I am a landscape painter living on Lake of the Woods in Northwestern Ontario. My favoured media are acrylic and water soluble oils.
I retired from Manitoba Telephone System in 1995. VE3LPX
I have a lot of trouble with labels.Personal labels that is. Oh, I know, they are important to our way of life, and there are some that I like to hang around my neck. It’s nice, for example, to be labeled a senior and get discounts at restaurants. Or to be labeled a grandfather, a retiree, or a fireman.Lots of labels are nice to be able to wear.Those are the ones that describe only one aspect of yourself, or maybe a condition that is only temporary.However, labels that become more all-encompassing and attempt to pin down the basic you or what goes on in your head really give me trouble..
Labels dealing with faith or the lack of it are the most difficult. Even political labels are not so bad. I wouldn’t mind being called a liberal, for example.But call me a Christian and I’m liable to get angry; or call me an atheist and I’m liable to say “now hold on a moment….”The problem is, well, really there are two problems. First, many labels, especially those dealing with “faith” are too restrictive.When you try to wear them, they begin to pinch like new shoes that are a size too small. They may describe a part of you, or a part of what they mean may fit you but not the rest, or other people may have a different understanding of what the label means.The result is that the label does little to describe the real you and may, in fact be quite misleading.
Labels tend to be absolute, brokering no wiggle room.As such they come in two opposite types: affirmative labels, like Christian, and denial labels like Atheist.Denial labels do little to explain what you are, only what you are not. Affirmative labels have denial aspects too, since claiming to be a Christian, denies belief in many other things.
The problem really asserts itself when ideas are turned into labels. I applaud the concept of agnosticism, for example, but would balk at my spiritual understanding to be limited by such a label for I am also an ignostic (or a theological noncognitivist, if you prefer) because I believe that before you even approach the problem of proving that He exists, you first have to define the word “God”, and ignostics believe that is impossible.
While I can claim acceptance of any of these ideas, I cannot accept them as defining labels. In that respect, I think that denial labels are probably worse than affirmative labels since they end to be more confining that affirmative labels and do very little to explain who or what you really are.
But even the affirmative labels have their limitations. In the past I have considered myself a Gnostic; have greatly admired Buddhists, and even considered myself a Christian at one time. I later leaned toward Pantheism and, finally, the Humanist way of thinking.
The problem remains, however, that none of these labels really fit properly, although some come very close. Pantheists, Humanists and Buddhists, for example, deny the existence of God, in that respect they are all Atheistic and probably Agnostic and Ignostic as well. Buddhists however, accept the concept of consciousness surviving the death of the body, while Pantheists and Humanists tend to deny all spiritual concepts.It really becomes impossible to find a label that perfect;y fits my personal view of reality. And therein lies the problem. Any label broad enough in scope to accommodate ones beliefs would be so fuzzy as to be useless.
The concept of god may be at the root of the problem, since most faith labels are referenced to God in some way, as if that were the basis of all religious thought. I disagree. While the idea of God is important to any discussion of religion, and will be tossed around for millennium to come, He is not the prime concept behind 99 out of 100 religions. The idea that consciousness can survive the death of the material body is death is, for if you don’t believe that your consciousness will still exist after your body returns to the earth, then all other religious discussion is meaningless. Nothing else matters and even God becomes impotent. Perhaps, then, more “faith” labels should focus on that concept rather than on the existence or non-existence of God.
So… in the end, what label could I pin on myself? I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to make one up. But then, what use is that. Labels are meant to convey a description of yourself to others. If I pin a label on myself that only I know the definition of, what use can it be? I guess I’ll just have to be content with Humanist for the time being, after all, it does come closer than anything else.
So the pope has decided that its ok for male prostitutes to use condoms. Tell me; why in the name of all that is right, decent, sane and logical, does this ridiculous announcement rate national news. Considering all the lives that have been lost and degraded by this man, I wonder how he is able to sleep nights. However, the blame is not totally his. A great deal of the blame has to be shouldered by those who believe it necessary to follow the vaticans' ridiculous edicts. Isn't it time the human race grew up and put this nonsense behind us??
Some interesting scientific and historical items I picked up in recent readings:
CHARLIE CHAPLIN: Apparently Charlie once came in third in a Charlie Chaplin Look-alike contest in Monte Carlo.
WHO REALLY FLEW FIRST? Contrary to popular opinion, the Wright Brothers were not the first to achieve powered flight. The first was, apparently, a Frenchman, Clement Adler, who flew a powered craft some 50m. (Some 13 years before the Wright Brothers). The Wright Brothers were the first to achieve controlled powered flight. (true to form, whatever an American invents is, naturally, the more important than anything anyone else may invent).
However, the Wright Brothers were apparently, (and I haven’t confirmed this), the first to realize that the propeller is in fact a rotating wing, and as such it generates “lift” just as a wing does. Therefore since the tips move faster than the inner part of the propeller blade, the pitch can vary throughout the length to even out the “lift” over the length of the blade.
THE FIRST VOICE BROADCAST: The first voice modulated radio broadcast was made by a Canadian. Tom Edison had hired a Canadian physicist named Reginald Fessenden who, in 1897, wanted to experiment with broadcasting the human voice. Edison, however, discouraged him, saying that such a thing was less likely than man’s chances of jumping over the moon. Nevertheless, Fessenden made the first voice radio broadcast on Dec 23, 1900.
Lord Kelvin, while president of the Royal Society, proclaimed that “X-Rays will prove to be a hoax” and also that “Radio has no future”.
SCRATCHES ON CD's: found out an interesting fact about CD’s. I’ve always wondered why scratches don’t come through as pops or dropouts in the audio. The way it works is the two audio tracks are sampled 44,100 times per second each and the samples are turned into digital codes representing the amplitude of the sample. You would therefore expect that a scratch would ruin enough of the coded samples to cause either a dropout or a pop in the audio. It doesn’t.
The reason why it doesn't is that the crafty buggers who designed it, realized that the samples don’t have to be put on the track sequentially….. they can, instead, be “interlaced” out of order so that a scratch that is wide enough to interfere with several codes in succession will in fact be spread out over several waveforms and will not be detectable. They also, of course, included three error correcting bits in each sample which allow the reader to detect and sometimes to actually correct, an error. By the way, the track on a CD, starting from the inside, is actually about 3 ½ miles long and the speed of the disc changes from about 500 rpm to about 350 rpm at the outer edge so that the bits/second is constant.
COMPUTER CHIP LIFE: Modern computer chips apparently have an expected life-span of about 5 years continual service. There are three mechanisms responsible:
ELECTROMIGRATION: which causes atoms in the metal to be swept along like pebbles in a stream to be deposited where they shouldn’t be.
OXIDE BREAKDOWN: weak spots developing in the insulating oxide layer and causing shorts.
HOT-CARRIER INTERACTION: where overenthusiastic electrons may punch through the oxide layer.
Older chips with larger internal components can apparently last many decades.
SPAM: The word “spam” representing junk e-mails, comes from a skit performed at the final Monty Python Flying Circus show of 1970 wherein they insert the word “spam” throughout the skit.
BALL POINT PENS: Do you know why ball point pens leak when they get wet? Did you know that they do? Well, the reason is that when you finish writing the ink left on the ball immediately dries, form-ing a seal. If, however, the pen gets wet, the seal is broken and the ink leaks out.
SUPERGLUE: Apparently scientists are not really sure how superglue works. One theory is that it is because of “van der Waals” forces, which are forces between molecules resulting from the interaction of their polarities. What they do know is that the cyanoacrylate (superglue) reacts with water to form long chains that coil around each other and bond together to form a hard resin. That’s why it sticks to skin so well and why it is used to detect fingerprints.
I have been digitizing a huge box of slides for an old friend (old meaning that he's 85) who spent a lot of time in the middle east in the sixties, and I ran across this slide:
Now if you look closely, it looks like a spider with ten legs and a pair of really wicked looking fangs. Notice that the hand is keeping its distance.
Feeling that this warranted further investigation, I searched the web for desert spiders, thinking that if this thing really is a spider, then I have found absolute proof that God doesn't exist, since no rational being (I assume a god would be rational) would create such a thing.
It is (was) a spider. A Camel Spider to be exact (probably named that because they eat camels). I also found a site devoted to the little beasties: camelspiders.net
Furthermore, the one in the slide above IS A SMALL ONE, they can get to be 10 inches long. Below is a more modern picture (from the site mentioned). Now I know for sure there is no God.
By the way, they don't have ten legs. The two long things out front that look like legs are feelers of some kind. They tell me (and I don't believe it for one minit) that they are relatively harmless. However its rumoured that they can inject an anesthetic so that you don't feel them taking chunks of flesh out of you while you sleep.
Here's a little story that may appeal to those with a more twisted sense of humour.
Back in the summer of 1669 an alchemist named Henning Brandt, tried to make gold by heating a concoction of sixty buckets of human urine mixed with charcoal (do you know how long it takes to save up sixty buckets of piss?, I bet his wife could have told you).
Needless to say, the gold didn't materialize, but he did succeed in producing an entirely new material; white phosphorus. In fact this was one of the first elements to be isolated by chemical means.
Now white phosphorus reacts quite readily with oxygen and for that reason it is normally stored in water. As soon as it is removed from water, it begins to glow. If you remove enough from the water it bursts into flame. You can actually put some on your fingers and write with it.... it will glow for quite awhile. However, just increase the quantity slightly and you have fire. To quote Mr Brandt “'twill burn the place most dreadfully”.
Now Brandt was keen to find a use for this remarkable new material, and it's glow suggested medial applications to him, (I guess medications were different in those days) and it occurred to him that it just might be a handy cure for some sexually transmitted diseases. Whether he was so afflicted we don't know, but we do know that he tested his theory, and to quote him (and this is the punch line) : “If the privy parts be therewith rubb'd, they will be inflamed and burn for a good while after”.
That may well have been the forerunner of dispassionate understatement in scientific reportage.
Well, the houseboating season is over. The boat is over at the marina awaiting pull-out for its winter rest. We had a good weekend trip. the weather report for next week looked pretty bad so we thought we'd better get this last trip in and get it over to the marina. I haven't got the pictures off the camera yet, but will post some tomorrow.
We got a fire call last night at about 10 pm.
Someone in a boat on a lake south of here saw a fire on shore and called it in on his cell phone as a cottage on fire. We got the call from the dispatcher as a "structural fire" which means; get everything you have there as soon as possible. Which was no easy job. Four guys from Station 2 got there first with three units, a pumper truck, a tanker, and a van. As we drove out from Station 1 we listened to them on the radio as they tried road after road to find this fire. (the dispatcher didn`t have an address of course)
They found it before we got there with our four units, the chief``s 1/2 ton, a pumper, a rapid attack truck and the wild fire truck (the one I was driving). All together, seven vehicles and 13 firemen converged on this poor guy. Of course, we had to inch through two miles of very narrow, twisting access road to get there.
Turns out that the guy was only burning brush, which was wet and caused a lot of smoke. But, and here's the cautionary part, he didn't have a fire permit.
The chief, advised him that that little fact could cost him some money... in fact, $350 for each unit plus $45 for each fireman. I think it totals up to around $2800. enough to put a real damper on your weekend (a fire permit costs $10 and everyone is advised with their tax bill that they need one to burn).
The bad part of those false alarms is that you could have a real fire while you're all out on some back road. And, we did get another call, just after we started home, a tree on fire back near Station 1, so we high tailed it back home as fast as we could. It turned out to only be a tree across a hydro line causing arcing and a little fire, but it too was at the end of mile of winding, twisting bush trail. To get out we had to back the big pumper up all the way out.
One of our biggest problems here is that so many people like the feeling of isolation in their cottages. But they never think that they might someday need a fire truck.
Anyway, most of us got home at midnight... three stayed at the site waiting for the hydro guys to arrive. And, in the end, the Chief took pity on the poor chap and only fined him $350, and then only because he wasn't entirely truthful in his responses.
We had a very sad drowning here on Saturday night (not that any of them are happy).
We went to bed at 1 a.m. and the call came in on my fire pager at 2:05 a.m. to respond for a water rescue.
Three guys had jumped off the Sioux Narrows bridge after an evening of drinking in the pub next to the bridge. One didn't come up.
We keep the fire boat at a marina 7 miles from the bridge down town, by water. An interesting trip in the pitch black, (no moon that night), at high speed, well, 33 mph - not quite full throttle. Richard kept his face pressed against the window while another guy watched the GPS map and the radar. I was with Richard, peering out the window. Interesting that despite being a gadget junky, Richard still prefers to see it with his own eyes rather than trust the radar and GPS. But the trip only took us about 12 minutes. It's also interesting how many firemen show up when the fire boat is involved.... we had 8 of us on the boat and another one drove the fire truck to the scene. We're lucky to get 4 or 5 to a car accident.
Despite our conviction that the guy had gone straight to the bottom, we searched the shoreline for over 3 hours just in case he got carried away by the current and was passed out somewhere on the shore. Not a pleasant experience, and one that brought back a few unwelcome memories. Besides the fireboat, there were 4 other boats searching, including one with the local cop on board. At about 5 a.m. the OPP from Kenora arrived with their boat and an underwater search camera. They found him by about 6:30 a.m., right below the bridge, where he had jumped. (I'm sure our fire chief, will be putting an underwater camera into the next budget).
It's a pretty risky thing to do, jump off a bridge like that, especially on a night as black as that was, and when the water temperature is only 17 deg. The water there is only 32 ft. deep, but I doubt that he would have hit the bottom. He probably took in air in the initial gasp reflex and then got disoriented in the dark. He probably panicked as well. I don't know how high the bridge is off the water, but it could be 30 ft., I suppose.
He was either 22 or 27 or 32, depending on which news report you believe. He apparently had a wife and a kid. He was from North Dakota, as was one of the other guys. I guess his family has been coming up here for years, and staying at The Rod and Reel, at the other end of the bridge. The third guy was a bartender from the pub... he's only been here for two days so may not have been warned off jumping. He says he'll never do that again.
The guy who died had probably jumped off the bridge before . . . it seems to be the macho thing to do around here, and despite the efforts of the pub staff to stop it, many are still doing it. In fact a few days earlier, a guy dove off the top of the superstructure, possibly a 60 ft. dive, but he apparently knew what he was doing. Even a lot of young kids do it. One 9 year old we know, broke his leg landing on a rock a few years ago. No one has died doing it before, although there have been more than a few broken bones, sprains and, in one case, an all-over bruise on a native chap, who for a few days could really be called a "red man" after he did a belly flop from the bridge. Fortunately for him, the pain was dulled by a large infusion of alcohol.
Anyway, I got home at 7:30 a.m. to find Anne sleeping on the sofa so she could hear the fire radio we have in the living room. I then went to bed at 8:00 and slept until 1:00 p.m.
They brought a police diving team in from Thunder Bay on Sunday and they retrieved the body late Sunday afternoon.
The photo of the bridge shows the orange float marking the spot where the body is on the bottom, while waiting for the diving team to arrive.
Try searching "Texas school textbooks" on the Internet... This is really hard to believe.
The Texas school board, for the entire state, has just made something like 100 amendments to the school curriculum, mostly to history and biology. They have, for example, removed the word "democrat" entirely from the curriculum (most of the board are republicans), they make sure that people such as Newt Gingrich (Spelling?) are seen a heroes and anyone with book learnin' are vilified. It goes on and on like that. They got in "experts" to help them make decisions on the history curriculum, experts such as a minister who's hobby is Texas history. One of the key people that I heard discussing it was a republican who believes in "intelligent design".
The thing is that Texas is one of the biggest textbook users in the US (California uses more but can't afford to buy any for the next few years), and they actually sit down with the publishers to lay out what they want.... so you can imagine that negotiations go even beyond what the new curriculum will lay out.
Now, this shouldn't affect us, much. But, we have Harper. On CBC radio today they interviewed a woman who was born in the US, went to a lot of schools there, and is now a Canadian and somehow involved with education in Ontario. She pointed out that (as others have) that since Texas uses so many books, the publishers tend to produce for them and use the same books for all of the US (this apparently isn't quite so much of an issue these days with digital publishing techniques). As she pointed out, the christian right is moving more and more to the right in the US and getting bigger. The effect this has on us is that people who claim to be moderate conservatives (like Harper) can easily move more to the right and still claim to be moderate because they are not like "those crazies down south". One other thing she pointed out is that school may not be the only, or even the major, influence influence on the youth. The media is also a big influence.... but, as she said, it is just as bad, or worse. But, she said that even as a 10 year old in school in the US, she remembers wondering where they got all the crazy ideas she found in the school textbooks.
Anyway, if you'd like to know more check out these sites, or just do a search..... scary stuff really.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A prominent hard-line Iranian cleric who said promiscuity and immodest dress cause earthquakes says God may be holding off on natural disasters in the West in order to let people sin more and consign themselves to hell. Kazem Sedighi sparked widespread derision with his pronouncements in a prayer sermon last month linking earthquakes with women's dress. In a new sermon Friday, he has defended and elaborated on his claim.
Sedighi notes that some might ask why there aren't more earthquakes and storms striking Western nations that are "up to their necks" in immorality.
He says the answer is that God allows some of those who "provoke His wrath" to continue sinning "so that they (eventually) go to the bottom of Hell."
"FORT WORTH — A North Texas family is racing to stop a hospital from amputating a patient's foot, saying the procedure violates their religious rights.
The situation is now so tense that Angela Wright's husband has been barred from the hospital where she is being treated.
Wright had her first heart attack two months ago. Her family immediately began calling prayer groups, asking fellow Christians to appeal to God.
They kept praying through five more heart attacks.
"It's everything," said Dwight Wright. "It's the reason my wife's still here, I believe."
Angela Wright remained at Baylor All Saints Medical Center Fort Worth Friday as the toes on her left foot blackened. Family members say doctors want to amputate, possibly going as far up as her knee.
That evaluation has led to a showdown. Family members say prayer needs more time to work, and an amputation would violate their religious rights; doctors say the amputation is medically necessary."
Now, let me get this straight.
She had a heart attack.
They delayed treatment to give prayer time to work.
She's had 5 more heart attacks in the interval Now her toes have blackened, presumably due to lack of circulation.
And the prayer is keeping her alive???????
Now, you might justifyably ask yourself why, if God gave her the heart attacks in the first place, they think that they can change his mind???
You might also ask if they really think that prayer is having any effect at all considering the 5 additional heart attacks.
You might also wonder a bit about the kind of sense of humour this God fellow has.
What do Christians think of Neanderthals? Do they not consider them human?
I wonder if the religious contradictions explain why many anthropologists are so adamant that Neanderthals were not capable of symbolic thought, and therefore not human. Whatever the reason, some anthropologists have vigorously opposed any suggestion that Neanderthals wore any kind of jewelry or created any kind of decoration or images, and thus were not human.
Up until now they have been able to cast doubt on any finds that link Neanderthals with such artifacts.... up until now. Just recently a chap named Joao Zilhao (try saying that quickly 10 times) dug up unequivocal evidence, in a site in Spain, of Neanderthal symbolism (ie body paint and jewelry), 50,000 years ago.
The conclusions resulting from this are of the "career-altering" kind for anthropologists.
For example.
If Neanderthals could think symbolically, then they were mentally on par with "behaviorally-modern humans".
Given that fact, you have to ask how and when did they acquire that level of mental ability.
They either developed it independently 50,000 ya, or it was present in the common ancestor of both humans and Neanderthals many years before that.
Both possibilities have significant consequences.
The independent scenario would mean that humans probably acquired the use of jewelry etc., by imitating the Neanderthals since humans did not exhibit these characteristics 50,000 ya, before leaving Africa, but the Neanderthals did.
The common ancestor theory, is equally troubling because it pushes back the emergence of "behaviorally-modern" humans to earlier than 200,000 ya... (many careers have been built upon that occurrence being only 50,000 ya)
It is amazing what two little holes in a sea shell and a bit of pigment can do to bring down years of well fortified theory.
Well, the ice is turning black. You could still walk on it, although you might want to quicken your step in some places. I wouldn't frive on it , however, even though there probably is 12 inches or more in most places.
It was 14 inches thick last weekend when we were all out there riding bikes, skiing, and skating.
Anne and I tried ice fishing a few days ago, but no luck. Of course there are few activities more mind numbing than ice fishing, so I suppose we didn't last
more than 15 minutes.
After all that effort we lit a fire and burnt hot dogs.
The deer are hungrier and skinnier than ever these days. I guess eating twigs doesn't produce much fat. They come and eat our compost and bird seed, but that can't help much eaither. Prety soon they'll be eating anything green they can find and they won't be quite so popular.
The book I'm currently reading describes an interesting experiment with polarized light. I'd like to try it but it requires three polarizers and I don't have that many.
It goes like this:
Photons are polarized; either vertical, horizontal, or something in between (actually, according to quantum theory they are not polarized until you measure them). However, if you pass light through a verticaly polarized filter, you will see light coming through that is only vertically polarized. All photons with different polarizations will be blocked (well, almost all). If you then place a horizontally polarized filter after the vertical one, virtually all of the light will be blocked. Makes perfect sense.
However..... if you then place a filter polarized at 45 degrees between the other two, light will come through all three filters. The book I'm reading says that all of the light will come through but that is not quite right, it is actually only 1/2 ,(i.e cos 45 squared). But light does come through. Remove the center filter and the light stops. If you want an interesting discussion of (not an explanation of) this phenomenon, there is a reasonable one at: http://www.mtnmath.com/whatrh/node78.html
Another interesting experiment involving polarized light is to send photons polarized at +45 degrees through a calcite crystal. The crystal will split into the light into two streams, one horizontally polarized, the other vertically polarized. If you then intercept these two streams of light with a second calcite crystal, they will be combined to produce a single light stream again polarized at +45 degrees. All good so far.
If, however, you send the photons through the two crystals only one at a time, you will still get a +45 degree photon out of the second crystal.
There is an interesting discussion of this one at:
http://quantumweird.wordpress.com/quantum-weirdness-a-matter-of-relativity-part-3/
Lately we've had a new visitor at the bird feeder - besides the birds, the squirels and, of course, the deer who actually stand on their hind legs to reach the seed. This new chap is a martin, and he seems to really enjoy himself on our feeder.
A few years ago we went on a dog sledding trip. Now, just picture sergeant Preston as he harnesses up his faithful dog King and the rest of the team. The dogs sit there patiently while he loads the sleigh with last minute items, locks up the cabin, takes a leisurely look at the morning sky, mounts the sleigh, hollers “on King” and the dogs come to life and gently move off into the forest. Nice picture eh? Yes, nice picture, but totally, absolutely wrong right from the beginning.
What really happens is that the dogs come abruptly to wild, frantic, maniacal life as soon as they see the harnesses. And they stay that way till the end of the day when supper is finished. In actual fact, Sergeant Preston would have had to anchor his sleigh to a tree with a grappling hook before he ever got a dog near it, and there would be no need to holler “on King”, because as soon as he unhooked from the tree the dogs would be off in a cloud of snow, with Preston if he were alert enough and hanging on tightly.
Before starting out on this trip we were naturally interested in any commands that we might use to “drive” the dogs. We soon found that any thought we had of “driving” the dogs was a total misunderstanding of reality, that there is a very good reason why the sleigh is shaped like a bullet… mainly because that’s how it behaves….you can aim it, but once you unhook from that tree, you have no control.
In fact, there are no commands… because dogs have no brakes, no steering wheel, no reverse, and absolutely no concern for your welfare. I doubt that they have any idea that there is anything behind them. Hence no commands. Well, there was one; it went something like HeYaaaaa, HewYaaaaaa, and sort of deteriorated from there on. However, they really need very little encouragement. Anyway there really are no commands, because you don’t really drive them, you just hang on. Well, Burton, the guy who owned the dogs, did have one dog, Sandy, his lead dog, who would ostensibly veer left to “haw” and right to “gee”. This worked not too badly, until Sandy saw a moose and headed for the bush.
They don’t even stop to crap, they simply crap on the run. Not a skill that you’d want to cultivate, but these guys do it, and do it well. They just spread their back legs a bit change to a gait where both back legs are moving in unison, and let fly.
Another thing that the new “driver” should know is that you will probably start out on shore and head out onto a frozen lake. Invariably there is a steep, twisting drop to the lake, studded with trees and other minor obstacles. Once you unhook from the tree, the dogs, who are fresh, excited (excited is such a weak word), and surprisingly powerful, and who have no interest in anything that they may be pulling, take off like a shot toward the lake, and keep on going. They do get a little bored on the lake and may slow up a bit in the fullness of time, but interest piques again as soon as they get onto a narrow, twisting portage trail crowded with trees, rocks and stumps and hills etc, and as the dogs turn corners, the sleigh slams against the trees (hence the bullet shape), and tips over. The sleigh is tough, and is usually not damaged. If you are not damaged, and intent on salvaging your pride, and would not want to have your team bound out onto the lake with you running behind screaming, you hang on for dear life, being dragged through the bush, until the sleigh finally gets tangled in a tree or rights itself on a snow bank.
Yes, there are brakes….. three of them. The first is a piece of snowmobile track about 8” wide and a foot long, that drags between the runners, that you can put your foot on to slow them down (this will in no way stop them, but putting all their weight on it may cause them to sweat a bit). Of course taking a foot off one runner, can have a deleterious effect on your balance, especially on an uneven portage trail.
The second brake, which worked fairly well on my sleigh, is an aluminum bar with two big prongs on it that you can force with a foot into the snow. It works well if you are on a hard packed trail. It’s particularly useful coming down hill through the bush on a portage trail where you have to apply vigorous brake to keep from over running the dogs with the sleigh, if not in preservation of your own health.
The third, not really a brake, is the anchor. It’s actually a large two pronged grappling hook, (mentioned earlier) and is made out of 1/2 “ steel rod. It’s on the end of a rope that places it near your foot. The idea is that when (if) you get them stopped, you throw this down on the ground, stamp it in hard with your heel, turn your sleigh on it’s side and sit on it while grabbing the axe to pound the grappling hook deeper into the Ice. Imagine Sergeant Preston pulling up dramatically in front of the miscreant and having to go through that procedure? Of course if there is a tree handy, you just toss out the hook on the way by and hope to snag it. Then, when you start out again, you unhook from the tree, the team immediately senses freedom and is off like a shot while you try valiantly to retain your balance, put on a brake, and stow the hook, while careening down a steep slope, through the trees onto the lake.
It’s fun though….. and by the way, none of the above is exaggerated.
The dogs are interesting. We had 21 of them, and they ranged from a couple that actually looked like real huskies, to big, long haired sad faced things, and small wiry, short haired creatures. In fact, the small dogs pulled harder than most of the big ones. But they all shared one trait; everything was done at full speed and right now. They were quiet on the trail, rarely fighting and barking. Even off the trail they were fairly well behaved until they sensed that it was nearly time to go, or time to eat, then they were in full cry continuously, until on the trail or eating.
Harnessing 21 dogs is real frantic. By the time you’re done its time for a little lie down, but of course, that’s not in the cards. They’re smart in a way. They know the routine, and they know what to do, they just have to do it right now. The result is that when you unhook them from their chains, you have to grab them by their collar and lift their front legs off the ground, that’s the only way you have a chance of controlling them. Even then it takes a firm arm.
But they know this routine, and actually leap into this position as you grab their collar. They knew when the trip was over too and were quiet then, just anxious to get into their cages. When we unharnessed them they’d usually run us to the truck and leap up as you lifted them into their little holes. He had a low box on the truck (sitting on the truck box so he could put sleighs and gear under it), with six little compartments with screened doors on each side. Once in there, they were content to just sit, no barking.
Harnessing them took over ½ hour. The lead dogs were harnessed first and if smart enough, would keep the traces tight while the others were harnessed. But they have a short attention span for anything but running, and we usually had to work at keeping them in line. Of course they are in full cry all this time. Some would even jump straight into the air they were so excited and anxious to get going.
We had 4 sleighs. Mine was the only manufactured one. It was all metal with an aluminum bottom about 5 feet long with nylon runners that stuck out about 3 feet behind, very light and short. I had 5 dogs.
Anne’s sleigh, as were all the others, was handmade, by Burton. They were nice sleighs, made of ash with thick nylon bottoms and runners. All the handmade sleighs had a canvas insert that closed at the top to keep your stuff from falling out as the sleigh bounced along behind the dogs after you fell off. Anne had only 3 dogs to start with, geared to her slender weight, then they added a fourth later. Even 3 were enough to cause whiplash. Except for falling off a few times on the portage trails, Anne did very well. (not that she fell off any more than I did)
Burton and his helper, Dwight, had 6 dogs each since they were carrying the food and gear. I guess he thought he would need a helper along with these seniors. He was right.
The dogs were remarkably well behaved in most respects, except for their hyper outlook on life. They were all very friendly and you could pet any one of them, but very few would approach you looking for attention. You could even take food away from them at any time and they would not so much as growl. (he took bones away from a couple of them). You didn’t try to pet them if they were fighting though…. And that was another application of the HeYaaa command, which, in general, just means stop whatever you are doing. (Mush was never used as a command…. Again, that gap between fact and fiction….. once those dogs are harnessed, there is never, ever, any need to utter any words of encouragement)
The food stunk…. The dog food that is. Soon after we stopped for the night, he chopped up a big bag of meat and fat scraps to give them a snack (about ½ to one pound each). He later took a 5 gallon pail, poured in dry dog food, water and more fat scraps and heated it on the space heater in the cabin (our food had to wait till the dogs were fed). They eat at high speed too.
The trip was fun. We left from a landing near his place, went across Eagle Lake, portaged into another lake, went down a narrow channel; a weedy place with a creek in the middle, and stopped there for lunch under an overhang on a huge cliff.
Lunch was corn chowder cooked over an open fire, bread, and cookies. The chowder was cooked in a pot that Noah probably chucked off the arc, and was served up in various containers from old margarine containers to broken plastic bowls. Very rustic. Very good..
We went over at least 4 portages on the way out to the cabin. The last was the worst. It was quite long, very crooked and narrow and full of trees and other hard things. I came off several times, managing to hang on until the sleigh got hung up on a tree, then drove the anchor into the snow while I cautiously righted the sleigh and attempted to get on, put on the brake, lift the hook etc etc all without loosing it again.
We stayed overnight at a nicely made log cabin, very rustic. Pots that have seen long use as mallets or some other hard use, a couch with the stuffing coming out, two bunk beds, a space heater, various animal parts hanging here and there, etc etc. Supper was spaghetti, salad and brownies.
Breakfast was pancakes and farmer sausage, quite good. Then Burton Dwight and I went across the small lake we were on, with one team, to get a set of moose antlers out of the bush. Anne stayed behind, not feeling too well. We left the dogs at the edge of the lake and walked in the “½ mile or so” to the swamp where the antlers were. There was a ½ mile in that hike all right, but we had to walk a mile to get to it. The antlers were quite large, he had been in there before and found them (with a dog team no less…. In some spots it was hard to get through on foot). The dogs didn’t like being left. I guess the worst thing in their lives is to be left behind. In fact the dogs we left at the cabin were in full chorus all the time we were gone.
The return trip was easier, only two portages and the longest was actually a snowmobile trail (a very narrow one) but it made it easier to handle the dogs because the brake worked better in the hard packed snow. Most of the trip was on ice though. He had to break trail for part of the way, which was no great problem because the sleighs were only sinking an inch or so into the snow, but was a bit crusty and slowed him us up a bit, with the result that our teams were crowding his and at times almost travelling beside his.
Anne rode back in Burtons sleigh partly because she was not feeling well and partly to be able to take some pictures on the way home. So Burton and Dwight each had 8 dogs in their teams. Dwight tied Anne’s sleigh behind his and in fact just rode in the second sleigh for most of the trip home. The dogs are just going to keep going till they get back home anyway, so you might as well sit down and enjoy the trip.
Which brings up another point. Dog sledding has never been accepted as an Olympic sport. You see, the feeling is that if you have no control over where or how fast you go, and are able to just sit in the sleigh while the dogs do all the work, you may be having a really great time, but you’re not really an Olympian.
I can tell you one thing though, we both hurt bad in a lot of places the next day so we were doing a lot more than just sitting for two days, and are quite thankful that, as much fun as I was, it only lasted 2 days.
The history of the speed of light involves, among others, Galileo, two chaps named Michelson and Morley, a FirzGerald, a guy named Lorentz, and, of course, Albert.
You might think that the speed of light was a relative thing. That it would go faster coming from car headlights than a lamp post. But you’d be wrong. You might also think that relativity was Albert’s original idea, and you’d be wrong there too, it was Galileo that first came up with a theory of relativity. He apparently said :The laws of mechanics valid in one frame of reference are valid in all frames of reference that move uniformly in relation to it.
Of course Albert took that idea and really put it to work. He expanded Galieo's relativity to include all the laws of physics. In particular, he included the laws governing electromagnetic radiation (which includes light).
But before Albert, there was Michelson & Morley, who measured the speed of light. Actually they weren’t as interested in its actual speed as they were in proving the existence of a medium for it to travel through. The thought of the day was that as a wave, light had to propagate through something. They called the something, the ether.
Of course if the ether existed, the earth had to move through it (it was assumed that the ether was motionless). Therefore a light wave moving in the direction of the earth’s motion should travel at a different speed than one traveling perpendicular to it. Unfortunately when Michelson and Morley did their experiment, both light beams traveled at the same speed. The conclusion: either the earth was not moving through the ether, or the ether did not exist. Neither alternative was very attractive to scientists of the day.
The next guy to throw his hat in the ring was George Francis FitzGerald. He reasoned that the ether may just compress matter traveling through it, including the “yardstick” used to measure the light speed. He suggested that this compression might just be enough to render measurement of the two light beams the same.
Then, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz independently worked the same idea out mathematically and laid it out in now famous theorem called the Lorentz Transformations. Albert put Galileo’s principle of relativity together with Lorentz’s transformation mathematics and came up with the Special Theory of Relativity, which says that:
1)The velocity of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers (i.e. in all frames of reference) moving uniformly in relation to each other, and
2)All laws of nature are the same in all frames of reference moving uniformly relative to each other.
The speed of light being constant in all situations is the fly in the ointment. It just couldn’t be right according to classical physics, but if it is right, if light speed is constant, then something else has to change, and Albert figured out that the something that changes is space-time.
(Even though the Michelson-Morley experiment had been published 18 years prior to Albert’s 1905 special relativity paper, and had led to the Lorentz Transformations, Albert claimed that it was not part of his reasoning process that led to his special theory.)
The perplexing part about measuring the speed of light is that since Albert threw out the idea of a fixed, unmoving, reference point, it is impossible to determine which is moving, the source or the observer. Maybe they both are. Therefore you can only talk about their motion relative to each other and only take measurements from one or the other point of view (or frame of reference).
If you are in the source frame of reference, the light leaving you will always be leaving at the speed of light, regardless of your motion relative to anything else in the universe. Consider the idea that light from a car’s headlights travels faster than light from a lamp post. Now, why would you expect such a thing? Does the sound from a car’s horn travel faster when the car is moving than when it is stopped? Of course not. Sound travels at a speed determined by the medium it travels through, i.e., the atmosphere, or you neighbours wall. Since light is a wave it propagates at a specific velocity too, regardless of the motion of the source, just as sound waves do.
However, if you are measuring from the observers frame of reference the situation is a little different (or the same, depending on how you look at it). The fact is that mass is compressed when it is in motion, just like FitzGerald said it would be (but because of a change in space-time rather than compression by the ether). The result is that the measuring tools (rulers and clocks), moving along with the observer, change just enough so that the speed of the light wave will still measure 186,000 miles/second. But that’s not all; the frequency will also measure the same as if it were measured at the moving source. The confusion comes in when you try to talk about stationary and moving observers. The fact is that you can only state your motion relative to the source of the light.
Therefore, as an observer, if you are stationary relative to the source you will measure the speed at 186,000 m/s. If, on the other hand you are moving toward the source at some incredible velocity, your measuring tools will shrink and you will still measure the speed at 186,000 m/s. No matter what the relative speeds are, or who is moving and who is stationary, the light speed will always be the same.
The classic example of a train whistle changing pitch as the it passes by is the same for light, hence the red-shift for stars moving away from us and blue-shift for those approaching us. In both cases, the velocity stays the same but the frequency changes.
Light leaving a moving star will still travel at 186,000 m/s, but the frequency will have to shift. If we were to suddenly begin to move away from that star, thus adding to the speed we are moving away from each other at, we would still see the same light speed and frequency because both our yardstick and our clock would change resulting the same measurement we got when we were "still" and the star moving away from us.
There are several other interesting points:
First;it appears that the classical physicists may have been right about a propagating medium. That medium may have been resurrected by Quantum field theory, which states that particles (including photons) are excited states of the featureless ground state of the all-pervading quantum field. (It seems to me that this field would be the fixed reference point 19thcentury scientists were seeking??)
Second:If light does not propagate through some medium, if it just whizzes unimpeded through empty space, then why does it settle on a specific speed? What makes 186,000 miles/second the speed limit? Well, if there is a propagating medium, i.e. the quantum field, then it make a little more sense that energy would propagate through it at a specific speed, just as sound through air. It is also in keeping with the fact that light travels slower when it encounters matter, such as glass, or the fibre used in fibre optics.
Of course, you have to wonder what also makes that particular speed an ultimate one that nothing can exceed. Is mass and energy that closely entangled that the same rules have to be obeyed regardless of which form it is in?
And finally, just to warp your mind, consider one of Albert’s thought experiments:
Imagine yourself in a moving room. The room moves with a uniform velocity close to the speed of light. Exactly in the centre of the room is a light bulb that flashes on and off periodically. The room is made of glass so that an outside observer can see what goes on inside. At the precise moment that we pass an observer the light flashes on.
Now you might think that you in the room and the observer will see the same thing, but you’d be wrong. Inside the room we would see the light travel out in all directions at the same speed and hit all four glass walls at the same time.
The outside observer also sees the light travel out in all directions at the same speed. However, he also sees that the room is moving, and therefore the light travelling backward hits the rear wall before the forward moving light can catch up to the forward wall.
And Albert’s conclusion? Events that are simultaneous for one observer may occur at different times for another observer, depending on their relative motion. The terms “sooner”, “later”, and “simultaneous” * are local terms and have no meaning unless they are tied down to a specific frame of reference.
*(this is apparently true only for “space-like separated events”. “Time-like separated events” can never appear simultaneous in any frame of reference travelling at less than the speed of light)
Just when you think you have some of it all figured out, Albert will throw something like that at you.
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
- Benjamin Franklin
You know, I always thought of Ben Franklin as more of a clown than a wise man, but those are truly awe inspiring words. But, if they are true, beer must have been with us right from the beginning. Right? So just how far back does it go? Well, Noah included it in the Ark’s provisions, but that’s as far back as we can go because the flood destroyed all the records.
Beer next pops up in 4200BC on Babylon clay tablets. It must have been very well established by that time since the Babylonians boasted over 20 varieties.
Interestingly, bread must have come before beer, which is always a good plan. But really, bread was developed first. We know this because early brewers used unbaked bread as a source of yeast to make beer. More importantly though, the master brewers were women, and in fact continued to be a major force in beer making well beyond the middle ages. The Babylonians even had beer Godesses (Siris and Nimkasi), as did the Egyptians. Theirs was Isis, the nature goddess and patroness of beer making.
Life in Babylon must have been one of the happiest of times in humanity’s long history, because in 2100 BC Hammurabi, the 6th Babylonian king, decreed a daily beer ration for the populace: a worker received two litres, civil servants three litres, and high priests five litres per day. Truly an enlightened society. However, it may explain a lot of things, including the popularity of certain careers, and some curious religious beliefs as well as rather erratic government policies.
Tavern keepers haven’t changed a bit since then either, since Hammurabi was forced to institute some serious regulations in his great code of law to protect beer drinkers. These stated that the punishment for short measure by an innkeeper was drowning; a rather effective but reasonable, way to prevent any repetition of the offence!
The Chinese were a bit behind, which was unlike them. China was not usually behind anyone in the pursuit of life enriching activities. However it was not until about 5,000 years ago that they began brewing a beer called ‘Kui'.
The Greeks and Romans also brewed beer, but they considered it the drink of barbarians, as did the Germans who thought beer contained a spirit which possessed the drinker (who’d have thought it?). Wine was reserved for upper crust.
But women continued to play in an important role in the making of beer, a fact that I’m sure all the women pushing for prohibition in the 30’s were not aware of, and which may have helped the cause of those resisting that terrible law. However, until the Middle Ages, brewing was exclusively the domain of women, mainly because they were in charge of baking the bread which also used yeast.
As the Christian Era dawned beer really caught on, mainly at the hands of the Monks. They began making beer as a pleasant-tasting, nutritious drink to serve with their meals and to help them through fasting periods (good story). Since drinking is allowed during a fast, beer was permitted; in fact some monks were allowed to drink as much as five litres a day. (No wonder some of them saw visions, and no wonder monasteries were so popular in the Middle Ages).
These guys knew when they were onto a good thing and they knew what they were doing. They added hops to the beer and perfected the brewing process. They built the first breweries are considered the pioneers of the hotel business, providing food, beer, and a roof for pilgrims and other travelers. They are the inventors of the PUB. We have much to thank the monks for.... beer, and coffee too.
Three very well thought of Christian saints are listed as patrons of brewing: Saint Augustine of Hippo; Saint Luke the Evangelist; and Saint Nicholas of Myra, better known as Santa Claus. Its funny how that little tid-bit never came up in Sunday school.
Saint Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow, established a religious brotherhood there in 540 AD, and one of the brothers started brewing to supply the others. Brewing is still regarded as the oldest industry in Glasgow. Saint Patrick apparently retained among his household a brewer - a priest called Mescan.
Even the Emperor Charlemagne (AD 742-814), the great Christian ruler (considered by some to be the founder of Christianity), considered beer as essential for moderate living, and personally trained the realm's brewmasters.
But, invent a good thing and sooner or later the government will want a piece of it. In this case they wanted it all, and around the 12th century the rulers, saw beer as a good way to collect taxes and so brewing in much of Europe became the responsibility of commercial enterprises, given permission under royal licence. (Things haven’t changed.) As a result, the monastery pubs started to close down. It may not be coincidence that in the Middle Ages, monks nearly took over wine production, as they ran most of Europe's vineyards. While today a number of families and corporations also run vineyards and make notable wines, monks still run some of the oldest vineyards throughout Europe. But as winemaking in monasteries became more prevalent a suspicion slowly fermented that monks perhaps were more interested in celebration than in the mass… but that’s another story.
Despite the fall of the monastery breweries, beer continued to be handed out to weary travelers with the establishment of the Wayfarer Dole by William of Wykeham, (1367-1404). A Pilgrim's Dole of ale and bread can still be claimed by all wayfarers at the Hospital of St Cross, Winchester, England.
But beer was still loved by the upper crust. The ladies-in-waiting at the court of Henry VII were allowed a gallon of beer for breakfast alone. The mind boggles. One wonders what they were waiting for. And then there was Queen Elizabeth I, who, when traveling through the country, always sent couriers ahead to taste the local ale. If it didn't measure up to the quality required, a supply would be shipped from London for her.
William Shakespeare's father was an ale-tester or "conner". The "conner" tested the ale by pouring some upon a bench and sitting on it while drinking the rest. If there was sugar in the ale, or it was impure, their leather breeches would stick after sitting for half an hour or so. (that’s an excuse I never thought of)
And one further little fact: in England, a "bride's ale" would be brewed for the wedding by her family. "Bride's ale" gave way to the word "bridal."
And then European beer came to North America in Christopher Columbus' ships. I suspect that Eric and Leif brought their version of beer to our shores long before that, but It is very likely that, as good Norsemen, they drank it all on the way over, which is exactly why the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, instead of further south as planned; because they ran out of beer. A journal entry dated December 19, 1620 said: "We could not take time for further search or consideration; our victuals being much spent, especially our beer" Which is not surprising; not that they ran out of beer, but that they stopped to brew some, because in those days, ships did not move without a crew, and crews did not move without their beer. In fact, Henry the VIII once nearly lost a major battle because someone had forgotten to order the beer for the ships.
Nevertheless, lets not forget our own native brethren. On his last voyage to Central America in 1502, Columbus found that they were making a first-rate brew "of maize, resembling English beer".
If, in reading all of this you think that we have lost something along the way, you’re not alone. Particularly noticeable in their absence, are beer allowances, and beer-making in the home under the direction of the little woman. It is also of note that at the end of the 17th century, the weekly allowance for pupils of all ages at one English school was two bottles a day (mostly because beer was a good deal safer than the drinking water). What a way to learn.
And beer was also common in the workplace. Benjamin Franklin, who introduced this piece, recorded the daily beer consumption in a London printing house which he visited. The employees each had a pint before breakfast, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint at six o'clock and a pint when they finished work. (and probably stopped at the local pub on their way home).
I didn’t work there
The advent of beer as we know it came in 1516 when the Duke of Bavaria, Wilhelm IV, proclaimed the German Beer Purity Law. For the first time, a law established that only barley, hops and pure water were to be used in the making of beer. The law remained in effect in Europe until 1988, when European Union rules came into effect.
Some historical notes:
4300BC Babylon clay tablets have recipes for beer. They produced around 20 varieties.
3000 BC in the Imperial Egypt of the Pharaohs, beer was already an important food item in the daily diet
3,000 year old beer mugs were uncovered in Israel in the 1960s
55 BC Roman soldiers introduce beer into Northern Europe
49 BC Caesar toasted his troops as they crossed the Rubicon, starting the Roman Civil War
500-1000 AD the first half of the Middle Ages, brewing begins to be practiced in Europe, shifting from family tradition to centralized production in monasteries and convents (hospitality for traveling pilgrims). During Medieval times beer was used for tithing, trading, payment and taxing.
800 AD: The ancient Germans were also brewing the stuff using barley or wheat.
1000 AD hops begins to be used in the brewing process.
1295 King Wenceslas grants Pilsen Bohemia brewing rights (formerly Czechoslovakia, now Slovakia & Czech Republic).
1420: German brewers develop the lager method of brewing.
1490's: Columbus found Indians making beer from corn and black birch sap.
1500: there were 600 breweries in Hamburg alone
1553: Beck's Brewery founded & still brewing today.
Late 1500's Queen Elizabeth I of England drank strong ale for breakfast.
1587 the first beer brewed in New World at Sir Walter Raleigh's colony in Virginia--but the colonists sent requests to England for better beer.
1612 the first commercial brewery opened in New Amsterdam (NYC, Manhattan) after colonists advertised in London newspapers for experienced brewers.
1620 Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock because the beer supplies were running low.
1786 Molson brewery is founded in what is today Canada.
1830's Bavarians Gabriel Sedlmayr of Munich and Anton Dreher of Vienna developed the lager method of beer production.
1842 the first golden lager is produced in Pilsen, Bohemia.
1876 Pasteur unraveled the secrets of yeast in the fermentation process, and he also developed pasteurization to stabilize beers 22 years before the process was applied to milk.
1880 there are approximately 2,300 breweries in the US.
1890s Pabst is the first US brewer to sell over 1 million barrels in a year.
1933 Prohibition ends for beer (April 7).
1938 Elise Miller John heads Miller Brewing for 8 years as the first and only woman ever to run a major brewing company.
People around the world consume more than 100 billion litres of beer annually.
It's very interesting that all this Canadian pride over our Olympic performance has resulted in several references to us having invented the Zamboni. A natural assumption really. After all who else would have invented it? Well, maybe someone in Russia, or Norway, or some other northern country? Or maybe even in Minnesota? But surely, southern California would be your last guess. Well, then you'd be wrong.
The Zamboni was invented by two brothers (Frank and George Zamboni) in the early 40's, in southern California when a huge skating rink opened up in Paramount California. The Zamboni plant is only blocks away from the rink.
The ones we use here in the great white north, are of course, made in the Zamboni plant in Brantford Ontario.
I hate to wound Canadian pride, but there it is. When you think it over, though, you'll realize that Canadians at that time would not have thought of building such a device. The tough Canadian attitude would have been to just learn to live with rough ice.
Do you know what the Chinese were building in 1100 AD? A three story high gadget called a Cosmic Engine. It was a water driven, escapement type clock that kept track of various aspects of time. It took for granted the fact that the sun sits at the center of our solar system. Five Hundred years later, the Catholic Church was threatening to burn Galileo at the stake for saying the same thing, thus committing two unforgivable sins; refusing to change and threatening to burn someone over an idea (no idea is perfect enough to justify that action).
We have to thank the Catholic church for it's monumental efforts to keep us in the Dark Ages. Thank God we have taken that kind of power away from them.
If anyone tells you that there is no real-life proof of evolution, you can tell them this little story about evolution in the lab. It goes something like this:
Biologists were trying to figure out what first caused one-celled creatures to group together and become multi-celled creatures, or, creatures with bodies. One theory was that the molecules that glue cells together first evolved as a way for cells to latch onto other cells in order to consume them and that at some point it became prudent to be bigger so cells just used this glue to bunch up.
So, a chap with the unfortunate name of Martin Borass took an alga that is normally single-celled and let it live in a tank for 1000 generations. It continued to be single-celled. Then, he introduced a predator, a single-celled creature with a flagellum that engulfs other microbes to ingest them. Within 200 generations, the alga responded by becoming a clump of hundreds of cells.
Over time the number of cells dropped to 8 in each clump. Eight turned out to be the optimum number because they were big enough not to be eaten and small enough so that each cell could pick up light to survive. (This all took several years).
Perhaps the most interesting thing was that when the predator was removed from the environment, the alga continued to reproduce and form individuals with 8 cells. Another interesting point is that, since it was so easy to go from one cell to multiple cells in the lab, why didn’t it happen earlier in nature? Well, it turns out that compounds like collagen (the glue) takes a lot of energy to produce, energy derived largely from oxygen. It wasn’t until about a billion years ago that oxygen levels started to rise significantly, and that’s when bodies (muti-celled creatures) began to show up.
War is made "civilized" by rules of engagement. This is where two countries, who obviously have a serious difference of opinion, decide to get together around a table and work out the rules they will "play" by as they try to cripple each other by killing off as many of the opposing forces as possible, in an orderly manner, of course.
Consider your situation as Canadian soldier in Afghanastan, however. You are part of a renewed offensive against the Taliban, however, you must do all you can to avoid killing civilians, and rightly so; far too many have died already. So when you are faced with a threat, it is incumbent upon you to first ask the person whether he is Taliban or not before shooting him. That may be tungue in cheek, but it doesn't fall far from the truth.
Suppose, however, you are a Taliban fighter. He doesn't care whether he kills civilians or not, his attitude is "kill them all, Allah will know his own", (I wonder who he learned that from). He also doesn't wear a uniform, instead, he tries to look as much like an innocent civilian as he can, and will continue to do so until the soldier with the red maple leaf on his shoulder asking what he is gets close enough, where upon he will pull out his gun and shoot him. Doesn't seem quite fair does it.
Do you suppose that Microsoft provided the software for Toyota? I wonder. Do you suppose they never heard of "fail-safe"? Probably not. Great to be driving a Honda though.
Civilized life begins with coffee. Some would say it begins with beer, but they’d be wrong. It begins with coffee and ends with beer. We must thank a Goatherd, some Monks, the Arabs, but, primarily, we must thank a goat, for civilization.
It began in 850 AD when an Ethiopian goat got frisky after eating coffee berries. The goat herder noticed this and brought some berries to the local monks, who, after tasting them, threw the bitter berries in the fire, whereupon, the pleasant aroma made them try them again. They soon considered them a gift from God since eating the roasted berries allowed them to stay awake longer and get more work done. Later, the Arabs got wind of this wonderful thing, and, since they were not allowed alcohol, poured hot water over the roasted, ground up berries to make coffee.
Now we could venerate the Goatherd but no one knows his name. We could venerate the Monks, but we already have wine to thank them for. We could venerate the Arabs, but we already thank them for the alphabet. So it’s only fitting that we worship the goat for bringing civilization to the world. So here is a short history of coffee and the early temples devoted to it’s worship.
850 An Ethiopian goat gets high on coffee berries. The monks get high on the roasted beans.
1100 The Arabs first make coffee. (It took 250 years to get from roasted beans to coffee?)
1475 A year we should celebrate... the first coffee shop (temple) opens in Constantinople
1654 The first coffee shop in Italy
1607 Capt John Smith brings it to Jamestown. Apparently, however, it arrived in Canada earlier than that.
1652 First coffee houses in England (it costs a penny a cup)
Did you know that you can buy plastic sandwich bags with fake mould spots painted on the surface? And why? Of course, to keep you lunch safe from the sandwich thief at work.
It all begins back in 1905 when a chap called Max Planck found a simple formula that predicted the actual energy loss curve of charged particles rather than what Newton said it should be. However, Max's formula required a fudge factor, thereafter known as Planck's constant (h), which caused the energy to reduce in little jumps,
In 1905 to say Newton was wrong was scientific blasphemy so no one paid the least attention to Max's little jumps.
Except Einstein, who, in the same year, used Max's little jumps to explain the photoelectric effect, calling the emitted energy; photons. No one took them seriously either, not for another 18 years anyhow, and then they apparently got it all wrong.
Soon after that Ernest Rutherford fired some alpha particles through gold foil and found that the atom is mostly empty space with a small, hard, positive core, orbited by electrons.
Nobody liked his atom either: too unstable.
It remained unstable until 1913 when Neils Bohr used Plank's neglected constant to stabilize the atom, thus enormously expanding the realm of the little quantum jumps. This explained a lot of things about light.
Nevertheless, no one took this seriously either, except Einstein. They called it “number juggling”.
Things began to change, however, in 1923 when an obscure American physicist named Arthur Compton, found that light changed frequency when he bounced it off an electron. Not the sort of behaviour anyone expected from a wave, ergo, the photon must be real and light must be a wave and a particle. (this was called the Compton Effect, by the way).
Everyone perked up and said “holy shit” or words to that effect. And thus began the era of quantum double-think.
Louis de Broglie, a French physicist, then applied the Compton Effect to the atom and came up with the wave behaviour of the electron, thus providing it too with a dual nature.
Still not everyone was happy. Like Einstein, for example, who was quoted in 1923 as saying “Every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks they know what the photon is, but they're wrong”. (he always seemed to be on a different path than everyone else). Also not happy was a guy named Erwin Shrodinger, who wrote to Bohr “...the whole idea of quantum jumps must simply be nonsense.”
So in 1925 while on a mountain vacation with his girlfriend (his wife stayed home), he embarked on a gallant effort to rid the world of the little jumps. He used de Broglie's “matter waves” to prove that energy moves smoothly from one state to another, not in little jumps. The result, instead, was that he laid down the basis for modern quantum mechanics, where things do, in fact, move in little jumps.
Everyone cheered, even Einstein for once in agreement, calling it genius, Planck called it epoch making. Shrodinger himself was delighted to think that he had gotten rid of the quantum jumping thing. Reality would never be the same.
Later, when what now passed for reality dawned on him, Shrodinger was heard to say: “If we are still going to have to put up with these damn quantum jumps, I'm sorry that I ever had anything to do with quantum theory”. If ever there was a reluctant hero, it was Shrodinger. Apparently he never accepted it.
Reality had to be put in its place. So in 1927, physicists met in Brussels, Belgium to do so. There they worked out a way for scientists to apply Quantum Mechanics to the physical world while ignoring the consciousness implications. It became known as the Copenhagen Interpretation, and is still the major interpretation in use today. It gets its name from the fact that Neils Bohr, along with Werner Heisenberg, from Bohr's institute in Copenhagen were its major designers.
While there apparently is no “official” Copenhagen Interpretation, every version of it does state that: an observation produces the property observed. But, Bohr safely confined this action to microscopic particles only, and to a large extent it has remained there for the last 84 years, despite the fact that quantum theory applies to all matter, not just the microscopic. But it allows physicists to ignore the embarrassing entanglement of physics and consciousness and get on with their calculations.
It rests on three principles:
The probability Interpretation of the wavefunction:
Quantum theory does not specify a particle existence in addition to the wavefunction. The particle is the wavefunction; until you observe it, whereupon it latches on to reality. It's actual position in reality is where probability comes in.
Note that particle (or cat) states can be referred to in various ways:
Quantum state: The cat exists as a wavefunction or in superposition Wavefunction: The cat is spread out as an energy wave.
Superposition: In quantum state but occupying two states or locations at once.
i.e. the cat is both dead and alive.
Normal state: The cat is either dead or alive, but in either case, it is “real”. Newtonian matter: Ditto Decoherence: The act of the wavefunction collapsing into “normal” matter.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Really this is just a mechanical limitation: any observation of atomic particles disturbs them enough to prevent the disproof of quantum theory. Really, that’s an actual definition. (sounds like something invented by the Harper government).
Complementarity.
A difficult one. It apparently means that you don't have to observe the atom to know where it is, or rather to cause it to be somewhere. Your acquisition of knowledge (information) of where it is, is sufficient to collapse the wavefunction. It was Bohr's way of allowing physicists to ignore the consciousness connection to the “measurement problem” and get down to work. (More and more I think that Bohr would have been very comfortable in Harper's government.) It apparently means that if you put a stethoscope to the box and hear the cat breathing, you will have collapsed its wavefunction. (Bear with me here. I guarantee that this will not make any more sense later, in fact you could, by hearing the cat breathing now, cause it to have died sometime previously).
Its worth noting that some physicists consider the wavefunction simply as information, whatever that is. This idea seems to pop up quite often, especially amongst those trying to build quantum computers.
Actually the Copenhagen Interpretation also admits that observation creates a present realityand provides it with a past appropriate to that reality. In effect, our later choice of observation creates an earlier history (of the particle or cat) – we produce something backward in time. (hence smelling a dead cat in the box will have caused to have died sometime earlier.)
In 1987 several physicists decided that they would disprove the backward in time thing and thus disprove Quantum theory. Unfortunately for them, quantum theory's prediction that the later choice of experiment determined what the photon did earlier was indeed confirmed. John Wheeler, who had initially proposed the experiment said later that “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to happen”.
Which finally brings us to Shrodinger's unfortunate pussycat. Back in 1932, a chap called John von Newmann thought up a test using Geiger counters and pairs of boxes (a test called the “Von Newmann chain”) that would prove that you can never, ever, actually see a particle in superposition.
An atom, in quantum mode, is fired through a partially reflecting mirror thus sending ½ of it's waviness into each box. The atom is therefore in quantum superposition state, that is, existing in two places at once, until you open one of the boxes to observe it, whereupon the wavefunction collapses (decoheres) and the atom materializes in one of the boxes.
Instead of looking into one of the boxes, you could, instead, open a hole at the end of each box to let the particle in its quantum mode out of both boxes to create an interference pattern on a screen. The particle would be either in one box only or would have been in both, depending on which way you choose to “observe” it.
Shrodinger was still unhappy, so a couple of years later he inserted a cat into the experiment to show how ridiculous quantum theory was. Which brings to mind other science concepts that were popularized by ridicule, such as the Big Bang.
The experiment involved Von Newman’s two boxes. The cat, of course, is placed in one box, isolated from the world, along with a Geiger counter which, when it detects an atom pulls the cork out of a bottle of cyanide, killing the cat.
When you open either of the boxes to observe the cat, the electron wavefunction will collapse into a particle in one of the boxes. If in the cat box, the cat will be killed, if in the other, the cat will survive. Until you looked, however, the cat was in superposition, i.e. both dead and alive.
If you take the cat test a bit further and don't look in the box until several days after you put the cat in the box and fire in the atom, you will find either a very hungry (and angry) cat or a very dead smelly cat because upon looking in the box you not only collapsed the wavefunction, but also created a past appropriate to the random result of either a dead or living cat.
This is, of course completely ridiculous. For several reasons:
The cat (and everything else in the box) would have to be in superposition state until you looked into the box. This is not possible since you cannot sufficiently isolate the contents of the box from the real world. Every macroscopic object not in quantum mode (the box itself for example) “observes” the cat. Even the cat's “entanglement” via gravity with objects outside the box would apparently be enough to collapse it's wavefunction.
The atom's wavefunction, upon entering the “box” containing the cat and Geiger counter becomes “entangled” with the enormously complex wavefunction of the Geiger counter (not to mention the cat) and is thus “observed” (entanglement is equivalent to observation because of the information exchange that takes place).
Thirdly; just do the experiment. You will always get either a dead or a living cat, which proves..... what? (not recommended if the cat means a lot to you or someone important to you)
It's very interesting that while Physicists will apparently nearly always admit to the measurement enigma, most are not usually curious about it. Some seem hardly aware of it even though they use quantum theory daily. Some get violent at the mention of it (Hawking , for example, although in his case the physical violence is limited). Even those that write about the enigma will often admit that they have gone for decades in their careers before becoming interested in it.
The main reason seems to be that quantum mechanics is enormously successful. No aspect of it has ever been proved wrong, it’s predictions are always correct. It works, and is used daily. Fully 1/3 of our economy depends upon it. Its not just an interesting theory, its the foundation of all physics. Thus the “shut up and calculate” approach.
In fact, careers have been destroyed when too much concern over the “measurement problem” is expressed. Only those wearing the armour of great success have been able to ask questions and survive, like Einstein, or Murray Gell-Mann who said when accepting the 1976 Nobel Prize for Physics, that Neils Bohr had brainwashed generations of physicists into believing the problem had been solved.
Einstein and Bohr never saw eye to eye on quantum mechanics. Bohr was a staunch defender and Einstein never wavered in his belief that there was more to say than quantum theory told. Nevertheless they remained very close friends to the end.
In 1935 Einstein published a paper along with two young colleagues (Boris Podolsky & Nathan Rosen) which became famous as the “EPR test” paper (after the first letters of their last names). The paper didn't so much claim that quantum theory was wrong, only that it was incomplete. It tried to show that you could in fact know the property of an object without observing it and that therefore that property was not observer-created.
Bohr, however, shot him down, but Einstein never accepted the rebuttal. At one point he apparently proclaimed "God is subtle but he is not malicious". Toward the end of his life, however, he said to a colleague in a letter: “I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious”.
That’s the way things stood for a long time. Then, in 1964 John Stewart Bell, a brilliant Irish Physicist, took a sabbatical to contemplate the quantum enigma more closely and the momentous result was “Bell's theorem” which most people ignored. It laid out a way to test reality and separability, i.e., to test whether things are real without being observed and whether objects could be “entangled” in such a way that effects on one can show up instantaneously on another far away.
John Clauser at Columbia U. was intrigued, and figured out a way to actually do the test. His experiments proved that the properties of objects in our world do have an observation-created reality and that there exists a universal connectedness, Quantum theory had survived its most serious challenge. Unfortunately John Clauser didn't. Apparently you can blaspheme in the physics world. His career was derailed because he had the temerity to question quantum theory.
However, a decade later, (in an apparently more receptive time) another physicist, Alain Aspect, in Paris, duplicated the experiments with more sensitive equipment and was able to produce an even more convincing result. Had Bell not died soon after, it is thought that he, Clauser and Aspect would probably have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
But it hasn't ended there. Physicists will almost universally admit that every interpretation of quantum mechanics involves consciousness, but they don't like it one bit. Apparently its one thing for physics to encounter consciousness, it's quite another to have to have a relationship with it.
And so the “interpretations” continue.
First came Neils Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation:
Which enabled physicists to confine observer-created reality to the microscopic, and ignore the fate of the cat.
Then came a host of others (and they still come):
Extreme Copenhagen:
Proposed by Aage Bohr (son of Neils Bohr and also a Nobel laureate) who took his father's interpretation further by claiming that atomic-scale objects do not even exist, so that no particles enter the box and the clicking of the Geiger counter, if indeed it does click, is simply fortuitous. (I kid you not). In this interpretation the cat starves to death, but we wouldn't see it anyway because photons don't really exist.
Decoherence interpretation:
Which somehow states that it all happens too fast for there to ever have been a measurement problem, and so they don't know whether the cat is dead or alive.
Consistent Histories (or decoherence histories):
Developed by Gell-Mann and Hartle, this one applies the decoherence interpretation to the whole universe, where, until recently, there were no observers to cause the cat's demise/continuance.
Many Worlds interpretation:
Originated by Hugh Everett in 1957, it maintains that when you look into the box, reality splits and the cat continues to live in one reality but dies in the other. This one is apparently favoured by many physicists. If you put the cat in the box, you should hope that your consciousness continues to travel along with the live cat to avoid the unpleasant encounter with its owner taking place in the other reality.
The Transactional interpretation:
Allows the wavefunction to collapse backward in time, meaning that the cat was probably dead when you put it in the box.
The Bohm interpretation:
Proposed in 1952, this one by David Bohm, apparently a bit of a maverick, simply assumes that particles do what Shrodinger's equations say they will and generates a “quantum potential” (whatever that is) to make them do that. The result is that the cat does actually die, and also continues to live on somewhere else and will eventually return to haunt you.
The Ithica interpretation;
Developed in Ithica New York by David Mermin at CornellU. who claimed that it is a matter of separating subjective and objective probabilities. He is not sure whether the cat is dead or alive, but as soon as someone builds a quantum computer he'll be able to calculate the probabilities. It's worth noting here that probability is a measure of ignorance.
Quantum Information:
Liked by those trying to build quantum computers, this one states that the quantum state is not an objective physical reality, it is only knowledge (information). Apparently its sort of a twist on the Ithica interpretation. They'll also know the fate of the cat as soon as they get the computer built.
Quantum Logic:
States that instead of attempting to predict the fate of the cat, just open the box then set the rules of logic to fit the observed facts. It may be the most logical interpretation but not the most popular one.
GRW
by Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber. These guys just modify the Shrodinger equations to make all wavefunctions collapse randomly every so often. For atoms this would be every hundred million years or so. Since there are a very many atoms in the cat, one of them is bound to collapse just as you open the box, triggering the collapse of the entire cat randomly to the living or dead state, which doesn't really resolve the fate of the cat but could alleviate a lot Physicist's anxiety.
The Roger Penrose interpretation:
Penrose and Stuart Hameroff (an anesthesiologist) came up with a function of the brain called “objective deduction” whereby the “AND” function that allows the cat to be both alive and dead is turned into an OR function. This is apparently accomplished by, what other physicists have called, “pixie dust in the synapses”. And the cat? Well, it exists just as you might find it, either dead or alive, but in either case, it's definitely your fault.
And finally, the Henry Stapp interpretation:
Henry, bless his twisted little brain, invokes something he calls the “quantum zeno effect” (named for a Zeno-like claim: a watched pot never boils). And that's about where my understanding of it ends. I have no idea what happens to the cat.
Believe it or not, all of the above have been published in respected journals by respected Physicists. Some of them even speculate that our brains themselves might be in a constant superposition state. At the end of the day, however, apparently every interpretation of quantum mechanics involves consciousness. And the big questions are still with us:
What is consciousness?
And how does it affect reality?
A third important question is: why does collapsing the wavefunction produce a random result? (i.e. is it truly random or does it really depend one you where you catch the “probability wave” ?)
As Bruce Rosenblum (prof of Physics at U of California) puts it:
“Consciousness and the quantum enigma are not just two mysteries, they are THE two mysteries: the first, the physical demonstration of the quantum enigma, faces us with a fundamental mystery of the objective world “out there;” the second, conscious awareness, faces us with the fundamental mystery of the subjective, mental world “in here.” Quantum mechanics appears to connect the two”
I have my own theories. They are as follows (I'll spare you the mathematics):
1. Testing for consciousness:
Determining what consciousness is and what creatures may have it is apparently a big problem. I have a simple solution: if you can kill a cat by opening a box and looking into it, you have achieved consciousness. One has to be careful, however, in the (not so unlikely) chance that the cat's consciousness is of greater magnitude than your own, it may not be the cat who dies.
Bruce Rosenblum tells of explaining to a physics class the Alan Turin test for computer consciousness, whereby, “if you can carry on a conversation with it via a keyboard for as long as you wish and not be sure whether you are talking to a computer or a person, then the computer is conscious”. (Or, it may be that you are not - my observation). Anyway, after he told this, a young woman in the class objected to the principle, explaining that “I've dated guys who couldn't pass a Turin test”.
2. The “consciousness particle:”
I find it very surprising that physicists haven't yet fallen back on their old standby: when the going gets tough, create a new particle.
Physicists almost universally accept that observation produces the property observed, yet,to believe that this can be brought about by a purely mechanical brain unable to reach in any way beyond its own borders is ludicrous. A “consciousness particle” emitted by the brain would solve the problem, and just think of all the other problems that it might explain. Believe me, this is no wilder than some of those listed above. And the potential....well, I leave it to your imagination.
3. Maybe our perceptions are too limited:
There may also be something to the observation that we can only perceive our world in two ways: position and time. All of our senses can be attributed to these two. Speed is just a combination of the two. Sight is a function of photons coming in contact with our retina, smells, just molecules touching our smell receptors, etc. Perhaps there are those “out there” who are actually able to perceive superposition quantum states and to whom there is no “measurement problem”. Maybe they even have cats.
And finally:
If indeed consciousness can collapse wavefunctions, and if, indeed this collapse can spread so easily to other matter around it instantaneously, then, forget about the cat, just consider what we may have done to the universe the moment we achieved consciousness.
In fact, Roger Penrose and others have gone even further. It goes something like this: If the original conditions of the universe were chosen randomly, there would be only one chance in 10123 that the universe would allow life (that’s far far less than the chance of picking a particular atom out of all the atoms in the universe). So we can tentatively say that it wasn't random. There would then seem to be very few possibilities left:
God: (An answer that leaves too many unanswered questions)
Multi-verse: i.e. there are many parallel universes, only a very few of which can support life, (There must be on hell of a lot of dead universes out there)
The strong Anthropic Principle: Which goes something like this: we set the parameters of the universe ourselves by reaching backward in time with our consciousness. (Don’t dwell on it too long, it will make your head hurt)
I didn't think these three up, believe me, and faced with a choice of the three I can understand why some would be tempted to pick # 1, although I think I'll keep looking for other alternatives.
Very prominent physicists have pointed out that quantum theory doesn't just apply to the small, but applies in principle to everything, and they go on to suggest that we may have in fact created our own “reality”. Even Hawking has said that finding the elusive Theory of Everything won't answer all the questions. He said: “ the usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the question why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”
I personally find it ironic that in the end, the only tool that physicists can use to understand reality is the one thing that they really don't want contaminating their equations; the human brain.
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