Sunday Night Stuff
Oct. 16th, 2006 03:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptDidn't get much for work done today. This is bad, as days without work mean more work to be done on a different day. It's not too distressing, as there's still time, but I can feel my panic meter already starting to climb. I think I panic mostly because I want to go do other things than do work, and I always feel like I won't have enough time. This has not yet been proven to be true. So I should not panic. But I can feel it coming on, like always. It'll get worse with having multiple projects.
I'm not sure whether to decry the following as shameless exploitation or a masterful political move. But, either way, political candidates are putting up MySpace and Facebook profiles. Might be the way to appeal to the younger generation, or it might be just another attempt at ubiquity without really caring, and it'll get tuned out soon enough. On other political fronts, while the White House and the President continue to cater to specifically very right-wing Christians, it may not be a united front. One of the staffers, in a book, suggests that the staff made fun of those kinds of people, calling them "nuts" and "goofy", among other things. That said, even if some of the staff disagrees, the President still probably thinks the way this cartoonist has portrayed him about marriage and sexuality. Speaking of such things, it's time to re-hash (I'm pretty sure I've at least seen this before) the Gator Gay-Straight Alliance's masterful send-up of the whole thing, 12 Reasons Same-Sex Marriage Will Ruin Society. Still following the theme of sex, but going in a wholly different direction, be careful if you're around Mount Diablo, as the horny male tarantulas are out looking for a mate. This is an appropriate time to make a "hairy" joke.
On the off chance that humanity should extinct itself, the Times (UK) provides us with a handy guide to how long it would take for humanity's traces to disappear. Considering, however, that we're creative enough to start selling pierced dinnerware, and reconfigure a TV tuner card to listen in on an arbitrary frequency, and try to develop an Internet Public Library, I'd say we're not done yet. Not unless someone figures out a creative way to extinct us. Which is thoroughly possible as well, but I have faith that humanity will be more creative still. Some exercises in creativity, though, by the government are not too well-received. A recent study pegs the death count in Iraq as high as 600,000 people. The death count that's most readily visible is one that's close to 4,000 - the number of American troops. But that doesn't count Iraqi civilians or Iraqi security or insurgents or anything else.
The race is on for electric roadsters, at least according to the Boston Globe. Tesla Motors and others are working to bring out high-end electric sport cars. Although the article says that the energy is not from Middle Eastern Oil, that's not necessarily true - as a car that has to plug in to recharge may have to tap into a power grid that is at least partially fueled by oil or other Mideast resources. It might reduce dependency significantly, though. Here's hoping the idea of smart cars catches on, and then we can make them all electric... and figure out some way to charge them on something like solar power.
An article, courtesy of the Guardian, on why fortune-telling methods work, why lucky people stay that way, why casinos and gambling houses make billions, and why your iPod seems to favor or disfavor certain artists on "shuffle" mode. It's because when random works, you see a pattern in it anyway. The brain tries so very hard to ascribe a pattern of some sort to randomness. If the random's not random enough, you might be able to pick out a pattern and be right, but if the random's random enough, then there's no pattern, despite what you may think.
Hawai'i had an earthquake of serious magnitude. Looks like, though, while there was damage, it wasn't significant. And there were aftershocks that weren't kind, either. Hopefully, not too many, if any, were killed or injured, and the federal disaster management agency can put things back in order faster and more competently than the debacle in Lousiana.
I kept this last piece out for special treatment, because it exemplifies a major error in the political consciousness of the American populace. How to Vote for a Moderate starts off reasonably well, although I'm not sure that in FDR's time, Democrats were truly left-of-centre. They were farther left than today's Democrats, though.
Then it goes to pot. Not all Democrats are moderates. Some of them, if you look at their voting records, cozy right up to the conservative point of view, even for the skewed definition of a conservative in America. Voting for a moderate candidate means voting for a moderate candidate, regardless of party. Which brings me to the second error, which I think is a blight on the American electorate's ideas. They recommend "Vote for the party, not the candidate". Stupid, stupid rat creatures! The party fields candidates it thinks will win. If your policies align with the candidates enough that you feel they're worthy of your vote, then vote for them. But if they're antithetical to you, even though they sport a party label you like, you should vote against them. (The comments look like this position has been delivered and argued, probably in myriad ornate ways.) If you want a moderate, vote for a moderate. If you want a liberal, vote for a liberal. Find the candidate most closely aligned with your views and vote for them.
Last thought is fairly random. Every now and then someone re-mentions the idea of quantum entanglement, where photons that were combined in a certain way still resonate with each other across distances at supra-light speeds (At least, I think it was faster-than light. It might have just been light-speed.). My brain works on this in an odd way, and wonders whether this could be the basis for a scientific explanation of how a race of Espers/Talents evolves. Some part of their genetic makeup produces or makes them receptive to entanglements, either of other people's thoughts or of certain affinities (fire and the like). Some learn to receive, others to manipulate those entanglements. Some can do both. And then, after I think of this idea, I ask - "Okay, where the giant hole that everyone else sees except me?" So, where might such a thing be? Would it be possible, at least theoretically, to do some Esper tricks were sufficient entanglements fired in the right ways?
And then there's this person who taps my forehead and says "Sleep" and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
I'm not sure whether to decry the following as shameless exploitation or a masterful political move. But, either way, political candidates are putting up MySpace and Facebook profiles. Might be the way to appeal to the younger generation, or it might be just another attempt at ubiquity without really caring, and it'll get tuned out soon enough. On other political fronts, while the White House and the President continue to cater to specifically very right-wing Christians, it may not be a united front. One of the staffers, in a book, suggests that the staff made fun of those kinds of people, calling them "nuts" and "goofy", among other things. That said, even if some of the staff disagrees, the President still probably thinks the way this cartoonist has portrayed him about marriage and sexuality. Speaking of such things, it's time to re-hash (I'm pretty sure I've at least seen this before) the Gator Gay-Straight Alliance's masterful send-up of the whole thing, 12 Reasons Same-Sex Marriage Will Ruin Society. Still following the theme of sex, but going in a wholly different direction, be careful if you're around Mount Diablo, as the horny male tarantulas are out looking for a mate. This is an appropriate time to make a "hairy" joke.
On the off chance that humanity should extinct itself, the Times (UK) provides us with a handy guide to how long it would take for humanity's traces to disappear. Considering, however, that we're creative enough to start selling pierced dinnerware, and reconfigure a TV tuner card to listen in on an arbitrary frequency, and try to develop an Internet Public Library, I'd say we're not done yet. Not unless someone figures out a creative way to extinct us. Which is thoroughly possible as well, but I have faith that humanity will be more creative still. Some exercises in creativity, though, by the government are not too well-received. A recent study pegs the death count in Iraq as high as 600,000 people. The death count that's most readily visible is one that's close to 4,000 - the number of American troops. But that doesn't count Iraqi civilians or Iraqi security or insurgents or anything else.
The race is on for electric roadsters, at least according to the Boston Globe. Tesla Motors and others are working to bring out high-end electric sport cars. Although the article says that the energy is not from Middle Eastern Oil, that's not necessarily true - as a car that has to plug in to recharge may have to tap into a power grid that is at least partially fueled by oil or other Mideast resources. It might reduce dependency significantly, though. Here's hoping the idea of smart cars catches on, and then we can make them all electric... and figure out some way to charge them on something like solar power.
An article, courtesy of the Guardian, on why fortune-telling methods work, why lucky people stay that way, why casinos and gambling houses make billions, and why your iPod seems to favor or disfavor certain artists on "shuffle" mode. It's because when random works, you see a pattern in it anyway. The brain tries so very hard to ascribe a pattern of some sort to randomness. If the random's not random enough, you might be able to pick out a pattern and be right, but if the random's random enough, then there's no pattern, despite what you may think.
Hawai'i had an earthquake of serious magnitude. Looks like, though, while there was damage, it wasn't significant. And there were aftershocks that weren't kind, either. Hopefully, not too many, if any, were killed or injured, and the federal disaster management agency can put things back in order faster and more competently than the debacle in Lousiana.
I kept this last piece out for special treatment, because it exemplifies a major error in the political consciousness of the American populace. How to Vote for a Moderate starts off reasonably well, although I'm not sure that in FDR's time, Democrats were truly left-of-centre. They were farther left than today's Democrats, though.
Then it goes to pot. Not all Democrats are moderates. Some of them, if you look at their voting records, cozy right up to the conservative point of view, even for the skewed definition of a conservative in America. Voting for a moderate candidate means voting for a moderate candidate, regardless of party. Which brings me to the second error, which I think is a blight on the American electorate's ideas. They recommend "Vote for the party, not the candidate". Stupid, stupid rat creatures! The party fields candidates it thinks will win. If your policies align with the candidates enough that you feel they're worthy of your vote, then vote for them. But if they're antithetical to you, even though they sport a party label you like, you should vote against them. (The comments look like this position has been delivered and argued, probably in myriad ornate ways.) If you want a moderate, vote for a moderate. If you want a liberal, vote for a liberal. Find the candidate most closely aligned with your views and vote for them.
Last thought is fairly random. Every now and then someone re-mentions the idea of quantum entanglement, where photons that were combined in a certain way still resonate with each other across distances at supra-light speeds (At least, I think it was faster-than light. It might have just been light-speed.). My brain works on this in an odd way, and wonders whether this could be the basis for a scientific explanation of how a race of Espers/Talents evolves. Some part of their genetic makeup produces or makes them receptive to entanglements, either of other people's thoughts or of certain affinities (fire and the like). Some learn to receive, others to manipulate those entanglements. Some can do both. And then, after I think of this idea, I ask - "Okay, where the giant hole that everyone else sees except me?" So, where might such a thing be? Would it be possible, at least theoretically, to do some Esper tricks were sufficient entanglements fired in the right ways?
And then there's this person who taps my forehead and says "Sleep" and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 01:48 pm (UTC)I suppose most fundamentally, the two entangled states need to be governed by entropy. That is if you have one object (A) that is totally random between two states and the other object (B)is entangled in such a way that it will always be in another state then if A were randomly up then B would be randomly down. Both of these are "observed" events (but once observed they're fixed in the great quantum craziness paradigm). So FORCING one object to be up (through brain activity) and thus entangling another object to be down (as would the case with reading said brain activity through entanglement) would not be possible.
It's supposedly also possible to transmit information whereby if you observe instantaneously (and thus fix) the state of a given object, and then transmit the identity of the object over so I can observe the corresponding object and thus know what you're thinking... but then you'd have to tranmit the identity of the specific neurons active at a given time... and that's about as useful as asking directly.
And the third obvious problem is that quantum objects are destroyed by observation. (I'm not entirely sure how this works but possible states are definitely distroyed.)
Anyhow, this all falls from my rather dodgy understanding of quantum theory. I haven't done the math. So caveat emptor. (Or caveat lector as the case may be.)
no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 07:43 pm (UTC)take 2 and we'll try not to freeze this time?
Date: 2006-10-16 10:29 pm (UTC)Whenever you'd talk to Charlie's dad about politics, he would always talk about the "smoke filled room". I don't remember a lot of what he had said, since it's been a while, but his basic thought revolved around the parties used to pick candidates that were "in the middle", but no longer do. or something. gah. maybe Charlie'll read your entry and be able to explain his dad's theory.
I completely didn't understand your last paragraph...can you explain it to me?
Also, I totally agree on the iPod...my iPod always seems to play the same stuff when it's on shuffle.
Re: take 2 and we'll try not to freeze this time?
Date: 2006-10-16 10:49 pm (UTC)The last paragraph is pretty simple - the guy pushes my forehead and induces a hympnotic sleep. It's a big stereotype/cartoon thing.
Re: take 2 and we'll try not to freeze this time?
Date: 2006-10-16 10:51 pm (UTC)hm. Do you really think that's how things are run? I mean, if thats' all they want you to do (vote for x party) then why bother with primaries and campaigning?
Re: take 2 and we'll try not to freeze this time?
Date: 2006-10-17 05:06 am (UTC)