Zoe: We're getting him back. Jayne: What are we gonna do, clone him?

'War Stories'


Natter 40: The Nice One  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


Kate P. - Nov 28, 2005 7:30:55 am PST #7348 of 10006
That's the pain / That cuts a straight line down through the heart / We call it love

nsm relaxing as like a stay in Guantanamo

Heh. This is pretty much how I feel about knitting and crocheting and the like.


§ ita § - Nov 28, 2005 7:32:43 am PST #7349 of 10006
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Since time is a part of the universe you can't really speak of universe having already happened, it just is and we're at a particular coordinate that has a location in both space and time.

Come again? Are you saying that the concept of something happening simultaneously (or an hour and a half apart) on opposite sides of the universe is bollocks?

I don't see how that jibes with the ability to posit a coordinate system with time as an axis.


tommyrot - Nov 28, 2005 7:34:14 am PST #7350 of 10006
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

Come again? Are you saying that the concept of something happening simultaneously (or an hour and a half apart) on opposite sides of the universe is bollocks?

Yes, according to relativity.


Nilly - Nov 28, 2005 7:35:04 am PST #7351 of 10006
Swouncing

True evil.

That's why she couldn't believe, years later, that she had actually done that.

something akin to gravity, as we experience it right now

So "gravity", not in the physics-after-general-relativity sense (twisting and curving the time-space), but in the Newtonian sense? I'm just trying to understand what you mean.

I'd never stopped to wonder why does time just go forwards, and why so inexorably.

I don't really know much about it, but the direction of all the processes that take place in the universe goes is that where the entropy (sort of amount of disorder) is enlarged. That's pretty much what governs all the multi-particle interactions and processes in the universe, and since everything is 'built', in one way or another, from lots of smaller particles, it plays that major role. So we may see it as the direction of time, but it's actually the direction of entropy.

It's like, if you drop a mug to the floor, and it breaks to pieces. When all the little pieces are mug-shaped, and whatever liquid is inside is inside-of-mug-shaped, they have just the one way (or very few) to be ordered like that. However, when it's all smashed to pieces on the floor, the material of the mug in all different pieces and places and the liquid inside all over the place, you have many more options for the particles which build the material to arrange themselves. You enlarged the entropy. So you see the direction of the mug being broken as the 'regular' flow of time, and the direction that reduces the disorder, the one in which pieces get back together and liquid gets put back inside, as the opposite, as time going backwards. But it's not a quality of time, per se, but of the entropy.

House, who really bothers me.

What about him disturbs you? I've only seen the one episode, mind you, so I may have no idea as to what you're referring to.

Doctors more often than not seem to be like detectives, in a way - they have to find the solution to the mystery, based on clues that the body gives them.


§ ita § - Nov 28, 2005 7:35:22 am PST #7352 of 10006
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Yes, according to relativity

I totally buy that -- I just don't see how the rest of the sentence is possible then.


Gudanov - Nov 28, 2005 7:36:22 am PST #7353 of 10006
Coding and Sleeping

Are you saying that the concept of something happening simultaneously (or an hour and a half apart) on opposite sides of the universe is bollocks?

No. I just saying you can't talk about the Universe existing in time outside of the Universe because time is part of the Universe.


Allyson - Nov 28, 2005 7:37:33 am PST #7354 of 10006
Wait, is this real-world child support, where the money goes to buy food for the kids, or MRA fantasyland child support where the women just buy Ferraris and cocaine? -Jessica

Is it just me, or does this look photoshopped?


§ ita § - Nov 28, 2005 7:39:05 am PST #7355 of 10006
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

What about him disturbs you?

He's a complete asshole who's indulged because he's bright, and I can't see the business reasons for keeping him around. Also, the shows tend to follow a fairly predictable format, but that's not a fault in the character. Just another thing that helps keep me at a distance.

But it's not a quality of time, per se, but of the entropy.

Does this mean that entropy reversal is impossible, or that it would result in a difference in how time is perceived?


tommyrot - Nov 28, 2005 7:41:30 am PST #7356 of 10006
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

Is it just me, or does this look photoshopped?

I think they photoshopped the license plate (for privacy reasons) but nothing else seems obviously photoshopped. However, I didn't look too long, as I have actual work to do.


Sue - Nov 28, 2005 7:42:15 am PST #7357 of 10006
hip deep in pie

Yay Jesse on giving notice

When I lived in France, I got fluent enough at thinking in metric that I was able to handle all the length, weight, and volume stuff without having to consciously convert back and forth.

Temperature, I am almost bilingual in, but though Canada is officially metric, if anyone told me their height and weight in metric terms, I would pretty much give them a blank stare. I still use Imperial measurements for cooking (cups, tsps) but when a recipe asks for 3 oz of somethng, I am totally lost.