HST

Remembering...

August 25, 2010

Dear Hank,

I was reading from The Great Shark Hunt, a compendium of articles written by Hunter S. Thompson. The guy has a way of making me laugh out loud and be awed by his mad genius.

The article I was reading dealt with Dick Nixon. At first, I thought Thompson and Tricky Dick were buddies because of the friendly almost loving way Hunter referred to the ex-President. Then things began to turn, what really bothered Thompson was the fact that he had not made Nixon’s famous Enemies List. Thompson wondered how he’d be able to show his face at a local bar once it turned out he was “not on the list.”

After all Thompson pointed out he was one of the first to call Nixon out, one of the first to kick him, and that he did while the guy was still up in the polls and proclaiming his innocence. Thompson pointed out that he, and he alone, had compared Nixon to Hitler; that, in and of itself, he reasoned should have put him on the list.

But then he pointed out, the list had been drawn up in 1971, and it wasn’t til ’72 that Thomson had really gotten going on old Tricky Dick. That and the fact that Ron Ziegler, Nixon’s press secretary, didn’t read Rolling Stone where Thomson had published most of his vindictive screeds.

He reviewed with a buddy how neither of them had made the list. His friend was quite upset and wanted to know what they were going to do. Thompson told him not to worry if and when the list was revised he assured his friend, “We’ll be there.”

Gotta go. Have a good trip,

Bryce

Is it a bird is it a particle?

August 19, 2010

Dear Hank,

I’ve always been fascinated by an experiment with light. The one where you take a candle and cut two rectangles out of cardboard and project the shadows onto a wall and (... Okay, Dan, and you can skip to the last part as this is all ancient history to you but for the rest of us...) see where the light comes through unadulterated and then you can see where shadows are and where there is overlap in the shadows. Clearly light appears to act as a wave.
The experiment continues with a change in light source. A photon gun is used. A photon gun is like a cathode ray tube and it shoots photons, which I am told are positively charged electrons. I never really understood how you know what they are or how they are charged but okay. When you shoot a stream of photons at the cardboard cut out rectangles you get the same effect as with the candle. The light goes through the slots and you see shadows like before. However, if you shoot one photon what happens?
How you shoot one photon and know you shot only one I never understood either but I assume somehow you can. Well, in my mind there are three possibilities: it goes through slot 1, slot 2, or neither. The incredible part of this experiment is that it appears to act like a wave. You get the same effect as with the candle light. Yet, you think you are shooting a particle - a photon, only one, at an object with two holes in it. It has to go through one hole or the other or neither; yet it seems to go through both.
Richard Feynman in his famous lectures on physics which you can get on tape (recorded - okay, maybe via download, maybe digitized, maybe CD) said that one of the problem’s with the single photon was, physicists thought, the photon had too much energy (I think that’s it) ad they dialed it down and watched what happened. Now you get into Schrodinger’s Cat. Whether Schrodinger ever had a cat or not is unknown to me; this is an imaginary cat, much like the famous Cheshire Cat. Schrodinger said that the very looking at the light could change the outcome of the experiment. (“Imagine if you will a cat in a box and by looking in the box to see if the cat were dead or alive changed the cat’s fate?” asked Schrodinger. Shoot the cat in the box and then you’d know I said but no one listened to me.) Feynman did a great example of this by talking about this in his lectures where he imagined having the photon gun set up and after each shot the result was announced then the energy was reduced and another shot fired. The tape went like this:
“One!...Two!...One!...” and then in a whining tone, “I don’t know!”
And that brings us to the state of the experiment until recently. Someone has done an experiment which says the cat asks you which you want (dead or alive?) and responds accordingly. In other words, someone has come up with an experiment that says you can look at the photon after it has passed a decision point on what path to take and depending on what you are looking for and how you look depends on how the photon will respond. In other - other - words, it will decide what it did after the fact.
Ponder that for a while.

Gotta go,

The B man

ps link found here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-the-past-exist-yet-e_b_683103.html

August 13, 2010

Strange Tales – cont. (Stranger Tales???)

Dear Hank,

The conversation with Corey continued and got even stranger. At one point he stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Rick by the way.”
“No, you’re not. I’m Rick.”
“No, I’m Rick.”
Was there any point in arguing with him? Rick decided to try one more time.
“No, I’m Rick. You’re Corey, the kite seller from Nevada.”
“No, I’m Rick the firefighter from Ohio.”
What could Rick do with Corey – now: Rick the Imposter? Had Corey some mental lapse that caused him to assume this false persona? Better to humor him maybe he’d come to his senses.
“Oh, I see you’re Rick from Ohio?”
“Well, I used to be. Now, I’m from South Carolina.”
“Oh, and you’re a firefighter.”
“Used to be, now I’m retired, riding my bike with my buddies.”
“Oh. I see. Well, uh yeah. Okay.”
Rick told me he thought about doing an intervention, wrestling Corey to the ground and slapping him around screaming, “Wake up! Wake up! Get a grip!” but then the guy did have several friends with him and if his friends didn’t realize the delusional state of their traveling companion they might come in on the side of Rick the Imposter, Firefighter retired.
It could get ugly. Better to back away.
“Have a nice day?”
“You too.”

On another note, it appears with this birthday Rick may have lost the ability to count to three, that being the number of ferries it takes to get from Hatteras to Oriental, not two. “But the first one doesn’t count,” he protested. Sounds like rationalization to me.

Take Care,

Bryce

August 12, 2010

Strange Tales

Dear Hank,

My friend Rick had his birthday on the 10th and he related this story to me. Now, I know you aren’t going to believe this, but it’s true.
He and his wife went to Oriental to celebrate his birthday. Oriental is a little town on the other side of Pamlico Sound from where they live on Hatteras Island. It’s about thirty miles away by boat or as the crow flies and five hours by car if you drive it. If you take the ferries, you need to take two. There are two different ways to get there by ferry but either way it takes two. If you take the ferries then it’s more like six or seven hours to get there but you’ve only driven sixty miles. In other words, no matter how you go to Oriental it takes the better part of the day.
There’s an Oriental Women’s Club in Oriental but no Oriental women – strange huh? At least, we didn’t see any. Nor did we see the club. We only saw the sign and it was pretty run down so the club may not be there anymore. We saw lots of Oriental women but no Asians – double strange huh? But that’s Oriental. Apparently, it used to be called Smith’s Creek but when they were fixing to get a post office they needed a proper name and folks thought the current name wouldn’t do. A ship named – you guessed it – Oriental had run aground and or sunk a few years before and a nameplate of Oriental had washed ashore; not in Smith’s Creek but in Manteo or thereabouts and a young woman found it and based on finding that nameplate decided to enter the naming contest for Smith’s Creek and won. So there you have it.
Btw if you look for my friend Rick in google maps and put in his town of Avon you won’t find him most likely. You gotta either put in Kinakeet, the old name for Avon, or Kitty Hawk, which is up the beach thirty miles. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know.
But that isn’t what I came here to tell you about. Come to think of it I have moved much so I have gone anywhere and nor am I talking to you so I ain’t tellin’ neither. Strange huh?
What I came to tell you about was that the day after his birthday when Rick and his lovely wife, Shelby, were returning home they ran into Corey! It was obvious to Rick that Corey had come all the way out here to celebrate his birthday with him and then at the last minute gotten modest and didn’t want to disturb him on his birthday. Such a gallant gesture! Actually, double gallant: one for coming out, and two for not disturbing him. But then he had the strangest meeting with Corey. It went something like this and, excuse me; I may be paraphrasing a bit (that is a word isn’t it? Paraphrasing?):
“Hey, Corey!”
“Who? Me?”
“Yeah, who else?”
“I don’t know.”
“How you been?”
“Fine.”
“It’s great to see you?”
“Do I know you?”
“Do you know me? What kind of question is that?”
“Huh? King’s English? I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you old kidder. It’s great to see you.”
“What did you call me?”
“Corey.”
“I’m not Corey.”
“You old kidder you. Of course you are.”
“Am not.”
“Are. Are. Argh. Oh, I get it. You are with your biker friends and don’t want to be seen with me. Okay. Okay. That’s cool. I get it. Hey, can I get a picture with you?”
“Will you leave me alone then?”
“Sure. Sure. That’s cool. Okay.”

Strange huh?
Guy comes all the way from Las Vegas on his bike and then doesn’t even want to disturb his old bud.

Gotta go. My car’s double parked.

B

Dear Hank,

Did I tell you that my novel won the Faulkner Award for best novel of the year?
No, well, there’s a reason for that. I must have been away from the phone when they called and so they awarded the prize to someone else. They forgot to even mention me in the runner up categories. I just don’t know what’s wrong with people these days.
Then there was that situation with the President. Darned embarrassing. Seems like a nice fellow. He came all the way to Maine to see me. What? You didn’t know? Well, that’s because it’s was a secret. I mean he was practically at my house. At least according to the picture in the New York Times. You could distinctly see the gray blob of my house in the background from where he was standing on Cadillac Mountain. Then I realized wrong blob. But if the camera man had moved to his right they would have gotten the right gray blob. What can I say? Too bad they didn’t do some more careful vetting and they would have known I wasn’t home.
I’ve even got the same picture of the spot where Obama was standing on Cadillac Mountain. Yeah, moments before. How many you ask? Well, I don’t know exactly. I’d have do a little thinking. Yes, moments, moments before is what I said. Well, I don’t know how long a moment is exactly. Well, three. Okay, three moments before. Are you happy? No, a moment isn’t a second. It wasn’t three seconds before the President stood on the rock it was more like I don’t know. How many seconds well you’d have to do the math it’s something like 60x60x24x365x4. What’s that - four years before you say? Yeah, well that’s about right. My picture was taken in 2007, his in 2010. Isn’t that three not four? Oh no, you have to count the current year. Yeah, so it was four moments not three. Sorry.

Gotta go, someone’s at the door about a car.

B