It seems to have finally calmed down, we've had little or no wind for the last 36 hours, maybe the weather's finally turned. I'll keep my wings crossed.
Havelock left yesterday for the sea. He looked so sad and lonely as he waddled off into the distance. Just one lone penguin on a mission. I know why he does it but it still doesn't make an awful lot of sense to me. Being on your own out there is dangerous especially if a storm blows up and you cannot find shelter. We always return to the sea in groups just in case. It may only be a small huddle we can put together but it's way better than nothing at all. Still it's his choice......Sometimes I wonder if what he really wants is to get caught in the open in a storm.........
Sparky's looking after the egg at the moment. "Just this once," he said, which means I'll have to ask 'Mr Artistic Vision' the next time. Oh well, could be worse, there could be no-one to ask.
Dropped by the Quantum Physics page on the Einstein for dummies blog earlier. It's getting very philosophical, which reminded me of something I read a few years back, 'the Tao of Physics' by Fritjof Capra. Now Capra is a physicist, and I suspect a buddhist, and the thrust of the book is that western philosophical thought since Aristotle ill prepares a human mind for quantum mechanics. It's often deterministic and whether it's explicity stated or not, dualist. There is a 'perception machine', your body, and an 'I' that actually processes the information into a world view, what Dennett calls the Cartesian theatre. 'I' is the audience. A society steeped in that kind of thought finds the fuzziness of quantum mechanics, where there are only probabilities, very hard to deal with. They get hooked into the apparent paradoxes.
Capra's argument is that eastern philosophies are much closer to providing a human insight into quantum mechanics because they emphasise the idea that the reality you perceive is just that, one you perceive. The real reality lies elsewhere, you just have to find a path to it. This in turn reminded me of the day I 'got' the two slit experiment.
You shine light through two slits in a screen onto another screen. You get interference, bands of light and dark as peaks and troughs in the wave cancel or reinforce each other. Light travels in waves. QED! But then you drop the light source so it only fires one photon (discrete quantum of light) at a time. You still get interference. The photon goes through both slits at the same time and interferes with itself! Bizarre? So we'll nail it and put detectors at both slits and see what fires. One detector fires and no interference. I puzzled, thought, screamed for days, weeks, months. How? How could the photon 'know' it was going to measured? Then one day I understood. Not in a way that I can explain or put into words, I just got it! It made sense! The fuzziness made sense. I suppose it's sounds a bit 'new agey' (and perhaps it is) but somehow I just got it in an intuitive sense. I got relativity the same way, one day it just clicked!
It's a little like the zen koan "Imagine the sound of two hands clapping. Now imagine the sound of one hand clapping." Now I say this to my 'brethren' all the time when they're bleating their pathetic little defiance to the wind. For me, I have to wave my one wing as though I am clapping both together, but after ten minutes or so of waving, I swear I know what it sounds like. I 'hear' something at the end of each 'wave' as my wing stops. And it's not the sound of two wings clapping. But then I have to force myself to think like you - I don't normally - and maybe that makes a difference.
The blog also came up with a strange little coincidence.
Please.
Dropped by the Quantum Physics page on the Einstein for dummies blog earlier. It's getting very philosophical, which reminded me of something I read a few years back, 'the Tao of Physics' by Fritjof Capra. Now Capra is a physicist, and I suspect a buddhist, and the thrust of the book is that western philosophical thought since Aristotle ill prepares a human mind for quantum mechanics. It's often deterministic and whether it's explicity stated or not, dualist. There is a 'perception machine', your body, and an 'I' that actually processes the information into a world view, what Dennett calls the Cartesian theatre. 'I' is the audience. A society steeped in that kind of thought finds the fuzziness of quantum mechanics, where there are only probabilities, very hard to deal with. They get hooked into the apparent paradoxes.
Capra's argument is that eastern philosophies are much closer to providing a human insight into quantum mechanics because they emphasise the idea that the reality you perceive is just that, one you perceive. The real reality lies elsewhere, you just have to find a path to it. This in turn reminded me of the day I 'got' the two slit experiment.
You shine light through two slits in a screen onto another screen. You get interference, bands of light and dark as peaks and troughs in the wave cancel or reinforce each other. Light travels in waves. QED! But then you drop the light source so it only fires one photon (discrete quantum of light) at a time. You still get interference. The photon goes through both slits at the same time and interferes with itself! Bizarre? So we'll nail it and put detectors at both slits and see what fires. One detector fires and no interference. I puzzled, thought, screamed for days, weeks, months. How? How could the photon 'know' it was going to measured? Then one day I understood. Not in a way that I can explain or put into words, I just got it! It made sense! The fuzziness made sense. I suppose it's sounds a bit 'new agey' (and perhaps it is) but somehow I just got it in an intuitive sense. I got relativity the same way, one day it just clicked!
It's a little like the zen koan "Imagine the sound of two hands clapping. Now imagine the sound of one hand clapping." Now I say this to my 'brethren' all the time when they're bleating their pathetic little defiance to the wind. For me, I have to wave my one wing as though I am clapping both together, but after ten minutes or so of waving, I swear I know what it sounds like. I 'hear' something at the end of each 'wave' as my wing stops. And it's not the sound of two wings clapping. But then I have to force myself to think like you - I don't normally - and maybe that makes a difference.
The blog also came up with a strange little coincidence.
Someone was confused about half-lives (of isotopes), ie exponential decay. The first half of some isotope decays in time 't', leaving half left. Half of that (one quarter) decays in time 't' too and so on.She didn't understand why it wasn't the same as a pat of butter. If enviromental conditions remain static half the butter will melt in time 't' and half of the reaminder will melt in time 1/2 't'. The answer has to do with probabilities and stuff but what was intriguing was her name, Jael (Yael). Now Jael was one of those biblical 'kick-ass' women who got one over on their enemy in (usually) violent fashion. Jael drove a tent peg through Sisera's head while he slept having been served 'butter' or some curdled milk drink by Jael. Strange, huh?
Oh well, only another couple of weeks and Fricka will be back.Please.
You are more well-read than I have given you credit for. Forgive me.
ReplyDelete