(Ir?)Rational

So I am not entirely happy with Tumblr.  Just like FB when you go on TUMBLR you get a feed, you don’t just get my blog (even if you are following me).  Trying to get away from FB-like experience for posting my content.  I want people (= null set) to actually go to my blog with intent to read.  Not to just happen upon it because it's on their feed. And even more critical, is that neither Vera nor I could could find a way to comment on a specific post so that any reader could generate a dialog about the post.  Not that there are or will be any readers, but if such happens that people start following I want them to be able to comment.  

So okay I go back to basics and look more in depth at WordPress.  Wordpress can let you create a blog on their site for free, but I looked at using a hosting service.  Wordpress today is pushing BLUEHOST ($ flows would be interesting, but that's another post).  So I go to Bluehost, pick a domain name, and get ready to sign up.  Of course I want to understand ownership of material I post, and ToS looks good in this regards, better than TUMBLR but then they have this: “By submitting content and data to Bluehost, Subscriber grants to Bluehost, its successors and assigns, the worldwide, royalty-free, and nonexclusive license under Subscriber's copyrights and other rights, if any, in all material and content displayed in Subscriber's web site to use, distribute, display, reproduce, and create derivative works from such material in any and all media, in order to maintain such content on Bluehost's servers during the Term.”   

So after reading up on this, anything original I post I own rights to  ... BUT ... anybody on TUMBLR can repost ad infinitum.  (Not sure if the re-post credits original source automatically.)   And something about TUMBLR affiliates also able to re-post, ad infinitum.  

While I’m on it how does anything original or creative actually generate credits (read $) for the originator?  Reminds me of the days of AOL (this was the 90′s for you younger folks) when folks would do real work maintaining forums, policing sites, posting content and the only one who benefited was AOL.  So now in the current day, young folks are generating content, in some cases really good stuff, and what it does is make a platform more engaging but do the content creators actually see any return on their creative investment?

In the mid eighties I thought “wouldn’t it be cool if a graphical software interface could be used to replace my engineering calc pad?”  Well just a few years later, lo, behold: MathCAD appears.  (From a bunch of MIT types no less. Backstory there is too long to get into now.)  I used this software from day 1, enduring all the growing pains along the way.  So when I do detailed engineering calcs, I always use MathCAD.  I tried during my working years to spread the gospel on this software to my company, and unfortunately, they didn’t get it.  They are still using spreadsheets to do stuff -- even to this day.  Impossible to validate.  Good luck if you have to pick up someone else's work without their help to guide you thru it! 

Since I was a group head at least my group was using MathCAD and we coded all our tools into worksheets using it, before going to production FORTRAN code.  Made debugging much easier.  And you can really get an intuitive feel for how the calc responds to change in inputs or parameters.   So of course, I want to see if I can cut and paste to Tumblr from MathCAD, because if I do want to share any analysis work I’ve done, that would be the easiest way to do it.  Here goes: 

++++++++++++++++MathCAD paste below+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++MathCAD Paste above++++++++++++++++++++++++

So yeah, in my intro post I said I was into QM this year.  Why at 61 try to understand this theory, which even many smart, smart scientists can’t wrap their heads around?  Well it was because there was a news release recently about quantum entanglement (see http://www.cnet.com/news/physicists-prove-einsteins-spooky-quantum-entanglement/ or The Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21676733-one-weirdest-bits-physics-proved-beyond-doubt-almost-hidden-no-more ) and how loopholes regarding FTL action at a distance were closed.  This is astounding stuff!  So I tried to read the actual paper.  Was able to actually find a free version following a link (which I can’t find now).  (The paywall version is located at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v526/n7575/full/nature15759.html .) I couldn’t make heads or tails of what they were doing and realized I needed to learn at least the jargon if not the theory to have a better chance at understanding what they were up to.  After all the implications of FTL information transfer are enormous -- they have been well investigated by the Sci-fi community for many years.  But suppose you can quantum entangle some electrons say at Palo Alto, embed them in the iPhone, and then also change state of one while detecting this change remotely.  This is instantaneous information transfer and would eliminate EM radiation as the predominant info transfer medium.  It would mean you no longer need a carrier.  It would break causality, since modern physics defines causality by the light cone.  Was it even possible that the researchers broke the current notion of causality?  

So then I started researching QM.  Thought I had a good DOVER paperback (love these books; the typesetting of the math is a thing of beauty) on QM, but alas came up short on that.  (Altho I did find the Dover book on Mathematical Physics by Menzel, which is helping refresh and expand my maths, so i can begin to understand some QM.)  However, synchronicity came to the rescue and my COURSERA notices showed the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) was doing a course on quantum optics so I signed up to audit same.

One interesting side note, this course assumed some fairly deep prereq’s, including Maxwell’s Eq’s, wave theory, and beginning QM.  So I was jumping in without enough background.  The first lecture totally threw me when they showed this notation: <E|, |H>,  and similarly <E|H> .  What the hell did this mean?  Well of course I turned to Google to try to find this.  Try finding this using Google!  Even downloading compendiums of mathematical notation was no help. Eventually though through a very long process of searching I came to understand this was Dirac notation for the bra and ket vectors and the inner product (a generalization of the dot product) of the two.  (you’ll get some very good Wikipedia entries explaining this if you search for Dirac notation.)  In fact now I have an e-book on loan for Kindle which is going into great detail on this and helping me understand vector spaces and inner products much better than I had before. 

Right now I am contemplating buying a QM textbook (have my eye on another Dover paperback) but trying to work through what I’ve got first and of course finish the QM optics course.  

What does this all mean and where does it lead?  Hard to say at this moment, but just starting to understand how different is the QM world and when you realize it underlies reality, should make your perception of reality quite different, when you think about it.  Again this issue has been explored in Sci-fi as well as modern philosophy, and indeed if I want to write that Sci-fi book one theme option is how a complete understanding of the core basis of reality enables certain powers to manifest.  Sort of a compounding of QM with the Buddhist mindset that reality is not what it seems on the surface and a Dharma exists that if understood (to the enlightened) opens up immense possibilities.   

Don’t know about a blog.  Actually retirement to-do’s included a daily journal, a Weblog and memoirs. So a blog wasn’t the be-all, end-all.  Maybe a try at some sci-fi writing as well. I don’t want to go public with memoirs, at least until I’ve had some time to write, review and cogitate.  A Blog might be too public for some things that I’m into, think about, or otherwise have interest in.  Not that there’s anything I want hide, I just don’t think these things will be interesting to a reader.  And actually, privacy means a lot to me, Vera and our family.   

This is my first post on a new blog using Tumblr.  I am new to blogging but I read blog’s avidly.  One thing I do know is that for a blog to “make it” it has to have really good and interesting content and be updated regularly to keep denizen’s coming back.  We’ll have to see if this happens with this effort.  Frankly, I doubt it.  

I have written much technical stuff, and while my syntax and grammar will probably be okay, my writing will be boring unless I can break that mold.  

My header picture is the Temple of Doom. (Angelina Jolie shot the movie here – I don’t actually know the temple’s real name.) This is at Siem Reap (near Angkor Wat) from when Vera and I visited back in 2008.  I bet the people who built this temple thought it would last forever … but the trees beg to differ.  Our civilization will eventually suffer the same fate – would love to return in 1000 years to see what’s happened with our “last forever” monuments.  Change is the only constant in life.  

The avatar is my suncatcher photo taken on Koh Chang.  The entire picture actually won the Bangkok Post “Farang Picture of the Week” award and was published there for the enjoyment of everyone in Thailand.  Unfortunately a consequence of entry meant I gave up ownership rights to the pic; I wonder if they’ll come after me for using it here or on my FB page?  

This year I am starting some new things: this blog for starters.  Blogging was always on the retirement to-do list, just didn’t think I be doing it on Tumblr instead of Wordpress.  So far so good, quite easy in fact.  But note to self – check the user agreement on this, does Tumblr own my content once I post it?  If so, this won’t work!