|
Post by antondevey on Jul 30, 2006 13:11:33 GMT -5
it's just a compliment. In any case, you live on another continent. what happened to the missus?
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 29, 2006 20:12:30 GMT -5
ack! it says single in your page! how'd this get past us?
aaaand can I just say that you look very nice in that dress >>
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 12, 2006 17:56:19 GMT -5
allow me my innuendos, and a man can dream. Take it from me =o
... ok I'll stop there
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 12, 2006 15:47:48 GMT -5
yeah, Erin, I've got a growing "attraction" for you too =P
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Aug 14, 2006 20:45:26 GMT -5
that's freaking brilliant. I caught reference to terry pratchett too, I think I've found a new .com female icon to obsess over =P
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 30, 2006 6:06:48 GMT -5
cat who walks through walls? *wikifies*well this cat's position is wherever the narrative is... eh, yeah, it is another science fictiony cat but I don't think it has much bearing on shrodinger. I can't seem to find an analysis of the character... could you give us some more info?
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 16, 2006 16:15:09 GMT -5
XD that's hilarious. darn... a professor should know better than to say that to impressionable students, you've got to acquire that outlook through years of cynicism. I don't know if you can judge it for that too much though... I mean, while they probably do hide how intrinsically flawed most of their ideas are, they never say that they know everything.
Hey, I've just realised that this thread has become, by definition, the geekiest thing I have ever done. close to the philosophical analysis I made of kingdom hearts. someone give me a medal!
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 15, 2006 18:37:19 GMT -5
I get nervous when people say things like "belief in one scientific theory or another is a matter of discretion". Not really. You can't just decide to stop believing in gravity, or relativity. A theory becomes a theory (as opposed to a hypothesis) when there's a system of ideas that work together, are supported by data, and expand upon or make obsolete previous theories. Eeep, don't even go there... I'm afraid to say it really is about discretion, it's sad but true... I mean, it's not as if there aren't conflicting theories about things, and there's no way that you can irrefutably choose one and say "yeah, we'll go with this". One of the worst things you can do as a scientist is claim that anything at all is irrefutably correct, I mean, general relativity? it gets blown apart every week. Seriously, if you follow physics closely you'll notice that scientists jump up and down on things that were considered as creditable as the face on your face only last week... sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong, but believing either way prior to it being found to be right or wrong and then turning out to be wrong yourself is absolutely fine, because it really is... a matter of discretion. A couple of examples: Quantum mechanics(the scientists, not the study XP) still use newtonian principles to deal with the more intricate things involved with gravity instead of einsteinian ones. Although einsteinian is very soon to be replaced by Hawkingese and has its faults, it's still a damn sight more steadfast than newton's ideas, but they use newton's anyway because it's easier. Don't judge them, it's mind wrenchingly difficult anyway, but doesn't that sort of put physics as we know it in perspective for you?
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 14, 2006 19:15:30 GMT -5
you're probably right, another thing to consider is that it'd be difficult to kill shroe and not look like a bad guy. While he's part of the nazi youth, he's still a child - except in his introductory scene where he grows fangs briefly. If you could get it like that though... quite an interesting fight could ensue. If you had to kill him on the spot and no faffing about with superpositions, in theory you'd have to do it with your eyes closed so that he could be dead without anyone knowing where he was. That'd take some doing though, or a really really REALLY big automatic gun.
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 13, 2006 15:07:36 GMT -5
that's a matter of opinion really. Yes, observation does change the thing, but heisenberg said that even if you used no photons or waves or anything, and had an infinitely accurate and infinitely uninterfering measuring device you'd still change it. belief in one scientific theory or another is a matter of discretion... and Hirano has every right to take the piss out of it.
Now I could swear there was a part where shroe said he had a hard time getting into the mansion... Meh, I don't think it would make much odds anyway. It might mean that he doesn't actually have to know where he's going... All the same though, he would have to have his location known while he is undead.
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 13, 2006 9:45:56 GMT -5
hmm... perhaps we can derive how to kill him from this mess of speculation. I thought he might be both male and female because, well, he looks it. He's too young to have secondary sexual developement and such but... Yeah, I suppose you're right, he's a catboy.
But he does state that he is both everywhere and nowhere... but in another part, he says that he had a hard time getting into the hellsing mansion. Mkay... so either there's some kind of morphic shield around the mansion, or getting from place to place for him is more complicated than choosing which part of "everywhere" he needs to occupy.
Seeing as I can't think of anything that might constitute the mansion having an anti-shrodinger forcefield, I'll assume the latter. Ah, here's an idea: He is everywhere, but to be observed as being in a certain place he -or possibly the Doc?- must observe that particular place... and prove that he is, by definition, there. This is totally off on a limb, I'm probably totally wrong but from that I surmise that the hellsing mansion was bugged by millenium... allowing him to get there as an envoy. And when he went there to visit... uh... you know, that woman with all the tatoos Zorin, he was infiltrating her mind, which millenium developed, and thus can send him into by observing him there.
So shrodinger's limits are that he has to be able to see where he is going. Hey, the exact same thing applies to nightcrawler in X men. Next issue... how is he killed? I think I've got a more steadfast theory on that question. Above I suggested that his persona is a reference to the heisenberg uncertainty principle as well as shrodinger's cat. Now the main upshot of the heisenberg uncertainty principle is that in terms of measurement and observation, it is impossible to know two distinct facts about a particle... regarding shrodinger, it is uncertain where he is, and whether he is dead or not... these are the two variables for which you can only determine one. Can you see where I'm going? I'll continue...
See, Shrodinger parodies Heisenberg as well as quantum mechanics. Seeing as the heisenberg can easily seem, to the uneducated, a steaming pile of doggy doo, Hirano may be parodying this as well... So he would want to apply the principle in the same way as he did shrodinger's cat, so shrodinger would agree with it. That would mean that the way to kill him would be to catch him at a time when his location is a superposition(so, he is both everywhere and no where), and shoot him. Or something. What ever you do, he'll be dead and will have no location, so bye-bye shrodinger.
The reason that Alucard was unable to kill him before was that he had a defined location. So a lot of people knew where he was, and the superpositional variable(there's a mouthful) was whether he was dead or not... as he was undead. Alucard shooting him was an attempt to defy the science of observation, And altered where shrodinger was(by a couple of inches, but that was all he needed). This meant that his location became the superposition, and he was able to teleport back to millenium, where there would be at least one person(Doc) who could observe him as being half alive despite being shot in the face.
=D hey that made more sense than I thought it would. How about doing a strip where you apply that erin? and then laugh when Hirano seemingly rips you off.
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 11, 2006 20:02:33 GMT -5
what is he? To simply say "he's the personification of the thought experiment proposed by shrodinger" doesn't really hold many gravitas as an answer in my opinion. And neither does "catboy". So, I've got this little theory going... Tell me whether you think it's credible enough - It does sort of make him seem more important than every other character in millenium(theoretically). Shrodinger's cat, in moderate detail(bit more than Erin's summary), for those who don't know what this is about(please skip the next 6 paragraphs if you've read enough books on physics to know that it is featured in EVERY SINGLE ONE): actually, better idea: I'll put the parts about shrodinger(the hellsing character =P) in bold. So, early-ish twentieth century. Lots of developements in physics, what with General relativity(ten years earlier) and such, and the latest(and probably craziest) sub section of physics is making itself heard. That subsection is called quantum mechanics: the almost totally metaphysical, but mind wrenchingly interesting, study of atoms. It puts forward a freakishly revolutionary statement: atoms know when we're looking at them. "Observer effect" already played a part in science - for instance, measure the temperature of water and you'll be mostly right, but your measuring device will have reduced the outcome by absorbing some heat - But this didn't mean that the water knew it was being measured. So atoms were entirely different. Don't ask me how. I've read my share of articles and books on this sort of thing, but that counts for very little. What non physicists are told is what the almighty Terry Pratchett calls "lies to children", and devotes a couple of chapters to them in the science of discworld - they are what people are told when they don't stand a chance in hell of understanding the truth. The fact is, you need a degree to understand all of it, not a forum post, not even a book, but a lifetime's worth of study. Oh, you think you can handle it? No, me neither >> But that was the upshot. atoms know when we're looking at them... think about it. If observation really does change quantum mechanics, then it has done forever - therefore it has been observed forever, therefore... there was something observing it before us. And animals don't count(see below). Yuh. Existance of God, right there... and unless you're anti fideist(in which case I don't like you), you'll find this stupid whether you think s/he exists or not. Shrodinger thought so too... and so came up with the cat thought experiment to prove it wrong then and there. It goes like this: put a cat in a box(a special box, with what is called chinese walls: nothing, no wave, no particle, no neutrino, can get past it) with a decaying atom that is having its decay measured by a meter, which is connected to a cannister of poisonous gas. rig it so that the cannister releases the gas when the atom decays. Wait an hour, and the atom will do whatever it likes; and here is where the observation comes in. the decay rate of an atom is predictable, but the predictions are by no means ineffable, and according to quantum mechanics it is also influenced by(and what with the chinese walls, dependant on) observation. Note that the cat can't observe it seeing as it doesn't have neutrino microscopes on its eyelids. So... the atom is both decayed and not decayed, thus the cat is both dead and alive....wtf? you can't be both dead and alive... unless you're undead. being in two mutually exclusive states is called a "superposition", and you stay there until you're observed - but this is theoretical, whereas shrodinger's cat means the phrase is actually applied. Coming back to that in a minute... this proves, says shrodinger, that quantum mechanicers had spent too much time indoors. Their theories may make sense with maths and experiments so small it costs millions just to get the test samples(gold atoms - large and unconductive), but are worth diddly squat when applied to macro(bigger) principles. That was shrodinger's cat. So he's both dead and alive - that's new[/sarcasm]. So I surmise that shrodinger is in a physical superposition on that issue, rather than being simply "undead"... and he can maintain that superposition, even if he is observed, like when alucard shot him - there were people present, and they were observing the hell out of him, but he was still both dead and alive. I think this is a parody on the part of kouta hirano, saying that no, atoms don't give a shit about who's observing them and that branch of physics is so stupid that it belongs in fiction.
But he's also said to be both "everywhere and no where". This relates to something very different, and about as interesting: the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. This was put forward no more than two years after shrodinger's cat. It's to do with the margin of error in experiments, but has larger implications. Heisenberg's thought experiment went like this: So you're investingating this particle, and you want to know its position, let's call that X, and its momentum, that's P. Measure X with a microscope of whatever sort is required, and then its momentum by colliding it. then do it again in the same way, in the same environment... should get the same result, right? nope, because by using the microscope you've shot more photons than it likes at it and changed its momentum, and by colliding it with something else you've changed its position. OK, so micorscopes and other particles aren't all they're cracked up to be - use something else. Use waves: an ultrasound like process for position, and emit and collect waves at either end of its pathway to measure its momentum. Now do that again with the same stuff in the same environment. Same results? didn't think so. waves'll have a minimal effect on it too, why didn't I think of that? Thus: no measuring device in this world or the next is totally reliable. Heisenberg, though, says that even if you had an infinitely accurate, infinitely passive measuring device you'd still change the particle, in opposition to shrodinger. Now, this was the exact problem that he put forward - the position and momentum of a particle being measured, and you can't have the two measurements at the same time. For shrodinger, this applies... and here I start getting obscure. Thing is, we know his position: it's super. Thanks for asking. No, stop laughing, this does make sense, so his position is super and that means that his momentum can be whatever it likes. Whatever he likes, for that matter, making him the ultimate messenger and allowing him to be everywhere and no where because he is forever in superposition in every aspect of his identity. here's an interesting extension of that: he's both male and female. Heh, Hirano, you could have ignored that question. So, help me expand and work on this, if you feel it needs it.
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 15, 2006 18:49:08 GMT -5
D= darn other countries with your darn anime conventions and darn cool people. I've been to one darn convention and all the interesting stuff consisted of a tifa cosplayer and a doujinishi that turned out to be yaoi. X: I gave the latter to the former in the end.
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 12, 2006 22:06:36 GMT -5
If I were there the ensuing scene would be much more like a glomp scene in the fanpeople storylines =P
|
|
|
Post by antondevey on Jul 13, 2006 9:54:26 GMT -5
Ah but she's like our Pope. And Stoker... is moses! He brought down from heaven the Word of Alucard(Drcaula, Vlad, whatever), and graciously published it. Hirano is all the gospels rolled into one(except Judas Iscariot, he was naaaasty), and here's a better analogy of Erin: St. Paul. Though he was a bit unpleasant too... But hell, Alucard used the cross of st paul, so he's fine by us.
|
|