mindstalk | Entries tagged with chiletrip1

I'm back, and I kind of want to leave again. I shouldn't complain, it may be cold but at least it's ice-free.

No more Chile commentary right now; I'm just back, tired, and need to sort mail, get food, and a week of sleep.
Plane trips were as good as 24 hour trips can be; I've had 8 flights in a row with no problems. Dallas->O'Hare threatened a problem, re-scheduling an hour later, but then they scheduled back as I was hunting down the gate. I upgraded to first class for that segment, since it seemed like not that much and I've never experienced it before. It was nice. In some ways, though (not the seat space way) LAN (Chile's airline) is first-class relative to anything in the US: LED displays per seat, free wine... of course, that was the international flight; the short-hop wasn't that luxurious. But neither was the flight out of Chile, which turned out to be served by American in partnership with LAN. Chilean stew, but no wine or metal utensils -- and they confiscated my water bottles at boarding!

Instead of Bloomington Shuttle, I took Star of America home. $15 vs. $25 (well, $22 with the Shuttle's new online discount.) I'm somewhat suspicious, suspecting predatory pricing by a big company which may destroy something amazing (frustrating as the Shuttle's schedule is, that it exists seems a minor economic miracle) but I did save $10 and 40 minutes: Star leaves 20 minutes earlier and I got home before 4, vs. 4:40 deposit at the Courtyard Marriott. Oh, and Star has Wi-Fi.

Alright John, you can envy me now.

Yesterday G and I went up to Las Campanas Observatory. First he showed me the Magellan telescopes, and later I got to see an image being taken, one with a possible Oh My God Particle event, given a cosmic ray track (or artifact) that amazed all the observers. Today I saw the 100 inch ("It's like my 8 inch Celestron, only much bigger") and 40 inch telescopes, and Indian petroglyphs in the region, and heard the rocks that give the mountain its name ("the bells"), iron rich rocks that ring when you strike them against each other. But last night was the light, when he hauled out his aforementioned Celestron up on the mountain and his Nikon Eagleview binoculars and we went stargazing in the Southern Hemisphere. First we saw the thin crescennt of a two day old Moon, and the Mercury/Jupiter/Venus conjunction. Craters on the Moon, Io Europa and Callisto around Jupiter, Jupiter's banding, the phase of Venus -- old hat for some, but new for a city boy like me, where stargazing tends to mean looking at the Big Dipper or Orion, or finding Polaris.

But then Hemispherical stuff. Upside-down Orion, Canopus, then fuzzy patches visible only out of the corner of one's eye -- the Greater then Lesser Magellanic Cloud. But soon they were visible, even obvious, to direct view. And the Milky Way came into view, not as obvious as it was on Catalina for freshman orientation, but still pretty good. The Southern Cross, actually more of a kite. At the end of the evening he pointed out Alpha Centauri coming up over the horizon, pointed to (along with Hadar) by the short limb of the cross.

We saw a satellite; later, while looking at the nebular glow of the Pleiades through the telescope, I think I saw another satellite zip through the field. I caught a meteor, too. He picked out the Crab Nebula in the scope; I with the binoculars found some open star cluster that he recognized but couldn't ID, above the Milky Way in the south. It's got a wavy line of stars in the upper left, and an M of stars in the lower right, with a band of darkness running between.

S has used the term "house farms" for the monoculture development housing tracts in Southern California; G's translation "granjas de casas" for the Chilean equivalent got instant recognition from Chileans.

There's an 'official' map of the Firefly universe:
http://www.fireflyshipworks.com/2008/11/map-of-the-verse/
G mentioned actual support by Joss; there may be a more informative link somewhere. The construction is a close star cluster with lots of hot jovians and thus moons. Fans have imagined the latter but it's the star cluster that helps to expand the habitable range, or range of zones (maybe). And Blue Sun corporation comes from... a blue sun. And all those Asians we never saw might have been on some world we never saw, there's over 200 of the things. Though I still like the B-Ark interpretation (was that me, or James, or someone else?)

* I slept decently despite the canine chorus of the damned.
* It occurred to me recently that the bemoaned low turnout of US elections might be connected to the voting system; often, it seems rational to stay home, since one's vote is surplus or pointless. True, if all the supporters of one side suddenly turned out, they could turn California red or Alabama blue, but given the real world... one is raised to be a habitual voter or not, and just increasing the overall turnout doesn't do much good. OTOH, in PR systems one's vote always has concrete marginal value, not just probabilistic marginal value, and this might keep turnout high. I don't know Canadian and UK turnout though; they'd be the main control group for Craptacular Voting (tm).
* I finally left the house yesterday (Friday), going for a walk toward downtown La Serena. Of note:
** I don't care what Chileans like to think about their ethnicity, what I saw was at least 95% strong Indian heritage.
** I saw a public library, open. Lots of book collections in their own rooms off a narrow central corridor, at the end of which was the main collection in Dewey Decimal, under an awesome skylight.
** I saw a couple of "INFERNET" internet signs. Not a typo, given the flames on the signs.
** Some downtown streets are paved in little square-inch tiles.
** I saw a sign for a college anime club, and for something commercial and anime related. The club is watching Death Note and Macross Frontier, among others. World culture is world.
* Went to the farmer's market today. Great peaches. A cantaloupe slide had superior texture but inferior flavor to US ones, or at least I wasn't used to it.

* Rooting out RNC racism: Barack, the Magic Negro
* People worry about storing radioactive waste. How about coal waste?
* Peter Watts playfully suggests parents aren't rational enough to vote. But then, who is?

* The current President is a woman, Michelle Bachelet. And unlike Ireland, the President here has real power.
* My summer sausage and Romano cheese got confiscated in customs. I don't know what pests either one could be carrying, but.
* One legacy of Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys: inflation-indexed currency is common in contracts, e.g. G's insurance. + side: makes sense, hedges against inflation. - side: removes the use of mild inflation as a sneaky way around wage stickiness, where lack of raises gives a modest wage cut.
* The War of the Pacific saw Chile secure coast, Bolivia lose all coast, and Chile killing Bolivia's economy via high tariffs on the "guaranteed" seaport access after the war. These days though, Chile is trying to be a good neighborhood leader, forming an equivalent to the EU (UNOSUR?), with talk of a single currency, funding rail to Bolivia's tariff-free access to the port, and helping Argentina escape from under the IMF thumb, and forming a Bank of the South to provide a general alternative to the IMF and World Bank. (Caveat: I'm not sure how much some of these have happened, vs. being optimistically talked about.)
* Tuition at the top private school in La Serena, the German school, with trilingual education and excellent math and science teachers and labs, is about $3000. Of course, for the average Chilean that's a lot.
* There are lots of dogs here and they've just started a major concert of barking and yowling. This bodes ill for my sleep tonight.

Non-Chile:
* It takes 24 months for a disabled US worker to actually qualify for Medicare. Need help in between? Bankruptcy or death.
* I realized there were these countries in NE South America I never hear or think about. Suriname turns out to be Dutch-speaking, and was independent in Nov 1975, after many people I know were born. They had a coup less than 5 years later. Very diverse ethnically and religiously, thanks to the Dutch bringing in contract workers from the east Indies and India, after slavery went out (in 1863-1873.) Guyana speaks English, was where Jonestown happened, and has an emigration rate nearly equal to the death rate; population growth is barely positive, at 0.2%. Both countries have less than a million people.

I'm having fun here in Chile, but it doesn't seem LJeable. I've only left the house and yard to go to the supermarket once, though I'll try to explore more tomorrow; just been hanging out with the family. The girls, Gr and Si have taken to me pretty well (as did my niece at age 2; I've wondered how that works), with enthusiasm and hugs and having me read things, or reading things to me. I've had talks with G&S, and played games, and looked at photos of S's long ago South America trip. (Games: Chrononauts was fun, a Fluxx with meat; US Patent No. 1 is fun, with a weakly repetitive endgame; Bohnanza and Guillotine are their usual selves.) Christmas was a huge loot for the kids. I gave Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to S (from S to S, from my point of view; private joke) and The Best American Science Writing of 2008 to G, though I'm sure S will read it too. As will M aka F probably, because I see a late gift in the future. The kids got illustrated postcards from me, which I was up to 3am making, so I'm punchy.

S's sister J got stuck in Portland, though she finally made it to LA. US sucks. I don't want to come home! I got to see Skype at work for the first time, with videophone function, as the family talked to the respective grandparents.

Was talking about various topics with G. Did I mention Chile has universal health care? It's not as good as the private system (and that's not something to just assume; Australian private care gives you nicer rooms and sends you to the public system for anything serious, from what I hear) but it's more than the US has as public care and hey, they have a GDP/capita of $11,000 ($14,000 PPP, same as Russia.) Talked about chances of ET intelligence, with G mentioning things he's heard about possibly links between stellar metallicity and flariness, with even slightly older stars than the Sun being more flarey, maybe (though for all we really know, Sol is just in a low-flare period right now). Also a possibility that two similar-mass Jovians like Jupiter and Saturn are needed for stable circular orbits, vs. eccentric or hot Jovians; we see lots of eccentric orbits out there, making our concentric circles seem unusual. But still might be detection bias.

I mentioned the cost of cold before, but didn't talk much about the content, especially from the third link in the comments. It's all about the misallocation of Soviet resources in Siberia, with Stalin forcing and later governments bribing people to go to Siberia and live in cities to develop resources. The links don't actually discuss anything as concrete as heating costs, say, but there's an abstract measure of "temperature per capita" -- actually a measure of temperature beneath some arbitrary level in January, weighted by population -- which is flawed but interesting in principle, for showing how while Russia and Canada might both have cold geography, Canadians live huddled up against the US for warmth (James's words) and mostly use seasonal camps for northern resources, while Russia is saddled with these Soviet-era year-round cities where few people would probably choose to live. Heating costs, material damage costs, health costs, transportation costs from being so spread out.

* Lord of the Rings as evil hobbit conspiracy.

Much to my surprise, nothing went wrong on my 19 hour 4-flight journey from Indiana to La Serena, Chile. Observations along the way:
* The new Indianapolis airport is light and spacious and airy. Wireless didn't work, I never even got a "give us ridiculous amounts of money" page to finish loading.
* The Charlotte, North Carolina airport had lots of food shops. I was tempted by Nathan's Dogs, with dim memorise of Calvin Trillin, but I tried a Carolina Pit BBQ instead, figuring I should try regional specialties. The sauce was good, the beef brisket seemed just okay, not that I have much to compare it to. The deep-fried pickle was weird but pretty good. Hushpuppies -- deep-fried cornmeal and onion mix, was ehh. I ate to the sounds of a gospel group belting out not the standard Christmas carols (I just realized it's been a few years since anima_mecanique introduced me to "Good King Wencelas" and the idea that some Latin poems go well with it) but lyrics like "Jesus is Lord!", "worship, we worship you" and "the reason for the season is [Jesus]". OTOH, Internet worked for free.
* In Miami, I entered on gate J6, and left from J12. So I didn't see much. But I can add North Carolina and Florida to my list of states that I have technically been physically present in. Miami managed to ask for money.

* Chile charges a "reciprocity fee" to certain foreigners. In US $, $131 for Americans, $132 for Canadians, and lower amounts for Australians, Albanians, and Mexicans. Paying that, going thorough customs, changing money, renting a cell phone, and going through security for domestic flights (ok, it's not just the US that re-screens you even though you never left a secure area) took an hour.
* At the La Serena airport, I called S and told her I was at the station. It really does seem like a train or bus station, one of the smaller ones. I'm told they don't have instrument landing here, so in the winter it's better for them to drive to Santiago to fly to the US).

* BUT IT'S SUMMER! Which here means 60-70, maybe warmer in direct sun. It feels a lot like LA, the most Hispanic areas, though with even more colorful walls. G&S are up a hill, so it's like my sister's in Spokane, only, you know, not.
* Chile is like Japan in currency, the basic unit is the peso, about 600 to the dollar; the 'mil' or 1000 pesos is useful chunked unit, like 100 yen or a dollar. Orange bell peppers are 400 pesos, about 60 cents each. It's supposed to be peach season, though I haven't had any yet, and thanks to altitudes peach season supposedly lasts a long time. I've had two Chilean meals so far, courtesy of the maid.

I'm told:
* the water here is really hard, and the copper pipes don't last long. And of course the pipes *are* copper, because that's Chile's leading resource and export.
* Quakes here sound like a truck, because the sound waves generated across the valley travel through the air faster than the seismic waves through the dirt.
* Even when Chile tries to be a modern First World country and ground their electricity, it's hard because the dirt is loose and dry; the observatory drove rods 60 (feet or meters) deep without getting good grounding.
* Lots of their astronomers are stuck in places due to crappy weather, like one who keeps e-mailing from Dallas, waiting to get back to Seattle.

* Bloomington has a new airport service, only $15. I wonder what the business model is. Has Bton Shuttle been ripping us off, or is Star of America out to drive them out then jack up prices?

* On Europe's internationalization of gay rights.
* Pope calls homosexuality a threat to the human race, of the same order as global heating. "Merry Christmas"