2014 — 3 August: Sunday
The cares of a somewhat sleepless night1 are now being soothed by Rossini's "William Tell" overture — or is that the Loan Arranger? — and further dispersed by a cuppa. It's sunny, but a delicious two degrees or so cooler than of late.
I cannot believe...
... the UK guvmint tells porkie pies. Or, at best, seeks to 'redact' embarrassing information on the point of being released on the other side of the Pond. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked. Oh, wait, no I'm not. (Link.)
Mind you, John Pilger got to the same place a while ago too. (Link.)
It does indeed seem to be the case that, no matter who you vote for, the guvmint gets in.
Oh my sainted aunt
The "right to be forgotten" — which basically seems to mean "I demand the right to be unlinked from any result I don't like that a Google web index search drags into the sunlight" — sounds like such good fun:
Among the data now "hidden" from Google is an article about the 2009 Muslim conversion of Adam Osborne, brother of the chancellor, George Osborne.
Golly. My finger is so very far from the pulse of modern life...
I've read...
... just one story by Boris Vian (The Dead Fish [1955]) which appears in Damon Knight's anthology "13 French SF stories" (1965). It's pretty revolting. Gawd alone knows how it was turned into a film in 1989, but it was. According to Knight's notes, Vian died of a heart attack in 1959 while watching the screening of the movie "I'll spit on your grave" that had been based on his novel. Harsh criticism. I can't say I shall be rushing out to see "Mood Indigo", filmed from another Vian novel by Michel Gondry. Christa and I gave up on Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" though I found his "The Science of Sleep" rather quirky.
I was taken...
... by this extract:
Margaret Thatcher's Big Bang, Gordon Brown's endorsement of light-touch regulation, and the wealthy's convenient belief that fantastic bonuses were no more than financiers' just deserts (sic) died that morning — not with a bang but a Weimar. Seven years on and rightwing intellectuals still cannot accept that their certainties no longer make sense. Like old men at a bar, they block out the present and relive the moment when they were young and filled with audacious vigour; the days when Thatcher was in power and conservative thinktanks could propose the most outlandish privatisations and see them adopted and, apparently, succeed.
... though the article as a whole (and many of the comments it's attracted) did little to add much light to the debate. I hadn't made the connection between (The Right Hon Matthew, 5th Viscount) Ridley's science writing and his chairmanship (following literally in his father's footsteps) of the ill-fated (and, I think it's safe to assume, spectacularly badly-run) Northern Rock bank.
The wondrous Cerys...
... has just played the even more wondrous Julie Covington singing "Queen of Lights" from her 1971 album The Beautiful Changes. I recognised her voice as soon as I returned to the living room from yet another fruitless attempt to find that dagnabbited "Pogo" book that Carol gave me (and which I first noticed was AWOL from my books database on this day in 2010). At that time, it was offsite in one of the 178 cartons in temporary storage during the Great Central Heating Upheaval. But where is it now? Good question.
Life's little quantum uncertainties
Just two days ago, I noted that, at one point earlier in my life, I vaguely contemplated the idea of a life in physics. Come back with me to Chicago in 1933. Let's drop in on Werner Heisenberg, referring to the partial reflection of light by a half-silvered mirror. He was reported (by Alfred Landé) as saying:
There is, then, a definite probability of finding the photon either in the one or the other part of the divided Ψ-wave packet. Now, if an experiment finds the photon in the reflected part, say, then the probability of finding it in the other part immediately becomes zero. The experiment at the position of the reflected part thus exerts a kind of action, a 'reduction of the wave packet', at the distant point occupied by the transmitted part. And one sees that this action is propagated with a velocity greater than that of light.
The chap I'm actually quoting now (the late WA Scott Murray, writing in the seventh part of his series "A heretic's guide to modern physics" in the March 1983 issue of Wireless World) adds:
Feeling the draught, perhaps, he then went on to say, "... This 'action' can never be used for the transmission of signals".
By all accounts Heisenberg made this statement with a completely straight face and believed in what he was saying. It is manifestly nonsense, but for that very reason it may be difficult to make a rational reply to it. The argument that light waves are electromagnetic waves which carry energy and therefore cannot collapse faster than the velocity of light is not quite sufficient because Heisenberg has dodged it by referring to "Ψ-waves". He is, however, proposing that something associated with the photon must collapse in this way.
The "Letters" column was predictably filling up with a mixture of interest and personal abuse by May 1983. And, I note sadly, there's still no sign of an FTL "Ansible" communications device, either. Move along. Is it time for tea yet?
Tomorrow...
... is looking (currently) like the least-worst weather day for our next country ramble. Take us out, Mr Sulu.