....and before i do that, i'm going to build a mock skeleton for the other two blogs.
this isn't intended to be comprehensive, in any way, it's just meant to fill in some blanks. i'm just going to be going through the two mostly published the blogs - this one and the music journal - and copying posts to the other two blogs.
i hope this is done within a day or two.
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
i'm also going to fill in some of the posts from sept-dec, 2016 on this blog before i put this aside for a long while.
i didn't avoid this on purpose or anything, it just got lost in all of the things i was doing to rebuild. iirc, i got up to mid sept, and doubled back around to 2013 to do the final rebuild, which included archiving all of the files on an external hard drive and rebuilding the deathtokoalas blog. i was supposed to just do it in sequence, but it didn't actually happen.
if we're putting the rebuild aside until i finish periods 3 & 4, i should plug that hole, first.
that was, of course, also the period leading up to the last election.
i didn't avoid this on purpose or anything, it just got lost in all of the things i was doing to rebuild. iirc, i got up to mid sept, and doubled back around to 2013 to do the final rebuild, which included archiving all of the files on an external hard drive and rebuilding the deathtokoalas blog. i was supposed to just do it in sequence, but it didn't actually happen.
if we're putting the rebuild aside until i finish periods 3 & 4, i should plug that hole, first.
that was, of course, also the period leading up to the last election.
at
16:43
this is a confusing point for a lot of people, as well. what is, again, pretty basic science suggests that you have to expel the virus somehow in order to transmit - via coughing, sneezing, etc. but, the numbers don't add up, if we assume all transmission is coming from clearly sick people.
so, what is "asymptomatic transmission"?
we had a longer than normal spring here in most of canada, and people walking around outside until fairly late into may would have experienced symptoms like runny noses that they would have normally attributed to the weather. they may have come in from outside and blown their nose, without thinking about it. or they may have even brushed their faces with their hands as they took off their hats, and then touched other people. or, maybe they weren't thorough enough with the soap on the way out of the washroom, after having touching handles and doorknobs.
this happens with other mild viruses, too - all you have to do is transmit fluids. you don't have to cough or sneeze - you could blow your nose, or just touch your face. and, you might not even be fully cognizant of what you're doing.
the truth is that these people are symptomatic, but they don't realize it or they deny it. the symptoms are so mild in many cases, that you might mistake them for allergies, fatigue, a garden variety headache or a normal reaction to cold or hot weather. so, what we call "asymptomatic" should really be replaced by "weakly symptomatic". this is no doubt the cause of the confusion...
you shouldn't be able to spread any virus without symptoms, but it's a lot harder to realize that you're symptomatic than we all think is obvious. we live in polluted cities. we're all sick all of the time.
with the warm weather, the situation flips over - instead of runny noses from the cold, you'll have sweaty foreheads from the heat. so, you may come into a grocery store from outside and wipe your sweaty brow, then touch something - without even thinking about it.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7043306/coronavirus-asymptomatic-spread-who/
so, what is "asymptomatic transmission"?
we had a longer than normal spring here in most of canada, and people walking around outside until fairly late into may would have experienced symptoms like runny noses that they would have normally attributed to the weather. they may have come in from outside and blown their nose, without thinking about it. or they may have even brushed their faces with their hands as they took off their hats, and then touched other people. or, maybe they weren't thorough enough with the soap on the way out of the washroom, after having touching handles and doorknobs.
this happens with other mild viruses, too - all you have to do is transmit fluids. you don't have to cough or sneeze - you could blow your nose, or just touch your face. and, you might not even be fully cognizant of what you're doing.
the truth is that these people are symptomatic, but they don't realize it or they deny it. the symptoms are so mild in many cases, that you might mistake them for allergies, fatigue, a garden variety headache or a normal reaction to cold or hot weather. so, what we call "asymptomatic" should really be replaced by "weakly symptomatic". this is no doubt the cause of the confusion...
you shouldn't be able to spread any virus without symptoms, but it's a lot harder to realize that you're symptomatic than we all think is obvious. we live in polluted cities. we're all sick all of the time.
with the warm weather, the situation flips over - instead of runny noses from the cold, you'll have sweaty foreheads from the heat. so, you may come into a grocery store from outside and wipe your sweaty brow, then touch something - without even thinking about it.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7043306/coronavirus-asymptomatic-spread-who/
at
13:55
must have been covid-19.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/humpback-whale-st-lawrence-1.5604229
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/humpback-whale-st-lawrence-1.5604229
at
13:29
so, i finished watching that lecture series on quantum physics and i promised i'd say something about it in the end.
in truth, i don't have much to say at all.....
i have a physics background; i've seen these equations before, and the general physics isn't new to me. but, the courses i took were not as formal as this, they just skipped over this kind of kantian approach to the foundations of quantum mechanics as this kind of synthetic linear algebra and went right to the calculus and statistics. i took years worth of abstract algebra, though. so, i was actually maybe the best possible audience for the lecture series, in a sense, as i had already seen all of the math and had already seen all of the physics, and had even taken formal courses in euclidean & non-euclidean geometry, i just hadn't seen anybody put them together to explicitly lay out the theory.
as it was only the formal foundations that i hadn't seen before, it's really only the first couple of lectures that were worth commenting on, and i've already done that. i don't have any particular criticism of harmonic oscillators or the schrodinger equation, it's the underlying system of algebra that i wonder about, as it is rooted in kantian assumptions that were eventually absolutely savaged by gauss (and friends) and reversed to form the basis of relativity, by einstein (and minkowski). susskind knows that. so, what the fuck is he even doing?
i was hoping that the course would carry on long enough to bring me to a point where i could say "aha! parallelism! foiled!", but, as it is, all i can do is sort of pointlessly draw attention to deficits in the model, which i've already done. the thing is that proving that a model has flaws doesn't actually mean anything. all models have flaws, and we know that something is going to need to break before we can unify physics. i think the quantum model seems less compelling than relativity, but that's just my opinion.
i mentioned it before, so i'll just summarize it here: the biggest thing i pulled out from watching this is wondering if these minor fluctuations in the "imaginary direction" (by tiny factors of planck's constant) are not merely relics of the broken underlying geometry, and i wonder if the error terms would disappear or otherwise align themselves with the other branches if we were sure we understood the underlying geometry better.
maybe einstein had the answer right in front of him the whole time, even if he didn't quite know how to tweak it. but, i mean, that's the fields medal question, right?
he didn't mention bell's theorem, so i'll skip over it for now.
lecture series number two is classical mechanics, and i initially wondered if it was worthwhile, but, after watching the first lecture, i'm going to carry through with it. again: i've taken all the classical mechanics, but he's going at it with these weird kantianisms again, in an apparent attempt to derive newton's equations from the underlying quantum theory, and i'd like to see where he's going with it. i hope he goes full out and doesn't dumb it down, as that is something i'd like to see done explicitly, rather than merely waved off as saying "classical mechanics exists in the limit", or whatever.
the last of the previous:
and the first of the new:
in truth, i don't have much to say at all.....
i have a physics background; i've seen these equations before, and the general physics isn't new to me. but, the courses i took were not as formal as this, they just skipped over this kind of kantian approach to the foundations of quantum mechanics as this kind of synthetic linear algebra and went right to the calculus and statistics. i took years worth of abstract algebra, though. so, i was actually maybe the best possible audience for the lecture series, in a sense, as i had already seen all of the math and had already seen all of the physics, and had even taken formal courses in euclidean & non-euclidean geometry, i just hadn't seen anybody put them together to explicitly lay out the theory.
as it was only the formal foundations that i hadn't seen before, it's really only the first couple of lectures that were worth commenting on, and i've already done that. i don't have any particular criticism of harmonic oscillators or the schrodinger equation, it's the underlying system of algebra that i wonder about, as it is rooted in kantian assumptions that were eventually absolutely savaged by gauss (and friends) and reversed to form the basis of relativity, by einstein (and minkowski). susskind knows that. so, what the fuck is he even doing?
i was hoping that the course would carry on long enough to bring me to a point where i could say "aha! parallelism! foiled!", but, as it is, all i can do is sort of pointlessly draw attention to deficits in the model, which i've already done. the thing is that proving that a model has flaws doesn't actually mean anything. all models have flaws, and we know that something is going to need to break before we can unify physics. i think the quantum model seems less compelling than relativity, but that's just my opinion.
i mentioned it before, so i'll just summarize it here: the biggest thing i pulled out from watching this is wondering if these minor fluctuations in the "imaginary direction" (by tiny factors of planck's constant) are not merely relics of the broken underlying geometry, and i wonder if the error terms would disappear or otherwise align themselves with the other branches if we were sure we understood the underlying geometry better.
maybe einstein had the answer right in front of him the whole time, even if he didn't quite know how to tweak it. but, i mean, that's the fields medal question, right?
he didn't mention bell's theorem, so i'll skip over it for now.
lecture series number two is classical mechanics, and i initially wondered if it was worthwhile, but, after watching the first lecture, i'm going to carry through with it. again: i've taken all the classical mechanics, but he's going at it with these weird kantianisms again, in an apparent attempt to derive newton's equations from the underlying quantum theory, and i'd like to see where he's going with it. i hope he goes full out and doesn't dumb it down, as that is something i'd like to see done explicitly, rather than merely waved off as saying "classical mechanics exists in the limit", or whatever.
the last of the previous:
and the first of the new:
at
07:32
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