an incredulous moore - "So you got no paper rolls, paper tissues or uh kitchen towelette rolls?"
cool french/canadian/brit - "what do you mean?"
moore - "so how do you wipe your ass?"
cool french/canadian/brit - "oh they come and wipes our asses for us"
This little caricature pretty much summarizes Michael Moore's Sicko.
As familiar as I was with the horrors of American medical care there were still jaw dropping moments in that documentary (polemic or not).
Then a few thoughts hit me.
How is it that the biggest bully (the biggest richest nation) in that block of germanic nations we call "The West" has such depraved inhuman health compared to the other western nations ?
The US has always struck me as a sort of large scale (continent-sized) human experiment in nationhood, social and political order.
To a large extent it is, but it is not one for its own sake by any means. It seems more and more plausible to me that the happy Europeans with their universal health coverage and significantly less stressed lifestyles are the real beneficiaries behind this experiment of the US.
The US as it were serves merely as the whacking club to be used by the Europeans to secure their position and advancement in the world and in history.
It is thus that we find the repressive totalitarianism and inhumanity of the social order in the US , in order to cow its population into compliance with implementing Europe's big stick in the world.
It is thus that that belligerent rich big nation treats its citizens so ruthlessly. It is more of a tool in the hands of its real masters and beneficiaries, Europeans.
Another thought. It is this model of society that is being pushed at the "third world" with pervasive ubiquitous cultural encroachment through their "world-class" mass media / entertainment industries.
It is thus that Oliver Stone, Spielberg, Woody Allen are better known throughout the world than Claude Chabrol or Ingmar Bergman or Michel Ocelot or Hayao Miyazaki or Kurusawa.
It Seems that promoting Hollywood and its projection of the American socio-political order is what matters more than promoting the "real" culture being produced in Europe.
another thought. How with such a film out can the rotten politicians still perform their dirty play on the people? And how come the people still take. And just who are those fucking tools in political party conventions cheering and clapping and glorifying those same crooks that have robbed the terrorists (americans) of their humanity ????
Another thought. I am actually one of the stupid people because since my mid-teens it was the US and its culture that commanded my attention and aspirations, not the better more civilized societies in western europe. I was duped largely because no other culture was promoted around me so forcefully but I also fell for it like a brick because I did not know better, was not better discerning.
Only by the time I reached my late twenties did I realize that the country or society I had looked up to , was not the best one. It was the wrong one. There were better societies and cultures to be found in europe and Canada (as far as modern urban societies go). But by then it was too late for me. Too much had been invested by me, mentally, socially, ideologically , that I was left with no resources to switch to a new direction. When the inevitable ideological and financial break down came, the only way was back to where I came from - a place which rejected me upon arrival.
yet another thought. How is it that Americans have come to this? It is a question that Moore asks after sampling how radically different life is for Americans from other western societies.
This is what occurs when you let your country get run by misers. Something that was somehow not fully achieved in Europe.
The money dries up. social welfare and solidarity dries up. The faucets are turned shut.
Instead the Americans (or rather terrorists) are fed a steady diet of fear , war mongering and significantly phobias against all that can be good for them.
As Moore rightly wondered, why is that American opinion leaders want Americans to hate the French? Could it because the French are actually good to themselves? That they actually have a functioning democracy that puts intellectuals rather than media whores in public office, and that actually pushes and accomplishes the good and well-being for the population ? Yes, Michael. That's right.
Americans were taught since the 1950s that socialism is evil and a menace, and have been made to actively fight it in Italy and Greece and Portugal and latin America and Asia and Africa with the most ruthless and bloody ways - even while at hte same time, their far mentally superior kith and kin in Germany, France , Britain , Canada and Scandinavia quietly implemented socialist policy in health care and social welfare and labor rights.
The terrorists were fed a steady of fears and wars against helpless peoples and nations who would have otherwise made great friends to the Americans (eg, the south east Asians and the arabs and the Africans) and made great contributions to american society. Instead of being allowed to be a truly universal human experiment in which all input was welcome , it was restricted to input by Germanic whites only and their necrotic miserly financiers - to serve as a big stick to defend both the germanics of Europe and the petty supremacist and misanthropic fantasies of the necrotics.
The steady diet of fear and phobia and hysteria that is force-fed to Americans since they flip their first comics or watch their first cartoons is a theme that has featured prominently in a lot of Moore's work , such as Bowling for Columbine.
Americans are ruled by fears and phobias and constantly told to be afraid. They are literally ruled by terrorism . And this is terrorism if ever there was a good example. And this is how they deal with other peoples they seek to control and subjugate.
The other tool this movie pointed out for control of the people is debt. It is to keep them in debt even "before they get their first job". Keep them indebted and demoralized.
I felt Moore treated these two means of control well in his documentaries and is prominent in this one.
But as he says, disenfranchised dehumanized demoralized as we (he was refering to Americans, and I refer to us the overseas subjects of the necrotic empire) have no other choice but to "hope for the best" - lest we regain our humanity and get labeled "terrorists" by the terrorists.
here in Egypt we have been following the same American (terrorist) model. Remove social safety networks, endenture the people into debt demoralization and megalomania. We are being steered and herded into "a society of me not we".
Anyway, polemic or not, sensationalistic or inaccurate or not, ishta `aleik ya Michael. You touched me again.
... Read more
30 August 2008
14 August 2008
some informatic notions that apply to us macroscopically
Warning: This post contains idiocies and is best suited for idiots rather than smarter people!
(This particular train of thought is expressed elsewhere in earlier notes of mine from the period 2005 - 2006, which should be incorporated into any future edits of this post.)
There are some analogues to quantum informatic observations that may apply to us as individuals. This is a first (or second) attempt to enumerate them.
But first a recap of the question of scale.
* The wave / particle duality applies to all things. This is not observable for objects that are much larger than the quantum scale precisely because wave properties such as diffraction and interference become negligible as size scale increases. The properties are there, but they are negligible. As a result wave properties and measures like uncertainty are infinitesimal for objects such as ourselves.
uh, End recap.
However , some informatic properties seem to hold across scales such that their measure does not vanish as we increase in size scales.
Thus for instance,
1. A measure of information is the amount of uncertainty as to the possible content of a given "message".
We see the quantum physical manifestation of this in the case of a confined particle.
The more tightly a particle is confined in space - such as the case of an electron confined to the diameter of the atom - the more uncertainty that results in measuring its position or momentum. This is because the volume of confinement is so small that the momentum of the measuring tool (usually an incident body such as photon or some other particle) interferes significantly with that of the object being measured.
Yet an analogue also presents itself in the case of an individual. If we consider a single single individual (a person) in a very large volume (in a city). There is very little uncertainty as to their whereabouts with regards to the confines of the city.
No matter where or how they move , the likelihood is very high that they are anywhere in the confining space (city).
If we reduce the scope of the confinement space (down to a neighborhood, or the volume of the individual's residence) , predicting where the individual will move next, carries more and more uncertainty, and thus a higher measure of information.
2. In another unrelated way of looking at things, the wave nature of matter can be analogous / can be applied to the way information travels among persons, and throughout a social medium.
We see interactions of information that include: exchanges of information; these result in and are caused by changes in energy states; diffraction , such as in the way information radiates from a given individual (a tiny aperture) out onto others; interference which could be construed as how different pieces of information contribute to reinforce or weaken the spread of a given piece of information; we see also that pieces of information , form cummulatively "bigger" ideas , perhaps in a similar way to how a signal's waveform is composed of many harmonic components.
The analogue between information transfer among individuals (at a high semantic level) and wave interactions can be tenuous when we consider things like : what is the analogue of frequency / wavelength , intensity and energy of information that flows between individuals. Yet with some work those analogues could be pinpointed. For instance the energy of a piece of information can be expressible in the "reach " of that information. For instance, a piece of information that gets exchanged between two friends and stops there, has a lot lower energy , than a piece of information such as a news headline, a proverb or a meme that has a reach as wide as an entire society or community.
Another way to consider the energy of a piece of information , is the amount of energy it takes for it to spread to its farthest extent, or the amount of energy that gets unleashed due to the spread of that information.
For instance information (or misinformation) that results in wars or economic upheavals , could be said to carry a lot of energy.
The intensity or amplitude of a given amount of information can also be expressible in the "reach" that amount has, not only in how far the information is carried throughout society, but also in how long that information persists.
For instance a piece of news spreads and dies out in a relatively short period of time, compared to a proverb that keeps moving among people for centuries.
The foregoing thus highlights a few qualities that one can play with in constructing a meaningful analogue for high-level semantic information from wave terminology:
- how far information travels
- how fast it travels
- the energy cost for that information's motion
- the energy cost occuring as a result of that information
- how long the given information persists in motion
- The complexity of a piece of given information in terms of the smaller components of information that comprise it.
Looked at in a very large scale, we can see such information interactions as ripples
throughout society , while at a very small scale we are looking at the very discrete nature of information transfer from one person's mind to the next. The quantization of information transfer is at the level of individual persons who receive process re-transmit or hold a piece of information they receive. ... Read more
(This particular train of thought is expressed elsewhere in earlier notes of mine from the period 2005 - 2006, which should be incorporated into any future edits of this post.)
There are some analogues to quantum informatic observations that may apply to us as individuals. This is a first (or second) attempt to enumerate them.
But first a recap of the question of scale.
* The wave / particle duality applies to all things. This is not observable for objects that are much larger than the quantum scale precisely because wave properties such as diffraction and interference become negligible as size scale increases. The properties are there, but they are negligible. As a result wave properties and measures like uncertainty are infinitesimal for objects such as ourselves.
uh, End recap.
However , some informatic properties seem to hold across scales such that their measure does not vanish as we increase in size scales.
Thus for instance,
1. A measure of information is the amount of uncertainty as to the possible content of a given "message".
We see the quantum physical manifestation of this in the case of a confined particle.
The more tightly a particle is confined in space - such as the case of an electron confined to the diameter of the atom - the more uncertainty that results in measuring its position or momentum. This is because the volume of confinement is so small that the momentum of the measuring tool (usually an incident body such as photon or some other particle) interferes significantly with that of the object being measured.
Yet an analogue also presents itself in the case of an individual. If we consider a single single individual (a person) in a very large volume (in a city). There is very little uncertainty as to their whereabouts with regards to the confines of the city.
No matter where or how they move , the likelihood is very high that they are anywhere in the confining space (city).
If we reduce the scope of the confinement space (down to a neighborhood, or the volume of the individual's residence) , predicting where the individual will move next, carries more and more uncertainty, and thus a higher measure of information.
2. In another unrelated way of looking at things, the wave nature of matter can be analogous / can be applied to the way information travels among persons, and throughout a social medium.
We see interactions of information that include: exchanges of information; these result in and are caused by changes in energy states; diffraction , such as in the way information radiates from a given individual (a tiny aperture) out onto others; interference which could be construed as how different pieces of information contribute to reinforce or weaken the spread of a given piece of information; we see also that pieces of information , form cummulatively "bigger" ideas , perhaps in a similar way to how a signal's waveform is composed of many harmonic components.
The analogue between information transfer among individuals (at a high semantic level) and wave interactions can be tenuous when we consider things like : what is the analogue of frequency / wavelength , intensity and energy of information that flows between individuals. Yet with some work those analogues could be pinpointed. For instance the energy of a piece of information can be expressible in the "reach " of that information. For instance, a piece of information that gets exchanged between two friends and stops there, has a lot lower energy , than a piece of information such as a news headline, a proverb or a meme that has a reach as wide as an entire society or community.
Another way to consider the energy of a piece of information , is the amount of energy it takes for it to spread to its farthest extent, or the amount of energy that gets unleashed due to the spread of that information.
For instance information (or misinformation) that results in wars or economic upheavals , could be said to carry a lot of energy.
The intensity or amplitude of a given amount of information can also be expressible in the "reach" that amount has, not only in how far the information is carried throughout society, but also in how long that information persists.
For instance a piece of news spreads and dies out in a relatively short period of time, compared to a proverb that keeps moving among people for centuries.
The foregoing thus highlights a few qualities that one can play with in constructing a meaningful analogue for high-level semantic information from wave terminology:
- how far information travels
- how fast it travels
- the energy cost for that information's motion
- the energy cost occuring as a result of that information
- how long the given information persists in motion
- The complexity of a piece of given information in terms of the smaller components of information that comprise it.
Looked at in a very large scale, we can see such information interactions as ripples
throughout society , while at a very small scale we are looking at the very discrete nature of information transfer from one person's mind to the next. The quantization of information transfer is at the level of individual persons who receive process re-transmit or hold a piece of information they receive. ... Read more
09 August 2008
Satirist's history of quantum mechanics
07/30/2008
Intro
Quantum mechanics is a theory of physics that has the unique characteristic among other laws of physics that scientists have deliberately sought to make it unintelligible to anyone that tries to understand it. The Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg who presided over the merger of electromagnetic weak force fields, said that it is so simple that it made scientists deliberately shroud it with needlessly complicated and diversionary allusions for fear of losing their jobs or that the commies and chinese would "get it".
As a manifestation of this scientists and educators like Richard P. Feynman proclaimed that it is a theory that no one can understand, even though he used it to repeat the work of Weinberg and others.
On the other hand, according to David Bohm "Feynman doesn't know what he's talking about and the jury is still out on my theory of the universal rheostat", hence giving rise to the "many-worlds" interpretation, in which , every few years someone comes up with a completely different meaning for quantum mechanics.
Examples of the many interpretations postulated by the many-worlds interpretation include:
* The many-worlds interpretation - the schizophrenic multiverse theory basically states that when you decide and proceed to do an action , every other choice of action is also taken and carried out in parallel worldlines
but you are just stuck with the one with the most negative consequences for you.
* "string theory" , aka the planck guitar theory. Viz. there exists a stupidly tiny guitar at just below the planck length that hums out energy and mass forming leptons or bosons as the mood may it take it. This theory is said to have been inspired by the Beatles' "While my guitar gently weeps" .
* Quantum gravity , in which scenario the graviton finally makes up with the photon and other force particles (known as bosons), and agrees to enter into a joint force field with them.
* the Bohm Rheostat: David Bohm postulates the universe is regulated by a large variable resistance radio rheostat just outside the universe
History of development
In 1907 Max Plank cut a deal with Albert Einstein, they'll share the credit for the planck and energy equations that were so obvious after maxwell's and lorentz's work into two seemingly different concepts E = mc2 and E = mu.h and share all the benefits. In truth , neither of them understood any of it (until de Broglie figured out that electron energy was also quantized like the photon) and had come across it rummaging through the papers of obscure polish and italian physics students.
Later on, ca. 1913 the two incorporated a corporation for their "quantum racket" (known in german then as quantumracket) which they called the Max planck Institute. That institute became a magnet for bright but socially failed physics students whom Planck and Einstein mobilised to rummage through all the papers in the trash of foreign university students.
Around that time also Einstein invited over indian physicist Bose to complete an experimental round of poker played exclusive by physicists whose last name begins with "Bo" (Bohr, Bohm,Bose and Born) with de Broglie also around to service the decks take the players coats and bets and serve meza and drinks. But Bose decided to start an audio components company instead.
Dirac Jordan , Bohr De Broglie and others only managed to catalog the results in the early 1920s, as Bohr once noted in retrospect "it was just in time to provide a scientific basis to explain away the german inflation, and also in time , no pun intended, for the fox-trot , which was described by a discrete wave function that led our boy Schrodinger to his wave equation."
In 1925 , the Max Planck Institute students, "Planck's gang" as they were called met Swiss chemist Sandoz who invented LSD and the Mozambiquan white crested kaka monkey smallpox virus. He introduced them to LSD with spiked drinks, and they had a trip reported to involve a lot of long spontaneous synchronized bouts of laughter. it was in the course of that mind altering meeting that quantum mechanics took its most recognizable shape and formulation.
It was there and then that Schrodinger deduced his famous Schrodinger wave equation from the probability density of getting laid among randomly matched foxtrot and charleston dancing partners. Simultaneously, Dirac came up with a harmonic analytical matrix formulation of Schrodinger's equation just to spite Schrodinger and prove to all once again he was the superior mathematician; in retaliation for which , Hilbert punished the entirety of the hallucinating Planck's gang (and unknowingly future generations of physics students) by replacing Both Schrodinger's wave mechanical formulation and Dirac's matrix formulation by an exceedingly complicated complex vector space which he called after himself and to which he applied Dirac's vector operators. Everyone hated the remoreseless Dirac just then, and even more so the merciless Hilbert. But later on various reports from personal correspondence and bathroom scrawls, the group would shares jokes about how the mathematics of quantum theory surpassed Einstein's understanding since 1905.
Despite its promise by the time quantum mechanics "came out" to the scientific community, the great depression hit and everyone went broke and unemployed. Numerous repeat visits to the Sandoz laboratories in Switzerland were reported of the "Planck gang" or Planckenga(umlaut)ng as they were called in austro-hungar-holy-roman-prusso-germanic-empire.
Shortly after the depression WWII took place and Heisenberg and Niels Bohr had a slapping duel in Coppenhagen after a bout of drinking.
Fed up with his inability to navigate Hilbert and Dirac's mathematics which by then became the sole language in which quantum mechanics was written, Einstein got angry, moved to the United States, signed up for the army and invented the atom bomb, famously writing to the ruler of the land , "PS. this powerful-as-the-sun device will also kill more people faster than anything that hit the planet since Noah had to build an ark," - which note the president obliged by trying it out on a couple of non-white cities.
From 1939 it became clear that every particle had to have its own field. This was the beginning of quantum field theory which postulates that physics will no longer study nature but rather sublimate it entirely in abstract algebraic concepts like non-homogeneous group theoretic representations and homotopy.
Just as at the turn of the XXth cent. the line was blurred between a particle and an electromagnetic wave, since the 1967 "Summer of Love" and the following near worldwide student riots of 1968 protesting the sheer decadence religious zeal and contempt for the gravity of war of the hippies and yippies, the line has been getting increasingly blurred between the concept of a particle and that of a purely conceptual , not even hypothetical , but virtual pseudoparticles.
The Nobel prize winner for his quantum well-digging and quantum field prospecting Yang Tchi Chi Che Chiuh, PhdE2 noted in Physical review letters at the end of the last decade that physics is now in the realm of studying abstract mathematics blurring the line between nature and other people's fallible minds.
After the implications of the new physics became clear, in the period from the 1960s onward to the present time, no popular science books sought to explain it but rather writers resorted to throw up paradoxes and misquoted zen and hindu allegories to confuse the readers about it rather than elucidate them. Consequently only those science authors that take a solemn oath at Princeton Institute of advanced physics to describe quantum mechanics only as a paradoxical unintelligible theory that defies our common sense are permitted to publish material about it.
Principles of quantum mechanics
* When in a tight spot , your uncertainty and the uncertainty of you both go through the roof
* God does not play dice and does not want us to know anything beyond a certain infinitesimal limit. Our senses and tunneling electron beams cannot go beyond that certain infinitesimal limit, which we would only understand we if had infinitesimal minds, which we don't.
* Two electrons will go through each other or appear at two places at onces, making them apparently advanced Pythogerean acolytes.
* If you truly enjoy quantum mechanics , chances are you are unemployed and have no social life.
* electricity is monopolistic while magnetism is dipolistic and gravity is apparently nonpolistic. On the other hand , the strong force is tri-polistic, having an RGB-component technicolor charge.
* The nucleons are made of tiny quirks : These are called "Cuteheart", "Tiny", "Uptown", "Beautiful", "Stimpy" and "Weird". These have a funniness charge , as opposed to the electric-shock charge of the electrons and other leptons. The study of quirks is thus called Funny Quantum Dynamics. It is hypothesized that a seventh as yet unobserved quirk exists that is tentatively called the "Colorific" which leads to the field of acoustic-quantum chromodynamics.
* Even if you understand quantum mechanics, we will never live long enough to learn enough math to do quantum dynamics.
* The "Force" does exist but no one has been able to pin it without it breaking some conservation law or shattering mirror in a cosmic mirror store called "CPT symmetry". Also it is now in the "Dark Side" as only 0.04% of the universe (yes all those gargantuan galaxies and gassy clouds) is made up of matter , and the rest is "dark matter".
Implications
* Zen Buddhism is just a smart alec attempt by popular science writers to obfuscate the simple facts about quantum mechanics.
* The universe appears to physicists to suffer from multiple-personality disorder and maybe autistic.
* If you ever run into Einstein (after death or in some parallel worldline) do not mention the names Hilbert, Dirac or Schrodinger or even the Max Planck Institute.
* Another postulate is that some subatomic particles are extremely shy and will puff themselves out into a cloud the way Nightcrawler does when looked at. The measure of a particle's refusal to get measured properly is called the Planck Shyness.
* Quantum mechanics will not make computers cheaper because the software would still be expensive (for the deadbeats: and have to be used in cracked mode which will always break requiring a reformat).
* Software user login modules around the world will have to be rewritten - because with the advent of quantum computers quantum algorithms would render passwords useless. This is known as the Quantum computer Problem.
* For the first time in history a computing machine beats the Turing machine, probably: Big Blue and many other supercomputers and even the Earth simulator could never beat the Universal Turing Machine at computer chess tournaments, but finally quantum computers showed that they would tend to beat the imaginary Turing machine with a probability distribution of a 97% WIN superposed with a probability 3% LOSS in a single computational step, given that all physicist in the room keep their fingers crossed in order to raise the a priori probability of winning.
* quantum mechanics does not solve the greenhouse water and energy problems . However it is postulated that if successfully married to relativity theory by tying them together with planck guitar strings and if the supreme court approves the vote count, they will form the theory of everything, which nonetheless will still not solve the energy problems.
* No matter how much you explain it to them, people will misunderstand that quantum effects only apply for small corposcule/wave scales and not at the macroscopic scale. As a result the theory is often misused to justify a complete absence of logic and common sense in the practical life fields of business, law and government. ... Read more
Intro
Quantum mechanics is a theory of physics that has the unique characteristic among other laws of physics that scientists have deliberately sought to make it unintelligible to anyone that tries to understand it. The Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg who presided over the merger of electromagnetic weak force fields, said that it is so simple that it made scientists deliberately shroud it with needlessly complicated and diversionary allusions for fear of losing their jobs or that the commies and chinese would "get it".
As a manifestation of this scientists and educators like Richard P. Feynman proclaimed that it is a theory that no one can understand, even though he used it to repeat the work of Weinberg and others.
On the other hand, according to David Bohm "Feynman doesn't know what he's talking about and the jury is still out on my theory of the universal rheostat", hence giving rise to the "many-worlds" interpretation, in which , every few years someone comes up with a completely different meaning for quantum mechanics.
Examples of the many interpretations postulated by the many-worlds interpretation include:
* The many-worlds interpretation - the schizophrenic multiverse theory basically states that when you decide and proceed to do an action , every other choice of action is also taken and carried out in parallel worldlines
but you are just stuck with the one with the most negative consequences for you.
* "string theory" , aka the planck guitar theory. Viz. there exists a stupidly tiny guitar at just below the planck length that hums out energy and mass forming leptons or bosons as the mood may it take it. This theory is said to have been inspired by the Beatles' "While my guitar gently weeps" .
* Quantum gravity , in which scenario the graviton finally makes up with the photon and other force particles (known as bosons), and agrees to enter into a joint force field with them.
* the Bohm Rheostat: David Bohm postulates the universe is regulated by a large variable resistance radio rheostat just outside the universe
History of development
In 1907 Max Plank cut a deal with Albert Einstein, they'll share the credit for the planck and energy equations that were so obvious after maxwell's and lorentz's work into two seemingly different concepts E = mc2 and E = mu.h and share all the benefits. In truth , neither of them understood any of it (until de Broglie figured out that electron energy was also quantized like the photon) and had come across it rummaging through the papers of obscure polish and italian physics students.
Later on, ca. 1913 the two incorporated a corporation for their "quantum racket" (known in german then as quantumracket) which they called the Max planck Institute. That institute became a magnet for bright but socially failed physics students whom Planck and Einstein mobilised to rummage through all the papers in the trash of foreign university students.
Around that time also Einstein invited over indian physicist Bose to complete an experimental round of poker played exclusive by physicists whose last name begins with "Bo" (Bohr, Bohm,Bose and Born) with de Broglie also around to service the decks take the players coats and bets and serve meza and drinks. But Bose decided to start an audio components company instead.
Dirac Jordan , Bohr De Broglie and others only managed to catalog the results in the early 1920s, as Bohr once noted in retrospect "it was just in time to provide a scientific basis to explain away the german inflation, and also in time , no pun intended, for the fox-trot , which was described by a discrete wave function that led our boy Schrodinger to his wave equation."
In 1925 , the Max Planck Institute students, "Planck's gang" as they were called met Swiss chemist Sandoz who invented LSD and the Mozambiquan white crested kaka monkey smallpox virus. He introduced them to LSD with spiked drinks, and they had a trip reported to involve a lot of long spontaneous synchronized bouts of laughter. it was in the course of that mind altering meeting that quantum mechanics took its most recognizable shape and formulation.
It was there and then that Schrodinger deduced his famous Schrodinger wave equation from the probability density of getting laid among randomly matched foxtrot and charleston dancing partners. Simultaneously, Dirac came up with a harmonic analytical matrix formulation of Schrodinger's equation just to spite Schrodinger and prove to all once again he was the superior mathematician; in retaliation for which , Hilbert punished the entirety of the hallucinating Planck's gang (and unknowingly future generations of physics students) by replacing Both Schrodinger's wave mechanical formulation and Dirac's matrix formulation by an exceedingly complicated complex vector space which he called after himself and to which he applied Dirac's vector operators. Everyone hated the remoreseless Dirac just then, and even more so the merciless Hilbert. But later on various reports from personal correspondence and bathroom scrawls, the group would shares jokes about how the mathematics of quantum theory surpassed Einstein's understanding since 1905.
Despite its promise by the time quantum mechanics "came out" to the scientific community, the great depression hit and everyone went broke and unemployed. Numerous repeat visits to the Sandoz laboratories in Switzerland were reported of the "Planck gang" or Planckenga(umlaut)ng as they were called in austro-hungar-holy-roman-prusso-germanic-empire.
Shortly after the depression WWII took place and Heisenberg and Niels Bohr had a slapping duel in Coppenhagen after a bout of drinking.
Fed up with his inability to navigate Hilbert and Dirac's mathematics which by then became the sole language in which quantum mechanics was written, Einstein got angry, moved to the United States, signed up for the army and invented the atom bomb, famously writing to the ruler of the land , "PS. this powerful-as-the-sun device will also kill more people faster than anything that hit the planet since Noah had to build an ark," - which note the president obliged by trying it out on a couple of non-white cities.
From 1939 it became clear that every particle had to have its own field. This was the beginning of quantum field theory which postulates that physics will no longer study nature but rather sublimate it entirely in abstract algebraic concepts like non-homogeneous group theoretic representations and homotopy.
Just as at the turn of the XXth cent. the line was blurred between a particle and an electromagnetic wave, since the 1967 "Summer of Love" and the following near worldwide student riots of 1968 protesting the sheer decadence religious zeal and contempt for the gravity of war of the hippies and yippies, the line has been getting increasingly blurred between the concept of a particle and that of a purely conceptual , not even hypothetical , but virtual pseudoparticles.
The Nobel prize winner for his quantum well-digging and quantum field prospecting Yang Tchi Chi Che Chiuh, PhdE2 noted in Physical review letters at the end of the last decade that physics is now in the realm of studying abstract mathematics blurring the line between nature and other people's fallible minds.
After the implications of the new physics became clear, in the period from the 1960s onward to the present time, no popular science books sought to explain it but rather writers resorted to throw up paradoxes and misquoted zen and hindu allegories to confuse the readers about it rather than elucidate them. Consequently only those science authors that take a solemn oath at Princeton Institute of advanced physics to describe quantum mechanics only as a paradoxical unintelligible theory that defies our common sense are permitted to publish material about it.
Principles of quantum mechanics
* When in a tight spot , your uncertainty and the uncertainty of you both go through the roof
* God does not play dice and does not want us to know anything beyond a certain infinitesimal limit. Our senses and tunneling electron beams cannot go beyond that certain infinitesimal limit, which we would only understand we if had infinitesimal minds, which we don't.
* Two electrons will go through each other or appear at two places at onces, making them apparently advanced Pythogerean acolytes.
* If you truly enjoy quantum mechanics , chances are you are unemployed and have no social life.
* electricity is monopolistic while magnetism is dipolistic and gravity is apparently nonpolistic. On the other hand , the strong force is tri-polistic, having an RGB-component technicolor charge.
* The nucleons are made of tiny quirks : These are called "Cuteheart", "Tiny", "Uptown", "Beautiful", "Stimpy" and "Weird". These have a funniness charge , as opposed to the electric-shock charge of the electrons and other leptons. The study of quirks is thus called Funny Quantum Dynamics. It is hypothesized that a seventh as yet unobserved quirk exists that is tentatively called the "Colorific" which leads to the field of acoustic-quantum chromodynamics.
* Even if you understand quantum mechanics, we will never live long enough to learn enough math to do quantum dynamics.
* The "Force" does exist but no one has been able to pin it without it breaking some conservation law or shattering mirror in a cosmic mirror store called "CPT symmetry". Also it is now in the "Dark Side" as only 0.04% of the universe (yes all those gargantuan galaxies and gassy clouds) is made up of matter , and the rest is "dark matter".
Implications
* Zen Buddhism is just a smart alec attempt by popular science writers to obfuscate the simple facts about quantum mechanics.
* The universe appears to physicists to suffer from multiple-personality disorder and maybe autistic.
* If you ever run into Einstein (after death or in some parallel worldline) do not mention the names Hilbert, Dirac or Schrodinger or even the Max Planck Institute.
* Another postulate is that some subatomic particles are extremely shy and will puff themselves out into a cloud the way Nightcrawler does when looked at. The measure of a particle's refusal to get measured properly is called the Planck Shyness.
* Quantum mechanics will not make computers cheaper because the software would still be expensive (for the deadbeats: and have to be used in cracked mode which will always break requiring a reformat).
* Software user login modules around the world will have to be rewritten - because with the advent of quantum computers quantum algorithms would render passwords useless. This is known as the Quantum computer Problem.
* For the first time in history a computing machine beats the Turing machine, probably: Big Blue and many other supercomputers and even the Earth simulator could never beat the Universal Turing Machine at computer chess tournaments, but finally quantum computers showed that they would tend to beat the imaginary Turing machine with a probability distribution of a 97% WIN superposed with a probability 3% LOSS in a single computational step, given that all physicist in the room keep their fingers crossed in order to raise the a priori probability of winning.
* quantum mechanics does not solve the greenhouse water and energy problems . However it is postulated that if successfully married to relativity theory by tying them together with planck guitar strings and if the supreme court approves the vote count, they will form the theory of everything, which nonetheless will still not solve the energy problems.
* No matter how much you explain it to them, people will misunderstand that quantum effects only apply for small corposcule/wave scales and not at the macroscopic scale. As a result the theory is often misused to justify a complete absence of logic and common sense in the practical life fields of business, law and government. ... Read more
beauty of nature
note: further down in this post the importance of defining what is meant by the terms organization and design is inevitable and a definition is hazarded which sheds needed light of the scientific sort on the nature of nature .
we find beauty in the intricacies and visuals of nature continuously on every scale from the molecular and subcellular to telescope deep field scales . Beauty and perfection as in flawlessness of design are thus found at every level of organization in the phenomenal world - the world of hadath, or of hodooth , or of al-mahsoosat , or of al-shahaada (witness, testament, witnessing).
it is clear also that moving through the scales of scope or size, we move through successive levels or layers of organization - we might also be able to say through layers of abstraction .
it would be remarkable that the level of complexity remains constant , but does it?
is the level of complexity (design complexity, constraint complexity , in terms of all the "rules" or laws being played out , size complexity - but then again what kind of size? - the same for a system of atoms and molecules and ions in subcellular systems and a system of a group of galaxies ?
in terms of number of atoms and molecules, of course the group of galaxies would be of enormously larger "size" then the number of atoms inside a single cell,
but would the number of stars or star systems be comparable to the number of molecules or atoms inside the cell ?
if so would this mean that both systems would have the same "size" complexity ?
another feature is that densities of matter between dense and very sparse alternate in succession as we go from small to large scale of scope of what we observe - eg from the atomic scale to that of galaxy superclusters and whatever lies beyond
at higher levels of organization.
Back to density , the densities of matter fluctuate as one traverses both distances and orders of their magnitude.
as one goes from the nucleus of an atom , and the enormous distance compared to the nucleus' size , until we reach the electron cloud and the fuzzy borders of the atom , there is a palpable large amount of void followind the closely packed density of matter inside the nucleus at least at the level of baryons,
like neutrons and protons.
as we get farther from the nucleus and the much larger atom, the size of the system observed also grows , and now we can look an entire molecule ,
which replaces the period of void with a densely packed "matter" in this respect atoms rather than nucleii ,
and a certain level of organization seems to bind the molecule together , and further still , another level of organization bind large numbers of molecules together into lattices or crystals or foams or fibers of some sort or another forming various kinds of materials, our own familiar macroscopic kind of objects,
in a very large collection of materials nearly constantly changing into each other makes up our planet and a very densely packed amount of matter measured in macroscopic units like tonnes .
but that density and the size of our entire planet is again followed by even larger size of the distance of void between it and other such "planets" like the moon further defining a yet larger system, the binary system of earth and moon , which again is followed by a long distance of void much larger in diameter than the system's , until we start encountering other similar systems comparable in size which ranges in difference from the asteroids to giant planet-satellite systems like jupiter and saturn and even the sun , the star of the show.
the entire solar system incredibly much larger than any of its constituents is itself tiny compared to the sphere of void that surrounds it until other systems comparable in size to itself are encountered, forming galaxies and later yet groups of galaxies.
is a molecule's organization more complex than that of an atom?
is that of a block of material or cellular organelles more complex than the molecules?\
of coures the molecules of blocks of material are much less complex than those of cellular subsystems ,
and the homeostasis of a system such as the cell required to maintain the state of a living cell is clearly a lot more complex than that the kind of homeostasis needed to maintain the state for a block of rock , ie for a block of rock to continue to be a block of rock .
which incidentally brings us to the important point on what is organization and why do i use the term design ?
would not the use of design immediately suspend my discourse from the sphere of science altogether, since i betray an a priori belief in God ?
well, not necessarily , which is the crux of the point.
the level of organization of a natural is the sets of all the rules or laws or algorithm or constraints that keep the system behaving in the natural way , such as we observe the system in nature. the level of organization defines the structure , form , behavior , and stasis as well as eventual change of any given system in nature .
organization thus defines states of systems, and the state machines (or algorithms , or functions) of different natural systems of all scales of size (and complexity).
this is even more dramatically seen in biological organisms such as ourselves where the natural system is very complex , its homeostasis is very complex and is defined as a program of automatic control that lasts since our conception until our passing.
such a program (program as in algorithm, or automatic machine) yields an autonomous self-repairing self-motivating etc. orgranism, that though changing over the course of its lifetime, consists at every instant of a stasis or homeostasis suitable for its functional wellbeing at that moment.
That homeostasis is maintained throughout and fits perfectly - or takes into account the long-term changes that occur to the organism from formation to death and decay . (of course long-term could mean years and decades for a a human , but only a few hours or minutes for a bacterium or weeks for an insect)
I do not think there can be discussion of systems in which is so clearly present automatic control , along with its subsystems of feeback , error detection and correction , without talk of design .
thus speaking of design in natural systems is not unscientific at all - it is very much in the domain of applied science as not only matters of engineering but also as that finished examples of functional and very well "designed" systems that surround us in nature , including our own selves.
It is not unscientific either to speak of the beauty we collectively feel when confronted with the elements of "design" or organization of such systems , literally from first sight (the visually aesthetic) down to the minutest details (the continuity of intricacy throughout from the global system to the smallest discernible constituent subsystems)
whatever the significance or meaning of that experience of "beauty" that we feel or note when observing physical systems it is not at all unscientific to take account of it at least by making note of it. in fact refusing to make note of it and trying somehow to make use of it in the scientific work (and technological work) is more unscientific in approach , as some information is omitted purely at the discretion of the scientist or technology designer which could prove important in the understanding of what these systems mean. ... Read more
we find beauty in the intricacies and visuals of nature continuously on every scale from the molecular and subcellular to telescope deep field scales . Beauty and perfection as in flawlessness of design are thus found at every level of organization in the phenomenal world - the world of hadath, or of hodooth , or of al-mahsoosat , or of al-shahaada (witness, testament, witnessing).
it is clear also that moving through the scales of scope or size, we move through successive levels or layers of organization - we might also be able to say through layers of abstraction .
it would be remarkable that the level of complexity remains constant , but does it?
is the level of complexity (design complexity, constraint complexity , in terms of all the "rules" or laws being played out , size complexity - but then again what kind of size? - the same for a system of atoms and molecules and ions in subcellular systems and a system of a group of galaxies ?
in terms of number of atoms and molecules, of course the group of galaxies would be of enormously larger "size" then the number of atoms inside a single cell,
but would the number of stars or star systems be comparable to the number of molecules or atoms inside the cell ?
if so would this mean that both systems would have the same "size" complexity ?
another feature is that densities of matter between dense and very sparse alternate in succession as we go from small to large scale of scope of what we observe - eg from the atomic scale to that of galaxy superclusters and whatever lies beyond
at higher levels of organization.
Back to density , the densities of matter fluctuate as one traverses both distances and orders of their magnitude.
as one goes from the nucleus of an atom , and the enormous distance compared to the nucleus' size , until we reach the electron cloud and the fuzzy borders of the atom , there is a palpable large amount of void followind the closely packed density of matter inside the nucleus at least at the level of baryons,
like neutrons and protons.
as we get farther from the nucleus and the much larger atom, the size of the system observed also grows , and now we can look an entire molecule ,
which replaces the period of void with a densely packed "matter" in this respect atoms rather than nucleii ,
and a certain level of organization seems to bind the molecule together , and further still , another level of organization bind large numbers of molecules together into lattices or crystals or foams or fibers of some sort or another forming various kinds of materials, our own familiar macroscopic kind of objects,
in a very large collection of materials nearly constantly changing into each other makes up our planet and a very densely packed amount of matter measured in macroscopic units like tonnes .
but that density and the size of our entire planet is again followed by even larger size of the distance of void between it and other such "planets" like the moon further defining a yet larger system, the binary system of earth and moon , which again is followed by a long distance of void much larger in diameter than the system's , until we start encountering other similar systems comparable in size which ranges in difference from the asteroids to giant planet-satellite systems like jupiter and saturn and even the sun , the star of the show.
the entire solar system incredibly much larger than any of its constituents is itself tiny compared to the sphere of void that surrounds it until other systems comparable in size to itself are encountered, forming galaxies and later yet groups of galaxies.
is a molecule's organization more complex than that of an atom?
is that of a block of material or cellular organelles more complex than the molecules?\
of coures the molecules of blocks of material are much less complex than those of cellular subsystems ,
and the homeostasis of a system such as the cell required to maintain the state of a living cell is clearly a lot more complex than that the kind of homeostasis needed to maintain the state for a block of rock , ie for a block of rock to continue to be a block of rock .
which incidentally brings us to the important point on what is organization and why do i use the term design ?
would not the use of design immediately suspend my discourse from the sphere of science altogether, since i betray an a priori belief in God ?
well, not necessarily , which is the crux of the point.
the level of organization of a natural is the sets of all the rules or laws or algorithm or constraints that keep the system behaving in the natural way , such as we observe the system in nature. the level of organization defines the structure , form , behavior , and stasis as well as eventual change of any given system in nature .
organization thus defines states of systems, and the state machines (or algorithms , or functions) of different natural systems of all scales of size (and complexity).
this is even more dramatically seen in biological organisms such as ourselves where the natural system is very complex , its homeostasis is very complex and is defined as a program of automatic control that lasts since our conception until our passing.
such a program (program as in algorithm, or automatic machine) yields an autonomous self-repairing self-motivating etc. orgranism, that though changing over the course of its lifetime, consists at every instant of a stasis or homeostasis suitable for its functional wellbeing at that moment.
That homeostasis is maintained throughout and fits perfectly - or takes into account the long-term changes that occur to the organism from formation to death and decay . (of course long-term could mean years and decades for a a human , but only a few hours or minutes for a bacterium or weeks for an insect)
I do not think there can be discussion of systems in which is so clearly present automatic control , along with its subsystems of feeback , error detection and correction , without talk of design .
thus speaking of design in natural systems is not unscientific at all - it is very much in the domain of applied science as not only matters of engineering but also as that finished examples of functional and very well "designed" systems that surround us in nature , including our own selves.
It is not unscientific either to speak of the beauty we collectively feel when confronted with the elements of "design" or organization of such systems , literally from first sight (the visually aesthetic) down to the minutest details (the continuity of intricacy throughout from the global system to the smallest discernible constituent subsystems)
whatever the significance or meaning of that experience of "beauty" that we feel or note when observing physical systems it is not at all unscientific to take account of it at least by making note of it. in fact refusing to make note of it and trying somehow to make use of it in the scientific work (and technological work) is more unscientific in approach , as some information is omitted purely at the discretion of the scientist or technology designer which could prove important in the understanding of what these systems mean. ... Read more
concert video revu draft: Maceo 2003
notes for
Reviewing a video of the Maceo Parker concert at:
B Jazz Burghausen 34. Internationale jazzwoche 2003
A - What does it feel for Maceo and for other jazz musicians and observers that Maceo's set, a funk set, be packaged along with "jazz".
to be sure other jazz festivals, and a lot of what gets labeled as jazz (usually cheaper or free concerts) is actually more on the pop/rock and particularly r&b or soul and funk side of things.
Interestingly Maceo did address that question in his words to the audience - after "Uptown" :
He expressed thanks for those responsible for having them there , and gratitude for having been on tour as long as 3 months by then, and thanks
" also to be invited in the [he signals quotation marks with his fingers] jazz [hesitates] concert , we really appreciate that although ... we don't do jazz [he smiles and audience laughs] thank you."
obviously also the other jazz musicians and the listeners don't mind and perhaps they particularly don't mind Maceo himself. It could thus be down to the likeability of the person himself. Eg, no one would at a jazz or heavy metal festival would complain , however strange and unlikely it would be, if say Stevie Wonder walked in on stage as a guest , or was invited to be one of the acts.
Then again there is the more technical question of funk's proximity to acid jazz, fusion, particularly modern easy listening and groove oriented popular jazz, like benson , etc; as well as funk's distance from the mainstream of pop or black pop like r&b and soul, and its other proximity to that other niche in modern popular music, rock and even hard rock.
like the blues funk is a lot like a root ( a root of musical genres). a raw form that informed so many "genres" , from dance disco to soul to rock music to acid jazz , and later to the neo-funk or new wave / minneapolis sound / "funk" of the eighties.
so perhaps that too contributes to the acceptability of an act like maceo's in a german jazz week.
A.bis. - when he started talking i also wondered about that seeming presumption of english' universality when they speak in english on the stage - though this is not only true of north american acts, but also some non native english speaking european ones.
For Maceo just went through his word in english, and to be sure the audience sounded like it understood every word of it.
i felt it was a bit presumptuous on his part, even given the fact that it is lingua franca throughout the world by now particularly via the ameriganos.
zappa , by contrast treated it differently.
in some spanish concert he spoke spanish to the audience, probably the one in barcelona the video; then on vol. 3 cd 2 of YCDTOSA, he talks in italian to what presumably is an italian audience (easily verifiable).
B - nice to see Maceo so recently (2003). Also saw 16 minutes of him from 2002
C - prim and proper act and lineup - dressed in comfortable dark dress suits (except for Corey)
D- much the same lineup from 2002
E - The Hammond organ
F- Gimme some more does not sound as funky , lacks the beat of the studio version i used to have
G - Uptown: the Solos , trombone, trumpet , hammond then Corey Parker . No body applauded for the hammond and his solo was sort of cut in by Corey (though surely it's all rehearsed and intended) but there wasn't closure for the hammond solo and certainly no time for an applaused as Corey walked upstage to do his lyrical act.
H - "Baby knows" by prince.
I- Cover of McCartney's "My Love" that segue's to Hey Jude's chorus :)
is beatles music part of maceo's unive ... Read more
Reviewing a video of the Maceo Parker concert at:
B Jazz Burghausen 34. Internationale jazzwoche 2003
A - What does it feel for Maceo and for other jazz musicians and observers that Maceo's set, a funk set, be packaged along with "jazz".
to be sure other jazz festivals, and a lot of what gets labeled as jazz (usually cheaper or free concerts) is actually more on the pop/rock and particularly r&b or soul and funk side of things.
Interestingly Maceo did address that question in his words to the audience - after "Uptown" :
He expressed thanks for those responsible for having them there , and gratitude for having been on tour as long as 3 months by then, and thanks
" also to be invited in the [he signals quotation marks with his fingers] jazz [hesitates] concert , we really appreciate that although ... we don't do jazz [he smiles and audience laughs] thank you."
obviously also the other jazz musicians and the listeners don't mind and perhaps they particularly don't mind Maceo himself. It could thus be down to the likeability of the person himself. Eg, no one would at a jazz or heavy metal festival would complain , however strange and unlikely it would be, if say Stevie Wonder walked in on stage as a guest , or was invited to be one of the acts.
Then again there is the more technical question of funk's proximity to acid jazz, fusion, particularly modern easy listening and groove oriented popular jazz, like benson , etc; as well as funk's distance from the mainstream of pop or black pop like r&b and soul, and its other proximity to that other niche in modern popular music, rock and even hard rock.
like the blues funk is a lot like a root ( a root of musical genres). a raw form that informed so many "genres" , from dance disco to soul to rock music to acid jazz , and later to the neo-funk or new wave / minneapolis sound / "funk" of the eighties.
so perhaps that too contributes to the acceptability of an act like maceo's in a german jazz week.
A.bis. - when he started talking i also wondered about that seeming presumption of english' universality when they speak in english on the stage - though this is not only true of north american acts, but also some non native english speaking european ones.
For Maceo just went through his word in english, and to be sure the audience sounded like it understood every word of it.
i felt it was a bit presumptuous on his part, even given the fact that it is lingua franca throughout the world by now particularly via the ameriganos.
zappa , by contrast treated it differently.
in some spanish concert he spoke spanish to the audience, probably the one in barcelona the video; then on vol. 3 cd 2 of YCDTOSA, he talks in italian to what presumably is an italian audience (easily verifiable).
B - nice to see Maceo so recently (2003). Also saw 16 minutes of him from 2002
C - prim and proper act and lineup - dressed in comfortable dark dress suits (except for Corey)
D- much the same lineup from 2002
E - The Hammond organ
F- Gimme some more does not sound as funky , lacks the beat of the studio version i used to have
G - Uptown: the Solos , trombone, trumpet , hammond then Corey Parker . No body applauded for the hammond and his solo was sort of cut in by Corey (though surely it's all rehearsed and intended) but there wasn't closure for the hammond solo and certainly no time for an applaused as Corey walked upstage to do his lyrical act.
H - "Baby knows" by prince.
I- Cover of McCartney's "My Love" that segue's to Hey Jude's chorus :)
is beatles music part of maceo's unive ... Read more
was hendrix worked to death ?
Was watching the "Classic Albums" video on a Hendrix album that i can't remember, and in it was a brief history related by the various interviewees of the incredible tour schedule that hendrix and his band had to endure.
they were hopping continents on a daily basis for extended periods. i am no physician but it strikes me as intuitive that this much haul with a lot of substance abuse and the energetic performances and bad unhealthy food would lead to a complete deterioration of the body.
their financiers or managers or minders / whtever had a responbility not to work him that hard, and more over they had a responsibility to look after his health, , see that , he does not overdose , given the environment in which he was given so much booze and drugs . ... Read more
they were hopping continents on a daily basis for extended periods. i am no physician but it strikes me as intuitive that this much haul with a lot of substance abuse and the energetic performances and bad unhealthy food would lead to a complete deterioration of the body.
their financiers or managers or minders / whtever had a responbility not to work him that hard, and more over they had a responsibility to look after his health, , see that , he does not overdose , given the environment in which he was given so much booze and drugs . ... Read more
