Time Travel (dreams)

This ancient hobby contemplated by much of humanity continues to be very popular. For example, there are 22,000 Reddit users who subscribe to a precognition discussion group. I have expertise in precognitive dreaming and I wrote everything I currently know in a book called The Oneironauts, which means “dream travelers” and is pronounced oh-NEAR-oh-nauts.

LEFT:  In 1995 I sketched the discovery images of Fomalhaut’s dust belt based on a memory of a dream.  MIDDLE/RIGHT: I received the Hubble Space Telescope data in 2004 and published it in the journal Nature in 2005. This was the first time that a dusty comet belt was observed to have an offset from circular symmetry around the host star. The theory behind this phenomenon was proposed for the first time four years after my dream by my close colleague Professor Mark Wyatt (Cambridge University).

Swimming (open water and pool)

I wrote a travel guide book for open water swimming around the Greek island of Crete and even included an astronomy lesson with the night swims.

Go to www.creteswim.com for more more information, photos, and videos.

This stunning swim route is on the southwest side of the Greek island of Crete at the beautiful seaside village of Loutro. Along this coastline I have swims for a range of swimming abilities in deep blue water and through amazing marble sea caves.

Readers learn about astronomy and bioluminescent plankton in “The Galactic Night Swim” from Chapter 4 of Crete Swim.

A freezing ice swim in the beautiful Merced River below Yosemite Falls in California.

I also compete nationally and internationally in pool and open water events. My main pool event is the 200 butterfly, placing 23rd in the United States in 2024.

Fencing (foil)

I started this hobby from scratch in late 2016. Fencing is a superb sport that is very safe, an excellent workout, and technically challenging. Plus you learn a bit of French as you go along. En garde!

Here is a friendly bout at our club’s holiday party in 2017. I’m in the left foreground.

Windsurfing

Everyone seems to be kiteboarding nowadays, and I’ve taken lessons, but I guess I’m sticking to windsurfing. It’s more of a hassle, I admit it, I’ve even broken my ribs, twice, but windsurfing has moments when the board and the sail, the wave and the wind, are all channeled by the person into a magical kinetic harmony, without even thinking. Or, if the wind goes nuclear, just go as fast and as high as possible until something breaks.

1996 at Diamond Head, Oahu (left) and 2016 at Kouremenos, Crete (right).

Guitar (classical & flamenco)

I’ve been studying classical and flamenco guitar since college, and have performance experience in both flamenco guitar and dance. Because flamenco is improvisational, playing for a dancer can be a pure thrill as both guitarist and dancer spontaneously and instantaneously connect their emerging creative energy into a unique performance.  My guitar pictured here is an Alhambra/Muro Del Alcoy 7Fs with a spruce top.

Screenshot from a Spanish language cable show (ahem, that young guy is me). I performed with Mosaico Espanol in the 1990’s at events on Oahu and Maui.

El Cabrero (left) and Pepe Habichuela (right) are the real deal. I’ll never forget their outdoor summer performance together at 2 a.m. in Andalucia.  (Photography is another hobby of mine.)

Film

I am a member of CAIFF (California Independent Film Festival) and have enrolled in different courses and workshops since college. In general, I prefer films that have hidden meaning in the visual content and spoken narrative, especially if it questions the nature of reality, identity and purpose. Though “The Matrix” and “Dark City” comes to mind, there are many others such as “Barton Fink” and “A Serious Man” by the Coen brothers, or Miyazaki’s animated “Howl’s Moving Castle.”

I participated in several workshops by the late film critic Roger Ebert. We would go scene-by-scene through various films, analyzing the large variety of elements that convey meaning on screen.

Human Hamster Running

I enjoy slow running in mindless circles around this rubberized track for 10 kilometers or 60 minutes, twice a week. Running on such tracks minimizes the risk of injury, and at the same time allows the mind to relax and wander, which serves to consolidate memories and evoke novel problem-solving. The breakthrough ideas period usually starts 20 minutes into the run because mind-wandering is enabled when: 1. novelty in the immediate environment has subsided from attention, 2. increasing physical exertion triggers a natural defense response of separating the mind from the present and from the body, and 3. motion through space activates hippocampal place cells and entorhinal grid cells which are associated with the basic architecture of memory and semantic knowledge.

The human hamster wheel. I also carry an iPhone during human hamster running for music and for dictating notes as new ideas come to mind. The only danger is an abnormal craving for corn and sunflower seeds.

Astronomy

I almost forgot to mention that astronomy has been my hobby since I was 12 years old. I still have my original telescope, a Dynamax 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain.  I still use it for outreach activities, such as with Girl Scouts events.

Nowadays I work with telescopes that have mirrors larger than 8 inches.  The Gemini South telescope has a fantastic 8 meter wide mirror.

For scale, here is a shot I took in 1999 of the 8-meter mirror that was to be installed in one of the domes of the Very Large Telescope in Chile.