un pazzo, e invece sono state tutte verificate dall’esperienza.” (from “Sette brevi lezioni di fisica (Opere di Carlo Rovelli Vol. 1) (Italian Edition)” by Carlo Rovelli)

Quantum Mechanics (not to mention Strings and Multi-universes psychedelia) appears too crazy for me, and will always be as I guess I do not have enough notions plus it does not seem to fit into my brain’ settings. That is probably why I find it fascinating. According to one of the quantum theories, It’s all – we are all – about irregularities of a field!!!

I just finished reading (and partially understanding) the book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes” by Stephen Hawking. Every night I couldn’t wait to read some pages more before falling asleep and continuing travelling the Universe in my mind. How understanding the origin of the Universe could lead to the formulation an Unified Theory (and vice-versa) and the Anthropic Principle are takeaways I am looking forward to further exploring.

“The Anthropic Principle says that the universe has to be more or less as we see it, because if it were different there wouldn’t be anyone here to observe it. … As an example of the power of the Anthropic Principle, consider the number of directions in space. It is a matter of common experience that we live in three-dimensional space. That is to say, we can represent the position of a point in space by three numbers. For example, latitude, longitude and height above sea level. But why is space three-dimensional? Why isn’t it two, or four, or some other number of dimensions, like in science fiction? In fact, in M-theory space has ten dimensions (as well as the theory having one dimension of time), but it is thought that seven of the ten spatial directions are curled up very small, leaving three directions that are large and nearly flat. It is like a drinking straw. The surface of a straw is two-dimensional. However, one direction is curled up into a small circle, so that from a distance the straw looks like a one-dimensional line. Why don’t we live in a history in which eight of the dimensions are curled up small, leaving only two dimensions that we notice? A two-dimensional animal would have a hard job digesting food. If it had a gut that went right through, like we have, it would divide the animal in two, and the poor creature would fall apart. So two flat directions are not enough for anything as complicated as intelligent life. … Read more

Disappointed by Astronomical, the latest book I read by Tim James: overall a collection of measures and numbers, disconnected facts and diluted theories, with no story nor crescendo and with a forced humor. But I kind of liked the final quote :
“Everyone wonders sometimes if the human race is worth preserving and everyone has moments where they look at the size of the Universe and feel insignificant by comparison. Space science can potentially be depressing because it reminds us of our smallness. My answer is this: imagine if the Universe really were simple. Imagine how boring the story of science would be if Earth genuinely were flat, or if there was nothing outside our solar system. Imagine if, after spending a few years looking around with telescopes, we knew everything there was to know. No more mystery. No more exploration. No more discovery. How awesome it is that instead we find ourselves in a universe as huge and varied as this one. How fortunate we are to be surrounded with so many mysteries in desperate need of solving and how lucky we are to live in a universe bigger than our imaginations.”