A Blasphemic Journey to the Holy Land

Day 0, Travel to Jerusalem (and keep your passport clean from any trace of the "zionost entity") Day 1: Wet hijab day at Banana beach, Tel Aviv Day 2: "yes, Mame, me and Shlomo are sitting here on an ice-cream; I promise ..." Day 3: Sunset on Tel Aviv Beach, the Big Orange Day 4: Jaffa Cafe: Delicious Menue Day 5: Tel Aviv: Russian Immigrant is doing Sewage Fishing on Tel Avivs Carmel Market Day 6: Jaffa: In addition to the many beautiful Arab girls, there are also very enchanting Jewish ones, like the one next to me (dont try to date her, since she is my wife now) Day 7: Jerusalem, YMCA Guesthouse : In the tradition of the crusaders - but after adopting a more tolerant policy they also serve non-gay customers nowadays. Day 8: Marmilla Street near Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem: Each stone tells a story.   Day 9: Jerusalem: Gentlemen prefer blond (at least here, where it is still considered something exotic) Day 10: Old town Jerusalem: Bargaining for the price of grapes. Day 11: Old town Jerusalem: Cooling down the mood with some icecream. Day 12: Jerusalem, Church of Sepulchre: For those who believe in it, this red stone plate on which Jesus was layed down after his death, can do miracles. I tested it with my mobile phone, and indeed it got fully recharged after placing it there for just one minute.
Day 13: Jerusalem/Al Kuds: School is out in the Arab quarter   Day 14: Jerusalem: Goes together very well: Tasty Taybeh beer from Palestine and genetically modified Cherry-Tomatoes from Israel Day 15: Jerusalem/Al Kuds: Sabbath at western wall.   Day 16: Qumran / Death Sea: The dream of many young folks: Exodus to South America Day 17: En Gedi / Death Sea: Taking a refreshing bath where King Solomon met Suleika.   Day 18: Death Sea Shore: Baywatch at 42 degrees.   Day 19: Haifa / Bahai Garden: Members only (unless you fit through this fence)   Day 20: Haifa / Alenby street: Kosher rubbish bins: left one for milky products, righ one for fleshy products.   Day 21: Haifa / Allenby street: The Sadam Hussein memorial shelters.     Day 22: Jerusalem / Al Kuds: Western Wall, Mount Muriah, Dom of Rock at the beginning of Sabbath.   Day 23: Jad Vashem: The Tree to honour Oskar Schindler.   Day 24: Jerusalem/Al Kuds: Top Soccer Players. Arab boys build their playground on the roofs of christian or jewish houses. Day 25: Tel Aviv / Hayarkon Park: Red Hot Chilly Peppers concert   Day 1 after returning home: Reading Saul Bellows "To Jerusalem and return" and trying to understand how much I missed and why I should come back.

Accelerating Evolution on Mars

Hello Michael, 

You have probably heard that last week a new mars rover landed succesfully on Mars surface, and how this event was enthusiastically wellcomed by NASA and the entire scientific community. It follows a long series of less brilliant failures to get a working mars robot up there, one that could produce more than just pretty pictures. This new mission of an explorer vehicle called "Couriosity" is officially intended to test the existence of lower forms of life on our neighbor planet. For this purpose, "Couriosity" carries on board a couple of sophisticated devices, some that can take samples from mars' surface or from deeper layers of the ground in order to apply sensitive detection methods for organic molecules, considered to be exclusively produced by living organisms. I am wondering if they are looking there for a sort of blood stains, or some traces of blond hair or spit-out chewing gum.

What makes this new Mars exploration so special (for me as a radiation biologist) is the fact, that the rovers energy supply comes from about 5 kg of plutonium 235, providing 120 W electric energy for at least five years. Thats fine, I would say from an engineers point of view, and I would also like to drive my old Benz with this sort of low-emission, low-cost and low-maintenace type of fuel.

But the radiation-biologist in me (and I hope you agree somehow) has to wonder about the long term consequences of 5 kg plutonium, a potent alpha emitter, if it comes to its mutatgenic effects on living organisms. Assuming the plutonium is accidentally released from the mars rover and evenly spread over the hypothetical mars ecosphere,  it would cause a tremendous rise of the mutation rate in all cells, whether low prokaryotes or in higher and multi-cellular creatures like plants or animals or anything else in between. This means the 5 years mission of the man-made Mars rover will not only explore the presence of live on Mars, but if there is any, it will also drive evolution by increasing the number of new mutants. So scientists will not only be the silent observers, but active players of an extra-terrestrial evolution of life.

I am afraid, that with this man-made mutation burden, the mars creatures will indeed soon look like those in Tim Burtons "Mars Attacks". But for this, we have to blame nobody else than ourself.

I am more than worried now looking up the sky at night. There are not only beautiful meteor showers and the romantic moon, but from now on there might also be a laboratory of accelerated evolution on mars.

Take Care, yours sincerely
/ghazal

A redshift of our E-mail traffic

Ghazal, Dear,

For the delay of your e-mails relative of the ones I send to you, there is this easy explanation. If I send you about one message per day, and receive from you only one in response per 2 weeks, it must have to do with your own location getting further and further away. The great astrophysicist Edwin Hubble was the first to relate the observation of a redshift (i.e. the elongation of wavelengths of the star light) with the proposed expansion of the entire universe The long intervalls of your response e-mails are an equivalent to this redshift, but maybe as a passionate car driver you are more familiar with the Doppler-Effect that is used by the traffic police to measure the speed of vehicles. In essence, its the same physical phenomenon.

In our case, the observation that daily send E-mails from me to you experience a dilation of their responses to only one every two weeks results in a calculated escape velocity of your location relative to Munich by 1440 km/h. (Whow, thats more than the speed of sound !!).

The calculation please find below.

This once again convinces me that you are an angel, which accidentally had to do an emergency stop in Munich 2 years ago, but now you are again in your other world where Angels rule and drive cars with chocolate engines.

Take Care Michael

Super-Cooled Persian Lady

Dear Ghazal, I always knew that Persian people can be pretty cool. But who could ever think they are that cool. Watching this news from Sweden I even got the impression that the Swedish spectators dressed in their fur coats and heavy snow-boots are more freezing than the Iranian lady jumping into the ice-whole. All I can say about her courage is "Marg Bar Dictator".

   

 Before you go and try to do the same exercise, please make sure there is a pre-warmed towel kept for you outside.

Riding Iran on a horse back

Hello Michael,
Such a nice horse! You trained her very well. Must be nice to have a horse, not so common i guess. I showed the video to my dad. He would like to know which breed it is. When he was a kid in Iran during Shah"s time, he liked to visit his uncle in a village who had several horses. He said they had traditional persian breeds, a very old race. They were very pretty and elegant, but strong and hot-blooded at the same time. Must be nice animals, this combination of power and beauty. What breed is your Penelope ?
regards
ghazal


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Dear Ghazal,

Penny is in fact a danish breed called Knappstrupper. My experience is that although she was very wild and stubborn initially, after I gave her a couple of lessons she quickly learned and now is pretty obidient. I guess, a persian breed would be much wilder (like you). Persian full-bloods (or studs) in fact were beside arabs and berber-horse the origin of the famous english breeds, which gave rises to the best racing horses ever (probably combining the physical power of old english races with the temper and slender body shape of the orientals).




If you come to Munich the next time, you might ride her a bit.


Take Care, Ghazal
Michael


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Hi Michael,
Yeah, a horse is something really nice, in particular at a time when there is so many unnecesarry violence around us (like this idiotic maniac who killed 78 childred in a norway youth camp last week).
I was following too many IC blogs over the last days that made me very sad indeed. There were talks about cultural genocide, iranian holocaust, very agressive discussions about Mozzadegh and the Shah and the Tudeh and the British and the Russians and the Germans and the Arabs and about whom of those to blame more for the current tragedy in Iran. I felt how all my confidence about a bright future for a new, free Iran vanished more and more, since a new Iran would require a pioneer spirits, rather than people feeling comfortable in their role as a victims. Don"t take me wrong, I think every nation should be aware of its history, but I would prefer this in a less emotional and more academic style. The worst example of how one could show historical awareness is probably the annual ʿĀšūrāʾ, where the feeling of martyrdom among Shiits is revitalized again and again and has a significant influence on the social life and political structure, usually not for the best.
In contrast to these very hate-loaded political blogs I mentioned above, there were - thanks God - also a few that showed the nice and beautiful side of life, like the poems by Soosan Khanoom and the JJs adventure with the horse. In particular the horse story and the very vivid discussion that followed made me wondering. Is there something left of the nice horse-riding tradition in Iran that my dad told me about ? Maybe this could help the people of Iran to find back to their tradition of philosophy, tolerance and culture.


Take Care
/ghazal
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Ghazal, my Dear,
Your last mail made me wonder if it is possible to travel Iran on a horses back, like a young australian recently crossed half of Eurasia, 6200 miles from Mongolia to Hungary ?

How are the iranian immigration rules for a horse , assuming I want to enter the country from the north (Armenia or Azerbaidshan). I have friends there and could get a horse in either of the two countries. Although I have a nice mare here in Germany, the long transport to Iran would be too stressful for her.
Will there be sufficient food for the horse ? Will people respect horses in Iran, assuming that I have to cross or even ride along a motor-way ? In Germany, horses have to wear a number-plate and a liability insurrance, if you ride them on a public road (not kidding). How is this in Iran ?
In Europe, dogs fouling is forbidden in public area (you can get fined up to about 1000 euro if your dog is messing up the street), whereas horse faeces (altholugh much bigger) are always tolerated and people walking-by even collect it to fertilize their rose gardens. How is this in Iran ? Will people hate my horse if it drops feces on the street ? (the recent blog petition about killing stray dogs in Teheran made me slightly pessimistic). Historically, the Parthian Empire was famous for its arts of horse riding in the whole southern and eastern hemisphere. Is there something of this heritage left ? Or is this just another issue for the fight between persians and arabs for historical and cultural hegemonie over the domestication of horses ? Did horses arrived together with the Partians from the inner-asian regions and came to Arabia later, where they started the famous breeding ? Or was it vice versa ? I will post this to IC and if the readers there have any suggestions, I"ll redirect them to my blog.


Take Care, my Dear
Michael

A Night Walk at Full Moon

Hi Michael,

I just arrived at home, after driving my friends home. Very tired. I sweared to myself I wont do this any more. You know what happened ? In the middle of the night, more than a kilometer from home, my car stoped without any obvious reasons (Except for a loud noise that came from somewhere under it). Hey, what is that with your german cars? It is a Benz (o.k., not very young any more), how can it just let me stand alone on the road in the middle of the night ? The disgusting thing was that my mobile also was low on battery, so can you imagine I had to walk home at 2 o"clock a.m.?
My only rescue was the bright, full moon. It was so strong, that I could always see my moon-shadow.

Hope you are fine, sleep well.
TAKE CARE,
/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

Poor you, must be a frightening experience to walk home in the middle of the night. I guess it was not the kind of walk that you liked so much here in Munich, to let you thoughts flow and to recharge your vitamine D pool in the sun. I have to estimate, if and how much moon-light is any good to synthesize it. But I guess it has no UV-A, what do you think ? By the way, wouldn"t it be a interesting project to study in photobiology in cells using moon-light ?
So you worked as a driver again. I suspect people exploit your reluctance to drink any alcohol at the party and invite you as the driver.
The moon was visible here as well. If you can, make a photo of your moon shaddow.
The one below I did in our garden.

Take Care, my Cat on the Moon,
Michael

Relax with a kinetic sculpture

Hi Ghazal my Dear,

Reading you last e-mails I got the impression that you are most excited if I send you links to some "moving pictures" (the origin of the word MOVIE, as you perhaps know). The german translation is KINO, which comes from french CINEMATOGRAPH, meaning "moving or kinetic image" and what gave rise to the english CINEMA.

Why I tell you all this stuff ?  Not only because I remember the films we saw together here in Munich, and the nice time we had before and afterward.
There is another reason, and this I discovered last weekend at the BMW museum (can"t remember if you went there with your family or with Shava). Perhaps the most impressive object in the museum is the so-called "kinetic sculpture", an arrangement of steel balls hanging on wires that can all be individually moved up and down by a machine, thereby generating the most astonishing images of slowly moving 3D-sculptures.

I am almost sure, Ghazal, you will like this. And I am also sure that you work hard these days, same as you did during your MSc project here, and therefore you deserve some relaxing videos at night.

Enjoy, Take Care

Michael

As always, I hope you are doing fine and stay as nice and symphatic and strong as you have always been.

PS: Had a look at the swedish word for cinema, and this is Bioskop. No clue what "Bio" means therein. There is a type of apple, which is called Boskoop, but this I guess is a coincidental similarity. And Cinema is written in Persian as
سينما
And here, you see, I don"t even know how this is pronounced. So many things I have to ask you.

Social Networks and Loneliness

Hi Ghazal, my Dear,

Hope you are well up, although I have not heard from you for a while. I"m afraid I might have written something confusing or unintentionally something that you felt as assaulting. We had a very emotional argument today in the institute about the value of social networks and whether each of us or even the entire institute should be present in Facebook. Some believe it is essential, to stay visible to others (but to be honest, there are science-specific social networks a lot, like PubMed or LAbome, Wikigenes and others. They are probably most efficient to meet and stay in contact with other scientist). But I agree, to be visible to the general public there is perhaps no way around Facebook. Using this, we might soon be contacted by celebrities who want to use our Cre-Lox gene targeting method to correct the shape of their nose or to get rid of their double-chin. We might also be asked by anxious people about the risk coming from all the atoms in their body. I"m seeing forward to discuss issues like those with them.
The general attitude among the people here in the lab towards facebook was pretty ambigious. IVG was absolutely in favor of it, praising its cabability to stay in contact with friends worldwide. BSB and myself were very proud to be social and very communicative folks without having long lists of Facebook friends. And there were even some, like ZB and OH who claimed that they are post-Facebook generation, i.e. they had a Facebook account but were unsatisfied with it and deleted their accounts.

I very much see a misconception of long lists of so-called "Friends" at the social networks and the value of some long-lasting and solid personal relations, some that are not just for the sunny days but on which you can also rely if you need help. Sometimes I got the impression that the social networks are weak networks, they seem to be devoid of any personal responsibility. The possibility to opt-out of a Friendship just by clicking a button makes it so much easier to avoid any commitment to people you know. I"m convinced that one should accept also difficulties in a relation, and not just choose an easy way-out. I recently heard a paraphrase by german actress, who after some personal tragedies still manages to make a very happy appearance. She said "If life gives you a box of lemons, you better ask to have salt and tequilla with it."
For you, Ghazal, I hope there wont be any lemons at all, but a lot of apples, sumac berries and oranges, not just for Norooz but for the whole year through.

TAke CAre

Michael

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hi michael,

the three fruits you mentioned at the end of your letter are only a small selection of what is typical for persian new year. I"m going to send you my kucha-pecha presentation that I gave last year at the schneeferner-house to the other MSc students.
Facebook becomes very important if you are away from home, from your family and friends, or if you have to change home frequently. I therefore understand IVG a lot, because like myself she travelled a lot when she was student, master-student, PhD. Like her, I also used facebook a lot when I lived in London one year and last year in munich. But for me, the real relations in life where you meet people face by face are of course superior. I also found that such relationships are much more solid, and you can rely on somebody if you need help. I think you have to have a real exchange of thoughts between two persons, and a track of giving and taking to realy feel bound to somebody. In contrast, one might collect endless lists of "friends" in facebook and still be completely lonely.
I recently read an interesting study in the journal Science about Loneliness and general Health. The full paper is here.
What I found very clear, the author states that “Some people are socially isolated but they are not lonely. By contrast, some people are lonely even if they have a lot of social contacts.”
And the authors found very interesting correlations between loneliness and the risk for several diseases, including stroke, dementia and metabolic disorders. The long lasting assumption, however, that loneliness can cause cancer has been disproven in this study.
Maybe it would be an funny project to investigate, if the number of "Facebook Friends" that people have on their accounts is linked to the frequency of various diseases. Than maybe in the near future you might see a prescription from your doctor saying: "Diagnose: You have got migraine. Suggested therapy: Reduce the number of "Friends" by 50%" or "Jouvenile Diabetes type 2: Stop using the internet at all and ride the bike for 1 hour every day".

Oh boy, so much things to care about. And we are still trying to see the minuscle effects of irradiation.

Hope you are okay, take care (but don"t take the study about loneliness too personally)

/ghazal

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Hi Ghzal my Dear,

Why you think I might take the study by John Cacioppo et al from Chicago about the health effects of loneliness personally ? I don"t feel lonely, not at all. If I say that I miss you, it does not mean I"m lonely. I manage very well to keep myself busy, here at the institute, at home with my family and house and the dog and playing music and reading books. But none of these activities take away the feeling that I lost something very precious when you left.
With the study design I have to check the original paper by Cacioppo et al. I would like to see how the study was done. I guess, like people always design the epidemiologic studies it was a case-control study. The problem therein is that the correlations found (as in this case between loneliness and mental illness) only shows a link between two independent observables. How one can exclude that loneliness is just coming from a gradual loss of mental fitness, and this can be a very early step of dementia. So it might equally be that the pathogenesis of dementia includes as one of the earliest symptoms loneliness.

I hope, of course, that neither you nor me and any of your friends and your family has to worry about this. It is really a very frustrating disease, since absolutely no working therapies against it (just some to reduce the symptoms).

Take Care , my Dear

Michael

A Joint Meteor Party

Hi Ghazal my Dear,

You recently raised the issue of spotting simultaneously the same meteor from your place in Stockholm and from here in Munich.

It appears it is not as simple as you thought, since you cannot compare it with the moon, sun or stars that, if they are high enough always look the same from here and from there. The difference is, that meteors, once we see them glowing, have already entered the upper layer of the earth atmosphere (about 100km altitute). And therefore, it is a matter of whether they are still above the horizon of an observer or below, and this determines if they are visible or not. Trigonometric calculation (see below) shows, that a meteor coming down as far as 1121 km from the location of an observer would still appear above the horizon (and therefore be visible). Munich and Stockholm are exactly 1310 km distant from each other (on a direct line, not motorway, railway or flight), and therefore each meteor coming down halfway between the two would easily be visible (since the distance to each of the two observers would only be 655 km).

And even more, all meteors coming down within a +/- 54 degrees radiant around the direct line could also be visible (i.e. about one quarter of the whole skies circumsphere, what is not too bad). So my suggestion for the Leonides meteor-shower on the 17th of november is: If we two agree on a defined observation time (maybe one hour around midnight), and we both look in the right direction, and there are no clouds, and we are lucky, and we believe in this calculation, and the Leonides shower has not choosen another trajectory this year, and there are now vampires biting us at night, and there are no drunken guys distracting us, and no haloween - kids begging for sweets, and no snowmen melting next to us and and and ....

then we might be really lucky and both spot the same meteor at the same moment. Our wishes, most likely will neutralise each other, I"m sure, so life will carry on.

TAKE CARE, my Dear

Michael

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Hi michael,

So your calculation shows that if I would look southward from here and you would look northward from Munich, we might both spot the same meteor tonight ? Does your calculation also considers by chance the outside temperature ? You can"t expect me to wait outside our house for an hour tonight, since we have already snow here and its freezing cold. And anyhow, even if I would spot a meteor tonight, knowing that the same one is visible from Munich, it would not be as wondeful as at was in August, when we saw the "Stjaernfallen" from the park behind the guesthouse. Then it was warm, a nice summer night, and it was fun to be there together. I think I will skip the meteors tonight. But your calculation should equally hold true for next years Perseides in August, right? But then, who knows, maybe I"m back in Munich, and the distance between us shrinks from 1310 km to just a few cm.

I wish you a pleasant night anyway

Take care

/ghazal

PS: I could stay inside and try to spot some of the meteors tonight through the window, can"t I ?

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Ghazal, my Dear,

Assuming there is a clear sky tonight, you might spot a meteor through the window, why not.

Which side does your window face ? north, south ?

Michael

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Dear michael,

I checked, the window of my room faces north, and our kitchen to the west. What is the best ?

/ghazal

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I guess if you watch through your window northward, you perhaps wont see the meteors, but you have a good chance to see Polar-Light. By the way, since Polar-Light comes also from the upper atmosphere (like the meteors), the calculation is equally valid for them. This means, you might see the same Polar-Light looking northward as an eskimo in Greenland or a reindeer farmer in Lappland.

But they don"t know about you, they have never seen the magic of your blue eyes, my Dear. Maybe for them the polar light is something very common, or even something frightening. And unlike me, they don"t associate it with a particular person, whom they miss a lot who might watch it at the very same moment.

O.k., I have to accept that the Leonides meteor shower is not the most suitable to watch it outside in Sweden, despite all my calculations. However, in case I spot a meteor tonight, I"ll imagine that at least in your dreams you see the same one, and that it takes you on to an angel flight through the night sky.

TAKE CARE, enjoy

Michael

Spot the Stjaernfallen next week

Hi Ghazal my Dear,

Don"t know were you spend the evening tonight, but I"d like to remind you of the Perseiden Stjaernfallen that are most prominent these days. I think to watch them is also a good remedy for the sadness that one usually gets before beloved people leave.

Since the next two days might be quite cloudy, I think tonight is the only chance to view the fallen stars (nice term, isn"t it. Maybe we can see fallen stars like Whitney Houston, Britney Spears or Mikey Rourke tonight, or Michael Schumacher, Maradonna and the like).
To be honest, real Stjaernfallen are much nicer than these celebrities that greet us every day from the yellow-press.
To help you find the Perseides and have a good chance to spot some of the meteors, I made a scheme for you to get an orientation on the night sky.

First try to find the northern direction (from your house look towards the Olympia TV-tower). Then turn your head further to the right, untill you see somewhere a very prominent constellation of stars called Cassiopeia (like a hughe W on the sky). Below or slightly left of Cassiopeia (depending at what time at night you are there) there is the constellation called Perseus, and the Stjaernfallen should originate from this site.

As I told you, according to mythology, you can express a wish whenever you see a Stjaernfallen, but you should not tell anybody about it.
I saw some already yesterday night, and I hope that neither of my wishes collided with your future planing. I tried to avoid anything that is related to the place or the country where you want to do your PhD project (I think this question is too much conflict-loaded).
Therefore, I"ll continue with wishes that I think everybody can live with.

Would be nice to read some words from you

Take Care

Michael

PS:
Just to avoid any confusion on the night sky: the description above referes to the site of I.s house. In case you are in Unterschleissheim tonight, you have to look north, but this will be almost opposite to the Olympia-TV-Tower. Standing in front of the guesthouse, you should then turn your eyes to the left (along Edith-Stein-Strasse).
Maybe you are not in the mood to watch the stars tonight at all. But be careful, than all my (crazy) wishes might come true.

Take Care, my dear

Michael

Quantum Entanglement, Dogs and the Problem of Longitude

Hi Ghazal, my Dear,

Hope you didn" got lost on your Random Walk (swedish "Slump Promenade") through the Olympia shopping mall.

The swedish "Slump" (for Randomness) is really a very, very strange word, isn"t it. And in research, randomness is always what we like to minimize because it tends to obscure our observations, which we would like so much to interprete as a result of shear causality. In the formular for the genetic LOD-score = log10 (Likelihood for Linkage by causative gene)/(Likelihood for Linkage by chance) it is the denominator standing below the fraction line.

Interesting, in the swedish Wikipedia-entry for Slump/Randomness there is a indirect link to a subject I already mentioned recently: Quantum Entanglement or Kvantmekanisk sammanflätning. This subject is still a hot issue between opponents and proponets of the quantum-mechanics. But there is good evidence that it works. The principle is as following: You take two particles that form a pair (having a joint wavefunction) and therefore are dependent from each other in their quantum-mechanical status. When you separate them spatially, their joint wavefunction remains and therefore their correlation is preserved. It is now believed, that by "taking on of these particles with you" wherever you go, and leave the other particle at home, you always can determine the status of the remote particle. A recent study published in NATURE estimated, that the speed by which information can be exchanged this way is about 10 000 times faster than speed of light.
My proposal, you remember, was to use our two twin DKNY watches for a permanent informational link between us, because their status I believe is already "entangled" .

A funny idea emerged in the 18th century, assuming an extra-sensual information transfer could solve the problem in sea navigations of how to keep the precise time from their home country (this was crucial to determine the longitude). There was the hilarious theory that if you take two dogs from the same litter (virtually twins), and you leave one of them at home and take the other one on board a ship that will go around the world, then the two dogs remain linked to each other by a transzendental and telepathic connection. Therefore, whenever the dog at home is hurt (for instance by peeking it with a needle), the other dog on-board the ship instantly feels the pain and howls loudely. So when the dog that is left home is hurt once a day at 12 o"clock midday, the people on board the ship hear the second dog howling and this way they know precisely when it is 12 o"clock at home. Funny idea, isn"t it.
Unfortunately (but maybe furtunately for the dogs) this project never worked ;-}, and finally the english carpenter and self-educated watchmaker John Harrison constructed in the year 1735 the first ship chronometer that run precise enough over many weeks on board the ship and therefore allowed the determination of the geographic longitude.
Although the strange idea to use dogs telepathic abilities for this purpose was born in England in the 18th century, it later appeared so hilarious that nowadays the english Wikipedia refers to it only in an entry on "Powder of Sympathy" rather than in its larger article on "The problem of Longitude". The german, as always very open to strange and esoteric ideas, still reproduces this telepathic dog hypothesis in their Wikipedia.
But who knows, maybe today with the knowledge of quantum-mechanic entanglement we can make it work using our two watches.

Enjoy the time, my dear, don"t condemn me

Michael