Fuzzy Bunny Slippers

After seeing the latest Harry Potter movie, I thought of something.  "Wow, what a crappy movie" would be the obvious thought, but not this time (well, not the only thought this time).  They have characters that call themselves Death Eaters.  Beside the fact that most people eat dead things, it got me thinking.  They all had these cool black cloaks and cool scary face masks and dark foreboding names, but why?

I've seen this in countless movies and books.  The Dark Side.  Starscream.  Joe Black.  The Master.  Kaos.  Why do all of these groups/people have dark sounding names?  Is it easier to recruit people into your organization with them?  Like in Reservoir Dogs - no one wants to be Mr. Pink.  Why do people want these tough sounding names?  Do they lack a true belief in their own internal Evil, so they need someone external to themselves to recognize this with words that connote their evil nature?  Sounds like someone needs a hug and a little confidence building...  wimps.

When I become an Evil Overlord, things will be different - I want people confident in their Evil.  I think the names and outfits, to be truly evil, should be lies.  Calling someone or something not what it is, ie deception, sounds more interesting to me.  The leaders should have names like Snuffles, Huggy, and Smiles.  They will great each other with the word "Friend" instead of comrade or saluting.  And the standard outfit would be bright colors and soft materials.  I think these things would inspire more fear in people than any of this Dark Lord crap.  "Run!  He was friendly and wears interesting colors!  He is a member of Friends of Life!  The slaughter is about to begin!"

It is true, I have actually seen things like this in some movies and books.  In horror films, there is nothing scarier than a child demon.  Sweet little innocence is actually a code word for death and destruction.  And there are the gentlemen killers in some of these stories, people so confident in themselves that they have a seductive aura of Evil about them.  People of quiet confidence do not need names like Death Eaters to inspire terror - like in The Devil's Advocate.  I guess that is why they say "it is the quiet ones you have to watch out for", for they truly know Evil.

The Edward

Harry Potter Spoilers!

This seems to be the topic on the lips of every news outlet - how will the final Harry Potter book end?  What will happen to all of those lovable characters?  I'll tell you something, there are no spoilers.  But first, a warning:  The rest of this blog MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS, if there is such a thing.  You have been warned.

I first saw an article on cnn a week or so ago that someone had hacked the computer at the publishing house and was posting spoilers from what he read.  He said that Hermione dies trying to save Ron.  And Snape dies.  I was so shocked to read this that I canceled my pre-order of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!

Then a few days ago, someone posted a set of pictures of the final seven pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!  This made all of the media outlets again!  And more shocking, he had a different summary of the book:  Ron dies.  Hermione becomes a nurse.  Ginny marries someone else.  Percy dies.  Snape dies.  Shocking!

Then yesterday, while searching for that link again, I saw another round of stories, this time about someone who posted the entire book online in the form of blurry pictures.  Someone read it and had these spoilers:  Hedwig dies.  Fred dies.  Ron and Hermione get married.  Harry and Ginny get married and have three kids.  Snape dies.  Amazing!

What do all of these spoilers have in common?  They are all wrong!  Sure, they all claim Snape dies, but that just shows what I am talking about.  All of these latest Harry Potter books are under lock and key, being kept safe, just in case their secret escapes.  But, my question is:  what is their secret?  And what happens if it escapes?  Okay, my two questions are...

The books are nothing more than what J.K. Rowling believes would happen to the characters in the world she described in her previous books.  It does say what happens, only her opinion of what happens.  I'm sure you could think of a much better ending to these characters than she could.  I am sure you have already thought of an ending that you would like to see.  Why?  Because this ending is the one that is best for you.  Why do you care what ending someone end came up with?

The characters are in your mind.  The ones in her mind are different than the ones in your mind.  They may share the same names, but obviously if you have envisioned a different ending than she did, they must have a different life in your head.  Why destroy your characters and replace them with hers?

That is one of the reasons people are avoiding spoilers.  At some point in the near future, people will know how J.K. Rowling ended her characters.  But people want the characters in their minds to live a little bit long.  To enjoy what they believe should be the conclusion.  J.K. Rowling will kill your characters this Saturday, so why read her next book?

The secret to building a nuclear device, if escaped, would be the same as if you invented it yourself.  if you compared those leaked secrets to what you invented, you would have the same works at the end.  That is a secret.  If the ending of Harry Potter escapes, it will not be the same as the one you invited yourself, as shown by the above spoilers.  This is not a secret.  It is just one person's ideas. There are no such things as spoilers, ever. Sorry to ruin the ending for you.

The Edward

Entropy and Order meet in a bar...

Listening to the Joy of Science on CD again, and there was talk of Entropy and how it increases.  The "latest" thinking is that the amount of order must be taken into account for a process.  The example used was a deck of cards just out of the box has a higher order than a shuffled deck.  And no matter how much one shuffles the deck, there is almost no chance that it will end up ordered again, hence Entropy increases.  But there is a problem with this.

Each state is just a state - there is no bias.  A deck of cards just out of the pack is in no better order than a shuffled deck.  Shuffling a deck of cards doesn't increase the entropy, it puts it in another unique state.  It is only the human mind that sees a deck out of the box as "in order."  Are the cards sorted by atomic thickness?  Number of atoms of carbon?  Number of photons bouncing off of them?  Even if one chooses that the face of card be used to determine order, which order?  What if the order I want is all cards of like type be together?  So, instead of by suit, it is by value?  In that case the cards coming out of the box are not sorted.  At each and every shuffle, the cards are sorted by some criteria, and shuffling them again will make it so that they will never exist in that order again.  Each order is unique, it is just that we have such limited rules on what is ordered.

If we can define Order with one rule, we consider it ordered:  all suits together.  The Universe does care about our definition of Order, and so us creating a set of rules for how the Universe acts based on what we label Entropy seems very silly.

The Edward

A Fight Half Done

I noticed something the other day, but that is a topic for a different blog post.  Today is about something I've seen in horror movies for awhile.  Not the naked women that used to fill these movies in the 80s and 90s, but instead lets talk about the final scene.  The monster, this overwhelming creature of pure evil with the strength to back it up, gets shot and falls down.  At this point, the pitiful human has an advantage over the monster, so the human is now the more powerful of the two.  So, what does this human do?  He or she throws down the weapon, turns his or her back and walks away, followed by everyone in the audience screaming at the screen "He isn't dead yet!  Shoot him again!"  They never do.  Once the human has the upper hand, they walk away.  Then the monster rises up and attacks again, followed by a struggle of some sort, and the human finally kills the monster, which is what he or she should have done in the first place. This person had to wait until the monster was once again a stronger threat before he or she could kill it.

Two quotes come to mind when I see this in a horror movie:  "Never get involved in a fight unless you are willing to finish it." and "Never deal a non-fatal blow to an opponent."

Who amongst us wasn't picked on in school?  This picking on probably didn't create a sense of "wow, I learned my place! I will accept my lot in life..."  How many of us instead thought, and still think to this day, "I'll show them!  Some day I will be rich and/or powerful, and will come back to this town and show them who's boss!"  See, the same thing as in the monster movie.  Not finishing someone off when one has the upper hand is always fatal!

At every point in a conflict one side is the stronger of the two.  People fear beating on the wimp, because it is a losing proposition.  One needs to deliver a decisive blow early in the fight, or do not even bother.  Who wants to kill someone or thing when it is on its last breath?  Do you want to see an hour of someone kicking someones ass, beating them to a bloody pulp, then finally killing them?  After an hour of this would you say "Wow, that was so cool!  That tough guy finally won!"  Probably not.  But if the tough guy went through a crowd of wimps, killing them all with the slightest touch, I imagine it would a very popular movie!

This is all based on people not wanting to kill the underdog.  At some point in the fight, if the underdog has the upperhand, he is no longer the underdog, so the roles are reversed.

When invading another country, it is the same thing.  If you do not take over and master it ASAP, it is like kicking the ass of a wimp for an hour.  No one wants to see it.  No one feels a sense of empowerment.  People are just disgusted by it.  If you want to be an invader, go in and kick ass!  Do not leave a fight half done, or that country will hold a grudge forever.

The Edward

Quantum Space?

What's all this hoo-ha that I've been hearing these days?  Quantum this and quantum that.  Seems that the young whippersnappers have gotten together with the old geezers and decided to start a ruckus.  Making everything quantum on us while our backs were turned.  Outrageous, I tells ya!

I remember the days of my misspent youth, everything was continuous back then.  Then one day, some wiseguy decides that energy is discrete, then suddenly every starts talking about quantum theory, with quantum energy.  I should have known then where this would lead, but I was young and foolish.  Nipped it in the bud, I should've!

This will lead to the downfall of the human race, I'm sure of it.  Mark my words, the aliens that discover the ashes of this once proud race will point to quantum theory and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.  Or whatever those methane beathers do that is the equivalent of mocking anothers hubris.

See, after quantum energy, these slick willies calling themselves Scientist decided that maybe everything is quantum!  Maybe time happens in discrete units - there would be a smallest time unit, for which there is no smaller.  Then the granddaddy of problems:  quantum space!  Space, with a smallest possible unit!  Quantum of space.  Can you imagine that?  Scientist actually proposed such an idea!...

What does this mean for us?  It means that everything that we know is wrong!  The shortest distance between two points can no longer be a straight line, if space really exists with a discrete unit.  How do they explain a^2 + b^2 = c^2?  There can be no non-rational distance with a quantum of space, so therefore going from point a to b is the same as moving along one axis of a, then the second axis, etc, until one reaches b.  Short cutting a diagonal has no meaning!  I tell you, if a is at 0,0, and b at 1,1, the outrageous claim is that the distance is now 2, instead of the sqrt(2).  One over then one up.  Blasphemous I tell you!

And all of this is based on Quantum Theory. A theory that at its core contains a divide by zero. Why as any nimrod knows, one can prove anything with a divivde by zero! Renormalization, my ass! Pure balderdash! Poppycock!

Who is watching over these Scientist?  I thought it was your turn?

The Edward

Riding My Ass

It was to be 100 degrees here where I live for the 4th of July, and I thought that just would be hot enough, so I went to Vegas where it was a record 116 degrees.  Better yet, flying would have gotten me there way to fast, so I decided to spend 9 hours in my car, each way, to get there with 113 degrees outside for 8.5 hours of it.  During my 18-ish hours in my car on the road, I learned a few things about driving from my fellow drivers.

1)  If there is no way for someone to pass, drive as slow as possible.  There are a few places along the way where there is only a single lane, with a 60 mph speed limit.  The person in front of me will deem that to be way to fast for any reasonable human to travel, so he will be sure to keep it way under 50 mph.  At some point, the road becomes two lanes, and it is like heaven opens up before me!  Suddenly, Mr. "Anything Above 50 is an Abomination in God's Eyes" can't go fast enough.  60 will suddenly be way to slow, which leads to #2.

2)  If you want someone in front of you to speed up, pretend like you are going to pass him.  So, one is in the fast lane, going fast, when one comes upon someone going much slower.  What will this person in front do?  Well, if there is a car next to him, rule #1 applies, he will match the other cars speed so that one can not pass him.  If there is no one next to him, or the car to the right suddenly blows up, in either case leaving a lane free in which to pass, one has a chance to make this person speed up:  simply go into the other lane.  Once over there, the slowpoke will find a new religion, a religion of speed.  Suddenly, that easy pass will become a difficult pass as he is now going more than 10 mph over the speed limit.

3)  If someone is trapped behind one of these moving roadblocks, ride their ass.  If someone is trapped, why not make their situation worse by riding as close to their rear bumper as possible?  All of the cools kids are doing it!  And it must get you to you destination faster... if your destination is an afterlife.  This one seems very dangerous, so I am currently unsure why drivers want to do this, but this one seemed to be very common.  Ass being ridden is a very frustrating situation to be in!

4)  If someone is riding your ass and you have a free lane next to you, pulling into it to let them pass is a mistake.  This is a mistake I make all of the time.  I figure the person riding my ass really wants to pass me, so I pull in the slower lane first chance I get.  The person suddenly seems to lose interest in passing me once he is around my rear quarter panel.  So, I can no longer easily get back into the fast lane and I have some moron in my blind spot.  Try to be helpful, and people screw with you.  I guess that is why people tend not to move to the side to let people pass, because of they do not want to be on the receiving end of this rule.

So, what have we learned today?  Nothing really.  I'm sure everyone has experienced these things happening to them before.  It was just kind of overwhelming to see it happening throughout the entire 18-ish hours, over and over again.  Sure, I had experienced this before at my last job, which made me hate what should have been a trivial drive into work, but after 18-ish hours I have to ask, what is wrong with people?  Doesn't everyone just want to get to their destination as efficiently and safely as possible?  I'd have to say not...  Humans...

The Edward

PS  After learning rule #4, I had the ass rider pull up next to me so he and his girlfriend could point and laugh at me for the next few miles.  So, be sure to learn all of these rules so as to get the best experience on your next cross country trip.

Happy!

Happy 13th anniversary! As of today, it has been 13 months since I started this little blog. Hard to believe that much time has passed. Hard to believe I still write... though recent times have been tougher to put pen to paper. I have such a back log of blog posts! I still write and still have ideas daily, I just find it hard to finish them. Kind of like emails - too much attachment to the results.

But not today! No context in this blog entry. I'm just a typing away randomly. No thought. No emotion. No me. I feel like a ghost, like the words are just appearing on my little screen as I read them. What will the next sentence be like? Let's find out, together!

The Edward

Buffy's Hell

Something I never thought about during my life, until I saw that Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode.  See, she was trapped in what her friends thought was a hell, so they rescued her.  The problem was that she was in a paradise.  So much for the spoilers, the interesting part to me was that she thought she was in hell when she came back to this world.  Why?  Because compared to paradise, this would be hell, right?

This was something I never thought about when I was a christian.  If what they say is true, and Heaven is a paradise beyond belief, then by the Buffy analogy, this would seem like Hell in comparison.  So, for all their talk of Eternal peace and happiness, what they are really saying is that we are in hell right now, suffering for some unknown reason.  This would be true of anyone who believes in an afterlife paradise.

This is why I believe that most religious people, those who believe in a paradise after this world, are lying to themselves.  If they truly believe that they could be in a paradise, what could possibly be keeping them from it?  If they truly believed what they preach, they wouldn't be here.  Look at the leaders of any religion, how many of them are willing to go to paradise ASAP?  None.  Yet they seem very willing to tell people to do things that will aid them on their way.  Their actions speak volumes that their followers seem not to hear.

The Edward

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Seen it? Funny stuff! I'm watching episode #1 on SciFi right now and can not stop laughing...

The Edward