Mobi's blog

[mobius]

warning: Expect much less useful information and a lot more random, sometimes ignorant bull****, compared to Simon's blog. But Once and a while I can think of some useful gems.


today's random pointless rant: Open-faced sandwiches are dumb.

Why was this invented? Seriously. The sandwich was invented so you could eat the thing with your hands without getting messy, hence the two pieces of bread. If you remove one piece you're forced eat it with fork and knife, thus defeating the whole point of the "sandwich". Also why does it seem like every open-faced sandwich is purposely slathered in so much gravy or diarrhea so as to make more of a mess. An open-faced "sandwich" is not a sandwich.

[Colorful Arty]

There is only one open-faced sandwich that is acceptable: French Toast.

[Simon]

We have Brötchen in Germany, large bread rolls that you cut in half. They offer lots of grip, even without the top shell bun.



-- Simon

[NaOH]

Why have any bread at all? That only encourages poor decisions. Just remove the bread and suddenly: a delicious salad appears!

[ccexplore]

Hmm, wonder how prone the toppings are to falling off that open-faced Brötchen after multiple bites.

All that said, a pizza is very similar conceptually to the open-faced sandwich.  Usually you can eat a slice with one hand just fine with relatively few mess.  The generous layer of delicious melted cheese holding everything together helps a lot, of course.

[IchoTolot]

We have Brötchen in Germany, large bread rolls that you cut in half. They offer lots of grip, even without the top shell bun.



-- Simon

This is even better if you just put raw meat + onions on it! It's called "Mettbrötchen" and is a german classic!

Don't trust anyone who doesn't like Mettbrötchen and isn't vegetarian or sth. We even used to do a day where we bought ~ 13 buns + 1 kg "Mett" (raw meat) and some onions back in school and eat all of this in a lesson the teacher was ok with this .

[mobius]

here's a tiny [poorly made] game I made with Adobe Flash in highschool.

Drag the file onto a blank web page and it should work.

[mobius]

Today I discovered my car's break lights work exactly 50% of the time, so I've gotta take that in to get looked at, then I gambled on not working overtime this Saturday in fear I'd be given the job I don't like-- turns out I would've got a good job, then I left my cell phone in someone else's car; who happens to live rather far away.
So my three day weekend is off to a great start...

I doubt I'll be streaming tomorrow but I might just get an opportunity, I just don't know, that's why I can't be definite about it, sorry guys.

I forgot to ask this before but; @Arty since when is French Toast considered an open-face sandwich?

I like that this thread is full of pics of yummy food.

[Colorful Arty]

Well, French Toast is a piece of bread with toppings on it, so it's kind of a sandwich.

Sorry to hear about bad week. Hang in there!

[mobius]

all the time I read people griping about music and things they don't like in the world and all I want to say is: stop complaining and just enjoy what you like. Often on music videos people will gripe about how the crap music and crap TV is popular and main stream. That's because;

1. stupid people like to be loud and get a lot of attention, even if they have nothing to say.
2. greedy companies can easily make more money off of gullible stupid people so peddling the crap they like is better for them then selling "good stuff".

All you need to do is ignore the stuff you don't like. If you don't like it, just don't even think about it. It seems like a waste of time to me, to sit around and bitch about stuff you don't like; just enjoy what you do, and the world will seem better. 

[mobius]

EVERYTIME I got a vacation this past year; EVERYTIME! something bad happens.

Well over Presidents day weekend I believe I got my first taste of old age, needless to say; I did not care for it.

I was helping a friend move some stuff, a little heavy lifting, nothing really major, nothing I haven't done before. My knee started hurting but it wasn't bad so I soldiered through it, like I've also done before. I went up and down a bunch of steps, which is the only thing I can think of that would've caused this. I went home later and my knee got worse but like any sprained tendon/muscle whatever I thought it would go away within 24 hours (they always have for me before).
The next morning I woke up and could not get out of bed. If I moved my right leg or tried to bend my knee in the slightest I got excruciating pain. I couldn't walk from my bedroom to my bathroom without being afraid I was going to fall over. I went to the doctor the next day when it still wasn't better and he gave me some pills but didn't know what was wrong so I got an X-ray. I haven't gotten the results back yet but it seems to be getting better on it's own. But it's taken... 4 going on 5 days to get better!?

[Colorful Arty]

Sorry to hear that mobius.

I hope you feel better soon.

[mobius]

<<<<important notice>>>>

Drop box is changing their method of sharing files and old accounts (like mine) will stop working sometime soon. I'll work on fixing my links but for a time some of them may be broken. Also some of my older ones I will probably never bother to fix; like pics posted on the forum I'm not going to update.

[mobius]

part 1) The Grandfather Paradox

The Grandfather Paradox

This will hopefully be the first installment of a series where I talk about highly philosophical issues which science (currently) cannot understand very well. And I hope to present fun and interesting thought experiments. Discussion and argument is welcome.

I'll start by discussing what is commonly referred to as the "Grandfather Paradox". I read a book recently which claims to solve this paradox, but I'm not satisfied with the explanation given, I feel like it's been "explained away" more than resolved.

For those unaware the Grandfather paradox is essentially as follows:
Assume that you can travel backwards in time. Details about time travel itself or how a time machine might work is not necessary (at least for now).
Go back in time fifty years and murder your grandfather before your father or mother was conceived. This assumedly would result in you yourself also not being born, which also means that you could not have gone back in time to commit the murder of your grandfather, first act of this situation, in the first place. Because I entertain myself with using fancy expressions I'll refer to events like these as "null-causal event". Expressed more accurately thus: "Causing and event which directly or indirectly alters the event itself."

There are many different theoretical solutions to this problem. The simplest of course being "backwards time travel is not possible", which I admit makes just as much sense at first than any other explanation. And arguments can certainly be made to support (e.g. Where are all the time traveling tourists from the future? etc.). But I'd like to assume that it is possible and most scientific articles I read or experts I see point out that most theories today (including Relativity) while don't directly explain time travel, don't do anything to disallow it or disprove it. So I will try to delve into each of these explanations and rationalize them as best I can for them to work. I could keep rambling on but I chose to stop at a certain point for each. If anyone has more ideas please give them.
So the solutions assuming backwards time travel is possible in some form or another;

1. The first is seen in several movies, perhaps most famously in "Back to the Future".  The solution is that; upon killing your grandfather you vanish from existence. This explanation seems at close examination to be rather silly and raises maybe more questions than it answers. However; I will not discount it entirely and may come back to it later.

2. You cannot alter the past in this way. Backward time travel is possible but certain arbitrary things are not. Like; killing your own grandfather, to be more precise; causing and event which directly or indirectly alters the event itself. At first I can understand this argument. Because of my beliefs on the nature of free will (a topic for another blog post ) and determinism and such, I can see this actually working. You may argue that it doesn't make sense to assume the universe somehow "prevents" you from doing certain events, such as the murder of your grandfather, just because they affect your perception of reality. I assert that all reality and perception is relative (another topic for another blog post) and who's to say your being prevented from murdering your grandfather isn't the "magical universe" acting against you but mere chance? Of course chance alone doesn't seem enough to explain this; if an infinite number of people time traveled and killed their grandfathers chance would dictate that some of them would fail and some would succeed. This line of thought could keep going without really getting anywhere.
But here's a more important point:
Since all events can be argued to have infinite causes that could be traced back in time infinitely, and let's assume you're not a super computer or god who knows what effect every action you take will cause; why should murdering your grandfather be the only thing that alters your future? The very act of talking to him in the past may alter events such to create a null-causal event. If you consider that every action has a consequence, no matter how small doesn't matter, every action has the *potential* to create a null-causal event. Then it seems to follow that; indeed time traveling at all shouldn't be allowed. Just stepping foot into the past for a fraction of a second disturbs the future, however slightly.

3. Parallel universes. This was the explanation offered as the "true" solution in the book I read and a couple of shows on TV, offered by scientists that is. Believing in parallel universes means that if you consider every instant of time or every action has an infinite number of outcomes and these outcomes actually happen; at every instance an infinite number of parallel universes split off. These universes somehow exist beside our own though we can't detect them at present (if this theory is true).
Now to deal with the Grandfather Paradox; If I go back in time and kill my grandfather what I'm actually doing is creating an alternate universe where my grandfather is dead and I don't exist, and in my present nobody would know me.
I have a gut problem with this solution. First; I would assume that the old timeline (or universe as it were) where my grandfather is still alive and doing well that leads to my birth and this event; is still intact. And from that perspective I haven't done anything wrong. Also from that perspective; that is, from someone, e.g. a friend of mine, might say I did not time travel but I simply vanished and never returned. A line of reasoning that follows from this is to ask; at what point is the alternate universe created or entered? When I kill my grandfather? Why not the very moment when I arrive in the past? The dilemma in a step by step;

-I time travel and kill my grandfather
-I enter an alternate universe where I do not exist in my present.
-The old timeline still exists with me and my grandfather in it.

-Where exactly was the alternate universe entered or created? If I say it was when I killed my grandfather; this means my present self existed in my own past. We won't think about the fact that my family could have pictures of this mysterious person in their past, mysterious that is until I was born then shock at the realization that I time traveled and whatever that might entail. Remember the point from #2; every single action has the potential to create a null-causal event; therefore it seems that using this explanation, upon time traveling you may be entering an infinite number of alternate universes constantly. As long as I exist in my own past there is the potential for infinite null-causal events. So If I assert that upon creating a null-causal event I enter an alternate universe it seems impossible or at least highly unlikely that I will ever succeed in getting to the point of killing my actual grandfather [that is; the grandfather from my original time-line. I could still kill "a" grandfather, but it wouldn't be him, it would be an alternate universe grandfather]. And this seems to take us back to either #2's argument again or simply "time travel not being possible".

-If I assert that the moment when I enter the alternate universe immediately or by the act of time traveling; then it's seems clearly impossible to kill your own grandfather, not only that but impossible to enter own past timeline. Furthermore I can quite easily argue that I have not actually time traveled at all. I merely stepped into or created an alternate universe which is exactly identical to my own, except happens to be fifty years behind mine, to give me the illusion of time travel. I have no problem excepting the alternate universe (or infinite worlds theory, it's sometimes called). But I feel like this explanation, while totally plausible, is a side point, and doesn't truly solve the problem or explain how a null-causal event works. Parallel universes may exist; but who's to say they're necessary to resolve the grandfather paradox (other than no other better resolution has been offered yet)?

So it seems to me that we haven't yet truly been able to kill our grandfather and #2's prospect is getting close to proving itself in a very unexpected or roundabout way. But I still don't like that explanation

I will be working on a fourth explanation soon, for a future blog post. Hope you enjoy. If anything is confusing or not well worded please let me know.

[Simon]

The Grandfather Paradox
1. you vanish from existence
2. event which directly or indirectly alters the event itself [is impossible]
3. Parallel universes

Well done rebutting #2. And #1 is action-movie-handwaving over followup questions, e.g., what fills the resulting void?

#3 comes in different flavors. The wording "parallel universes" might imply that the timelines are largely disjoint, and branch off each other at discrete points. Another interpretation allows several dimensions of time, and the discretely-interlocking branches live inside this larger, continuous space.

#3 gut feeling: Be careful what "I" means, then you can answer whether it has time-travelled. You can have several Is. Or you could permanently leave a timeline perfectly fine and nobody will wonder much, because by assumption you allow time-travel.

Primer (2004 movie) is confusing even for multi-thread programmers.

Temporal bonus level 5 solution (youtube) without infinite flying trick by stacking instances. Game homepage is down, but I'm mirroring it for now: Download Temporal 1.11. Again no physical explanation, but great puzzles.

-- Simon