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March 14, 2021

World of Lies

I’ve been thinking about an aspect of modern life that bothers me at least as much — if not more — than the anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-thought, bias of our culture.

It’s bad when emotions are elevated above rational thinking, that what matters most is how one feels. It undermines our future when that is not guided by understanding and thoughtfulness. And all too often those feelings don’t involve compassion and acceptance, but fear, hate, and rage.

What’s worse, what makes we wonder if we’ll ever find a decent path again, is that we’ve become a culture of lies.

21 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, lies, pi day, Service Today | posted in Rant, Religion, Sunday Sermons

March 13, 2021

Black Lightning

By Wyrd Smythe

Last Sci-Fi Saturday I savaged Sabrina, which remains a new low to me in dumb TV. This time I have a much more mixed review. I’ve been working my way through Black Lightning (available on Netflix). It’s a superhero show, so it’s fantasy and suffers all the problems and weakness that go with that.

On the other hand, it’s about a Black superhero (three, actually), and the landscape has been sadly and notably deficient in people of color as superheroes. There is also that Black Lightning obviously has a bigger budget, much better acting, and a far stronger sense of authenticity.

That said,… I’m sorry, but superhero stories are just super lame.

15 Comments | tags: science fiction, science fiction TV, SF, superheroes | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, TV

March 12, 2021

Friday Notes (Mar 12, 2021)

By Wyrd Smythe

Over time I seem to be creating day of the week categories for posts. It started with TV Tuesday, back in August 2012. (Which I unfortunately made a Tag rather then a Category — something I’d like to change one of these days.) The very next month I created Wednesday Wow (as a Category), which languished for years but I’ve used more often lately.

I’m not exactly sure when I created Sci-Fi Saturday. The first post was in July 2011 (the month I began this blog), but the Category came later. I applied it retroactively (many SF posts were on Saturdays; go figure). Mystery Monday is a recent addition started in December 2019.

And now I’m starting Friday Notes.

22 Comments | tags: laser light, Lotus 1-2-3, Turing Completeness | posted in Friday Notes

March 8, 2021

QM 101: Quantum Spin

By Wyrd Smythe

Popular treatments of quantum mechanics often treat quantum spin lightly. It reminds me of the weak force, which science writers often mention only in passing as ‘related to radioactive decay’ (true enough). There’s an implication it’s too complicated to explain.

With quantum spin, the handwave is that it is ‘similar to classical angular momentum’ (similar to actual physical spinning objects), but different in mysterious quantum ways too complicated to explain.

Ironically, it’s one of the simpler quantum systems, mathematically.

40 Comments | tags: QM101, quantum mechanics, quantum spin | posted in Math, Physics

March 6, 2021

Chilling Sabrina

By Wyrd Smythe

I watched the first season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Netflix) with mixed reactions. It had just enough to keep me watching, but I didn’t think much of the writing. It has the same problem as a lot of modern fantasy — random, irrational, downright dumb (and in this case very unoriginal) world building.

The latter season tipped the scales entirely to an Ugh! rating for me. Television shows are rarely known for their intelligence, but this one has given me a new standard of worst-ever.

To be clear here, ‘I come, not to praise Sabrina, but to bury it.’

16 Comments | tags: fantasy, Michelle Gomez, Netflix, witches | posted in Rant, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV

March 1, 2021

QM 101: Eigen Whats?

By Wyrd Smythe

Unless one has a strong mathematical background, one new and perhaps puzzling concept in quantum mechanics is all the talk of eigenvalues and eigenvectors.

Making it even more confusing is that physicists tend to call eigenvectors eigenstates or eigenfunctions, and sometimes even refer to an eigenbasis.

So the obvious first question is, “What (or who) is an eigen?” (It turns out to be a what. In this case there was no famous physicist named Eigen.)

14 Comments | tags: eigenstate, eigenvalue, eigenvector, matrix transform, QM101, quantum mechanics | posted in Math, Physics

February 22, 2021

QM 101: What’s an Operator?

By Wyrd Smythe

In quantum mechanics, one hears much talk about operators. The Wikipedia page for operators (a good page to know for those interested in QM) first has a section about operators in classical mechanics. The larger quantum section begins by saying: “The mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics (QM) is built upon the concept of an operator.”

Operators represent the observables of a quantum system. All measurable properties are represented mathematically by an operator.

But they’re a bit difficult to explain with plain words.

6 Comments | tags: QM101, quantum mechanics, quantum operator | posted in Math, Physics

February 21, 2021

BB #71: Brain Background

By Wyrd Smythe

Initially I thought, for the first time in the the Brain Bubbles series, I have a bubble actually related to the brain. When I went through the list, though, I saw that #17, Pointers!, was about the brain-mind problem, although the ideas expressed there were very speculative.

As is usually the case when talking about the mind and consciousness, considerable speculation is involved — there remain so many unknowns. A big one involves the notion of free will.

I just read an article that seems to support an idea I have about that.

20 Comments | tags: brain mind problem, computationalism, free will, human brain, human mind, theory of mind | posted in Brain Bubble

February 18, 2021

Sideband #72: Trig Is Easy!

By Wyrd Smythe

Trigonometry is infamously something most normal people fear and loath. Or at least don’t understand and don’t particularly want to deal with. (In fairness, it doesn’t pop up much in regular life.) As with matrix math, trig often remains opaque even for those who do have a basic grasp of other parts of math.

Excellent and thorough tutorials exist for those interested in digging into either topic, but (as with matrix math) I thought a high-altitude flyover might be helpful in pointing out important concepts.

The irony, as it turns out, is that trig is actually pretty easy!

31 Comments | tags: cosine, sine, sine wave, trigonometry | posted in Math, Sideband

February 17, 2021

Sideband #71: Matrix Math

By Wyrd Smythe

There are many tutorials and teachers, online and off, that can teach you how to work with matrices. This post is a quick reference for the basics. Matrix operations are important in quantum mechanics, so I thought a Sideband might have some value.

I’ll mention the technique I use when doing matrix multiplication by hand. It’s a simple way of writing it out that I find helps me keep things straight. It also makes it obvious if two matrices are compatible for multiplying (not all are).

One thing to keep in mind: It’s all just adding and multiplying!

7 Comments | tags: matrix math, matrix multiplication | posted in Math, Sideband