Groundhog's Random Banter of Weather Prediction and Anti-Gopherness #120

My motivation and level of activity have leaked out of the two orifices on the side of my head. If anyone sees them, would they be so kind as to scoop them into some bucket, and return them to me?

I really hate these times when my level of activity drop. :smallsigh: :smallfrown:
I need to be doing something constructive, or productive, but if I try to write, I have writer's block before even opening that .rtf file. If I try writing music, the notes lose originality before I've opened my music program.

I don't like being this useless. :smallsigh:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mrmud

Better Sock scenario:

Let's say two electron are orbiting in cohesion, many millions of light years apart. One spinning upwards, the other spinning downward. By some irrelevant circumstance, we know that: They are spinning in complete opposite directions. They will never change direction. And no outside force will interfere with the electrons. By seeing electron A spinning upward, doesn't that mean electron B is spinning downward, before the millions of years (by the seemingly malleable speed of light) it would take to travel however far out and see Electron B? Thus the transmission of that information moves faster than the speed of light. But again, it is useless information and therefore, ultimately irrelevant.

---

Well no... the information isn't travelling far at all. Think about it, you're not actually gaining any information from the electron that you aren't observing, you're just extrapolating from the information you have gleaned from the nearby electron (at well below the speed of light).

Also there is no certainty in this situation that the second electron will act in the way you predict.

If the act of observing the electrons spinning actually effected the spin of the other electron (which you specifically ruled out), ie that knowing that electron a spins clockwise makes electron b spin anti-clockwise, then you're in a whole different quantum mechanical ball-field. But then again I don't understand that topic enough to talk about it much (also I don't think particles paired in such away can exist very far apart... I just don't know)

Randman, I've been feeling kind of the same way recently. For me anyway I know it's to do with the fact that I have ONE WEEK LEFT of school and, in my head, it's already over. Forever. :smallbiggrin:

It's also freaking hot here, which makes me want nothing more than to curl up in front of a fan with a good book.

I actually want to start revising now, but the forums keep dragging me back in. Why won't you let me do what I need to do instead of taking advantage of my weak will? :smallbiggrin:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dragonrider

Randman, I've been feeling kind of the same way recently. For me anyway I know it's to do with the fact that I have ONE WEEK LEFT of school and, in my head, it's already over. Forever. :smallbiggrin:

---

No it's not. You got University to go to! :smalltongue:

Although, I tell you, it's pretty amazing to walk out of that final final and ride your bike home in total jubilation. It's even better then graduation day itself.

Graduation ceremonies are for families, not the student. True vindication comes from turning in that last test.

What is revising?

And I still have 3 days and 1 year to go. Still exciting for me though.

Revising is the process of going over all your work again in the attempt to remember and learn everything for an exam.

My last exam is in three weeks time and then I'll be done until I start University in September.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dragonrider

Randman, I've been feeling kind of the same way recently. For me anyway I know it's to do with the fact that I have ONE WEEK LEFT of school and, in my head, it's already over. Forever. :smallbiggrin:

It's also freaking hot here, which makes me want nothing more than to curl up in front of a fan with a good book.

---

Done with exams but haven't graduated? Yeah. Need that mental readjustment to occur first. And look at me, putting that into passive voice, as if it just happens. Nup. I gotta do it myself. How... How... :smallconfused:

Although, I realised that part of what I mentioned earlier was because I haven't been listening to much music today. I swear it's a stimulant for me.

Rush is helping me now. :smallsmile:

EDIT: I just noticed your comment on the weather. I'll have you know that yesterday, it hit what was effectively 100% humidity, without rain, AND 50 FLIPPING DEGREES CELSIUS. So much water in the air it just fogged over slightly. At 50 degrees. (122 F). I usually like hot and humid. Yesterday, I most certainly did not. :smallyuk:

50 degrees..? Wow. Where do you live? :smalleek:

I've been feeling pretty unmotivated too. Although I finally got the batteries I will be using for a personal project.

... Have I ever mentioned how horribly hard it is to find and buy rechargeable batteries? You know, the kind that's not designed to work with only one kind of device? I ended up with lead acid batteries. Only problem is they're so heavy. Oh well. They will work.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bluewind95

50 degrees..? Wow. Where do you live? :smalleek:

I've been feeling pretty unmotivated too. Although I finally got the batteries I will be using for a personal project.

... Have I ever mentioned how horribly hard it is to find and buy rechargeable batteries? You know, the kind that's not designed to work with only one kind of device? I ended up with lead acid batteries. Only problem is they're so heavy. Oh well. They will work.

---

UAE. And what did you get batteries for? :smallconfused:
Just curious, because last year, I really wanted to make a coilgun. Never got around to it, and now I'm not sure why I wanted to make one. :smalltongue:

I've stopped pretending to know how the Get to Know a Playgrounder thing works. Last I knew, I was scheduled for November.

I just answered my first round of questions.

...weird stuff.

I would like to offically declare... that i, Ash am 90% better...*clapping starts now*

Pilot light went out. Gas filling apartment...

Going... Dark...

Phew, that was close. I'd like to thank my handy dandy firestick. I love you, fire.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Phase

Pilot light went out. Gas filling apartment...

Going... Dark...

Phew, that was close. I'd like to thank my handy dandy firestick. I love you, fire.

---

Electric stoves. Gotta love them. :smallsmile:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Phase

Pilot light went out. Gas filling apartment...

Going... Dark...

Phew, that was close. I'd like to thank my handy dandy firestick. I love you, fire.

---

Yay! You can burn all the gas away!

Just think--pretty soon, your apartment will be entirely devoid of any kind of gas whatsoever.

...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by randman22222

Electric stoves. Gotta love them. :smallsmile:

---

I have to say I prefer gas.

Also: WOW. That is HOT. You're warmer than we are by about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, then. But there's also very little humidity here, which is better. Except sometimes you step outside and feel the moisture being sucked right out of you. Yech.

At least it's a desert climate - it gets cold at night even when it's 118 out. :smalltongue:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rutskarn

Yay! You can burn all the gas away!

Just think--pretty soon, your apartment will be entirely devoid of any kind of gas whatsoever.

...

---

Fire: It cleans everything! Even the air! It even cleans...

IN SPACE!!!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by randman22222

UAE. And what did you get batteries for? :smallconfused:
Just curious, because last year, I really wanted to make a coilgun. Never got around to it, and now I'm not sure why I wanted to make one. :smalltongue:

---

Well, see, I have this thing for taking stuff apart... so I got an extra NES (mine works perfectly even after nearly 20 years of being in my possession). I figured, hey, why not do things to it? I'm taking a trip in a few weeks, so I figured, hey, why not take my NES? Except it's hard to use during the trip and one can only use it at the destination. So the answer... portable NES!

So I have a screen (not great, but it works and I got it very cheap for an LCD TV thingy). I have the NES. I have stuff to make the case with, plenty of cables, a sacrificial controller, voltage regulators, etc. I just needed the battery. I wanted a li-ion battery, but those aren't the easiest thing to use (and especially... GET). See, you have to get universal ones, or they explode. And finding universal li-ion batteries... is not easy. So while we were looking for that, my dad sees these lead acid ones, 12V (so that would spare us the use of one regulator). And he goes, hey, why not use those? I told him that 2 amperes-hour wasn't good enough, given how the device will use 1.1 (so the battery would last less than two hours). So my dad comes up with the idea that we can just use two and connect them to each other in parallel and that would give us the 12V but with twice the capacity. So then, 3.6 hours of power. It's a heavy setup, but I can't currently afford any better than that. And since the batteries were at clearance... 2 lead acid batteries it is. I'll just add some sort of strap or something to the portable so that it will be easier to carry around.

... And it will double as a self-defense weapon, it's gonna be that heavy. :smalltongue:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mrmud

Better Sock scenario:

Let's say two electron are orbiting in cohesion, many millions of light years apart. One spinning upwards, the other spinning downward. By some irrelevant circumstance, we know that: They are spinning in complete opposite directions. They will never change direction. And no outside force will interfere with the electrons. By seeing electron A spinning upward, doesn't that mean electron B is spinning downward, before the millions of years (by the seemingly malleable speed of light) it would take to travel however far out and see Electron B? Thus the transmission of that information moves faster than the speed of light. But again, it is useless information and therefore, ultimately irrelevant.

---

Ah, I thought you might have been hovering around this. Now, I'll admit, quantum mechanics is one of my weak points, so I'm not entirely confident about this. However, I still know much more than most people.

I and a few friends actually had a conversation with a graduate student about this. The setup wasn't as you described, but it was essentially the same situation. (There are some unnecessities and inaccuracies in yours.) He basically told us that this is a question that still bothers physicists. The fact that you can't actually use this information to do anything is, for some, sufficient, but others find it unsatisfying and seek other answers. It isn't something I know a lot about, but for some people it is still an important question which has not yet been resolved.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Quincunx

The scissors scenario is interesting, but something (the spirit of Kepler, perhaps) keeps interjecting my train of thought with mutterings about speed and more importantly the "over TIME" part of the definition thereof, and other things (various organs of mine) are interjecting with discomfort and pain. In short, while I visualize the scissor blades going convex/parallel towards one another as they close, I can't articulate why.

---

Actually, you've hit on something that I forgot to take into consideration yesterday night, mostly because I was thinking in terms of nonrelativistic rotators and not giving the problem its due thought. One actually can't have a blade billions of light years long that doesn't bend; the very closest you can get is that it will warp at the speed of light as you try and rotate it, the motion traveling down the length of the blade gradually instead of all at once. Your visualization might very well be accurate. Interesting.

It is, however, still the case that the time between the beginning of motion of the tips of the scissors and the end of it would still be the same as the time it takes to close them; however, they would happen at different times.

Aside: This has nothing to do with the conversation, but here you can see a pretty neat video showing what one would see if traveling at the speed of light (except you're traveling at normal speeds so you can actually see it, so think of it as some weird phenomenon that shifts light as traveling at near lightspeeds would.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TwoBitWriter

Graduation ceremonies are for families, not the student. True vindication comes from turning in that last test.

---

So true. I just graduated from a university and I didn't even bother going to the ceremony. (I went to the reception, though. It seemed more my style.)

Portable NES... Can't say I've heard of many crazier ideas. :smalltongue:
Wait, that's not true. By a long shot.

Also, DR, what "desert climate" are you talking about? :smallconfused:

Also also, the harmonic minor scale is pretty cool to mess around in. :smalltongue:

The end is nigh!
It has been hot, cloudless and the sun has beem seen for the whole weekend (nighttime hours excluded) in this miserable, rainy peninsula of Britland!
The lido is open and full of swimmers! Beaches have people on them! SUnbathing! And swimming!
People are wearing shorts, t - shirts and swimming cossies!
And it is wondrously warm, with a small breeze.
I've been out most of the weekend.
Sadly my sandals are plaguing me with blisters as there's this annoying stitch in the lining that rubs against my poor foot.
*shrugses*
I pity my brother though, from tomorrow 'til Thursday he has some eight exams and no study leave. And this heat is predicted to last for the whole week.
I mourn too, as my first two exams are Thursday afternoon.
I should start revising.

Plus today I caught up with some twenty pages of RB and I have giggled. I doubt there're many places on the internets where that kind of thing happens.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CurlyKitGirl

The end is nigh!
It has been hot, cloudless and the sun has beem seen for the whole weekend (nighttime hours excluded) in this miserable, rainy peninsula of Britland!
The lido is open and full of swimmers! Beaches have people on them! SUnbathing! And swimming!
People are wearing shorts, t - shirts and swimming cossies!
And it is wondrously warm, with a small breeze.
I've been out most of the weekend.
Sadly my sandals are plaguing me with blisters as there's this annoying stitch in the lining that rubs against my poor foot.
*shrugses*
I pity my brother though, from tomorrow 'til Thursday he has some eight exams and no study leave. And this heat is predicted to last for the whole week.
I mourn too, as my first two exams are Thursday afternoon.
I should start revising.

Plus today I caught up with some twenty pages of RB and I have giggled. I doubt there're many places on the internets where that kind of thing happens.

---

I have an exam tomorrow and three more on wednesday (oh dear), I should really start revising now shouldn't I? :smallbiggrin::smalleek:
Also, I agree with you about the weather, it's too good to be true for some reason.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by randman22222

Also, DR, what "desert climate" are you talking about? :smallconfused:

---

The same "desert climate" that makes me laugh whenever people talk about Oregon and Washington as a green, lush paradise. :smalltongue: Central, Eastern, and Southern Oregon are all "high" or "low" desert...not the sandy desert most people think of, but the sagebrush country where you can see twenty miles in every direction and the only three trees in your line of sight are a hundred years old and three feet tall. :smalltongue:

We get ~10-12 inches of rain per year here, but the next town over gets about four. :smallsigh: The average lawn requires 36 inches a year. Water is a huge problem here...we do a lot of xeriscapic gardening.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dragonrider

The same "desert climate" that makes me laugh whenever people talk about Oregon and Washington as a green, lush paradise. :smalltongue: Central, Eastern, and Southern Oregon are all "high" or "low" desert...not the sandy desert most people think of, but the sagebrush country where you can see twenty miles in every direction and the only three trees in your line of sight are a hundred years old and three feet tall. :smalltongue:

We get ~10-12 inches of rain per year here, but the next town over gets about four. :smallsigh: The average lawn requires 36 inches a year. Water is a huge problem here...we do a lot of xeriscapic gardening.

---

...The pacific northwest has deserts? O.o

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by randman22222

...The pacific northwest has deserts? O.o

---

AND rainforests. :smallbiggrin:

We're craaaaaaaaazy.

Furthermore!
Yesterday I rediscovered my mum's Revlon nail hardening nail varnish (works over two weeks), and thanks to my aspirations to have long claws similar to those of a cat, I naturally applied a layer last night.
I have now scratched and drawn blood a grand total of four times. My nails are now long and lethal.
This pleases me, but it's awkward to rub my eyes now. Not to mention that my shortest nail is just over one and a quarter inches long, with the longest being just shy of two an a half inches.
This is pleasing, but understandably painful.

@DeeRee: I'll sell you some of our rain. By Om, I'd even give it away!

@Fred: Yah boo, suck dog doos to you. :smalltongue:

Heh, reminds me of Douglas Adams' rain god. You ought to send him up that way. He can skip here, though. It's too humid.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CurlyKitGirl

@Fred: Yah boo, suck dog doos to you. :smalltongue:

---

Well, I've never heard it put quite in that way :smallamused:, but thankyou. :smalltongue:

Not worried about tomorrow's exam, but I'm slightly worried about getting all of History Paper 1 (USA 1910-29 and Germany 1919-45) done in the two hours on Wednesday and the French Listening exam in the afternoon. C'est la vie. :smallsigh:

Averagejoe: I've been thinking of something a bit more simple that wouldn't have as many possible holes in it, as some of my other scenarios. Let's say...

I'm standing in the middle of an absolutely dark field, that is immensely vast. I'm shining a flashlight into the sky and the beam of light is visible for let's say... one hundred miles. The distant doesn't really play that big of a role in the case, but regardless, the light is going pretty far out. Now, I spin the actual flashlight around in my hand as quickly as practical, so the beam of light made a complete 180 turn, across the sky. The beam of light is moving at the same rate the flashlight is, so in the time it takes the flashlight to make a 3 foot angling adjustment, it will take the beam of light to make a several hundred mile arc. Correct :smallconfused:?

Due to a time-share discrepancy with Don Knotts, I'm legally obligated to pose this question once every two months:

Who would win in a fight? Statler and Waldorf or Gilbert and Sullivan?