Once again, into the breach

For fans of physics humor out there (not to mention people who don't like kitties), you have to check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hNDZ79MDC0

A bit with robots and the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment (the cat in the box simultaneously dead and alive, since both states are possible and neither can be observed).

It is an odd property of quantum mechanics that things behave differently when observed vs when not observed. The easiest example of this that can be "proved" is the wave/particle dual nature of the electron.

Electrons are small enough that the "observation" of the particles requires that we disturb the particles. To see them, we must bombard them with photons - the energy of the photons disturbs the motion of the electrons because the particles are on (roughly) the same scale. Since our visual observations require light (aka photons), all direct observations of electrons lead us to see the particle nature of the electron. The problem is that, to use a macro scale analogy, this would be like trying to determine the natural habits of a wild animal while constantly prodding said animal with a stick. You will get a result, but it will only tell you how the animal acts when you poke it with a stick. The kind of direct observation we use in the macro world falls apart at the quantum level.

If you shot a beam of electrons at photosensitive paper while observing the electrons, you would come up with a pattern very similar to what you would get if you fired a bunch of wet tennis balls at a wall through a autopitch machine. You would see most of the tennis balls (electrons) having a central location, with the occasional outlier. The electrons would act like particles.

If you shut out the lights and did not watch the electrons, they would hit the photopaper and leave a distinct wave-like pattern, nothing like particles at all! Kind of cool, and actually an easy experiment to replicate (assuming you have something to beam electrons with).

But in all seriousness, it is a cool way of seeing the difference between the wave and particle nature of matter, especially with a relatively large particle like the electron (large by comparison to photons and such). Even a particle that has a detectable mass still has a distinct wave function quality, and in fact the theoretical models of electron "location" in atoms are built on these probability wave models.

Well, I think it's cool anyway.

I am going to try to write more, and get back into the short story end of the blog as well.

Bye for now.

Blogging

Never have so many had so little to say to so few.


In light of that fact, I will continue to say so little in as many words as possible (like every other blogger out there). I am going to try and get back into a daily posting, just to keep up with my writing.

I will just keep telling myself that I am a unique and special individual...

Just like everyone else.

Every snowflake is unique too, but when you put them all together, all you have is a big wet sloppy pile of mush, all of the uniqueness blended out into a sludge of homogeneity. A metaphor for the human condition - perhaps.

No one wants to look at that aspect of uniqueness - and the fact that uniqueness doesn't imply quality, either. Just because you are unique doesn't mean you are important.

But being important is overrated, too.

So if you are not depressed yet, just remember, as an intelligent species, we have been around for about 200,000 years. We have to last 2,000,000 years to match up with a successful dinosaur species (T Rex). To put it another way, the universe is about 70,000 times older than we are as a species, and we have been technologically savvy for only that last 100 years (not really, but it makes the estimations easier), meaning that we have had reasonably good grasp of the physical nature of the universe for about 1/140,000,000 of the time the universe has been in existence. So if we want another intelligent alien species to talk to, they probably haven't evolved yet, or have and gone extinct, but even if they are out there concurrently with us, we can't ever meet them if our current understanding of the universe is even remotely correct.

And if SETI actually picks up a reading from somewhere in the universe, odds are that the species that sent the signal is long dead, and if we respond, our species will be extinct by the time they hear us and send back a message.

If you still don't feel insignificant enough, then just go to the top and reread this. I'm tired.

But if you want a more upbeat look, realize that we are all made of the dust from the stars, coalesced into some form and randomly rearranged to create what we designate as life, and that the waters of the oceans flow in our veins.

It takes just as much faith to believe in nothing as it does to believe in something. I am not sure where I fall just about now.

A more detailed look at the Swarmlord

So there is a closer look at a higher resolution cropped pic of the Swarmlord - looks pretty good, except for the glaringly obvious crappy putty work on the tail, but some of the other work is good enough not to notice.

Here is a close-up of the face - I think my detail work is pretty decent on the painting, and the gloss varnish on the armored headpiece looks pretty damned good. You can't tell I cut and glued on the scissory bits on the mouth from another model (a Starship Troopers bug, actually) and puttied up the smaller second horn. This is some of my better work, I think. I like the yellow glaring eye!

This arm shows some of my better work as well. This was originally a left-handed lash whip - I cut off the whip and puttied on a bone sword, as well as cutting and reorienting the dangly bits under the arm from a right arm of a model to this left one. Looks pretty seamless, huh? Not perfect, if you compare it to the right side of the model, you will notice slight inconsistencies, but close enough for government work.

This is an extreme close-up of the upper left arm. I severed a right arm at the elbow, rotated it, reattached it, and cut all the stuff off of one side and put it on the other side of the arm. the only thing you really notice is the oval bit on the forearm which is not perfectly sanded down - but since it is actually only about 4mm by 2mm, who'll notice?

Top view, so you can compare the left and right arm - the right is stock, the left is a right arm cut to crap and rearranged to look like a left arm. I think I did a good job, but there are some minor inconsistencies, as I mentioned before. Principle among these is the presence of a "cable" in the crook of the right elbow where there is none on the left elbow.

Ugh - an extreme closeup of the crappiest part of the work. That tail joint needs to be sanded and repainted. I will do it at some point. See ya later.

The Swarmlord

So I finally took a couple of pictures of the Swarmolrd model I built. I think I captured the image from the codex pretty well. Here it is. I included the chaos space marine for size comparison - this picture is a bit rough (I re sized it to take less time to load). I think he looks pretty good, though my putty work on the tail is shoddy at best - I should sand it and repaint it. At the time, I did not really wait for the putty to dry, so I painted it as it was (every time I tried to sand it, it ended up breaking off, so I just stopped and painted it.

Ah, the impetuousness of youth :)

Gosh Darn It

I am more upset than I have been in a long time. I am having a perfectly good anniversary with my wife, and other than the fact that my brother neglected to get us Rush tickets for the concert tomorrow, everything is great.

I was a bit upset with my brother for not getting the tickets, but I figured that I would catch Rush the next time around. Then I decide to check my school email and I saw an email from one of my students' parents. This was the kid whose dad was in the music business, and he had sent an email a few days ago saying that he understood that I already had tickets, but he could get me in for a meet and greet with the band before the show. Of course, I don't have tickets and I don't get that email until the night before the show. That F--ING SUCKS!!!!

:(

:(

:(

Anderson Silva and MMA

So it is no surprise to any fight fans out there that I believe that Silva should clean Chael Sonnen's clock. He is a superior fighter in all aspects of the game and has great movement. Chael has shown a great deal of willingness to get punched and keep driving forward, but that is a recipe for disaster against Silva. Just watch the Griffin vs. Silva fight at heavyweight to see what I mean. Sonnen's best chance is to drive forward and get one of his takedowns while Silva tries to counterstrike, and hope he can inflict enough damage and evade the submissions of Silva. Then he should try to smother Silva and accumulate enough points to win. I think that this is Sonnen's only chance, and it is, frankly, quite likely to be his game plan (much as he talks knockout).

But this brings me to my main point. Dana White and others have pointed out that they do not like the hang back and pick apart style of Silva - it is not flashy or aggressive enough for their liking. But here is my beef with that opinion. That is how a premier striker should fight. A jiujitsu guy stymies his opponent in the guard and prevents damage that way. A wrestler smothers his opponent by being on top and raining down blows and avoids damage that way. A striker uses good footwork, evasive maneuvering and counterattacks to avoid damage. There is nothing at all wrong with this!!!

I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH!

I have seen people praise George St. Pierre for laying on top if an opponent for 5 rounds and smothering him - not doing much damage but doing just enough to keep from being told by the referee to stand back up. This is effectively identical to what Silva did in the Demian Maia (though Silva did clown him a bit more than GSP ever does), and Sliva gets trounced in blogs and on TV for it. GSP and others seem to be more exciting because it is clear that they are in a fight - they are in constant contact with their opponents, whether on top or on bottom. People have become so enamored of the BJJ and Wrestling styles they forget that you do not have to get into a wrestling match to win a fight. In fact, I would argue that the striking style is more effective - fights start on their feet and a small striker can put out a much larger opponent the same way a small BJJ fighter can take out someone bigger. But in wrestling and infighting in general, the bigger person has an advantage against the smaller, just by virtue of weight and leverage. One need look no further than Roy "Big Country" Nelson to see this.

Yes, Nelson is a well-trained and well-rounded fighter, but he can smother someone better than he is by virtue of his size. In any kind of ground fighting, the bigger person has a huge advantage unless the smaller one is much better trained. The same is true in striking, of course, but I would argue that it takes less training to become a proficient striker in terms of self defense, and you have an easier out in running away after you inflict damage (this is strictly from a self-defense perspective not an MMA sport one).

But nonetheless, Anderson Silva avoiding damage on his feet should be lauded not derided, and if you think that this is not "exciting" enough than I would say that you are probably ignorant of the technique involved. Demian Maia had no answer for Silva's superior striking, and Silva should not have to come forward and prove that after handily winning the first three rounds. Maia should be scorned for not attempting to finish the fight in the last two rounds, because if Silva was actually tired (as many of his detractors claim) then Maia threw away his only opportunity to win. If Silva was not tired, it was still on Maia to try and win, because he had clearly lost the first three rounds. To fault Silva for this is the height of ignorance.

You can fault Silva for some of the unsportsmanlike ways in which he comported himself in the fight, but that is still forgivable, given that his opponent did not want to bother fighting him. But to conclude, just realize that the fight game is about inflicting damage on your opponent while avoiding taking damage yourself. Whether this is accomplished through grappling or striking is insignificant, and people are so conditioned to the infighting that occurs in the UFC, they forget the true skill involved in avoiding the infighting altogether. That is not at all an easy thing to do, and takes just as much skill and talent as anything else in the UFC.

On the Definition of Marriage

And I ask myself, should I really go here? I have a variety of thoughts on the subject and the knee-jerk reaction to my definition by someone who does not read thoroughly is "my gosh - he's anti-homosexual". So I am not even sure if I should address this topic, but what the hell.

First, I don't care what you do with another consenting adult (or group of consenting adults, for that matter) - within certain parameters of public safety and public decency. One should not, for example, hold an orgy on one's front lawn. The public safety bit is a little more difficult to pin down, but hinges on not trying to kill each other during sexual activity. Beyond that, what you do in the bedroom (or any other room for that matter) is nobody's business but the people involved, and anyone else they want to include in the conversation.

But once the term "marriage" gets involved, everyone gets their panties in a twist. Lets try to look at this from a historical perspective first, then move on from there. Both sides of the gay/traditional marriage try to co-opt the history for their own movement, but I am afraid that the heterosexuals win out on the history angle.

But don't throw your hands up in exasperation (if you are for gay marriage) or exultation (if you are for "traditional" marriage) just yet. While the historical precedent for homosexual marriage is really nowhere in any society, save for a few Roman Emperors and other Roman upper echelon folk (where it was clearly an exception to the norm), there is a lot of precedent for homosexual long-term committed relationships; they were simply never called marriages.

In ancient Greece, particularly, it was common for men to take male lovers, because, though you were expected to marry and have a wife who bore you children, women were thought of in many circles as less than men, and only another man could truly understand love (this was not the position of Socrates, interestingly enough, and the way Plato describes it, he had some issues with Athenian men as a result, but that is for another time).

History is rife with examples of this kind of relationship, but it has never been granted the status of "marriage" in any but those rare Roman cases (in one case a male emperor reputedly married a male eunuch who he forced to impersonate the wife that the emperor had killed - I believe that is how the story goes). Marriage has always been a man and a woman, a man and several women, or more rarely a woman and several men.

And this is where I take a bit of an abrupt turn. In all of this discussion, polygamy has a much stronger history than either gay marriage or "traditional" marriage. And yet this is completely excluded from the discussion. Why is it disallowed? Utah was forced to drop polygamy before it was allowed to become a state. There are laws against bigamy all over the place, and yet there is no hue and cry to undo these, even though they are clearly discriminate solely based on a lifestyle choice.

Of course, were polygamy allowed, it would foul up the tax code something fierce - they would have to have different scales for three and four and five adult person households, etc. There are several fairly easy ways around this, but it would take a pretty significant revision of the tax code to deal with it.

The reason, historically, that marriage has been defined as it has is that the family is intended as a medium for procreation and passing on mores, social norms, and customs. Up until recently, this was outside the purview of the homosexual couple. With artificial insemination and adoption being much more available now, as well as homosexuality no longer being considered a mental illness, this is changing. Marriages and families are no longer solely for the generation of children, and there are a number of modern day issues that are important for married couples. The issue of visiting in a hospital and potentially making life-and-death decisions for a spouse is terribly important. Inheritance and jointly owned property and rights upon the death of a spouse are also crucial issues, as are citizenship issues.

But the real problem comes down to the word. Marriage is a religious ceremony, and has sacramental connotations. A church can and should have its own rules about who can or cannot marry (incidentally, the Catholic Church will probably never allow gay marriage until priests are allowed to marry - the celibate priesthood is the one place a devout gay Catholic male can go, and if gays could marry, you would see a radical decline in men becoming priests). The problem becomes severe when the state issues "marriage licences". Of course, a stable family unit is the basis for any society, and this is why the state has always intermingled itself in the marriage business. Especially as the society gets more complex, the legal ramifications of marriage and divorce become extreme.

But here is the real problem: marriage now implies love, even with the state licence. You aren't supposed to marry for the tax benefit (if there is one), and you certainly are not allowed to marry just to grant someone citizenship (this is illegal, I believe). But why not? The state should be involved in only the contractual obligations involved in a marriage - the so-called "civil union" aspects of it. The issue would get a lot clearer if the state just issues civil union licences and gets out of the whole marriage business. Leave that to the churches - the state does not issue Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, or any other Sacrament, Catholic or otherwise (and obviously, I am Catholic, which is why I am using the term "Sacrament"). If people have fiscal reasons for engaging in this contract, let them. Of course, what about polygamy? Liberals are going to duck that one forever, because it makes them way more uncomfortable than gay marriage - gay marriage panders to a voting bloc of theirs, polygamy does not.

Long story short, the state should not be in the marriage business, but it should deal with the appropriate legal ramifications of any union in terms of property rights, etc., and the state should provide equal protection to the citizens that make it up (according to the US Constitution), so there is no reason to oppose the state such licences - the term marriage, however should be reserved for the churches, and if the church of which you are a member does not recognize your relationship, join one that does.

Personally, I need neither the state nor a religious institution to validate my relationship - we do that ourselves (with some help from family and friends).

By the way, while I spent a lot of time on the history of marriage, and the heterosexual nature thereof, history itself is not a sufficient reason to be for or against something. History provides context, but it does not provide answers, and we should have the courage to embrace history when it serves us, and discard it when it does not.

A perfect example are the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. These were codified and written out precisely because there was not much historical precedent for them, and the ratifying states wanted guarantees that the Federal government would not overreach.

Both sides of the gay marriage argument want history to be on their side, but it does not matter a whit. What matters is the rights of the individuals involved, and right now the state does a good job of fouling everything up by inserting itself in a religious matter.

That is enough for now, not like anyone will ever read this.