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Comment Re:Harmony at last.. (Score 1) 160

A great explanation, which made sense. But now I just have more questions. Like, "I will put a ball in one of these boxes, but I will not tell you which one I put it in. Now from your perspective, Neither the statement 'this box has the ball in it' nor 'this box does not have the ball in it' is true. You have no way of selecting which box I put the ball in." How is this any different?

What I am saying is, I don't see how there is any 'entanglement' there. It's just either in one diamond or the other. It's only our perception that doesn't know which one it is in.

Understanding wave-particle duality and the nature of light is critical to understanding modern physics. The easiest way I know of explaining this is through double-slit experiment.

With the double-slit experiment, you pass light between two slits that are space closely together (on the order of the wavelength of light). If you then place a screen some distance away from the slits, you will observe an interference pattern. Thomas Young used this experiment in the early 1800s and it appeared to settle the issue of nature of light (namely, that it travelled as a wave) in the physics community.

Then in 1905, Einstein wrote a paper which deduced that the photoelectric effect could only be explained using a particle model for light (This is what he won the Noble prize for, not for relativity ...).

The problem is that something can't be a wave and particle. Waves can interfere and pass through each other, but particles cannot (they collide). So, which is light? Since the time of Newton, it was suspected to be a wave, due to interference. Young's double slit experiment was especially convincing.

The modern answer is "It depends, depending on how the experiment is performed." If you repeat Young's interference experiment, but place a detector at each slit, you will not get an inteference pattern, you will get two sharp peaks on the screen centered around each slit. This is what you would expect from a particle model of light (the photon must pass through one slit or the other, it cannot pass through both). Even if you do the experiment so slowly, and only allow single photon at a time to pass through the slit, you will still get an inteference pattern.

In brief, what happens is when you make an observation, the wave function of the particle is said to "collapse" onto one state or the other. But, when we aren't observing, the particle exists in a superposition of all possible states.

Comment Re:why bother with IRS? (Score 1) 57

With all the inflation created by the Fed to feed the ever hungry Treasury, why bother with the IRS? Here is a cost cutting for you: abolish the IRS and just keep counterfeiting. There is no difference. IRS is just a token dep't, existing for the sake of existing, today, that government only collects a small part of its expenses in taxes and borrows and prints the rest.

In FY 2010, the U.S. collected $2.1 trillion in taxes, and borrowed $1.3 trillion, I would hardly consider ~2/3 to be a small part.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200

Comment Re:NYT is a lap-dog (Score 2) 127

The New York Times has been dead to me ever since Bill Keller, Executive Editor, admitted that he won't publish anything relating to the US govt. without their prior approval.

I'm at work so I can't youtube, so I can't see exactly what he said, but its pretty standard practice in journalism to allow people to comment on stories that are about them ... perhaps his comments were misinterpreted. I would like to see the exact quote.

Comment Like the overflow toilet idea (Score 1) 83

If this has ever happened to you know, you know how much damage it can generate, especially if its on the 2nd level of a house and goes unnoticed for any length of time. They could also perhaps increase the tank capacity back to reasonable levels and only use as much water as necessary to appease the water conservation freaks (the residential toilets sold now have jokingly low capacities and therefore weak flushes due to federal laws passed in the 1990s)

Comment Re:Which is worse? (Score 1) 595

Nuclear power is only relatively expensive because of unreasonable/unfair government regulation. Nuclear plants would never have been built in the 50s/60s/70s in large numbers if this wasn't the case.

Like you mentioned, the plant at Three Mile Island safeguards worked just fine - the whole story was overblown by the media. This was even before the excessive regulation drove up the price point to where coal was cheaper.

Comment Re:Perspective vs. Tunnel Vision (Score 1) 284

The syntax for equations are about the only redeeming feature of LaTeX. Every other typesetting feature is hideously painful. "OK, I want to change the page margins... um, I'm not really allowed to do that hard? Are you sure this is a 'typsetting' language?" Not to mention, you can't do anything without a template. Not without a low-grade headache, in any case.

Comment Re:Military healthcare (Score 1) 449

The only war you can make a case for is WWII. The War of 1812 was basically started by the US in an ill-conceived attempt to conquer Canada.

WWI we really didn't have much business picking either side, per the tradition of George Washington and the Monroe doctrine. At the beginning the US tried to arm both sides, but the US basically had to choose between arming one side or arming neither side. The US had much greater financial ties with Great Britain which in the end was the decisive factor

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