The Martian

I watched the DVD of 'The Martian' today and as both an astronomy and science buff I was quite impressed with the attention to detail on the science part. However the plot was rather lacking but the acting skills of Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain made up for it. In summary it is about NASA astronaut Mark Watney (Damon) being marooned on Mars after the rest of his crew mates had presumed him dead and had to make an emergency departure from the red planet.  Reminiscent of other solo survival stories such as Robinson Crusoe and Castaway, he had to survive physically and mentally.  Yes he does grow his own spuds using Mars dust and human excrement for fertilizer.  However things go awry when he somehow blows up his Mars "house" which doubles as accommodation and potato greenhouse.  The rest of the story just drifts on from that. One scientific anomaly is Watney walking normally in a non-weighted spacesuit on a planet with 38% of Earth's gravity.  I think some scientific liberties were taken there.  All in all a reasonable film for the science buffs but don't expect a great storyline.

In praise of ... the double end bag

The double end bag or floor to ceiling bag is one of the most under-rated pieces of equipment in the boxing gym.  It is round football size bag that is attached to the floor and the ceiling by two pieces of elastic or bungee.  The elastic causes the bag to swing violently when you hit it, making it hard to hit the next time around.  So it helps you in your hand eye co-ordination and swing can be seen as an opponent's punch, meaning you can practicing your slipping and weaving skills at the same time.  So for me it is my favorite piece of boxing gym equipment.  Here is a perfect demonstration of it by Tim Bradley.

More left stupidity post Brussels

Every now and again I dip into the left wing blog, the Canary, to find out what the other side thinks. So after the Brussels atrocity I saw this rather terrible but typical article.  Here are some highlights from it

"As terrorist attacks hit Brussels on 22 March, anti-Muslim propaganda began to appear online." That's absolutely true but did the author think that without these terror attacks there would be none of this islamophobia?

"The general gist of the arguments was that: Muslims want to kill and subjugate them; ". Actually this is in someways true, there are passages in Koran which extols killing non-believers, in particular,

"Quran (2:191-193) - "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing... ".

So in a way these views have some factual backing and what of the hard evidence?  Once Islam was established, through the Ummayad dynasty it went on a conquering spree, all the way up to the Loire Valley in France, where they were stopped (battle of Tours).  Even the Total War and Age of Empires strategy games depict this.  So in a sense what this article is accusing the right of is actually correct.

And what of the claim that Islam seeks to conquer the west, well this article mentions someone who is not backwards going forwards in implementing this modern day conquest.  I can also point to this clip of radical muslim protesters showing their honesty.

The article mentions the role Saudi funded Wahabism in all this -

"This is not to say that all Wahhabis are terrorists. However, combined with other factors (like marginalisation, for example) Wahhabi indoctrination can be particularly dangerous."

However it abrogates this by mentioning "marginalisation".  It is the terrorists who have marginalized themselves from the rest of society.

"To truly stop terrorism, our governments must first deal with Saudi Arabia’s support for Wahhabi hate preaching around the world. Then, they must work to end the war, exploitation and injustice around the world in which our governments and their allies have all too often played a role."

The article ends with the above paragraph, and mentions that "war, exploitation and injustice" are factors, however what it means by injustice from the muslim point of view is that some in the west are standing up to islamofascism and sharia law.

Brussels attacks

Towards the end of my working day, I heard about the awful events that unfolded in Brussels, which started with the bombing at Brussels airport and later at Maelbeek station.  As I write this there are 34 confirmed deaths and countless injuries.  When events like this happen on instantly thinks of terrorism and Islamic terrorism in particular.  Commentators are already linking this with the recent arrest by Belgian police of Paris mastermind, Salah Abdeslam, and it is seen as IS's response to the arrest.

As if by magic, the Guardian produces a terrible opinion editorial on the tragedy, this time written by Simon Jenkins, whom I don't associate with the usual useful idiot left. A couple of his points come to attention

"There is no way any community can make itself immune to terror attacks. Since they are random, no protection can defend that community from them. No amount of police work or surveillance, no deployment of armies or navies, let alone of missiles or nuclear weapons, can guard against them. Intelligence and surveillance can go so far, but the bombers and killers will get through any net."

Of course, ultimately no amount of surveillance can prevent this but one way to do this would be properly control your borders and regulate who can come in.  Again this is all down to border control and how you react to people of different cultures in your community.  If you let fear of racism inhibit your policing then this is the result.

"What is not stupid is seeking to alleviate, or not aggravate, the rage that gives rise to acts of terror, and then to diminish the potency of the incident itself. The first requires a wiser foreign policy than most western nations have shown towards the Muslim world over the past decade. The second is even harder to achieve. It demands patience and restraint in publicising terrorist incidents and in responding to them."

Again, like all those on the left, Jenkins blames the attack on western foreign policy, even though Belgium has little to do with the war on terror.  By blaming western foreign policy Jenkins is using the racism of low expectations.  That is muslims have no moral agency, instead they are influenced completely by events in foreign lands.  People become terrorists because they have made a moral decision to become one, foreign policy or not.

"The blanket media coverage assured for any act of violence is reckless."

The media coverage is not reckless, it is merely reflecting the seriousness of the event.  Unfortunately it appears the left is stuck in its own religious blind faith.
 

Calon Lan

I still love this song, it brings back lots of childhood memories in Wales.

Bell's Inequality explained mathematically

If you ever wanted to see Bell's inequality explained through mathematical formula and Venn diagram then watch this and enjoy!



E

#OscarsSoWhite

I'm not usually a fan of the Oscars but this year's awards ceremony provoked more mainstream reaction when commentators commented that there was a lack of black winners or nominees.  My rebuttal of this is that the Oscars are awarded for talent and not for race and black actors and actresses have won awards before.  It is a question of ability not of race. Its very strange these commentators make no comment about the over representation of a racial group in other areas such as professional sports(black), science (Asian) etc.  What's next?  When, for example, will we see normally endowed porn actors winning the best actor prize at the adult film awards?

Commander: Europe at War, again

A few days ago I restarted another campaign game on Commander:Europe at War, again playing as the allies and starting from 1939. As the Allied units were being pushed back in France, I decided to do a Dunkirk evacuation and move the UK and French forces to the safety of Britain, leaving a single rearguard unit. However, after France had officially surrendered in the game, the evacuated French forces disappeared from the the UK map, even though they had safely arrived there.  Meaning that my evacuation had been ignored.  This is either a bug or something the game's designer's had ignored when they were doing the background research.

Another explanation of Bell's inequality

I came across another very good Youtube video explaining quantum entanglement and Bell's inequality.  Enjoy!

Atom: the key to the cosmos

Last night I watched another Jim Al-khalili documentary on Youtube, "Atom: the key to the cosmos" which is the second part of his 2008 Atom series.  Its another well explained programme on the components of the atom and nuclear physics.  He describes how Ernest Rutherford's students accidentally created hydrogen by using radium to split the nitrogen atoms in the air, thereby becoming history's first ever alchemist. Al-Khalili then mentioned the strong nuclear force which holds the positively charged protons in the nucleus of an atom together, preventing them from repelling each other.  This was another thing that was mentioned in my GCSE physics class but I then forgot in the midst of time.  So thanks for reminding me, Jim.

Getting a PS Vita

I've been mulling about buying a PS Vita for a while but I am not sure if it is worth getting just for a handful of games that I am interested in, namely Minecraft and Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution. 

Commander: Europe at war - lost campaign

I've been playing Commander: Europe at war on the Sony PSP since the weekend, and unfortunately it looks likely the PSP player, playing as the Axis, has won world war 2.  This is partly due to bad strategy on my part, like failing to evacuate the UK and French forces from France after the fall of France and also better than expected performance from the Italians, especially on the Eastern Front.  For some reason the US has not entered the war which is a big problem in the western front.

Alternative history on the PSP

I have given Daxter a rest and gone back to playing the turn based strategy game, Commander - Europe at War, on the PSP.  This time I am playing as the allies from 1939 at the invasion of Poland.  Poland surrenders no matter what you do at the start of the game, then it becomes a case of stopping Germany from conquering France, using the the forces of the French and the British.  I'm not sure if this is deliberate or whether the PSP player has stronger AI but the French forces offer very little resistance.  Now I wonder where I heard this before?  So now I am at the stage where the allies are off the continent and I am waiting for the USSR and the USA to join the war.  One thing I was able to do that the Churchill wasn't able to was recall the Royal Navy from the Mediterrean and use them for coastal bombardment on the channel coast, thereby limiting the effectiveness of the German armour.

The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell

I have just started reading "The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell" by Basil Mahon, I first came across Maxwell and his discoveries in electromagnetism during my GCSE physics class.  Unfortunately I didn't really pay enough attention to fully appreciate his work(sorry Mr Steeg).  However from all the science DVDs and youtube videos his discoveries gave us alot of the things we take for granted today. He also made discoveries in maths, optics and materials science.

Bell's theorem again

I found this wonderful youtube video which explains Bell's theorem with the aid of simple animation.

Enjoy!

Finally passed level 2 of Daxter

After many late nights and sore thumbs, I have defeated the end of level boss of Daxter. I wonder if the can of lager helped?

Bell's inequality

In Youtube, I found a video which brilliantly explains Bell's inequality or theorem and how it was eventually proven experimentally. Back in the 1920s and 30's physicists discovered that particles from a common source were entangled at the point of measurement.  For instance when you measure spin direction in one electron of a pair of electrons from an atom, the spin of its twin will always be opposite.  For example if one electron was spin up the other would be spin down.  This is quantum entanglement.  Before they were measured both electrons were in both spin up and spin down, this is known supposition and is best explained by the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment. This entanglement applied no matter how far the two particles were from each other, they could even be on different ends of the universe but the quantum entanglement still applied.

However Albert Einstein, along with fellow physicists Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, pointed out that for this to work there must be faster than light communication between the two particles.  And this cannot be since it breaks Einstein's special relativity that nothing can go faster than the speed of light.  This became known as the EPR paradox.  Einstein and his colleagues had pointed out a fundamental flaw with quantum physics and he described entanglement as "spooky action at a distance". Insead Einstein believed that the spin states of these particles were already set before measurement and they only become known to us at the point of measurement.  These are known as 'local hidden variables' and they imply that nature is pre-set in some ways.  Einstein characterized this by having two boxes and a pair of gloves, and each box contains a glove each.  When you open a box, not only do you see which hand the glove fits but you instantly know which hand is in the other box. So which was correct, quantum physics or local hidden variables?

For decades this issue lingered on, until 1964, when a Northern Irish scientist, John Bell, published a study on how to resolve this.  He came up with an experiment which tests local hidden variables of entangled particles.  Each entangled particle is sent to a polarizer to measure the spin and if the particle's spin and detector agree then the particle is allowed through, it not, it is blocked.  These detectors can be set to varying angles so we can measure the probability of a particle getting through or not.  Bell theorized that if hidden variables exist then there is a minimum probability of the two detectors having the same result.  This probability was found to be 33%, if the result go below this probability then hidden variable theory would be false and quantum theory would be correct.  All this became known as Bell's inequality or Bell's theorem.

It was not until 1972 that Freedman and Clauser in the USA, had the right equipment to perform this test, they found the results in favour of quantum physics.  Later on in 1983, French phyisicist Alain Aspect performed a much rigorous version of this experiment and found that the results proved Bell, and quantum mechanics itself, correct and the probability of both detectors recording the same result was below 33%.

So there is some kind of faster than light communication or relationship between 2 entangled particles.  How it comes about is another matter and yet to be explained. Further John Bell had taken on a question posed by one of the greatest scientists ever, Einstein, and won.

In search of the Trojan war - the singer of tales

Last I watched the third episode of Michael Wood's "In search of the Trojan war" - "the singer of tales" which was about Homer himself and how the Illiad was compiled.  We know that the Illiad was created 500 years after the actual war itself, whether it happened or not.  And also it passed on orally, and memorized until it was first written down in papyrus during Roman times.  Wood went to Ireland and Turkey to see how the last surviving modern day storytellers work and how they learnt their stories.

According to the episode, it is likely that the Illiad was a compilation of several poems or songs, which were set around 1200 BC. Some of the cities mentioned were already rubble by Homer's time which adds to the idea that was passed on from generation to generation.  Another fascinating fact that the first copy of the Illiad was compiled in Florence during the 14th century.

Daxter: still stuck on the level 2 boss

After more than 2 weeks I am still stuck on the level 2 end baddie, the queen of the hive.  The closest I got so far was 3 hits away from completing.  Looks like my reflexes need sharpening.

Misnomers

In everyday life one comes across phrases which their meanings bear no resemblance to the words that make them up, common ones include American football, bombay duck and toad in the hole.  Unfortunately quantum physics has two, quantum tunneling and quantum teleportation.

With quantum tunneling one has an image of an electron drilling through a solid wall with a set of sub-atomic tools to get to the other side. The reality is not like that and no drilling is involved. Since electrons can be waves as well as particles, one is never certain of their location at any one time.  A solid object will affect the path of the electron's wave but due to this uncertainty, there is a small chance it can be either inside the wall or the other side of it.  This is down to quantum probability and as been proven in the lab already.  Naturally the thinner the wall, the higher the probability that an election will appear on the other side.  And if the wall is thick enough then this probability will shrink to zero.

With quantum teleportation one has an image of particle such as a photon or electron dematerializing and rematerializing in another place a la Star Trek ("Beam me up"). Again the reality is not like that, you are merely teleporting the quantum states of a particle not the particle itself.  This is thanks to quantum entanglement where two particles spin states are inter-linked, if one is spin up the other must be spin down.  When you measure one, you set the state of the other.

Quantum tunneling

For anyone out there who is interested, here is an everything you need to know video explaining the wonderful and mysterious world of quantum tunneling.