An early morning riddle

Everyone is looking for it. You can't find it if you are actively seeking it. No one else can tell you when you've found it. When you find it you will have no doubts.

I thought of this when I woke up at 5 AM yesterday.

No twilight

One of the coolest things about my (not so) little town of Bellingham is that we have no astronomical twilight during the week of the Summer Solstice. This means that even at 1 AM (thanks to Daylight Savings, our astronomical twilight will be at 1:12, the 12 minutes is due to not being in the dead center of our time zone) some of the sun's rays are still showing for that week. it is a really cool experience I recommend everyone see at least once, and the midnight walks are really fun.

No night on Summer Solstice

This made me think, there is no page I can find which says how far north you have to be in order to have no sunset, so I am going to write it here, by working backwards.

Furthest north locations with night every night of the year:

• 48 25' - Mount Vernon, Washington
• 48 33' - Bow, Washington

Furthest south locations with no night on summer solstice.

• 48 35' - International Falls, Minnesota
• 48 37' - Alger, Washington
• 48 45' - Bellingham, Washington

This means the answer must be 48 degrees 34 minutes to have no astronomical twilight on the summer solstice.

No Astronomical Twilight on Summer Solstice

Let's say no night is not good enough for you, you want to have no astronomical twilight as well. This will mean the horizon will be faintly visible on your summer solstice. For this, let's do another exploration:

Furthest north locations with astronomical twilight on every night of the year:

• 54 18' - Prince Rupert, British Columbia 
• 54 28' - Perry Vale, Alberta
• 54 32' - Fawcett, Alberta
• 54 34' - Kitselas, British Columbia

Furthest south locations with no astronomical twilight on summer solstice: 

• 54 35' - Boyle, Alberta
• 54 37' - Colinton, Alberta
• 54 43' - Athabasca, Alberta
• 55 10' - Grande Prairie, Alberta
• 55 41' - Chetwynd, British Columbia

You have to be further north than 54 34' in order to have no astronomical twilight on Summer Solstice.

No Nautical Twilight on Summer Solstice

But that's not enough, and you want to be able to have no nautical twilight as well on your Summer solstice, which means you will have civil twilight which means that the light will be enough to discern objects.

Furthest north locations with nautical twilight on every night of the year:

• 60 10' - Teslin, Yukon
• 60 29' - Little Teslin Lake, Yukon
• 60 32' - Sterling, Alaska
• 60 33' - Kenai, Alaska

Furthest south locations with no nautical twilight on summer solstice:

• 60 36' - Drift River, Alaska
• 60 43' - Whitehorse, Yukon

If I had to take a guess, I'm expecting that you would have to be north of 60 34' in order to have no nautical twilight.

No Astronomical Twilight on the Summer Solstice

The pattern continues further with 66 degrees, 33 minutes, and 47.5 seconds is the most famous of all these lines. The Arctic Circle, the point where locations famously have the midnight sun.

On the other hand, if you check out Rovaniemi you will find that it has no sunset at all, and is located at 66 degrees 30 minutes. so, it is time to do the same thing to find the true Arctic Circle:

Furthest north locations with nautical twilight every night of the year:

• 65 35' - Kuivaniemi, Finland
• 65 41' - Maksniemi, Finland
• 65 44' - Kemi, Finland

Furthest south locations with no sunset on the summer solstice:

• 65 46' - Savast, Sweden
• 65 48' - Karlsborg, Sweden
• 65 49' - Kaakamo, Finland
• 65 51' - Tornio, Finland
• 66 30' - Rovaniemi, Finland

Looks like the real Arctic Circle should be at 65 45' North, not where it is traditionally put.

Northernmost places with Daylight every day of the year:

The other issue, is that at the Winter Solstice, you will still have daylight at the Arctic Circle. It doesn't last long, but it is still there.

Northernmost places with daylight every day of the year:

• 67 17' - Kolari, Finland
• 67 21' - Straumen, Norway

 Southernmost places with no daylight on the Winter solstice:

• 67 24' - Andkilen, Norway
• 67 26' - Junosuando, Sweden
• 67 29' - Kango, Sweden

It looks like you have to be around 67 22 or so in order to have truly no daylight on the Winter Solstice

Southernmost places with no Civil Twilight on the Winter Solstice

But, being a vampire you really hate the light, and the civil twilight still bothers you. You have to go even further north.

Northernmost places with civil twilight on Winter Solstice:

•  71 32' - Nuugatsiaq, Greenland

Southernmost places with no civil twilight on the Winter Solstice:

• 72 42' - Pond Inlet, Nunavut
• 72 47' - Upernavik, Norway

There is a real lack of locations between these two longitudes, being in the high Arctic.

Southernmost places with no Nautical Twilight on the Winter Solstice:

Most polar places with Nautical Twilight on the Winter Solstice:

• 78 13' - Longyearbyen, Norway
• 78 31' - Minna Bluff - Antarctica

Least polar places with no Nautical Twilight on Winter Solstice:

• 78 37' - Mount Slaughter, Antarctica
• 78 39' - Mount Atkinson, Antarctica
• 78 47' - Isachsen, Nunavut
• 79 59' - Eureka, Nunavut

Southernmost places with no Astronomical Twilight on the Winter Solstice

You HATE the sun. You want dark. For a full 24 hours. And when you say 24 hours you want a full darkness uninterrupted by the sun with not even astronomical twilight.

Most polar places with Astronomical twilight on the Winter Solstice:

• 82 31' - Alert, Nunavut 
• 83 10' - Holland Range, Antarctica 
• 84 15' - Commonwealth Range, Antarctica  
• 84 30' - Hughes Range, Antarctica

Least polar places with no Astronomical twilight on the Winter Solstice, meaning it is completely pitch black, without not even a hint of the rays of the sun:

• 84 44' - Queen Alexandra Range, Antarctica
• 85 30' - Amundsen Coast, Antarctica

The lack of locations with measurements in this area makes it hard to know exactly where the point of no astronomical sunlight on the winter solstice is.

Conclusion

The following lines of latitude are the important points for various levels of twilight at solstices:

• 48 34' - No night on Summer Solstice
• 54 34' - No astronomical twilight on Summer Solstice
• 60 34' - No nautical twilight on Summer Solstice
• 65 45' - No civil twilight on Summer Solstice
• 67 22' - No daylight on Winter Solstice
• 78 31-37' - No civil twilight on Winter Solstice
• 84 30-44' - No astronomical twilight on Winter Solstice

Latitude is from Wikipedia, twilight status is from timeanddate.com

Learning how to invest, tips

I have been an investor since August. I have a stable account with Acorns which has been giving me excellent returns for a passive fund, and will be enough to retire if I put enough in there every month once I get my first real job. On top of this, as an economist, I have been learning how to trade currencies, because I have a goal of being able to choose to work in 10 years. This is important to me, and how I will be able to have the ability to help others financially and spend time doing the research and activism which I believe the world desperately needs.

I started my Forex account about a year ago, exactly when Brexit started. From the beginning there have been some major problems. They gave me a 48 hour moratorium period to start with, which meant I could not profit off of Brexit which was the entire point of starting the account when I did. They have only about 30 currency pairs, which does not leave too many choices in how to invest, and are missing many important indicators, such as the Awesome Index. On top of this, in order to trade with any information you have to use their application on Windows using Silverlight, which is terrible software for so many reasons. You can technically trade on your phone, but this is not recommended because you are trading blind without any indicators. they have some good educational tools, but do not have the tools you need to be successful at trading.

I started my Oanda account a week ago and so far I love it. It is cross platform and works on any operating system, as someone who uses Linux for multiple reasons this is a huge plus. It has more indicators and more currency pairs, and an API interface which I need to set up. The Awesome Index is supported which makes it far easier to trade successfully versus the poorer indexes on Forex.com. It is much easier to use, presents information in a much better way, and the options are far better than what Forex offers. They also require far less money to get started with Forex, you can start for as little as $5, making investing accessible to more people and allowing you to test your chops with very little risk.

Once you set up your Oanda Account, the Awesome Index combined with Bollinger Bands is the easiest way to get started and make some money on the side. I am finding that it is workiug for me. Happy trading!

Disclaimer: I am in no way compensated from Oanda or Forex for these opinions which are solely my own based on my personal experience with these two systems.

Sometimes I can be crass

There have been times in my life where I have said some really stupid things. Everyone has had these from time to time, and this can really put others off.

I am finishing my bachelor's right now with only another 3 months to go. Being in political economy means that I am learning about concepts which have everything to do with extremely controversial subjects and can sometimes be very useful in conversations I have with people. I also am by nature very open about almost everything and when I feel comfortable with people I speak freely. When I get into my field of interest I can go on and on for hours. I probably have some type of Aspbergers as well, but it is fairly mild almost all of the time. So when I am talking with someone I trust and they say something I am not sure about I will speak freely what I think given my education (and sometimes lack of experience). For people who don't know me very well this can put them off and make them think of me as being rude, and they are right.

A particular incident was during a very intense and educational Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Con in my district. I was talking with someone I barely knew about gender quotas and had just started learning about how economic quotas and price ceilings work along with their effects both positive and negative. I spoke freely about what I was learning but unfortunately didn't realize that gender quotas work differently from other types of quotas in their efficiency and ability to deal with this. This really put her off and offended her, which I regret, but as soon as I got a chance I did research and found papers discussing the efficiency of gender quotas and she was absolutely right, they do work differently from price ceilings (I'm not sure exactly why yet, I have a lot of other projects I am working on, hopefully someday I will get back to it). But this is just one example of other times I have been too intense for people to know how to deal with me.

Disclaimer: I am a white heterosexual cisgender male American. I am very liberal. I am UU. I am also a liberal feminist meaning I believe that everyone should be treated fairly regardless of gender. I believe your skin color, background, native language, disability status, or any other trait should not determine how others treat you. This puts me at odds with Marxists and radical groups who think the solution to injustice is simply to turn the tables and make today's bourgeois tomorrow's proletariat which historically has only perpetuated such systems. It also puts me at odds with conservatives who don't believe in social liberalism.

Being a white heterosexual cisgender male puts me in a very advantaged class and effects how people see me on a daily basis which I find hard to fully understand, especially since I grew up in a very liberal community where we don't judge people by the color of their skin or other thing which has no bearing on someone's character. This means my personal experience is from that of a supporter and ally of people who are discriminated against, though I myself have not been directly discriminated against like other people find.

With this in mind, I am very open to learning. One principle I take very closely to heart is from UU's 7 principles "A free and responsible search for truth and meaning" which I try to put into practice every day. Knowing this means that when I talk with people and they say something that is inaccurate or hurtful I work very hard not to get angry with them and remember we are all on this journey together to make the world better and live our lives to the fullest we can. I am very interested in talking with the person about whatever issue it is so we can both grow and learn together. This is the best way I know to help move this world onto a better path. Only after someone says something offensive time and time again after talking about how it is wrong and show no incentive to learn and grow will I start to get tetchy with their statements. This is of course a goal and something I don't always succeed with but it is very important to me.

When I do things like this I want my friends and family to know that I do care about them and all they have to do is tell me they are done with the conversation and I will stop. If I call them by the wrong pronoun, it is never intentional, they just might have to correct me one more time and I will reliably get it right after I see them enough. I never purposefully try to offend people, and I will never be offended if someone calls me out for being too crass or offending them. The only way someone could offend me in such a situation is to think that I don't care and feel like they can't correct me, because nothing could possibly be further from the truth.

So, given my place in society and vantage point (which is definitely not a complete view on the world) and my age (I'm only 22) I find it is very important that when I talk with someone to respect them and not insult their intelligence or worth as a person as long as they are trying and making progress to be a better person. We are all in this journey together and we all have things to learn from one another and teach to each other. I really do believe that by having honest conversations with one another and sharing our knowledge we can become better people and make this world a better world.

Carbon, why not silicon?

I love technology, and I do see it as offering a lot of amazing answers to the future. Over the 20th century we developed batteries to store electricity better than before. With new carbon-fiber batteries we are able to store more electricity in a smaller space with shorter charging times and longer discharging times. This has enormous potential for the future of electric cars which will make them be able to carry electricity through the whole vehicle which Volvo is currently working on, the reduced weight means extra efficiency which means a longer range. The other advantage of short charging times means that people will be able to drive them as they would an internal combustion engine powered car and save enormous amounts of money and energy. This is currently being developed and in the next five years will yield enormous benefits to all people without significantly damaging the environment. Tesla has already made their current cars charge extremely quickly, and improving the technology once their patent expires will make electric cars the dominant car on the road.

The other piece of the puzzle is that silicon batteries are currently being developed and offers better storage than other forms of batteries. Hopefully this will hit the market soon which will allow better storage which then will make electric cars even more realistic and affordable for people. This will reduce the carbon footprint of humanity, helping to stall global warming in the long run.

This is why I am a proud technophile and optimistic about the future. This future is now.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon%E2%80%93air_battery
http://www.materials360online.com/newsDetails/12800;jsessionid=208C96025E476AB21334B13EAC8C60C5
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/168964-volvo-develops-battery-infused-carbon-fiber-body-panels
http://ecomento.com/2014/06/06/carbon-fiber-battery-bodywork-for-electric-cars-swedish-researchers-say-yes/
https://www.google.com/patents/EP2502295A1?cl=en has information on the silicon air battery
http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

Summer Con 2014

Summer con was fun. I took the Greyhound bus down and met some really nice people, one from Canada who does web design and is in his late 20s. I then had a very nice conversation with a nice lady who is my age from Edinburgh which is now on my list of places I want to travel. Mark and Kyle helped me out a ton by letting me stay with them on Thursday night. Mark was there but Kyle was at his house in Corvallis. I like all of their roommates who are wonderful people. Mark and I went to West Hills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in the morning and helped set things up and participate in the board meeting. I am really good at my job, and participated to the best of yay ability in the conversations. There were about 30 people there who ended up going at the end of the day, and if knew most of them already. About 5 people were going to their first YA con after Bridging and there were at least two people who were completely new. I helped cook breakfast on Monday. I was the touch group leader for my group consisting of Robyn, her friend, and Shawna, all of whom I hadn't met before. We were great and talked about inclusion, which was the theme for the con. For the first workshop I did some Tai Chi with my new friend from Ashland, and it was a slightly different form than what I originally learned. The second workshop was blues dancing which was the first time I did it, and the other people were really good. I learned quickly, and the one thing I need to improve on is using my arms when I dance by myself. At the middle of it a family who was driving north needed help with paying for a hotel room and we a number of us (including ourselves) pitched in even though most of us are the stereotypical starving college student. I have never loved my friends as much as when we practiced the second principle (justice and compassion in human relations) right there to the best of our ability. The big workshop including all people was to talk about how we as UUs make sure we are inclusive to as many people as possible. Makayla was in my group and she was awesome, along with 6 other people. We talked about how we make sure we let almost anyone join our fellowships and ministries without being so inclusive that we allow someone to engage in destructive behaviors that are contrary to our 7 principles and covenant. It is a delicate be lancing act when working with people to ensure that we keep ourselves safe while still not isolating ourselves from people who need our help. During the final worship I played Moonlight Sonata, Ave Maria by Bach/Gounod, and Clair de Lune which was naturally a total hit. At least 10 people complimented me on my piano playing. I played four times in the talent show, thee times on the piano accompanying other people and one time on the trumpet. I played Andante et Allegro by Balay (with a small introduction about who he is and saying it is one of my favorite trumpet pieces) and accompanied with our own Pete Seeger's Where Have all the Flowers Gone? while singing, a piece with Grant, and once with Kira from a musical. On my way back to the bus stop Mark kindly drove me back and is such a wonderful person who is kind to everybody he knows and a good friend.

I am always astounded by the love of my UUs that I am fortunate to experience on an almost daily basis and our willingness to help each other and others outside our community whenever we can. I will never leave this community.

One final thought on charity. I gave $10 to the family who needed a hotel room to visit their ailing grandfather, even though I have very little. The con was almost completely college students but we still were generous enough to make sure they wouldn't be hungry. Sophia only gave money when she knew they had kids, which is important. Resources are not limited and and we need to make sure that when we hand out cash which is extremely liquid that it will be used for what we the donors intend for it to go to. I practiced this as well when a man approached me at the greyhound station asking for money while he absolutely reeked of nicotine. I didn't give him money because I am certain that it will go to furthering his destructive addiction. Given how I am already going to pay for his chemotherapy when he gets cancer, and I absolutely refuse on moral grounds to fund the Child labor that goes into that extremely disgusting habit. If someone is truly hungry there are churches like mine and if they are scarred by conservative religion they can always go to the food bank, so I don't give people cash unless I know they really are in need like the family who approached us on Saturday or it is through an intermediary like the UUA which ensures that the cash will not go to furthering the unfair labor practices and disastrous health effects of cigarettes and the unjust way they are produced but instead to the services people need. If someone can afford a pack of cigarettes they can afford food. I refuse to participate in that industry in any shape or form given all the lives they have taken.

Muslim Student Association dinner

Tonight I went to an amazing dinner/event with the Muslim Student Association at my university. We started with just talking for a while, and about half an hour in dinner was served from a local Indian restaurant. The people I was sitting with were extremely kind, and the featured people were amazing. The first presenters were some Sufi dancers from Seattle who sang and danced, which was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The second presenter was a graduate of my school who sang some pleasant rap with Islamic themes of serving your community, looking to God for help, etc.

The third was a speaker who graduated from my school a few years ago and he talked about what it means to be Muslim, about faith in action, serving your neighbors, and some examples. He talked about some Muslims who were going to Mosque to break the fast during Ramadan who saw a poor man outside and they talked to him about Muhammad. After hearing about his situation they fed him before they broke their fast and when the Imam came to Mosque the starving man (who apparently knew nothing about Islam before that day) told him how much he loved Muhammad. Another example was about washing his feet which once presented an awkward moment in a private restroom when he was using a public sink to clean his feet (which is required in Islam) and someone else washed his hands after using the bathroom next to him, and not a word was spoken between them. Another time he was washing his feet and a TSA agent came in... he's ok, don't worry. He was an amazing speaker. The message that Islam teaches peace (which is true) and in serving your neighbor is something all religious people agree on.

All in all a wonderful conference with some wonderful people.