BS: The Mother of all BS threads

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 12 Oct 05 - 05:19 PM

I'm out there, trying to get in, but the 'cat wasn't open.

merses profundo: pulchrior evenit.       -Horace

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: MMario
Date: 12 Oct 05 - 04:09 PM

Remember when you shoot the breeze that air doesn't have much stopping power and watch where you point the weapon!

I'm still in "recover from the wedding" mode. For the first time I am glad I don't have kids of my own. Associated adult is exhausting enough!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Oct 05 - 03:57 PM

Mom, I'm feeling better today, though things still ache a little. Narcotic painkillers do have a role to play in our lives. Nothing like taking something at bedtime so you don't wake yourself up every time you move on the sore spot.

Bee-you-tee-ful sunny crisp fall day here today in North Texas. Warming up a bit too much this afternoon, but it will get better every day. The culmination of good fall weather is when this darned Daylight Savings Time ends and we get the pleasure of sleeping an hour longer. (It's even better if your bladder doesn't insist you get up at the old time).

I'm just shooting the breeze until someone else comes along to take up the slack. Rapaire, Amos, BWL, Rustic, Bunn--anyone out there?

Hellooo ooo ooo

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Oct 05 - 10:47 PM

Groaannnnn. . .

It was one of those days, lots of battles to wage, won most of 'em, a couple are pending. Had a chunk of skin (that wouldn't heal) frozen on my thumb and got a tetnus shot (did it on the same arm, might as well not have BOTH sides feeling bad). That puts long pithy science posts way outta my league. Want to write a little summary for us, Amos?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 11 Oct 05 - 06:35 PM

I don't think they were in time for them. But they were all top-rated professional dictators, all right.

In other news, the mystery of the universe continues to unfold, or split, as the case may be:

Can an Electron be in Two Places at the Same Time?

October 11, 2005
      
Max Planck Researchers in Berlin show that for electrons from nitrogen molecules, the wave-particle character exists simultaneously.

In something akin to a double-slit experiment, scientists at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, in co-operation with researchers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, have shown for the first time that electrons have characteristics of both waves and particles at the same time and in virtually the push of a button can be switched back and forth between these states.

Normally, we think of building blocks as static objects.

The researchers provided evidence that disrupting the reflective symmetry of these molecules by introducing two different heavy isotopes, in this case N14 and N15, leads to a partial loss of coherence. The electrons partially begin to localise on one of the two, now distinguishable, atoms. The results could have implications for the building and control of "artificial molecules", which are made of semiconductor quantum dots, and are a possible component of quantum computers. (Nature, September 29, 2005).

A hundred years ago, we took the first steps in recognising, at the level of elementary physical events, the dual character of nature that had been postulated in natural philosophy. Albert Einstein was the first who saw Max Planck's quantum hypothesis leading to this dual character. Einstein suggested the photon have an electromagnetic wave character, although photons had previously been considered as particles. That was the quintessence of his work on the photoelectric effect. Later in 1926, it was deBroglie that recognised that all the building blocks of nature known to us as particles - electrons, protons, etc. - behave like waves under certain conditions.

In its totality, therefore, nature is dual. None of its components can only be considered as a particle or as a wave. To understand this fact, Niels Bohr introduced in 1923 the Complementarity Principle: simply put, every component in nature has a particle, as well as a wavelike character, and it depends only on the observer which character he sees at any given time. In other words, the experiment determines which characteristic one is measuring - particle or wave.

His whole life long, Einstein suspected that natural characteristics actually depend on the observer. He believed that there must be a reality independent of the observer. Indeed, quantum physics has simply come to accept as a given over the years that there does not seem to be an independent reality. Physics has ceased questioning this, because experiments have confirmed it repeatedly and with a growing accuracy.

The best example is Young's double-slit experiment. Coherent light is passed through a barrier with two slits. On an observation screen behind it, there is a pattern made of light and dark stripes. The experiment can be carried out not only with light, but also particles - for example, electrons. If single electrons are sent, one after the other, through the open Young double slit, then a stripe-shaped interference pattern appears on the photo plate behind it. The pattern contains no information about the route that the electron took. But if one of the two slits is closed, an image appears of the other open slit from which one can directly read the path of the electron. What this experiment does not produce, however, is a stripe pattern and situation report. For that, a molecular double slit experiment is required that is based not upon position-momentum uncertainty, but on reflective symmetry.

The double-slit was voted the most beautiful experiment of all time in a 2002 poll by Physics World, published by England's Institute of Physics. Although each electron seems to go alone through one of the two slits, at the end a wavelike interference pattern is created, as if the electron split while it went through the slit, but then was subsequently re-unified. But if one of the slits is closed, or an observer sees which slit the electron went through, then it behaves like a perfectly normal particle. That particle is only at one position at one time, but not at the same time. So, depending on how the experiment is carried out, the electron is either at position A, position B, or at both at the same time.

But Bohr's Complementarity Principle, which explains this ambiguity, requires that one can only observe one of the two electron manifestations at any given time - either as a wave or a particle, but not both simultaneously. This remains a certainty in every experiment, despite all the ambiguity in quantum physics. Either a system is in a state of "both/and" like a wave, or "either/or" like a particle, relating to its localisation. This is, in principle, a consequence of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which says that given a complementary pair of measurements - for example, position and momentum - only one can be determined exactly at the same time. Information about the other measurement is lost, proportionally.

Recently there has been a set of experiments suggesting that these various manifestations of material can be "carried over into" each other - in other words, they can switch from one form to the other and, under certain conditions, back again. This set of experiments is called quantum markers and quantum erasers. Researchers have shown in the last few years that for atoms and photons - and now, electrons - "both/and" and "either/or" exist side-by-side. In other words, there is a grey zone of complementarity. There are therefore experimentally demonstrable conditions in which the material appears to be both a wave and a particle.

These situations can be described with a duality relation. It can be seen as an extended Complementarity Principle for quantum physics; it can also be labelled a co-existence principle. It says that manifestations of material which would normally be mutually exclusive - e.g., local and not local, coherent and not coherent - are indeed measurable and make themselves evident, in a particular "transition area". One can speak of partial localisation and partial coherence, or partial visibility and partial differentiability. These are measurements that are connected to each other via the duality relation.

---

Just when you thought it was safe to go back through the double slit....


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Oct 05 - 05:08 PM

In purusing the Martel Electronics catalog that came today, I find that the Dictaphone DTP1244 mini cassette portable recorder is listed as being "For the Professional Dictator."

Did Hitler have one? Stalin? Idi Amin?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Oct 05 - 04:47 PM

Still a few hundred posts till final Shatnerization.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Oct 05 - 12:33 PM

No. I'm but a simple student of Nature, merely an intelligent observer of the Great Cycle of Life, just one who knows how the Great Mandela rolls.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 11 Oct 05 - 12:28 PM

Oh, Rapaire, what a wonderful analysis -- it really, you know, penetrates into the subtle, secret workings of the mind of a female Great White shark.

How were you able to do that?

Surely you are drawing on resources and experience from which you have acquired this sort of wisdom?

I bet you were a dogfish in a past life, right?

A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: MMario
Date: 11 Oct 05 - 09:37 AM

Hi Mom! I'm home, I survived the weekend - and now I want to sleep for a week.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Oct 05 - 09:07 AM

Ya know, I don't think that the shark thinks that it was something very much. I figger she was out there with some friends, drinking white wine and nibbling on people's toes, when the conversation turned to males. She talks about it for a while and then heads home. When she gets there, she's feeling a bit "frisky" so she goes out looking for, well, you know.

But there's no male shark anyway around that she can look at without tossing her cookies. Still feeling that way, she keeps looking, getting farther and farther away and getting more and more "frisky." Finally, she met this guy off the coast of South Africa, they had a few drinks, maybe went to a movie, had a few more drinks, and Nature Took Her Course.

Next morning, she wakes up and he's off at some feeding frenzy. Disgusted, she takes a shower and heads for home. Maybe stops for some coffee and a croissant before leaving SA. Back on the GBR, she tells her friends, over tea and gelignite on white, that those foriegn men aren't all they're claimed to be.

Simple. No big deal to the shark.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 11 Oct 05 - 08:13 AM

The most chivalrous fish of the ocean,
She swam far in search of a potion,
She crossed the salt sea,
AS fast as can be,
Which caused a great commotion!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 11:36 PM

I heard about that shark on the radio news. Pretty interesting.

The most chivalrous fish of the ocean. . .

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 11:10 PM

Been there and done that, but never quite so far, so fast.

On the other hand while I am white and sometimes great I am never Great and Whote all the time.


Abraham Lincoln said that.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 09:58 PM

I went to SLC to pick up Pat at the airport. She got out of Denver JUST ahead of the clobber; mechanical problems delayed their takeoff. Better Denver than here!

As for that shark, Amos:

...she was possibly looking for a mate. It's that oooolllldddd thing, the smell of horomones in the water....

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 08:57 PM

In other news, something mighty fishy is going on:

WHITE SHARK RUSHES ACROSS INDIAN OCEAN IN RECORD-BREAKING SWIM, October 08
A female white shark has stunned scientists by swimming from South Africa to Australia and back in record time, shattering assumptions about how the fish migrates and navigates, according to a study published on Thursday.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news7090.html

I wanna know what the deal is here with this woman shark.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 07:29 PM

You lucked out, Denver got clobbered. Good thing you had safe conditions for the drive home.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 06:32 PM

There's snow on the tops of the hills and the ridges are slightly outlined in white. Today it's 60 F. and brilliantly clear. Tomorrow and Wednesday, more of the same only a little warmer. Rained a little last week, which is where the snow Up High came from. SLC was, as usual, suffering from too much air pollution.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 06:07 PM

How's the weather up there? Winter yet?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 04:34 PM

So you escaped without any extra wives or orther major problems then?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 04:20 PM

Howdy, Ma. I'm back up home from that little trip to Salt Lake City. And danged glad to be here, lemme tell ya.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 04:01 PM

The only important thing that is not UP right now is Mom.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 10:20 AM

Upstreet, Upshire, Upsall, Upsettlington, Uphall, Upwell, Upton, Upwey, Uppark, Upholland and Upchurch

But can I find an uphill? No! I need somewhere with a total lack of originality in naming places. The colonies....

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 08:55 AM

And for MOAB, that best place is the top of the page, under the line!

A good rainy morning to you, Mom!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 07:23 AM

There's no doubt up is up, but it often seems people quibble over how far. But when you are down, there's a place for you among the Downs, just past the end of Lonely Street. The Downs are in west Sussex, of course, but Lonely Street is in (I believe) Memphis. It's a cyberspace thing.

Although there are no Downs in Paris or London, you can try being down and out there. Orwell near to them...(ugh!). But when you're up, any old place will serve.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Oct 05 - 01:16 AM

It's the normal plain ol' Celtic Music ads now. What you saw must have been an aberration. I'm bushed. Just checking in to see that Mom is comfortable. Now I'm off to my comfortable bed, after telling the kids to turn off the lights behind them. I work tomorrow, they have the day off from school. They're up watching movies I borrowed from the library last week.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 09 Oct 05 - 07:00 PM

kooweerup? Tweak the pronounciation to Koow-'eer-up, and it'll be the punch line to a bad joke...

Any idea why the Ads are now for wheel-clamping firms?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Oct 05 - 11:43 AM

I've been Up North. And up into Canada. And even sometimes I can even afford to fill 'er up.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: JennyO
Date: 09 Oct 05 - 11:36 AM

Here in Oz, we have Koo-wee-rup

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Oct 05 - 11:31 AM

Oops. Nurseries.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Oct 05 - 11:31 AM

This time of year the nursery's in the area are selling Johnny Jump-ups.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Oct 05 - 10:59 AM

Out here we've got giddy-ups. And Seven-Ups. And uptown. And upsy-daisies. And even some upyourses.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Oct 05 - 10:31 AM

Go to Sweden for Upsala (or Minnesota).

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 09 Oct 05 - 07:14 AM

Something i just noticed. Britian has( all place names)

Downs ( All across southern England)
Backs ( Cambridge)
Forths (Scotland)

But hasn't any ups!

There are tops, in the lake district, and uplands and such like , but no ups. Does somewhere else have them?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 09:59 PM

If the Idaho Legion ain't there, it's boring. Also safe. Some damned fool gave the Eat-Em-Up Kid a pint of hooch and some bullets last night. We usually don't let him have bullets, in fact we never let him have bullets, 'cause he would most likely damage himself and/or others. He kept nippin' at the hoochinoo as he tried to load the .25 caliber cartridges into his .45. Fortunately, he'd put 'em in one end and they'd fall straight out the other. It's a good thing that the hooch took effect before his cussin' got any more out of hand, 'cuz as it is he turned all the white Ford Explorers in his part of town bright blue, burned the paint off six houses and three fences, and plumb raised blisters on a bunch of nuns two miles off and six hunnert feet up in the hills. Worst thing was though, his cussin' also ignited the fuses in the powder house at the Caribooboo Mine, which caused the dynamite to explode, which brought about two hunnert ton of rock down the side of Elegant Mountain, which closed off the road to Pass Pass (so called because it was discovered by a bunch of bridge players, who bypassed it), which totally stopped the beer wagons from reaching the Legion Hovel.

The Kid is in big, deep doo-doo, but it sure was an admirable job of cussin'.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 09:37 PM

Boring is as boring does, Mister Rapaire. Those who have not wandered the Downs will have them forever in the afterlife, a little place called Upson. Judgement is self-destructive.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 08:43 PM

...So live, Pardner, that when yer summons comes ta join        
That there trail drive, which moves              
Ta that mysterious realm, where each shall pitch        
His bedroll 'round the silent chuckwagon of death,        
Ya don't go, like some city dude at night,        
Scourged ta his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed        
By an unfaltering trust in yer riata and saddle, approach yer grave              
Like one who wraps his old sugans         
Around him, and lies down ta pleasant dreams.
                      -- Robert Louis "Slim" Kipling
                         Thanatopsis (last few lines)

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 03:01 PM

Off the top of my head I'd guess that a lot of poetry from Texas has a cowboy flare, but I'm sure that sells a lot of poets short. I'll have to look around for some suitable submission.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 02:52 PM

As I said...boring! Only good things Kipling ever wrote was The Cremation of Sam Magee and Thanatopsis.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 02:26 PM

Shame on you Rapiere!

What happened in Sussex? Kipling did! Not the being born bit, but a large amount of his work is set in or is about the place.

Sussex, 1902.

God gave all men all earth to love,
But, since our hearts are small
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all;
That, as He watched Creation's birth,
So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
And see that it is good.

So one shall Baltic pines content,
As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove's droned lament
Before Levuka's Trade.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground-in a fair ground --
Yea, Sussex by the sea!

No tender-hearted garden crowns,
No bosonied woods adorn
Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,
But gnarled and writhen thorn --
Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,
And, through the gaps revealed,
Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim,
Blue goodness of the Weald.

Clean of officious fence or hedge,
Half-wild and wholly tame,
The wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge
As when the Romans came.
What sign of those that fought and died
At shift of sword and sword?
The barrow and the camp abide,
The sunlight and the sward.

Here leaps ashore the full Sou'west
All heavy-winged with brine,
Here lies above the folded crest
The Channel's leaden line,
And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,
And here, each warning each,
The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
Along the hidden beach.

We have no waters to delight
Our broad and brookless vales --
Only the dewpond on the height
Unfed, that never fails --
Whereby no tattered herbage tells
Which way the season flies --
Only our close-bit thyme that smells
Like dawn in Paradise.

Here through the strong and shadeless days
The tinkling silence thrills;
Or little, lost, Down churches praise
The Lord who made the hills:
But here the Old Gods guard their round,
And, in her secret heart,
The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found
Dreams, as she dwells, apart.

Though all the rest were all my share,
With equal soul I'd see
Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair,
Yet none more fair than she.
Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed,
And I will choose instead
Such lands as lie 'twixt Rake and Rye,
Black Down and Beachy Head.

I will go out against the sun
Where the rolled scarp retires,
And the Long Man of Wilmington
Looks naked toward the shires;
And east till doubling Rother crawls
To find the fickle tide,
By dry and sea-forgotten walls,
Our ports of stranded pride.

I will go north about the shaws
And the deep ghylls that breed
Huge oaks and old, the which we hold
No more than Sussex weed;
Or south where windy Piddinghoe's
Begilded dolphin veers,
And red beside wide-banked Ouse
Lie down our Sussex steers.

So to the land our hearts we give
Til the sure magic strike,
And Memory, Use, and Love make live
Us and our fields alike --
That deeper than our speech and thought,
Beyond our reason's sway,
Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
Yearns to its fellow-clay.

God gives all men all earth to love,
But, since man's heart is smal,
Ordains for each one spot shal prove
Beloved over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground-in a fair ground --
Yea, Sussex by the sea!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 01:01 PM

Yessss!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 01:00 PM

You getting hitched, MMario?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: MMario
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 12:38 PM

Hi mom - sorry I haven't been around - but as you know there is a family wedding this weekend - see you tuesday!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 11:28 AM

Actually, I do know about Adobe Walls. It was led by Quanah Parker, who is big here in Texas. His mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was abducted as a girl in Central Texas and lived happily for many years with the Commanche before she was "rescued." Quanah Parker was also a personal hero of an old friend of mine. I was in the process of getting some duplicates made of photos in our Special Collections as a gift, but my friend died. Alas, Parker died sometime after injury he sustained in a visit to Fort Worth. He and a friend were in a hotel room and one put out the light, not realizing that the gas was still flowing. The friend died.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: rumanci
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 10:55 AM

LOL
hmmmm
good job there's a big ocean between us to save you getting flushed too
Later !!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 10:49 AM

Right you are! Except, of course, decent drains would be nice there....

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: rumanci
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 10:45 AM

Ha ha ha
typical bloody Colonial only concentrating on the eastern bit.....grrrr !!
West is best .......mate
:-P
rum

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 10:44 AM

Okay then, SRS: What amazing thing happened at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 10:42 AM

Nothing of any importance to anyone anywhere at any time ever happened in Sussex. Sussex is the most boring part of...is it England? It's so boring I can't bring myself to actually remember Sussex. I mean, come on: Alicia, Countess of Eu? Walter Krips? Hastings, where Harold said, "Well, it's better than a poke in ey..."? The Gallowes of Whoorne? Paul Lewis? Boooooooooooooorrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggg!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Oct 05 - 10:42 AM

But Rap, I know about Joaquin Murietta! I've even read the novel! I've also learned some Texas history from Elmer Kelton novels. I also know some history of New York and Arizona and Tennessee and Kentucky, but mostly in Washington State. Texas isn't the place I expected to spend a couple of decades. It just happened.