Archive of entries posted on 20th May 2021

Thursday Night Open Thread: My Hunch Was Right

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If you substitute Biden for Alice in Through the Looking-Glass, the story works.

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Biden was rambling on in this way when he reached the wood: it looked very cool and shady. “Well, at any rate it’s a great comfort,” he said as he stepped under the trees, “after being so hot, to get into the—into what?” he went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. “I mean to get under the—under the—under this, you know!” putting his hand on the trunk of the tree. “What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it’s got no name—why, to be sure it hasn’t!”

He stood silent for a minute, thinking: then he suddenly began again. “Then it really has happened, after all! And now, who am I? I will remember, if I can! I’m determined to do it!” But being determined didn’t help much, and all he could say, after a great deal of puzzling, was, “L, I know it begins with L!”

Just then the Fawning media came wandering by: it looked at Joe with its large gentle eyes, but didn’t seem at all frightened. “Here then! Here then!” Joe said, as he held out his hand and tried to stroke it; but it only started back a little, and then stood looking at him again.

“What do you call yourself?” the Fawning media said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it had!

“I wish I knew!” thought poor Joe Biden. He answered, rather sadly, “Nothing, just now.”

“Think again,” it said: “that won’t do.”

Joe thought, but nothing came of it. “Please, would you tell me what you call yourself?” he said timidly. “I think that might help a little.”

“I’ll tell you, if you’ll move a little further on,” the Fawning media said. “I can’t remember here.”

So they walked on together though the wood, Joe with his arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawning media, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawning media gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Joe’s arms. “I self-identify as a Fawn!” it cried out in a voice of delight, “and, dear me! you’re a human child!” A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown nose, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.

Joe stood looking after it, almost ready to cry with vexation at having lost his dear little “fellow-traveller” so suddenly. “However, I know my name now.” he said, “that’s some comfort. Joe—Obiden—I won’t forget it again. And now, which of these finger-posts ought I to follow, I wonder?”

It was not a very difficult question to answer, as there was only one road through the wood, and the two finger-posts both pointed along it. “I’ll settle it,” Joe said to himself, “when the road divides and they point different ways.”

But this did not seem likely to happen. He went on and on, a long way, but wherever the road divided there were sure to be two finger-posts pointing the same way, one marked “TO TWEEDLEDEM’S HOUSE” and the other “TO THE HOUSE OF TWEEDLEREPUB.”

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Do you have something you’d like to share? A link? A joke? Some words of wisdom? A topic to discuss? It’s our nightly Open Thread, and you have the floor.

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Song Parody: The Sound of Science

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Not based on Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence.” Nope.

A Eulogy To Science

♩♪

Hollow carcass, my old friend:
It’s sad you came to such an end.
Because division softly creeping —
Leftist seeds into your ground seeping —
Brought derision that supplanted your fair name
And still remains
Using the sounds
Of science.

In Greta’s dream we’d walk, alone,
Narrow streets of cobblestones
‘Neath the flicker of 8 street lamps
You’d turn your collar to the cold and damp
And a guy could be stabbed for the use of a neon light
They fought that fight
Upon the ground
Of science.

And in a naked grab I saw
Ten million dollars for Al Gore
People watching without thinking
Holding hearings without listening
People “righting wrongs” (“Consensus” never cared)
No one dared
Declare unsound
The science.

Fauci said: “You do not know
Science must put on a show!
Wear a mask or we might grab you!
Bare your arms that we might jab you!
But still arms must not be freely borne!”
No one mourned
Because dissent
Was silenced.

And the people bowed their pride:
Let the peon god decide.
And the Founders had left their warning
In the documents they were forming:

By design said
The treasures and profits
That are Madoff of new vaccines
And quarantines
Are buried
In the shroud
Of science.

♩♪

10

Straight Line of the Day: Scientists Have Found a Loophole In Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Which Means…

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Straight Line of the Day: Scientists have found a loophole in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which means…

Scientist find a loophole in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle
Live Science | 05/15/2021 | Ben Turner

At its simplest, entanglement describes the idea that two particles can have an intrinsic connection that persists no matter how far apart they are. The particles are ethereally coupled: measure something about one particle, such as its position, and you’ll also glean information about the position of its entangled partner; make a change to one particle and your actions will teleport a corresponding change to the other, all at speeds faster than the speed of light.

The scientists in the first experiment… placed tiny drums, each around 10 micrometers long, on a crystal chip, before supercooling them to near absolute zero. With the drums chilled, the chances of them interacting with something outside of the system was dramatically reduced, enabling the scientists to coax the drums into an entangled state, vibrating in sync as they were hit with regular pulses of microwaves.

A second team of researchers… in Finland set out to use their own quantum drum system to sidestep one of quantum physics’ strictest rules…

First introduced by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1927, the principle sets a hard limit to the absolute accuracy we can obtain when measuring some of the physical properties of a particle. .. that at its smallest, most fundamental level the universe is a fuzzy and unpredictable beast, never permitting complete information about it to be known.

But the second team of researchers found a way around this. By hitting their quantum drum continuously with photons, or light particles, like they would a snare drum, the researchers were able to tune their drums into an entangled state. Then, instead of measuring each individual drum’s position and momentum, the researchers treated the entangled drums as if they were a single, combined drum, and measured the imaginary drum’s position without affecting its velocity.

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