Except, it isn’t quite a pendulum. A pendulum is entirely on one side, the other, or sitting in the middle. It doesn’t experience both sides at once.
I guess dozens of pendulums would be more accurate. They aren’t always in synch with each other. So they get mixed. Mixed…
I hate mixed states. It’s usually the most annoying parts of the two extremes. But what’s to do? Just keep on pushing through it, hoping it ends.
I’ve heard it said before that the default assumption in regards to deities should be agnosticism.
To put it in simple terms, that’s a crock of shit. Why? Let’s look at it.
There has been no conclusive evidence to date in regards to the existance or non-existance of any deities, be they the Greek Gods, the Roman Gods, Jehova, Yahweh, Allah, Shiva, Vishnu… You get the idea. None of them have ever revealed themselves to a group of reliable witnesses in historical times. None of them have ever appeared on television. None have been photographed. There’s no voice recordings of any of them. There is zero evidence in favor of any specific deity. There’s no concrete evidence of there being any supernatural entities.
“There’s no evidence against them either!” you may respond. That’s true. “Because there’s no evidence for or against, we should say maybe, maybe not.” you might continue.
You’d be in error. There’s no evidence in favor of leprachauns existing. But there’s just as much evidence against their existance as there is against the existance of any deities. None. The only arguement against leprachauns is the lack of evidence for their existance. Does that mean we should stand by and say leprachauns may or may not exist? Not in the least.
Scientifically, the default assumption regarding deities should be atheism. A true scientist would say that they do not believe in any deities, but are willing to re-examine their beliefs should new evidence be prevented. The same goes for leprachans.
In all reality, deities are inherently unscientific. Science is about natural phenomenon. All the gods that have ever been worshipped have been supernatural to an extreme. The power controlled by even the weakest of them would be a gross violation of the laws of physics.
Gods, unicorns, leprachauns, dragons, vampires, werewolves… They all have one thing in common: They could (theoretically) be out there, but nobody has found evidence of these things that go against all the natural laws.
I ask of any agnostics that read this, how are deities any different than el chupacabra? Both have reported sitings, but neither have been conclusively proven or disproven.
I started a Vampire: The Masquerade game this past Sunday. I’ve got three players right now. One is very experienced, the other passingly so, and the last has only played World of Darkness once.
The new guy chose to play a Lasombra. He started himself with a humanity of seven. In one session, he rolled humanity no less than five times. Had he not taken the Luck merit, he’d have a derrangement. He decided to get in a fight with a drug-dealer. He cuts the guys arms off, picks him up, and runs out of there using Celerity. He gets home and the guy’s bled out. He’s dead. The body is still fresh enough to Embrace him. Out of guilt, he Embraces this guy. Oops. There’s no food source around. So the drug dealer goes into frenzy and start tearing up the place, getting blood all over. Well, the new guy’s got a point in the herd background, so he calls up and has the methhead come over. And bring one of her friends.
His childe, of course, goes overboard and kills the methhead. The childe comes out of frenzy. And freaks out over his missing arms. He gets talked down enough to regrow his arms. And goes right back into frenzy. Boom, innocent girl that came over with her friend gets attacked. She’s lucky enough to not die. But she will die if she doesn’t get medical attention. So he takes her to the hospital. Wearing a blood covered trench coat. He says he doesn’t know what happened to her. But he’s covered in blood, so that’s a bit suspect. As he’s leaving the hospital, he notices that the cops are at the entrance to the ER.
He runs and manages to lose the cops. He breaks out a window and jumps out. At the intersection is a cop car and a pair of officers. He manages to sneak to another intersection, but there’s cops there, too. The side walks are all well lit, so he’s not going to get away like that. As he’s new, and I’m feeling generous, I let him roll to see if he can figure out a way out of this situation. He gets enough successes that I hint that he can get rid of the things that most identify him as the psycho that brought in a half dead girl. He loses the trench coat and sword. He sneaks over to an entrance and attempts to slip into the light unnoticed, so that he can act like he’s just coming out of the hospital. The cops notice him. One comes over to check him out. Luckily, he sweet talked his way out of the situation. But not without telling where the trench coat and sword were. Oops.
He violated the Masquerade (ERs have security cameras, and he’s a Lasombra) and left behind a sword with his finger prints all over it. I find it funny, personally. And the 6th gen Malkavian that looks out for the group he’s in will wash her hands of someone that causes that much trouble.
Saddam Hussein has been executed, as you no doubt know. And I’m conflicted as to whether or not him being executed is the best result.
One one hand, there’s no chance of him trying to pull strings from in prison. He’s truly no longer a political threat. And while I generally oppose the death penalty, there are definate exceptions to this. A case in point would be Ted Bundy, serial killer/rapist with the uncanny ability to change his appearance to an amazing extent. Add on that he was an escape artist (he was captured once and escaped by starving until he was skinny enough to slip through the bars), and there’s an even bigger recipe for a man that’s extremely dangerous to leave alive. And the thing that made this bastard so effective at what he did? He had charisma up the wazoo, but a wholly forgetable face. Witnesses that saw his face remembered relatively few usefull details, so sketches were difficult to get. That with him being an expert at disguising himself spelled out a difficult man to find. And to top off the reasons to off him? He flat out admitted to every rape/murder he was charged with and claimed to have committed hundreds more and vowed that if he wasn’t executed, he’d escape again and go on another spree. The man was simply too dangerous to keep alive. Any method that could keep the sick fuck locked up would ultimately fall into the realm of “cruel and unusual”.
Back to the subject of Saddam, his execution is also advantages in that he no longer can be a political prisoner. That’s advantageous, certainly.
On the downside, he has achieved martyrdom in the eyes of some. This certainly strengthens ideals. And in a way, it lowers us to his level, killing a killer. This is mildly hypocritical. I say mildly because the killer killed innocent people, so it isn’t quite the “Do as I say, not as I do.” scenario. Of course, executing Saddam will not act as a detourrent for other dictators. Benito Moussilini’s fate would have done that, but cruel dictators still exist.
On the subject of executing people… There are instances where it is a better decision overall to end the life of a person. These are rare. In all honesty, I don’t think that it is cruel to kill someone that has done vile, dispicable acts. Everyone dies, and most people will probably die more painfully than someone sentenced to death. I’ll grant that many recipients of lethal injection were still fully aware of what was happening as they were poisoned. I’ll grant that many of those who have been hanged remained conscious while they asphyxiated. Getting shot no doubt hurts like hell. The gas champer too. Death is flat-out nasty. But heart failure? You’d better believe that’d hurt like a mother fucker. Cancer? There’s a reason they give people pain-killers like it’s candy. Kidney failure? Some of the worst pain one can go through. I have heard from people that have had their kidneys fail and survive the ordeal say that it was more painfull than child birth. Worse than kidney stones. Death is almost always a painfull ordeal. Unless you are fully unconscious or your brain kills off before any signals can reach it (such as getting your head shot off by a high powered rifle or a shotgun [12 or larger bore]), you will be feeling as various parts of your body shut down. Peacefull deaths are only possible if the person is very much asleep. I’ve watched an animal die. The last hour was far from peacefull.
Really, letting the person rot in prison for the next sixty+ years is much harsher. The person is in an enviroment where they have little control over day to day life. Life in prison is going to be hell. And there’s always living with the knoweldge that you took a life. You will always remember it. That little cell you sleep and shit in is a constant reminder. Welcome to prison, your life is now the property of the federal government. For the rest of your life. And who can ignore the fact that the innocent have been sentenced before? With that in mind, how can we execute people unless indisputible evidence exists? Mistakes have been made. They will continue to be made. Sticking someone in prison for thirty years will certainly be a major set-back with long lasting reprecussions, but once the person’s heart stops, it’s pretty much finito. Game over. There’s no way the person can get their life back. Because it is gone. They are gone. While technically not murder, killing a man that was sentenced to die but was later discovered to be innocent would weigh on pretty much anyone’s consciounce.
(As a side note, I hate how narrow the column on this layout is, but it’s the best avaiable to me… Damnable lack of the ability to customize this layout…)
I feel almost dirty. I haven’t touched blogging in… Oh, three or four months atleast. Partly due to nothing to write about. Greatly due to being too damn lazy to post anything. I promise anyone who actually starts reading this damn thing that I’ll try and be good about it. And even cough up the occaisional good entry.
Lately I’ve been remembering my dreams vividly… In fact, the past three times I’ve fallen asleep and remembered dreaming. Sadly, I forget the dream’s content rather quickly. I still remember having dreamed, however.
Now, I do know that REM sleep is attained almost every time someone sleeps long enough. I’d look up how long, but really, I don’t feel like it right now. However, the fact that I have remembered dreams this many times in a row… It makes me wonder if I haven’t been getting enough REM sleep and my brain finally has decided to do a massive wave, thus increasing my odds of remembering a dream. Or not…
I do know that my REM sleep is shitty at best. I had a sleep test a while back and I pulled off less than half what is average for the same sleep time… *cough*Three hours. *cough* Fortunately, I’m sleeping much better now, but still I don’t sleep as well as I could. And many of one’s health problems can be caused by, or at minimum, aggrevated by, insufficient ammounts of deep sleep. While I am physically healthy, I am… Off. Nothing major, and many people are worse off than me. Still, I have a right to bitch. The average person is better off emotionally than I am. I deal with it though. And I’m not an emo fuck, so that helps.
Class assignment, listen to “Dreams”, by Roy Orbison. Or any of his other ballads. Best voice of popular music. Ever.
Here’s a short poem I wrote a while back… Profanity warning.
I was goingto eat
A fucking gummi bear
But then I realised
That fucking bear
Was fucking a bear
I lost my apetite
To a fucking gummi bear
Yes, the kind from off-planet.
Have they visited this planet? Not bloody likely… For one, it is immensely arrogant to believe that a species with technology allowing it to travel distances spanning light years just to land here look around, and leave. Think of our solar system visits. The exploring we’ve done with our probes is enough that we’d have found any civilizations The Mars rovers have driven on the surface of Mars extensively. If there were any nominally intelligent life we’d have seen it. But not even a tumbleweed, but that’s not the point. If E.T. came to look at us up close, he’d probably try initiating contact. But there’s more to it then no direct contact.
Distance: The nearest star outside our solar system is Proxima Centauri, at about 4.2 light years. And it is a red dwarf. Not very life sustaining planet happy… Let’s go with the sister stars, shall we? Only a difference of .21 light years there. The star system is known as Alpha Centauri by most, though more appropriately as Rigil Kentaurus. The two remaining stars could, theoretically, have planets that sustain life kicking around in orbit. We’ll be optimistic and say yes, they do, and yes, they are more advanced then us, technologically. We’ll not get into alien sexual prowess.
So, at a distance of 4.41 light years, they would first need to get very exact measurements of the Earth’s movement. Next, they’ll need fuel. They’ll need a fair amount for acceleration and small course corrections, however, the near perfect vacuum of space poses very little drag, so keeping the forward speed at what they want will cost minimal fuel. We will assume they have suspended animation chambers to cut down on supplies. The on board computer is advanced enough to keep everything on course until they reach this inconspicuous marble that has been sending out transmissions for so long. They’re in for a long trip.
Speed and time dilation: The speed of light (hereafter, c) in a perfect vacuum is 186,282 miles per second. So far, quantum physics has not way of accelerating matter to, or beyond this speed. Even more, it is speculated that such an act would convert the matter to pure energy, as in Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC2.
In other words, how the hell do you propel something to the c? First, we’ll look at current propulsion systems we have that work in space.
Rocket- Dominantly used. This involves the combustion of explosively flammable materials, typically liquid hydrogen with oxygen present to allow for burning. Cons- Heavy and volatile. Burns well above Mach, but far less than the c.
Gyroscope- Used more for steering, for which it is highly effective.
“Aerosol” type propellant- Used on astronauts performing space walks. Sub-Mach, slow acceleration.
Now what of nuclear reactions? Well we don’t have them as propulsion, but we’ll assume the aliens do.
Fission- Results in hydrogen atoms being split. Immensely powerful, emits photons (which make up light) in massive quantities. The downside- Most photon emition is gamma type, which has a very short wavelength, causing it to have tremendous energy. This causes it to be extremely deadly, causing radiation poisoning in all known life. This is because the radiation causes the water contained in cells to flash-evaporate, bursting the cell and spewing toxins therein through the body. This requires that the alien crew be in hibernation before the main engines are online. Still, there is not enough thrust from particles that do achieve c to attain c in a reasonable amount of time.
Fusion- When two atoms combine to form one larger atom. Starts with hydrogen. This method has the advantage of not releasing immense amounts of lethal radiation. It also provides more thrust than fission. It will likely yield higher speeds given the same amount of time. Downside- Requires immense pressure to sustain. Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, needs five times the mass it posses to sustain fusion. Heat also becomes problematic. The center of fusion reactions is in the millions of degrees Fahrenheit This temperature is far in excess of the boiling point of even Tungsten, the element with the highest boiling point, at 10,031 Fahrenheit when under one atmosphere of pressure. The pressure required to sustain fusion is beyond the strength of any known substances, as it is in the millions of atmospheres, at minimum. Still lacks the necessary amount of power coming from particles traveling at c.
Anti-matter- The most powerful energy source available. When matter and anti-matter come into contact, they annihilate, becoming pure energy. This results in an immense energy release for tiny amounts of mass consumed. No pressure is needed. Almost all particles that are ejected are in the form of energy traveling at or near c, with any extra being the result of an imbalance of the matter to anti-matter ratio. Very low radiation emition on dangerous levels. Downside- Extremely dangerous to contain. Requires constant magnetic fields to keep away from matter, else it annihilates prematurely or in the wrong area. Even one gram (think paper clip) would destroy the ship and an area the size of a small city. This requires that more mass be devoted to the ship in the form of redundancy for the anti-matter containment. This would likely get more attention than life-support. Also, due to the immense energy release, there becomes a problem with containing the reaction and directing it. Getting the required fifty-fifty ratio of matter to anti-matter is also of exceeding importance. Any extra matter becomes rapidly moving, incredibly dangerous missiles. Any extra anti-matter will be propelled, likely contacting the ship.
So now we can see that anti-matter is about the only choice. Next, time dilation Time dilation is proven to exist. The closer to c you come, the faster time moves for those not going the speed you are going. In other words, you slow down in relation to everyone else. This is because light cannot move faster than c while in a perfect vacuum. If your ship has headlights and you travel at one fourth c, the light coming from the headlights will appear to be traveling at c in relation to you. A motionless viewer would likewise see the light moving at c in relation to them. If the spectator watched you move about the ship, he would see you moving around inside your ship at three fourths your normal speed. At twice c, you’ll be moving at half speed, and everyone else will appear to be going twice as fast from your perspective. So, when you achieve c… No once really knows what time will flow like then. Theoretically, you could have time stop for you… And your ship would hurtle on until something slowed it down. Unless the alien civilization planned for this occurrence, you’d miss Earth. Still, you’re entire research operation would be fucked from this event either way. As would be Earth, if the aliens had planned on this. Still, this is one theory. This is kind of moot, however, as even anti-matter probably is unable to achieve c. Very close, but unlikely to get there, probably not even half of c.
Acceleration: And now the biggest bitch of traveling at or near c. Getting there without destroying the craft and killing the occupants.
I am going to do this off of known scientific principles, and as a true stasis field has no explanation within science, we will be using a type of hibernation similar to torpor that slugs enter. In this state, which can theoretically be used on humans, a creature’s oxygen levels rapidly drop to a certain range. This range will kick in a response that puts the subject into a state similar to torpor of snails, where there is next to no signs of life. In this state, oxygen needs are dropped to near zero, as are water and nutrient needs. As a bonus, the body becomes less susceptible to damage, as demonstrated when this procedure was performed on lab animals. A syringe was inserted into the brains of a control group of animals (squirrels, if I remember correctly) that were merely sedated. Then, a group of animals under this torpor-like state (same species) had the syringes inserted into the same area of brain. They were revived and after a set time all animals were euthanized and dissected. The control group all showed dead brain cells around the injury, where as those that had been in torpor showed little to none, despite being conscious for as long as the control group. This state has been induced in many animals, all of which have shown no adverse effects. Humans have yet to be tested. We will assume these aliens can achieve the state of torpor, be it an innate ability, or the result of technology. This protects from a lot of damage.
However, there is still a limit to what their bodies can sustain before being ripped asunder. If they have had their heart torn off by acceleration while in torpor, they would either be dead before revival, or soon there-after. So, there is a limit of extended g-force of about twenty g’s. At this rate, it will take roughly 321 days to hit c. Sustained g-force like that would require constant medical attention and the ability to cut that acceleration down if even one body shows signs of dangerous damage being caused. Breaking will also be the same. Total time for acceleration and subsequent deceleration: 642 days, possibly longer due to stress on the aliens.
Possible atmospheric complications: These aliens may even be killed by what’s in our air. No, not water soluble bad guys. I’m more referring to stuff like nitrogen, CO2, etc. This is fairly unlikely to cause problems, however.
Amateur astronomers: There are a lot of these guys. There is a good chance that a dude with a good telescope would see these aliens first.
SETI: That would be the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. They have radio telescopes all over the world, listening in for any communications being sent out. And advanced civilization capable of sending visitors here would have started broadcasting long ago. We would have heard it. Good bye inhabited Alpha Centauri…
Space is big. And very empty. The odds of intelligent life being within five light years of Earth? Atrocious. They would have to be about four and a half years away from radio communications. Based off SETI’s years of listening alone, I’d say we’re alone in this arm of the galaxy, possibly even this entire half.
Space is a lonely place.
I’m my own grandpa!
Well, not really. Fun song though…
I’ve been on this rock for about twenty years and two months now, and the biggest insight right now is: Insomnia fucking sucks. *Poke*”Hey brain, it’s 1:30 am… Get the fuck to sleep.” [Brain]“Go to hell.” [Sense of time] “Bastard…” [Leprachaun of Burning] “It’s a small world after all… WTF?!” [Gnome of Truth] “What’s to say? It’s late and I haven’t had caffeinne. Get lost.”
So yeah, sleep deprivation’s a bitch.
Now that I have my own ‘puter with internet I can finally update this thing. Regular updates, ho!
