"Once again, this time thanks to a trip to China, I find myself three weeks behind on my journal, i.e. these thoughtlets. As I pull from various notes that were put together over the course of the last three weeks, these words might not flow very well.
The first thing I will mention is the fact Paul was released from the Bishopric on Sunday the 28th of November. He is going to be working with the Young Men for the next six months, until he graduates from BYU. I thought I strived so hard to teach and to pass on my love for the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I now see how my temper and my tendency to control blinded too many to the path I worked so hard to build. I do recognize the influence of others who consciously choose to hide from the light of the Gospel. Also, I do recognize the right of each of those I love to use their free agency to select whatever long-term consequences they are interested in. I do find it a bittersweet pill that so few of those I love have chosen to actively pursue the path of the restored Gospel. I am very proud of the service Paul has rendered, and I am certain he and his family will find great blessings in their lives for having chosen to follow this path. It is not the easiest path to follow. Hopefully before, or even when, hard times come to the rest of your lives, you will find your way back to this path, and find the peace and stability accompanying the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
During the last three weeks, I have read 2 1/2 books.
The first is `Light,' by Brian Hales. This is the first time I have seen an author take physical principles from physics, i.e. the nature of light, and grow them into spiritual principles from the Gospel, creating a unified picture of light from a physical and spiritual perspective. I could go on and on about what Brother Hales wrote about, but then I would just be quoting from the book. Rather than do this I will encourage each of you who read this Thoughtlet, to obtain, to read, to study, to ponder, and to learn the principles taught in `Light, the Physical and Spiritual Nature of Light.' I find it fascinating how well the concepts in this book tie to my topic for this week of illumination modeling, which is tied to advanced seismic processing principles and techniques.
The second book was `Creating a World that Works For All,' by Sharif Abdullah. Sharif grew up in the urban blight of Camden, New Jersey. He is black, and his picture does not show an overly impressive or self-confident man, i.e. not a Bill Cosby. And his book is really good. He is way left on environmental and social issues, and yet I find myself agreeing with most of what he wrote. Sometimes when he writes about all loggers as being bad people who do not understand what they are destroying, I think he is off in a liberal fairyland, however, most of the time his words are carefully chosen and he tells a story that resonates with me. Certainly his concepts fit the concepts I am wanting to pursue with my Red Cove project (0436.html). Certainly Dr. Abdullah's approach could be the basis for a social version of illumination modeling.
I am 110 pages into the 296 pages of `Fingerprints of God: Evidences from Near-Death Studies, Scientific Research on Creation, and Mormon Theology,' by Arvin S. Gibson. This author is skeptical LDS, and a mechanical engineer by training and temperament. He approaches the matrix of science and religion in a similar way to how I do. However, his interest and studies are focused around near death experiences (NDE), specifically because his father had a NDE, and this became something Brother Gibson wanted to learn more about after his retirement as a nuclear engineer. Again, I find it fascinating to read about the light which so many who have been pronounced dead have seen and felt, and the impact of this light and love on the remainder of their life. This book is about a spiritual version of illumination modeling.
My trip to China had five objectives:
The key objective was the Tarim Basin R&D project, which was based around seismic acquisition, and specifically using wave-equation seismic illumination modeling to better design seismic acquisition in very complicated areas. The decision process at GDC is very interesting. Based on conversations with Jialin Yan over Thanksgiving, I made the decision to go to China and find out if this opportunity is real. The result when I got into the office on Monday, the 29th of November, was that I needed to put together an example of how GDC's illumination modeling software could help solve acquisition design problems. The first attachment shows illumination from a seismic source at the same location, but at entering the ground at different angles. The second attachment shows the result of placing sources all along a 2-D seismic section and illuminating the subsurface with seismic energy at different angles. I think there is a wonderful analogy between this type of illumination modeling and the physical, social, and spiritual illumination described in the books I read, or am completing.
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| Illumination Modeling Seismic Source | Illumination Modeling Loess |
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| Complicated Geologic Model | Illumination Modeling of Complicated Model |
So I took a seismic section which Jialin sent me, built a 2-D geologic model (see the third attachment), and worked with Yongzhong Wang to demonstrate the power of illumination modeling to understand seismic reflections from complex geology (see the fourth attachment. The screen captures illustrate the results. David Kessler, Dan Kosloff, and myself had done a lot of this same type of modeling in the early 1980's at the Seismic Acoustics Lab. In fact, David and I always intended to do a book showing the seismic response from structural and stratigraphic models that represent the range of hydrocarbon traps. I enjoyed putting together the illumination modeling examples for this trip, and since it took up most of my time from Monday through Thursday when I left the office, it made sense to have illumination modeling be the theme for this week's thoughtlet.
As is typical on one of my trips overseas, I stayed up all Thursday night. I spent quite a bit of the evening working on revising the index to the Thoughtlets, as per a request from Ben, so there is a chronological as well as an alphabetic index to the thoughtlets. I got about 1/3rd of the way through, and hopefully will get it finished one of these days. I am getting older, and I certainly recognized this as I drove to the airport early Friday morning. In fact, I was hit with a bad case of dysentery, and stopped at the Exxon Station at the Tollroad and Highway 149 to visit their facility. Just barely made it, and I must admit wondering if this was a precursor for the entire trip. I did make it, I made it to the airport, I checked in with United with my US$850 round trip ticket from Houston to Beijing to Houston, and went to the waiting area.
I slept really good on the flight from Houston to Chicago. There was a couple of hour layover in Chicago, and I plugged the computer into a plug in the wall and spent most of the time working on my presentations, which I didn't get finished at the office. Then I got on the plane for our flight up through Canada, across the north end of Alaska and the North Slope, over to Siberia, and down through Siberia to Beijing. I had an isle seat. The window seat was a math professor from Northwestern University. His name is Elton Hsu and he specializes in mathematical patterns and advanced mathematics. Thanks to our conversation, it was one of the most interesting flights I have had in a long time. The more we talked, the more interesting it became. He had a lot of questions to ask about the church. I told him a lot of stories, and he seemed to really enjoy them. This was his fourth trip to China this year. He is going to give a lecture at a Chinese University, and is being paid US$2,000 for 2 weeks of lecturing.
Well into the conversation, Elton asked if I know Rick Ottolini. Of course, I know Rick. In fact, I was surprised when I did a search of past Thoughtlets that Rick's name is not mentioned. Rick was Jon Clairbout's best student at Stanford University. I sponsored Rick on some projects he was doing when I was at Landmark, and Rick ended up going to work for Landmark in their Denver office. When Andrea and I were at the SEG in Denver we saw Rick, and I spent quite a while catching up with him. It turns out, Rick was learning Chinese, and wanted a Chinese roommate at Stanford. Elton was his roommate for 4 years. What a small world. I'm not sure how I will follow-up on this conversation, and I hope to keep it alive, because it was very interesting and I learned a lot about Brownian movement and other esoteric mathematical things. When we were not talking I was sleeping. I did not watch any movies on the way to Beijing. However, several times, I did stop and think about seismic, physical, social, and spiritual illumination modeling."