I’ve blinded myself with science.

Every time I read about physics, I get stuck at the whole Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle thing. I actually remember straining to understand it one night as a (very nerdy) teenager, and later on in science college, I would spew back the theory without ever really understanding it. Now I’ve finally picked up A Brief History of Time, and sure enough, nothing is more certain than my getting blocked at the Uncertainty Principle.

Here’s my problem:

Some believe that because everything in the universe is governed by a set of rules, if you know the state and velocity of everything in the universe at a given point, you could infer, by applying the rules of the universe, the state of everything at every other time. Hence everything can be said to be predictable. Let’s call this Determinism, which was at a time accepted by the scientific community. That makes sense to me.

But Heisenberg says that you can never measure the position of a particle perfectly, without changing its velocity (this is because you’d have to shed light on the particle to measure its position, and the light would alter the particle’s velocity). So, you can’t ever perfectly know the position AND velocity of a particle. Either you’re uncertain about its position, or about its velocity. Fair enough.

What’s always bugged me about this is that it seems to rest on nothing but an experimental limitation. Just because an experimental limitation introduces uncertainty, it doesn’t follow that uncertainty is a fundamental property of the universe. Yet Hawking explicity says it is; that this is the case no matter what experimental method you use to measure velocity or position. Why?

Hawking even says that some supernatural being could know all (ie. not be limited by experimental limitations), but “such models of the universe are not of much interest to us ordinary mortals”. Well, why wasn’t it a problem to accept Determinism, when there are also obvious experimental limitations to knowing the state and velocity of every particle in the universe?

More importantly, why must the very way the universe works be affected by our ability to measure it? It seems ballsy to suggest that the universe itself operates uncertainly, simply because we ordinary mortals can never know it perfectly. Sure, science must measure and predict, and the introduction of this principle increases the accuracy of our predictions. But why not say that’s the best science can do to be predictive? Why does it follow that this uncertainty is a property of the universe itself?

In other words, why assert that God plays dice with the universe? Why not say, “God doesn’t play dice, it just seems to our imperfect observational abilities that he does”?

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Donnie Darko again for fun. It led me to read about time-travel paradoxes, which led me to theories of parallel universes which led me to string theory, which is apparently gaining acceptance by physicists and posits the existence of parallel universes (real ones!). In order to learn more without adding another book to my reading list, I ordered the Nova special series The Elegant Universe on DVD.

Although the documentary is sometimes really dumbed down, the animations are evocative and beautiful, the production value is excellent and the subject matter, nothing less than fascinating. Explaining something as esoteric as string theory, which says that there are 11 dimensions and that everything is made up of vibrating strings of energy, to the general public, is no small feat. Although I felt a little condescended to at first, by the end of the three 1-hour episodes I had brain sprain, and was glad the documentary was holding my hand as it was.

Wrap your head around these concepts for size: gravity may not stick well to our universe, and possibly seeps off into parallel ones. Our universe may exist on a membrane parallel to many others, and may have been empty until a collision with a neighbor transferred matter to our universe at the collision point. That’s why at the Big Bang, lots of stuff materialized out of nothing.

A fun way to spend a couple of hours getting smarter.

I have a friend who’s looking for a freelance designer to develop a logo and graphic templates (stationery, web design) for his company. Enquire within.

UPDATE: position filled, thanks.

After four months of wedded bliss, my Windows XP PC decided this weekend it no longer recognized my iPod’s existence. In other words, I plug in the Shuffle, it charges, but iTunes keeps waiting for me to plug in an iPod, and I don’t see it as a removable disk in Explorer.

Shite. And I happen to have only 10 songs on it right now. I need that iPod to walk to work and back, to work out.

Go to Apple’s support web site, try everything there. No dice.

Call Apple service, and with them I try everything on the support site. No dice. The girl on the other end has a worryingly stumped tone to her voice. She says she’ll send me a procedure via e-mail, I should try it and get back to them if it doesn’t work.

I try it. It doesn’t work. I get back to them.

Of course I get a new representative, who tells me I’m not entitled to phone support, because I’ve had the iPod more than 90 days. I should go to their web site for support.

But I got service an hour ago! I say. “Well I do apologize for that, but” blah blah blah go to the web site.

I say I’ve been there, and the answers there don’t work. So what do I do for service now?

Buy the extended service coverage. How much? 59$ US. A new iPod Shuffle now costs 69$ US. F***ckers!

I decide to try to troubleshoot the issue myself. I find in online forums that a LOT of people have this issue, and try everything that is advised. Including restoring my computer to an earlier image and installing a brand new USB 2.0 card (80$ CAD). No joy.

Finally, I try the iPod on two other computers and get the same issue, so it’s the iPod. How can I possibly not get service for a defective unit when I’ve had it less than a year? Than six months, even?

I call Apple service again and simply say my iPod isn’t recognized by my computer any longer. To my surprise, the rep says they’ll send me a new one within two days. And this was only proposed to me on the third call, after (no exaggeration) about 7 hours of messing about, and 80$ for a USB card? This new one better work.

Lately, I haven’t been turning on the TV at all unless I have a really good reason to do so. One of the reasons why this is a little easier than usual is the absence of hockey. I love the game, but I’m proudly doing quite well without it, thank you very much.

Someone told me yesterday that the deadline for resolving the conflict is January 18th. I don’t know if that’s true, but in any case, why that day? Because if it resumed any later, they couldn’t fit the season into the remaining time?

Well, I think someone’s just not thinking outside the box.

They could have the hockey season in the summertime, couldn’t they? Imagine watching the playoffs with sangria in hand, fresh from a Jazz fest concert. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’d follow because I care about the game or anything. But I might watch… You know, just to see millionnaires having to work during the fair season.

And even if we absolutely needed to keep the serious business of our national game separate from our fluffy summer entertainment, there are alternatives to scrapping the season. Maybe we could just have the playoffs? Boil the season down to one big-ass round-robin. That would still take too much time? Get rid of that pesky 5-in-7 business. One loss and you’re out. Or maybe they could reduce the games to one period. Something! You know, for those people who care about that sort of stuff. Still not enough time for playoffs? I know! Have just one big shootout. Wouldn’t that be cool!? You know, for the children. I’m thinking of those poor children.

It’s not like I’m in withdrawal or anything. But maybe a yearly season of hockey Tourette’s is part of what keeps me sorta sane.

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog: A hodgepodge of information about the tsunami from various sources.

The Canadian Red Cross: Where you can send money.

Bunch of us bloggers, along with NYC Pete, going to La Tulipe again for 80s night on Saturday. Come one, come all, the more the merrier.

I got a strange mail from someone I’ve never met, commenting about a few things about the site, like the fact that I’m not cool because Jean Chrétien has probably smoked pot and I still haven’t. But hey, I got called a Faschist at breakfast today, so I already knew it wasn’t my popular day.

Anyway, he finished by asking if I, on the off chance, had seen his kitty Fritz, whom he misses badly. Fritz went missing on the Plateau about a month ago.

So please, keep an eye out for Fritz, and if you see him please contact Alex. I’m told Fritz likes to hang around people smoking the wacky tabacky. He’s a cool cat.

I went a little overboard with the whole Halloween thing this year. It seemed every time I was going out to buy something I actually needed, there was a new Halloween decoration I absolutely needed to get for my party. And I’m damned if someone didn’t forward me a link to a “great Halloween party trick” idea every couple of days, these last few weeks. Last night, T came home to find me sewing a wig together.

I know we get to rot our teeth out at Easter too, but today I get to do that, and come to the office as a blonde wearing that leopardskin mini. I’ve always thought it was safe for work, cause my mom made it for me.

Yeah, so what?

I mean, I don’t really understand people who rush to the store to buy a lottery ticket when the jackpot gets bigger. To me, 30 million dollars isn’t really more motivating than the usual - what is it? - 7, 12 million dollars? 12 million does me just fine, really.

It’s exactly as if someone offered me 12 million dollars to do some job, and I said “no, but make it 30 and we have a deal”. Wouldn’t happen. If 12 million dollars isn’t good enough to make me buy a ticket, neither is 30.

However, I did join the company ticket pool. There’s no way I’m going to be left out if everyone around here strikes it rich and quits.

30 million isn’t enough to make me play the lottery. But avoiding looking stupid sure is.