China Train Dining Car 555

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

I was on two major train routes during the China trip. This was the dining car on the Hong Kong to Shanghai overnight train, a trip of about 1000 miles in about 30 hours. Contrary to what some had told me the train was very comfortable and also as clean as the Amtrak we’d taken from Portland to Minneapolis a few years ago. The beds were *more* comfortable and larger but unlike Amtrak did not fold into comfortable seats, rather you sit on the bottom bunk or in tiny fold down seats at the outside of your sleeper cabin.

Culturally this is a good experience because most of the travellers are Chinese. Food was only fair here, and they closed the dining car after about 9pm which was a shame because it was the most comfortable place to hang out. There was even a tiny little bar at the end of the car where you’d buy the Budweiser beers I had on both trains (odd, because Tsing Tao beer and Yanzing?, a popular beer from Beijing, was at all the restaurants.

Crepe Cart on the road to Simatai 847

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

We pulled over for a snack on the road out to the Great Wall of China at Simatai, and a woman was making a sort of crepe on this into which she put eggs and some of the wafer stuff. I didn’t try one but those of us who did… seemed to enjoy them.

Originally uploaded by guzhengman

Due to the misty weather when we were there in early April we missed this splendid ride and view of the Tian Tan Buddha at Pol Lin Monestery, Lantau Island, Hong Kong.

The Cable Car is one of the world’s longest and lands you at a sort of tourist village near the monastery and Buddha. We took the Lantau Island Ferry (nice) and bus (comfortable but a pretty long and windy trip).

I think you need to take the bus from Hong Kong a long way to get to the Cable Car, but not sure.

Octopus? 014

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Octopus is a type of currency/card for Hong Kong transit that allows you on *most* but not all ferries, subways, and I think all busses and most trains. We did not use it but I sure liked the sign – this was at the Ferry Pier to Lantau Island.

Ferries are one of the coolest things about Hong Kong. There are dozens of piers along the main waterfront heading off in all directions – to Kowloon, Macau, Lantau, and many more places. Be sure to take at least one trip on the Star Ferry from Hong Kong to Kowloon, and try to return about 8pm when the waterfront of Hong Kong is lit to showcase the many tall buildings and skyline. There are also tour boats for this sight.

Unfortunately for us the mist and fog was so thick in both Hong Kong and Shanghai that we missed most of the glory of these bright waterfront cityscapes – two of the most stunning in the world.

Here’s a neat article that assigns work values to the many tasks taken on by a homemaker in the course of a week.   I’m a little skeptical that the 80+ hours totalled here is a reasonable average but this seems to be a better approach than the recent Salary.com study that assigned a huge value of about 116,00 annual to stay at home mom work.  Here is the calculator they provide.  That really does not jive with a rational view of how to pay people for doing work.     As the first article notes one realistic approach is to ask “what would somebody else do all this work for?”, though they also note that we undervalue domestic work in our economy.   I agree but don’t think we undervalue it enough to justify the claim of 116k.    For example if that was actually available to people to do the work you’d see a huge number of other professionals “apply” for homemaking jobs, which in turn would bring down the wage as demand for the job soared.

What is a realistic number?   Good question…working on that and paying myself handsomely for doing it.

A hypothesis I’ve been enjoying lately is that the universe has evolved from a single bit (or an “on or off” rule) that, in the beginning, was applied randomly to itself.  Everything has expanded from that and exists as information rather than particles and waves – or put another way our existence is best modelled as a set of information relationships rather than a collection of particles and waves.

I’m not sure how original this idea is (I think I read once that Feynman had speculated about the universe being driven by information bits rather than physical things)  but I’m really liking the concept as it seems to be consistent with most of the current ideas about how the world works such as string theory and evolution and perhaps even some forms of religious belief that don’t define things too narrowly.

So I’m saying  that the universe is best thought of as a non-physical entity analogous to a computer program (but I do NOT mean it is a “simulation” from a giant mind or computer – I’m saying at the core of everything there is … nothing but a single rule).  Everything we experience is an expansion from a single rule that says an information bits can be either on or off   (or 1 / 0 or whatever).    The physical reality / evolution / everything we all experience is as “real” as in other modelling, but it is an imperfect vision of what makes it all tick and when we eventually find the ultimate source it will be a single info bit.

That single “off or on” rule, when applied in random fashion, will lead to increasingly complex rule relationships.   Given enough time many different “information associations” will emerge including what we now call “matter” and “energy”.  In turn these matter and energy relationships evolved into … you, me, and the universe we currently experience.

What I like about this notion is that it helps me come to grips with some of the most baffling aspects of modern physics:   The first is string cosmology which suggests there could be an infinite number of alternate universes existing side by side with ours.    This seems a lot less fanciful if our existence is information driven.  In  the same way you can run a chess program and this blog side by side without them having awareness of each other we could be “running” our universe without awareness of our next door neighboring universe.   

The second reconciliation is with the electrons of an atom, which are not well defined as either particles or energy.  They “exist” in our models as a probability relationship with our observation and with the atom.   This is mind bending if you try to think about it in physical terms, but if *at the very core* the electron is a rule and not an object or wave then it seems to be much more accessible as a concept.

At first I’d thought this might do something to reconcile the religion vs science debates but I don’t think religious folks will be too happy with an origin this simple and … “godless”, though I think I’m cool with the idea we can say God is the prime mover in the equation – the single on/off rule that, applied randomly to itself, started everything.