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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
Random Noise
Sunday. 10.7.07 1:11 pm
My professor was teaching us about random noise. Can you somehow predict random noise? (Ans: yes, and that's how they make noise cancelling headphones... I'll talk about this later when I've had time to make figures) How do you tease real data out of random noise? (Ans: using very, very tedious techniques, that's how)

"No matter how well you know the physics behind your experimental setup," he said, "you will always have to deal with random noise. The only way you can deal with it is statistically."

I raised my hand here. I'm sure he loves it when I do this. I said, "But if you really knew everything about your experimental setup, you wouldn't have any random noise."

"No," he said calmly, "you would still have random noise."

"Ok, let's say," I pressed, "let's say that we are God." A "God-cringe" wave swept over the faces in the room. They hate it when people mention God, even it's just as an analogy. It makes them all uncomfortable, like you just made a major faux pas.
But I didn't let that faze me, of course.

"Let's say that we are God, and we know EVERYTHING about our experimental setup. We know about every stray gamma ray that passes through, neutrinos, beta-particles, minute changes in the wind, whatever, and we put ALL of these things in our model with the right relations. Then we should be able to account for ALL of the random noise in the experiment, no?"

He was about to say no again, but he paused. "Yes," he answered a little uncertainly. "Hypothetically, if we knew everything, then there would theoretically be no random noise. But we don't, so it isn't really an issue."

But ISN'T IT?! Isn't it THE ISSUE?! To assume that no noise is truly random is to assume that that the Universe is infinitely knowable! Isn't that the entire point of science?! If something isn't understood, it's because there are variables that we haven't accounted for! To say that an electron is statistically in a particular place in the electron cloud is to say that you DON'T KNOW but roughly what influences its orbit! To say anything is statistical is to say that you haven't discovered all the variables that govern its true equation of state!!! To rest there, at statistical probabilities, and consider the problem solved, is a HUGE COP-OUT. There should be a big FAT ASTERISK next to any solution with a statistical spread as an answer which leads to an explanation that says, *the answer, or as close as we care to get for practical purposes/government work.

Now all of this rant flies in the face of my personal opinion that there are some things in the Universe which are infinitely unknowable, such God himself, altruism, love, and what the tupperware container in my refrigerator used to contain before several weeks of neglect.

But I have to make Sloppy Joes for myself before I starve to death so I'll have to talk about that later.
2 Comments.


Yes, Zanzi, it's because he sucks.
Yes, Zanzi, I'm going to Denver. I've been selected to represent my University at the
"National Collegiate Honors Council's annual conference in Denver, Colorado, October 31 – November 4, 2007"



Reading this made me remember why I fell for my favorite bar.

Oh, and your tupperware container was filled with green bay packers

» Dilated on 2007-10-07 11:19:34

Oh no Zanzi, he's just being abstract!... which is a cop out.
» jinyu on 2007-10-10 01:37:01

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