Beo writes:
I hate it when people incessantly ask idiotic questions like, “if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? (Of COURSE it does, you ninny! The universe does not depend on your perception of it!)”
And then they act all smug, like they just said something intelligent.
So, my question is this: when you consider the effects of parallax, and the difficulties involved in the relatively infinitesimal length of the base used for ASA triangulation in which errors as small as one-millionth of a degree can result in a measurement error of tens of thousands of light years, why do some scientists pretend that they actually know how far away stars are? Are they all just a pack of liars, or are they just trying to impress women or something?
Since the beginning of time, everything man has ever done was to impress women. Topple empires, invent computers, shower daily – all to impress women. Why did John Kennedy vow to send men to the moon? Because one day Marilyn Monroe probably said something like, “I bet it would be neat to go to the moon.”
Probably one day some woman said to a scientist, “I wonder how far away those twinkly things in the sky are?” Thus the scientist ran out to do some hasty calculation (and I bet he still didn’t get any). So keep that in mind when reviewing any scientific data.
Reed the Viking writes:
1. Sandy Berger was caught putting documents in his pants and in his socks. Bill Clinton had a cat named Socks. Was the Cat somehow involved, or was it coincidence? Sam Berger got caught because the truth came out cause he couldn’t keep his pants on. Bill Clinton also had problems keeping his garments on. Is Sandy Berger having relations with an intern? How is Hilary involved? Is she an Avatar of Evil?
2. Are sea-monkeys bad like land monkey’s? If so, what are they plotting? Can Aquaman speak to them and convince them of good? If not, who would win in a fight; Aquaman vs. Sea-monkey’s? One last thing; What would you do for a Klondike bar?
1. Hillary is the Avatar of Evil, but that has nothing to do with the rest of the question. As for Socks the cat, I don’t trust cats and think he was probably involved. As for what Sandy Berger was up to, he was probably just stuffing his pants to impress women.
2. Sea monkeys are just stupid little shrimp sold to gullible children. Even Aquaman can beat them by just drinking one of those little aquariums they come in (and he could understand their screams of terror– muh ha ha).
As for what I’d do for a Klondike bar, I’d go to the store and buy one… but only if I was already going to the store to pick up a few other items.
Carl from Timonium, MD asks:
So when are you and SarahK meeting in real life?
That reminds me, didn’t I have an announcement or something to tell you people…
right wing duck writes:
Lately I’ve been reading about monkies that can walk on two legs. I also saw the movie I-Robot. I’m concerned. What if they monkies and the robots take over. The robots are logical and would vote republican. Monkies are stupid and throw their own feces, much like democrats. However, monkies can reproduce. Therefore they would outnumber the robots. Eventually, we would have a whole congress and senate full of democrat monkies. help me Frank. I lose sleep over this every night.
But robots build more robots. Isn’t that what I, Robot was about? I didn’t go see that movie because it looked stupid.
Frank Answers™ is now by invitation only, so stop sending me questions because I hate you.
We don’t send you questions because you hate us. We send you questions to humor you.
You’re going to get shot if you don’t give us that announcement. This is your final warning. 🙂
congress includes the senate. the “and senate” was redundant…
I haev to say it …
In regards to: “if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?”
Sound is just the PERCEPTION of propelled vibrations in mass. Therefore, while the objects around the tree would still VIBRATE since the tree fell, it becomes a semantic arguement about whether “sound” is a perception, or an accurate description of the vibration.
If no one had a sense of hearing, we wouldn’t call it sound, we’d say that “everything around the tree vibrated.” That statement would be true. A sound is simply how we perceive that vibration through our senses.
All right! The big announcement is on it’s way! What can it be? Is it that Soylent Green is made of people? I can’t wait, the suspense is killing me…Holy cow a blue car! What was I talking about?
Craig1f is a smacktard.
Here is the definition of sound. The definition actually shows that sound will remain sound, whether it can be percieved or not.
I just realized something. Osama Bin Laden said he would have assasinations. What if they were talking about Frank J? It makes sense doesn’t it? It would demoralize half of the country! Hide Frank Hide.
You had something to do with this site, didn’t you Frank?
http://www.moveonplease.org/
Announcement? There’s an announcement?
Announce already, dammit!
You hate me? Must be because I am beautiful.
Also I don’t buy shirts from people who hate me.
Wonder if the big news is that Frank is no longer a virgin.
If a tree falls in the woods with no one around to hear it, how do the hippies spin it to make it Bush’s fault?
Beltway Traffic Jam
A rainy Thursday linkfest:
Black-5 presents The Night Before Christmas (Cambodian Version).
Erick-Woods Erickson gives an insider’s account of cloak-and-dagger exploits in a small political campaign.
Courtney Knapp gives some helpful tips…
By saying, “It’s Bush’s fault! No bark for oil!”
Take quantum physics into it (or a theory anyway) and the tree doesn’t fall. It’s just fallen when someone walks there to find it. Otherwise, it’s there. If something cannot be percieved/witnessed, it doesn’t happen.
RWD, I was going to make a joke about how the monkies (the old groovy-rock band) and robots taking over could affect things, but then I double checked, and the band’s name is actually spelled Monkees. So no joke to be had. Now if monkeys took over, well, we’d have issues.
If a tree falls in a forest and kills a mime does he make a sound?
Does anyone care?
Whoa… You posted at 3:33. That’s cool.
“Whoa… You posted at 3:33. That’s cool.”
I strive for odd ways to express my coolness….I usually fail so I tend to resort to just being a smartass a lot…
P.S. Yes, I got beat up a lot as a kid…
Woo! The Monkees are my favorite band ever. It’s defintely spelled with two ‘ee’s…..go Monkees! Lol.
since the monkies were given new genes to work….i think the scientists have found something! we can use this gene on hippies because they don’t like to do anything and like Kerry’s head would, their heads would explode..thus one problem population would be wiped from existence.
next problem:what to do with the test monkeys…….
“hey hey we’re the monkee’s, we just love monkeeing around”…Jen they are good aren’t they…i could sing that tune much more comfortably known its spelled ee. :p
matt
Of course Hillary is the Avatar of Evil. And the Devil Incarnate, and Beelzebub too. Only dummies and democrats (redundant, I know) don’t know this fact.
And cats think the world revolves around them, so this makes them democrats too. They only love you when you feed them.
So should we start sending answers?
Sneaky, Frank, very sneaky… nice dodge of the question. ^_^
“So, my question is this: when you consider the effects of parallax, and the difficulties involved in the relatively infinitesimal length of the base used for ASA triangulation in which errors as small as one-millionth of a degree can result in a measurement error of tens of thousands of light years, why do some scientists pretend that they actually know how far away stars are? Are they all just a pack of liars, or are they just trying to impress women or something?”
Modern Astronomy only used ground based parallax for relatively close measurements; say up to 100 parsecs (about 320 light years). The Hipparcos satellite used extremely precise parallax measurement of about a million starts to push that distance out to about 300 parsecs (about 1000 light years). For distances further then that astronomers use two separate methods to calculate distance.
One is to us Cepheid variable stars as a form of standard candles to calculate distance. Cepheid’s have a well known relations ship between their brightness and the length of time it takes to go from their maximum to minimum brightness. This method is used to calculate the distance to galaxies or stars within our own galaxy.
The other method is to measure the apparent red shift of a galaxy’s light along with the Hubble constant to calculate the distance and velocity of a galaxy due to the expansion of the universe.
Now what I want to know is how many women are impressed? (Guys don’t count.)
If you throw a cat inside a lead box with a device that could either kill it or do nothing and there is no way to figure out if it’s dead or not then which is it? According to Schrodinger in this article, it is both dead and alive at the same time:
http://physicsweb.org/article/news/4/7/2
So in that case, if a tree falls in the forest, it is both standing and fallen at the same time (You really gotta exercise your doublethink abilities with this one).
announce! announce! what’s the announcement? SarahK is dying to know!
I would like to commend Frank on his master plan. Quite ingenious.
I’ve figured out what the announcement is. Like Carl Rove, I’ve consulted the forces of darkness (ie: magic 8 ball). Forces that I dare not name indicate that Frank is somehow “involved” with the NJ Governor scandal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as someone once said.
SarahK, now that this unpleasantness has been exposed, you will obviously need a shoulder to cry on. Feel free to come to your old buddy Exile.
Say it ain’t so Frank!! Not with a Democrat!!!
exile, 1) you’re married. 2) that’s not the announcement.
frank, you hate me?
“If you throw a cat inside a lead box with a device that could either kill it or do nothing and there is no way to figure out if it’s dead or not then which is it? According to Schrodinger in this article, it is both dead and alive at the same time:
http://physicsweb.org/article/news/4/7/2
So in that case, if a tree falls in the forest, it is both standing and fallen at the same time (You really gotta exercise your doublethink abilities with this one).”
WOW. I bet John Kerry just LOVES an example like this…being on two sides of an issue at the same time and having mathematical proof to back it up…
Justin, Metallica Rat — Quantum mechanics adds absolutely nothing to this debate, it simply makes such yin/yang thinking more palatable to the Western mindset. QM has an observer problem — namely, what counts as an observer? Both Schroedinger’s cat and the tree in the forest are asserting that only humans are observers. I say hooey, cats make fine observers; the cat’s observation of whether or not it is alive or dead is enough observation to collapse the incoherence. The tree too can observe whether or not it’s standing. That QM presents us with such situations is a testimony to how poorly we can make sense of the math that predicts the observations right now, not an evidence that we live in a universe where voting both for the Iraq War and against it is a logical way to handle reality.
It’s not so much rather the tree is observed to be standing or fallen, but rather that the tree’s wavefunction contains having made sound and not having made sound. Observation only collapses the wavefunction to one of the two cases, but both exist. That’s not to say that every situation has such dual realities. ie Michael Moore will always be worthy of being S.M.I.T.E.ed – there are no other alternatives.
Was there a winner chosen for the Kerry in the bunny suit caption contest.
Excuse me, but when a tree falls in a forrest and no on is there to hear it it does NOT make a sound. The Universe does depend on our perceptions. In fact. The tree hasn’t even fallen until someone comes along to see it lying on the ground.
I was just throwing a (monkey) wrench in.
There are too many theories on quantum mechanics to get into a debate here.
RTO Trainer – That’s what I was saying.
Better question – If we can assasinate someone, and say no one saw it, can we blame it on Quantum Mechanics?
RTO Trainer sounds like a Terry Pratchett fan! That’s a good thing, as the Very Strong Anthropic Principle needs you to believe in it to make it true. And it is true – if I wasn’t here my universe would not exist, and you are my universe. So you exist solely because I observe you. Now try and get that cat back into the darn box!
RTO Trainer — are you some fan of some form of an anthropic principle then? I happen to think that a universe without consciousness is every bit as real and true as one with, but I believe in God anyway so it’s a moot point; once God sees the tree fall, “someone” has seen in lying on the ground whether any humans or other conscious creatures ever happen to observe anything.
Orms — does a wavefunction you can’t do anything with have a meaning? QM is useful because you can find cases where the entity behaves in a state that is neither quite like a particle nor quite like a wave. When does the tree behave indeterminely between making sound and not making sound? Can the tree create an interference pattern with itself? Does it cross energy barriers via tunneling because it has a wavefunction? I’m firmly with the camp that says that multiple realities is a misinterpretation; we simply have multiple observers. From the tree’s point of view, while it was going about its merry way, the earth got closer and the sound came from the earth closing in on the tree, not any of this “falling” business, so why don’t you collapse the wavefunction of the earth instead — it either made the sound of smacking into the tree or didn’t after all.
TO: Frank J
RE: Reagan Was Right
Men built civilization because of women.
And women hated him for discovering their secret power over men.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
SarahK, of course I’m married (and really very happily, so hon stop cleaning your gun and staring at me). I was just offering a shoulder to cry on. I’m a compassionate conservative, that’s all.
compassion, bah! crying is for sissies!
Technically, the ground falls on the tree as well. Does it make a sound?
My brain is full; may I be excused?
I’m definitely opposed to the Weak Anthropic Principle in vogue with so many contemprary cosmologists. They’re trying to have their cake and eat it too. Like whisky, why have it if you aren’t going to have a strong one.
The big trick in verifying the falling tree thought experiment is finding ane example wherein the falling of the tree was, in fact, completely unobserved. Fauna observations count and with research into the consciousness of flora, well… the tree may be able to observe its own state and subsequent states to begin with.
And I do beleive in an omnipotent, omnipresent, omnicsient God, so unless he repeats his 7th day rest, that pretty well covers things. It is my own theory that this is why God created man on the 6th day–so someone could observe creation to that point and keep all the good work from disappearing. 🙂
Why do people feel the need to argue perception to look smart?! You know what it means when someone says a “tree falling”. And you know that just because you were not there doesn’t make a lick of difference! How many times have you happened upon a fallen tree? Why didn’t it wait for you to get there? Because it doesn’t care about you! Do you think the sound it produced didn’t occur? Even if you were there, the sound had to travel to get to you, so it existed before you heard it. Your ear HEARS a sound, it doesn’t produce it. It’s so dang arrogant of people to think that the laws fo physics and how the physical world goes about existing has any dependance on our or your perception of it. Trust me, you’re not that important. Learn to accept that, and it’s nothing but uphill from there.
Arguing little nit-picky points to try and twist the truth from the common obvious is a liberal tactic, and I would ask that all of you out there who are trying to look smart by twisting the truth with obscure theories please stop it. You should know better! Shame on you! Just because some shmuch who said something has a “Dr.” in front of his name, doesn’t make him right. Chances are, he’s a liberal trying to look smart by saying everyone is wrong andhe’s right.
-Brian
Enough about physics. I look at it at this way: the tree is a liberal, and whether or not it made a sound when it fell, we should just be glad it did. Hopefully some hippies will cry when they see it. Give it a hug or something. Now back to the IMPORTANT things…hey hey we’re the Monkees….and people say we Monkee around…but we’re too busy singing to put anybody down…..
A tree fell in my back yard a couple of months back… didn’t see it, but I dang sure hear that s.o.b.!
I really don’t give a high flying bat patootie about did ya’ or didn’ ya’ hear it/see it/sniff it/feel it blah, blah – makes my brain ache much like slurping down a slushie too fast, ow!
Anyway,I was just frickin’ happy the damn thing had the grace to fall into the ‘woods’ and not on my house!
and Brian.. or ‘i am right’ fella..
I don’t mean to be rude, but did the tree jump up your butt? I really don’t think these folks here are all that serious about the observing tree falling/cat whatever theory. So be calm, m,kay?..
It’s all good! Or it will be if FrankJ ever gets around to telling us what his frickin’ announcement is already!