PUAs

Pickup artists: men who pride themselves on their ability to trick, coerce, or otherwise manipulate women into sleeping with them. Faking human interaction in such an inhuman way that they can scarcely be considered one of us. They have no care for the experience or the joy of being with another human being. Plugging in memorised sentences like a code, steering all conversation along a predetermined path, with a singular desired outcome.

We have a name for something similar. We call it spam.

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Wave/Particle duality: Light

Classical mechanics gives us two things, waves and particles. Particles are the touchy feely massy stuff that has momentum and displacement and all that lovely stuff, but generally is, and remains as is. Light is not that. Light is a wave, and can be diffracted, deflected and generally interfered with. I may have understated the complexity somewhat but that doesn't really matter, because as any A level physics student can tell you, that ain't quite the case, is it?

We don't even have to wear uniform any more, we basically know everything.

In 1801, Thomas Young sought to answer the question as to what light really was. He did so by developing one of the most boring experiments ever thrust upon teenagers the world over that involved lasers, or more likely, a filament light bulb shone through a slit. Given that this is 1801, I think we can make a pretty sound wager as to which we're talking about here. The set up was thus: Light would be shone through two slits, and the pattern on a screen beyond the slits would be recorded. If light was made up of particles, the pattern would be a bell curve of intensity. If light was a wave, a diffraction pattern would appear.

As it turned out, Young found the second pattern. so it was settled. Light was a wave. Decades later, a guy called Maxwell would formulate his wave equation from which could be determined the speed of light; a nippy 3x10⁸ ms^-1.

I mentioned before that around the turn of the century, there was this problem going around regarding Black bodies and the light radiated from them. If you applied classical physics, or Maxwell's equation it come out as nonsense at large frequencies. It took Max Planck receiving a bunch of experimental data to get things going. He came up with the idea that light was made up of little packages of energy, or quanta.

Like many great, and even more awful theories, this wasn't taken particularly seriously at first, because let's face it, for all our talk of free thinking and empiricism, there are some physicists who are horribly stuck in their ways. Planck did nonetheless have his supporters in this particular idea. Einstein used it to great effect with his work on the photoelectric effect.

In short, this involved firing electrons between an anode and cathode, but making it somewhat difficult for the electron to reach the anode, though messing with the charges. It was supposed that if you increased the intensity of a light source aimed at the cathode the electrons would drink in the rarefied energy of the waves and have an easier time of it. This proved not to be the case. Indeed, the energy of the electrons seemed to be entirely independent of the intensity.

So, Einstein thought, if this Planck fellow is right, what does that mean? If we're firing individual particles, by increasing the intensity we're just firing more particles of the same energy. However if we were to increase the frequency, these little wave packets get more energy, and at some specific energy value the electrons hit by this energy would have enough to escape the surface of the cathode.

10 years later, a guy called Millikan would actually experimentally verify this, earning Einstein a Nobel prize.

So, light is made of little bundles of energy. That's nice. Can you smash other things with it? What a curiously violent question, imagined audience member. But yes, as it turns out you can.

Robert Holly Compton, the most amazingly named man ever to sport a toothbrush moustache observed what happened when you fire X-rays at electrons. Modelling x-rays as waves, one would expect the wave to just travel through the electron, moving it a little, like some twat reading his £129 Kindle in a pool.

"I'm not even reading it, this one is just to keep the sun out of my eyes."

Instead what we find is the electron moves as if something has collided with it, while there now exists a wave with a longer wavelength than the one previous. Compton, following on from Einstein by adopting Planck's "light is quantised" theory, worked out that what was happening was the photon would collide with the electron, give it some energy, while of course losing that same energy. This would result in a moving electron and a lower energy photon, moving at an angle to each other because conservation of momentum.

So there we have it. Hard proof of that wave exhibit particle-like properties. Because fuck you I won't do what you tell me.

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The Pacifist Cleric: A backstory

I thought I'd write up a bit of backstory for my DnD character, right up to the point when her future colleagues come to whisk her away to the Nentir Vale for adventuring shenanigans  I just kind of pumped this out, so I'm not expecting many marks for originality ;)

____________________________________________________________

In far off lands there existed once a mortal son of Anesthia, god of life and death. In life he sought nothing more than to protect those around him from danger, practising in the art of all manner of weaponry available to him in his small village. His task was to fail however, when a band of marauders swarmed his village and many of his community were killed. In blind fury he tapped into his divine origin, and with immense power he slaughtered his foes to the man.

His bloodlust sated, he looked upon his work and was horrified. The death that surrounded him struck him to his core. He could no longer tell slaughtered foe from murdered friend. From that day he vowed never to harm a living being. He travelled across the planes for long years, protecting the weak as he went, but never harming another, instead attempting to dissuade potential foes through persuasion where he could. At the end of a long and peaceful life, his divine mother, impressed by her son's deeds took him to her side, and allowed him small dominion over life.

As a god he was followed by the many who sought protection from death, for themselves or loved ones. All he asked of his followers was to view life as sacred, and while not to fear death, do protect any and all threatened with it. A humble god was he, and would demand no more of his followers than was reasonable. However centuries past and he grew exhausted with his task. Life was taken daily. He grew jealous of the influence of other gods, and aggravated with careless mortals who would ask for his protection, and throw themselves into harm's way. So he began gathering the souls of his followers to him, imprisoning them that they may be saved for eternity from their carelessness.

His mother saw what her son had become and was filled with grief. She could not kill him, but instead cursed him, tearing from him a sliver of his divinity and flinging it to the natural world, judging that whomever should find the sliver would be destined to find her son and replace him. The captured souls were freed, and she bound her son far away from influence to be forgotten, leaving him to await his eventual doom.

_________________

In the natural world, a girl was born in the less auspicious parts of town. She grew up fighting to survive, literally and figuratively. She was driven to get the most out of survival and was not above harming others to do so. She ended up on the wrong side of judge more than once until she was given a choice. Join the local military, or exile. It was wartime so either was meant as a death sentence. She chose military. Why not play to her strengths, after all? 

As a soldier she was ruthless, and it earned her both the fear and respect of her allies. She would lead into battle and they would follow, though whether through trust that she knew what she was doing, or fear of being on the retributive end of her blade was up for debate.

Following a skirmish against an attacking group of bandits, she hear a whisper. She looked around and found no source. Another whisper and she felt it in her head. It bade her walk beyond the battlegrounds. Compelled to follow, she walked. She walked across hill and field, river and road until she came to a clearing in a forest. During her journey here she had been told what she'd find, and sure enough there was a staff, half buried and orthogonal to the ground. Ever the bold one, she immediately strode forward and grabbed hold.

Every death that she had orchestrated poured through her in that instant. Though she held it for but a second, a lifetime of pain and demise and fear ripped her up from the inside. Her head was filled with the face of every sapient life she had ended. Amidst it all a voice spoke in words that shattered her psyche:

"I charge you to know the pain of every life you have taken, to feel it drain from yourself a thousandfold. Know this terror well, and learn."

She let go and, driven near insane with guilt, she ran.

She ran for days, a maddened creature in the wilderness. Her mind was in ribbons, the ghosts of a thousand lives lost etched into her. Exhausted by sorrow, she sought to end her life, and jumped from a cliff. As she fell, a voice spoke again to her, kinder than the one previous.

"This is not how your story ends."

Her body was found, broken, but alive, by a party of adventurers. They bickered about what to do, as adventurers will, but eventually the will of the party's Paladin of Pelor, far from home and weary from travel, outed. She healed the fallen soldier and took her to a temple of her order to rest. When she awoke, the Paladin and her party had long gone, and as the clerics told her of her story, she wept with immense gratitude.

She spent many years in that temple, learning the ways of the cleric. She felt the scars of her mind still, but less sharply than before. However she was mindful of them, and resolved to amend for the brutality of her past, revelling in the art of healing. Not so naive was she to believe that she could forsake violence completely, she took an oath to her new god, never to personally take another life, lest she risk the retribution of Pelor, and to protect those in need of her help.

Eventually she left the temple, intent on making good on her oath. She travelled far, and helped many on her way, never mentioning her past. So it was until one day, as she walked the wilderness between towns, delighting in the afternoon sun, the air around her crackled with arcane energy, and a portal split the air before her...

_______________________________________________

Some sources:

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/4e_Deities

http://images.wikia.com/kingdomhearts/images/3/3a/Corridor_of_darkness.png

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Notes: A (Very) Brief Introduction to Quantum Mechanics

In an uncharacteristic act of efficiency, I have finally gotten around to organising my notes into a fashion approaching orderly. So, I thought to myself, why not do some revision while the notes are out? So here we are. What shall we do? I'm feeling a in bit of a quantum stuff kind of mood. I'll just change the title there and let's get on with it, shall we?

I don't think I've delved much into QM at all here, so here is a quick comparison with it and the classical kind.

Classical Mechanics

• The Newtonian sort. You have a particle with a position in space and a momentum. These are things that can be measured, calculated, and ultimately known.
• Generally it's applied to objects at a more macroscopic scale, stuff we can see around us, moving at reasonable velocities.
• It's therefore obvious to us and somewhat intuitive. You throw a ball, it moves as you'd expect with the energy you transfer into it. That ball hits your inattentive friend in the face and you can kind of predict that energy is going to be transferred into your friend's face as the ball comes to an abrupt halt.

Quantum Mechanics

• The position of a particle can be known if it is measured, but doing so means we cannot measure it's momentum to a similar degree of accuracy. This isn't so much that we don't have the equipment to do it as it is that the maths just doesn't work out.
• Here we are generally dealing with things on a more atomic scale, and not of things of our everyday ken.
• Subsequently you can expect it to be somewhat counter-intuitive.

The next thing you must understand is that it is a theory. It is a framework that allows us to make predictions and calculations on things beyond our aforementioned ken, but it must still be backed up by experiment. It has also thus far never been proven wrong. So, a pretty sound model, wouldn't you say?

This has nothing to do with anything in this post.

A quick history

Back in the 19th century there were some physical problems going about. Gustav Kirchoff had proven the concept of a black body, an object that absorbs all light, and thus would appear black to an observer. He also proved that the energy emitted E depends only on the temperature T and the frequency v of the emitted energy. He challenged physicists to find the specific function that could describe this.

Many attempts were made but it was not until Planck, following a visit from fellow physicist Heinrich Rubens in 1900, came up with the idea that light could be broken into separate "quanta" that things really got underway. Quick rundown time.

1905, Einstein (Big hair, kind of a big deal, you know the guy) was working on the photoelectric effect and realised that while electromagnetism wasn't working too well, Planck's idea about quanta might be a better bet. This realisation earned him the 1921 Nobel prize, which I imagine was nice for him.

1913, Neils Bohr made some pretty groundbreaking work regarding the spectral lines of Hydrogen. This was opposed by the old fuddyduddies, but the younger guys, Rutherford, Einstein and the like were pretty impressed by it all.

1924, Bohr et al propose more stuff. This all tuns out to be wrong, but it does provide plenty of precious precious experimental data.

1925, Heisenberg publishes a paper demonstrating that the observation of the position of a particle would ultimately change it's momentum. In doing so he uses matrices, shocking everyone who thought that matrices were solely the domain of those mathsy wankers.

1926, Paul Dirac fully derives Planck's law, and the idea of causality in physics is slowly being abandoned. Regarding collision Max Born wrote:

One does not get an answer to the question, What is the state after collision? but only to the question, How probable is a given effect of the collision? From the standpoint of our quantum mechanics, there is no quantity which causally fixes the effect of a collision in an individual event.

Later Einstein would write a letter to Born where he would spawn the famously paraphrased assertion:

Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One. I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice.

Now, I ask you, who the devil decided that "God does not play dice" was a better summary that "The Old One does not play dice"? It's right there in the quote guys. How the Almighty did you fuck that one up?

Anyway, Einstein continues to prove himself a belligerent old sod by arguing extensively about the matter. This is not really a bad thing, as in his eyes the theory's foremost supporters were basically sitting back and going "Well, that's that. Everything is shiny." Einstein was really just loudly explaining that he just didn't get it, and shouldn't we really be ironing out these questions before declaring the work done? He didn't want the Uncertainty Principle to become physics' "A wizard did it". 

This kicked off a series of arguments and thought experiments that came to be known as the Bohr-Einstein debates.

 "It is wrong to think the task of physics is to find out how nature is," said Bohr. Einstein disagreed. "What we call science," he said, "has the sole purpose of determining what is."

So, experiments were done, theories were made, and this has continued ever since. It is still our best theory for what happens at inconceivably small scales, and working with it hasn't made our quantum dependent electronics blow up (Note: I'm referring to basically all popular electronics. Reading this? Thank quantum mechanics.)

That'll do for now I think. I hope you find yourself intrigued, or at the very least a little more informed. That's all we ask here at EP.  Late'

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Ana

So, I got to sleep at 8 o'clock this morning.

Well, have a little something I threw together.
____________________________________________

It's just as Ana was taught when she was young. People found wanting are often found in both definitions, and in that is a lucrative trade. As long as the classic sins manifest themselves in their numerous ways, there will be someone who doesn't want to do the dirty work in order to gain their treasures. The step from there to capitalising on such a flaw is not a difficult one. Interestingly, or not, the process to which Ana found herself with such knowledge at as young an age as eleven could be described with a similar ease.

When remembering the past, it is always best to take everything seen with a pinch of salt. The mind does have a tendency to adjust the contrast in the mental monitor, so that events are viewed through rose, or on occasion shit tinted glasses. Such a process would explain why Ana's father is recorded to have been a shining pillar of a community to which he never belonged. Perspective would account for his unnatural height, and pure invention would be the origin of the admittedly glorious imperial moustache that coloured Ana's memories of when Mr Lavoie recounted to his daughter tales of his questionable past. Whether he intended for his stories to have a lasting effect can be merely speculated, but the fact remains that from that time onwards, Ana knew what she wanted from her life. Such things could be taken for granted, but the possibility remains that had her father not inspired her as he did, perhaps she would not be running through a central business district in an attempt to lose the security team now pursuing her.

She overlayed her vision with a local map as she bounded through some neocon's preaching about the evils of uplifts, prolonged life, and other gifts that the unholy union of the gods of science and technology had bestowed upon humanity. Planning her route took less than seconds as she fired up her implants, nanobots scurrying to connect parts of her brain where before neurons held sway, processing information far more efficiently and quickly than her organic brain ever could. Her's was an older setup, so a few seconds at a time was all she could afford, lest she burn out her brain within her skull, but in those seconds, time past in her head like a river turned glacial.

Her father wouldn't have approved. They connected on many levels, but the augmentation of what he termed the "Natural human form" repelled him. Not quite a neo-conservative, he didn't so much oppose the idea of transhumanity as much as he rejected the concept as needlessly decadent. "No family member of mine will fill their body with such frivolity. It's against the very nature of humanity". Ironically he had stumbled upon the very reason Ana had admired transhumans. They were evidence of an inevitable future that it became increasingly clear her father wouldn't be a part of. The technology was developing at a startling rate, to the point that breakthroughs were being announced every other week. Ana had loved her father, but she loved the future more. She loved it's colour, it's promise. And as she resolved to follow that path, she resolved also to take her father's more applicable teachings with her.

Teachings that had lead her to this situation. There is always work for a shadow, for someone who can keep their presence unknown in an increasingly transparent society. Corporations want the secrets of others, scientists desire research they have no claim to, and your average civilian will covet their neighbours possessions. And all will pay good money to get what they want. She had the skills and the willingness to adapt them to her ever encroaching future, so why shouldn't she get paid for it? Nonetheless, she had often struggled with one of her father's cardinal rules. Don't get caught.

A quick glance back told her she was still being chased. Her pursuers had the benefit of tireless, albeit highly temporary automata that most ground level civil protection types occupy. She had standard birth issue human legs, powered by burning carbohydrates and bolstered by a controlled but limited adrenal boost. She had to lose them fast. Nearby businesses would have already been informed of the situation, and would have initiated security procedures already, more advanced entrances arming portal deniers. No one would outright help to capture her, but they would do everything in their power to keep the trouble from effecting them. If she was unlucky enough to pick an entrance with a denier installed, she would quickly find herself neutralised by a non lethal laser grid pumping a powerful current through her body. No, she would require escape into known territory. In the seconds afforded to her to plan, she marked her route to an old friend.
_____

Lawrence Valente was not your average information broker. Or at least, that's how he tried to market himself. "There's nothing, be it past or future I do not know or cannot find out!" an avatar would exclaim from his business cards. Those who knew him returned that this was because he was so rarely in the present. "It's true, Lore has a knack for working information out of people, but try to hold a conversation with him and you'll find yourself talking to a wall." This was unfair, as while he was not known for his social graces (having to replace a torn out wetware throat with what the early days of biotech had to offer does not do wonders for one's social life), there were some precious few for whom he would afford the time of day. One of these few was the late David Lavoie. The relationship had started as so many do, through business. Information on persons and things was often required in David's line of work, though what that work was he had always been quite vague about. Nevertheless, he helped where he could and found that David would do the same. Favours were exchanged and trust grew, and when David brought in a baby girl, he swore that should anything happen to David, he would look out for her until she could look out for herself. Roughly a decade and a half later David found himself on the wrong side of a gun. The circumstances were unclear but Lawrence made sure to come through on his promise, giving an adolescent Ana Lavoie a place to live for a further few years. He had never really bonded with her in the same way he had her father, but he taught her what he could of life, shared his food and made sure she got at least a baseline education. She knew he would shelter her should she require it.

He was broken out of a trance by a persistent ringing in his head. Someone was at his door, alerting him to their presence with increasing insistence. He brought up the door's camera feed, and found himself faced with a familiar, if somewhat frantic face. He addressed with as much amicability as his synthetic hiss would allow.
"Ana! I am surprised to see you. Not ininin an unwelcome way you understand why I wasss just consideriiiing how long it-t-t had been since I had seen you lasssssst."
"LorepleaseopenthedoorquicklyIneedhelphurryhurryhurry."
"Of course, dear girl, one ssssecond-d-d"
"NowLorehurryplease."

Ana heard the apartment security disengage and was on the other side of the door in seconds. She only dared breathe when she heard the lock click back into place behind her.
"Welcome back, Ana."
"Hey Lore. Sorry for the rushed entry. I was just, ah, out. Running."
"From something n-n-no doubt."
Ana had heard the faulty electrolarynx many times, but it still unsettled her. She could have used some augmented reality overlay but that seemed disrespectful to the man who had looked after her for however short a time.
"Would you li-like a drink? Come into the kitchennn."
"You're a lifesaver."
"What do you want?"
She paused before answering. Something was wrong here. He held her gaze a second too long and in his eyes she caught a little something like...guilt. An unspoken warning. "What's the matter, Lore?"
He produced a mechanical crackle that she knew to be a laugh "What-t-tever do you mean? Come into the kitchen." That look again. A ring at the door. She froze.
"You never could lie to me, Lore."
"I'm so sorry Ana. They got here before you."
A suited man stepped out from the kitchen. "Ana Lavoie, I am arresting you on behalf of Sjintech. Please come quietly and no harm will come to you or your friend."
She ran.
Current surged through her body.
She fell.
Darkness.
___________________

TBC. Probably.

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Goodbye Last.fm

In June 2009 I created a profile with Last.fm. Today, well over 51000 plays later, I deleted it, and it must be one of the most cathartic things I have done in a long time.

Last.fm is, at it's heart, a very useful site. You play music, it records said plays, lets you see stats about your plays, suggests similar music you might like, etc. But for me it's a holdover from an era in my music education where liking music was something to be proven to people. It wasn't enough to enjoy the music, I had to maintain an accurate representation of my listening habits, lest anyone get the wrong idea about who I am. No, I'm not just a metalhead, look, look at the number of trip hop plays I have right next to the Iron Maiden!

It detracted from the experience of listening to music when every play at the back of my mind there was the satisfying knowledge that somewhere a number was increasing through my input, to the point where I would force myself to listen to a track that I might not have been enjoying entirely at the time so it would scrobble.

Sometime last week I decided to let the scrobbler update, and in doing so something stopped working. I don't know why, but it wouldn't connect to my account, and instead of looking for a solution, I thought to myself "Why should I?" The question rattled around my head, delighting in the echo of an age past, when I listened to music because I wanted to, not because I wanted to show people I wanted to. I realised I had become too attached to the numbers, the statistics that subtly coloured my last few years of musical experience. And now, a week after that first question, I have ended it.

Goodbye Last.fm. You were by no means a bad experience, and you introduced me to a lot of new music, but I sincerely hope I never sign up for you again.

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Exams and Snow

Exam season is over, and things are almost back into some kind of normalcy. I would have liked to post something on Friday when my last exam, Matter and Fields I, was originally scheduled for, but reports if incoming snow meant that the university decided to postpone in until yesterday. Not such a bad thing on it's own, but fairly annoying in that while the rest of the country had this:

I had this:

Still, extra revision time, I suppose. The exam went as well as can be expected at any rate. Anyway, I'll be popping home for a couple of days before next semester starts up, but I should be back in time to post something on Friday, when I shall be forcing myself to stick to something of a regular updating schedule.

In the meantime, I hope you all have a lovely week, any exams go well, work goes smoothly and any troubles are sorted to everyone's satisfaction. See you around.

Note: All pictures in this post have been taken rather cheekily and without permission from friends. I hope that's cool :3

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Happy new year! I suppose!

I'm not that into it myself. Celebrating a new year strikes me as kind of odd. It starts during the week after Christmas, when suddenly everyone is fetishising the past, and as someone who fetishises a far future I'll never live to see I find this faintly disturbing.

Don't get me wrong, I love a party. I just find the idea of celebrating a measurement of time odd. And with the measurement being celebrated being of human creation there is something somewhat masturbatory about it. I guess, as is often the case, I am thinking too much about it. Besides, without everyone else getting hysterical about it and Christmas I wouldn't get my sweet sweet overtime pay.

Finally, the number 2013 just isn't very interesting. I think it's the 3. It might be magic but it's just not that inspiring.

Positive things. New years resolutions are cool. I have two, the main one being to update this bastard thing more. Even if it's just the cheaty revision notes posts. A subresolution I suppose would be to market it more, but eh. That's why it's a sub, I guess.

Second one is to bulk myself up a bit more. I'm not going to become some meathead, but if there's one thing I've noticed over my time at uni it's that I have become more thin than I'd like. Also, I've been watching the Yogscast Christmas livestreams, and one thing I saw...well, if someone who essentially plays video games for a living looks like this, I have no excuse. (Oh so very NSFW).

So, in summary:

• New Years is weird but so am I!
• Look forward to more posts! (Though probably not until after finals)
• I'm still alive!

Have a good year guys. Here's hoping it's a pretty okay one.

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