Warm Winter

As the Northeast prepares for yet another Arctic airmass, here in Tucson the bougainvilleas are doing fine. Most years in late February this exposed corner would be a convolution of bare wood, badly needing pruning. Of the 22 (non-contiguous) years I've now lived in Tucson, this winter was among the top two or three warmest. It's no coincidence that the ranking would be approximately reversed for the same 22 winters in Pittsburgh.

Affordable Care

Yesterday I successfully signed up for ObamaCare. That is, not only logged-in at healthcare.gov using the account that I had established with little trouble about two weeks ago, but also was able to list the available plans and to sign-up for the plan that I had already decided upon.
Since the middle of last week the healthcare.gov website has sporadically functioned for me at the point where it generates a listing of the available plans. The plans are displayed starting with the cheapest. I suppose that if you thought you never would need to actually use any of the possible services provided by the plans, and given that you need to sign up for one of the plans, then cheapest would be best. But for anyone who has ever been surprised by their health insurance company, the monthly premium price is not the only consideration. Unfortunately, the healthcare.gov website does little to help you filter possible surprises. You need to research that yourself and develop your own level of comfort based on the information provided by the individual company websites. For the purpose of doing that necessary research, it really doesn't matter whether the healthcare.gov site is fully functioning or not.
I'm happy that the ACA has leveled the playing field somewhat and lowered premium prices. But there are still games being played by the insurance companies. (Advance notice to my current insurance company: No thanks! -- for automatically switching me at the beginning of next year to one of your limited, new ACA-compliant plans.) It remains to be seen how it will all play out, both overall and individually.

Budapest Gymnasiums

In preparation for a tour, last month I reread Budapest 1900 by John Lukacs.¹ His chapter "The Generation of 1900" lists famous Hungarians, which reminded me that, among many other accomplishments, John von Neumann enabled running on a ca. 1950 computer the first useful numerical weather forecast. The successes of Neumann and others of his generation are credited in part by Lukacs to the schools in Budapest that by 1900 had reached standards comparable to the best ones in Europe. Lukacs continues on page 142, The most important impact was that of the middle schools, which were articulated into three kinds, the highest of them being the humanistic gymnasium—requiring, among other subjects, Latin and Greek, and attendance for eight years, usually from the ages of ten to eighteen. There were three such gymnasiums in 1876 and twelve by 1896 ...
One afternoon I made a pilgrimage to the famous Fasori Lutheran Gymasium. The site was off the normal tourist path, but was only four metro stops and another two blocks from our group's hotel. The name comes from the street, Városligeti Fasor, which means effectively City-Park Tree-Lined Avenue. It is somewhat more residential than the parallel Andrassy Avenue. The church building is on the corner of Városligeti Fasor and Bajza Street. (On the afternoon of my visit a public concert in the church was just ending.) The school building is adjacent. On the front of the building and to the left of the door is a plaque honoring three of their most famous graduates.

The plaque reads, from left, Nobel-prize-winner physicist (Wigner) world-famous mathematician (Neumann) and Nobel-prize-winner economist (Harsányi). The plaque also honors famous teachers of the graduates. Mikola taught physics (Wigner), Rátz taught math (Neumann and Wigner) and Renner taught Harsányi.²
Before the trip I had picked up the false impression online that most of Budapest's famous physicists had attended the same Fasori Gymnasium.³ Since returning, I found that the book entitled The Voice of the Martians corrects that legend.² The book's title plays with another legend, a running joke (pp. 116-119) that the reason for so many famous Hungarian scientists was that a Martian spaceship had crash-landed in Budapest around 1900. Immediately below the plaque at Fasori is a (presumably restored) monument,

which I translate as celebrating in 1905 what was then already 25 years of turning out graduates. The explorer/athlete seems to symbolize the highly competitive environment of the Budapest gymnasiums. Lukacs¹ on pp. 144-146 describes the high quality of the teachers, as well as both good and bad consequences of the environment.
Edward Teller and several other famous graduates chose the Minta [Model, emphasizing hands-on learning] Gymnasium, which was founded by Theodore von Karman's father.² So my next trip to Budapest will include a visit to the site of the former Minta Gymnasium, whch is now the Trefort School of the ELTE University.

1. Lukacs, John, Budapest 1900, A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture, 1988, Grove Weidenfield, New York, 255 pp., pbk. ISBN 0-8021-3250-2.

2. Marx, George, The Voice of the Martians, Hungarian Scientists Who Shaped the 20th Century in the West, 3rd Ed., 2001, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 427 pp., ISBN 963-05-7830-1. The hypothesis of a spaceship landing is supported on p. 118 by a map of Budapest showing the locations of the childhood homes of 17 famous scientists/inventors. [On the last afternoon of the group tour I took a walk, intending to retrace my steps, but got lost and headed south on what was then an unfamiliar street just as intermittent downpours began. I took shelter in doorways along the street during the heavier downpours. Now seeing the map on p. 118, it looks like two of the entryways where I waited must have been the childhood doorsteps of John von Neumann and John G. Kemeny.]

3. McCagg, William O., Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary, 1972, East European Quarterly, Boulder, Columbia University Press. On p. 215 the main text and the footnote probably contributed to the incorrect legend of one school having produced most of the famous graduates. Nevertheless, McCagg downplays the specialness of the schools in Budapest, noting that their elitist outlook and emphasis on personal training was similar to other schools in Europe. Instead McCagg emphasizes the cultural and societal changes in Budapest that made a good education possible and desirable. From that perspective, the quality gymnasiums staffed with outstanding teachers, all competing for the best students in Budapest, were merely satisfying a demand.

Snow in Tucson

Noon today, Feb 20, about a mile north of 1st and River.

Python

Till recently my explorations of Python had begun and ended with typing 2+2. Then I stumbled across this arxiv.org compilation of lecture notes, where the author uses python code snippets to teach. I also had noticed, for example, that the Naval Observatory provides software now in three flavors: Fortran, C, and Python. So the recent extensive publicity about Python in the AMS literature was just the final nudge to explore more.
While reading about previous suggestions by atmospheric scientists for installing Python on a Mac, I got off on a tangent by switching to a new package manager. Having used MacPorts awhile back, I've quickly learned now to enjoy Homebrew. I wasn't exactly sure about the next steps following installation of a Homebrewed Python, but fortunately this programmer

brew tap samueljohn/python

recently added supplemental Homebrew formulae for installing numpy, scipy and matplotib. His formulae worked.
My impression is that someone starting out today might never need to learn another programming language other than Python.

Gila Cliff Dwellings

Once Election Day was past, I took a ride to New Mexico. The first picture is a view from the ledge outside of the Gila Cliff Dwellings, looking toward the southwest (in the general direction of Tucson).

If there were a freeway straight from Tucson to Albuquerque it might take only about two hours to get from my house to this spot. Instead the actual drive takes almost five hours, ending with spectacular scenery along the way north from Silver City, NM. After arriving at the parking lot there is a one-mile trail that climbs up to and back down from the Cliff Dwellings. The first part of that loop-trail ascends alongside a creek through the canyon. The drive and the hike would be worthwhile even if there were no ancient structures to be seen.

The second picture is a view from inside the caves, also looking toward the southwest (the cave opening, if not over-exposed, would be a view of the ledge from the first picture). Three of the caves (caves 3, 4 and 5) are connected on the inside. There is a set of wooden steps at the entrance to cave 3. You can see in the picture the wooden railing along those steps. As an alternative entrance/exit, off to the left of the picture there is a wooden ladder that leans against the outside wall beneath cave 4.

On returning home that evening there was already a high wind warning in effect for Tucson. Anticipating high winds from the southwest at the Cliff Dwellings over the following days, I asked the ranger stationed in cave 3 about their impact. She commented only on the pleasant effects of cool breezes through the caves on summer days. Still I bet that sometimes high winds are channelled through the canyon, entering through the opening for cave 3 and exiting through the openings for caves 4 and 5. I imagine that part of the reason for the walls, for example the wall in the middle of this picture, was for protection from the wind. The wall in the middle happens to be special. As explained on the blue tablet that can be read while facing that wall, the wall displays a very faint remnant of a 700-year-old mural. According to the tablet, “Some modern Puebloan people who claim cultural affiliation with the Mogollon interpret similar designs to symbolize rain or clouds.” The tablet goes on to wonder, “Could this mural ... have been part of a plea to end the thirty year drought that swept the Southwest between 1270 and 1300 AD?” I can imagine someone huddled up against that wall for protection from the wind, hoping the wind would be followed by winter rain.

Let's hope this winter's storms bring abundant rain and snow to the Southwest. The outlook is for neutral-to-borderline-weak-El-Niño conditions, so a wet winter is not out of the question.

After the Deluge, July 15

Late Sunday afternoon my place got three and a quarter inches of rain. This picture was taken just two hours after the most intense rainfall rate I've ever seen. The pot-of-gold is a couple of miles away in Bob Maddox's driveway.