I think what I said was equivalent to what you said:

Did I miss something? (Not being snarky, I want to make sure I understand this as well as I imagine I do.)

A second important part of what makes them so spectacular is the shape (the cut) of the final gemstone. Since the index of refraction is a function of both frequency and of the angle of incidence (of the light ray into or out of the diamond), extreme angular cuts of the gem will cause the colors "in" the white light to be spatially separated enough to be resolvable by the human eye. That's why we see all the flashes of colors as the gem is rotated around.

Thus, part of the cost of the finished gem is the skill of the jeweler who cut the stone. Not worth anything like the crazy prices they charge, but not nothing, either.

The *last* thing WF has is poor customer service. My very first time there--I had never heard of it before, decided to try it--I had an item that wouldn't scan. Every other market chain would have called for a price check that would have meant a 3-5 minute delay for not only me, but the four people in line behind me. At WF, the clerk looked the item over, said "that looks like about $4.99", rang that up, and we continued on. I have also (since then) had multiple instances of some item not scanning, and they simply gave it to me for free, rather than delay long lines. I love that the upper management has given the clerks the power and permission to do that sort of thing.

Then too, if you ask *any* employee, working in any department, where an item is, they will not only direct you, but walk over to it with you to make sure you find it right away.

Whatever other charges you may lay against WF, that one at least is not true, from my (many years of) experience shopping there.

I like and agree with most everything you've said here. I have a different opinion about the late innings/high leverage situations. I really enjoy the psychological games that the pitcher, hitter, and runner (if any) play with each other. It winds up the tension, and gets me on the edge of my seat. And when at the game IRL, the crowd gets amped up, chanting, booing the (visiting team's) pickoff attempts...Great fun!

Can you imagine the expressions on the faces of TSA employees when they boot up your laptop and see OS/2? Could they possibly figure out how to access your data?

The laugh might be worth the $99 dollars all by itself!

Correct; I was attempting to explain what, not why. To the best of my knowledge, the question of why an observation collapses the wave function has only been partly answered. Essentially, you have to ask (for every case) exactly how the observation was done. Most commonly, you bounce one or more photons off of the thing you want to observe (or you arrange for it to emit on or more photons). This appears to be the cause of the collapse. Hopefully someone who knows more than me will chime in with more detail?

You will find that the interference pattern is destroyed! You will instead get two blotches of electrons, one in front of each slit.

Mathematically? It's because the function that produces the probability values is time-dependent; the result is that the probabilities of the various values (momentum [not velocity] and position, to take your examples) change over time. Thus, if you wait too long after you made your first measurement, subsequent measurements of the same physical quantities will have "decohered" again.

Physically? Since there are lots of possible quantum states, and since the probabilities associated with those states are determined by the force/energies that surround your electron, then as time passes, the forces and energies interact with the electron, and so the electron's physical state is re-randomized. (Semi-randomized, actually, but never mind.)

Sorry, I wasn't clear: I'm not suggesting the other interpretations of QM are nonsense; I am suggesting that the statement that "the electron could be in two places at once" is nonsense. As the poster below me said, there are NO interpretation of QM (of which I am aware) that will make that claim.

(That said, the Copenhagen interpretation, whatever its ontological problems, has the virtue of having stood the test of time and--more importantly--LOTS of experiments.

(Sorry for the delay in answering; Sunday night movie with the wife. :-) )

The term "superposition" means, in this context, two things--or rather, one thing, but expressed two ways:

(1) Given a particular physical setup--the collections of forces (or, equivalently, sources of potential energy), both internal and external, that act on a quantum particle, along with the initial conditions of the system--quantum theory cannot produce a single answer to any question you might pose, but only a list of possible answers, along with the probabilities that a measurement of the relevant physical quantity will produce each possible result.

For example, if I ask "In my particular experiment, what is the magnitude of the orbital angular momentum of the electron in a hydrogen atom", quantum theory will produce a list of (say) 5 possible values, along with the probabilities of obtaining the 5 values: 2%, 10%, 76% 10%, 2%--when you make the measurement. Thus, after the measurement, the angular momentum has a definite value; but before the measurement, the most we can say is that the electron will be found in one of those states, according to the weighted probabilities.

But, that is a lot of words; so, the phrase "quantum superposition" was invented to mean all of that. The common phraseology is to say that "prior to measurement, the electron is in a superposition of these 5 quantum states".

(2) The math way to say exactly the same thing is the state function (i.e., the solution to Schrodinger's equation for the given potential energy function) is a function that is a superposition (a sum) of so-called "basis functions" (or "basis states"); each basis state is one of the 5 states mentioned above.

This is what people mean when they write things like "the electron can be in two places at the same time", but it is a horribly imprecise and misleading way to phrase it. --But I understand why writers do it; look how many words it took me; what newspaper editors would allow 400 accurate words when 40 semi-accurate words will sort of do, and who the hell besides a few physicists will care, or even know?

No, the electron is NOT "in two places at once". That is nonsense. Prior to measurement the electron (and indeed, any quantum particle) simply does not have a well-defined position; rather, there is a set of points in space where it could be found (weighted by the probabilities returned by the* wave function of the electron in the given physical setup ("the potential well")). It is only when a measurement is made that the probabilities resolve to a certainty--and the electron is then found in literally one position in space.

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*Technically, the square modulus of the wave function.

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Sorry for the physics rant; I feel better now.

If a specific venue wants to reduce the problem of ticket bots, they could simply have ticket purchases to be at the box office only. After all, if you are physically going to the show, you are physically capable of going there to buy tickets.

Edge cases: the venue is not in your current city; you have a physical limitation that greatly increases the inconvenience of going there to get the tickets (e.g., in a wheelchair); I'm sure people can think of others. Possible solution? For these cases, purchase over the phone.

(Note that the added fees that Ticketmaster and their ilk charges would disappear. ("Convenience fee" my ass))

What obvious problem with this idea did I miss, thus proving that I am an idiot?