My, but today has been exciting, hasn't it? What the fuck happened last night? I get a bit of drink on and I wake up to Europe shunning us even more than usual. Once again Cameron has done his level best to assure us all what an utter tosser he is.
Under the assumption that you have already read the proffesional views from your choice of news network, I won't labour the intro. All I see is Cameron a) completely missing the point of the meeting, that it was to help the European community, a community to which we are inevitably tied, certainly economically, and b) blindly going with political posturing rather than thinking about the long term future of the god damn country he's supposed to be representing.
His argument seems to be based largely on the premise that Britain is a strong nation, completely ignoring the fact that it is as economically strong as it is because of the large amount of historical and current trade we have with Europe, the very group he is now alienating us from. There is no way in hell this country can stand on it's own. The Tories and "Euro Skeptics" are pining for the Good Old Days, remembering that once we get all these powers we have ceded away to Brussels back, we'll be fine, like back when we had an empire. They completely forgetting that we don't have a fucking empire any more.
Okay, look, I'm pretty angry. This has very much been a post written with emotion rather than forethought, and no matter how much I believe the thought to be accurate there has been some Straw Manning. I feel I should explain myself and my reaction.
I touched on this in my post on why I do physics. There is not much I believe in, but one thing I do is the ability for humanity, or transhumanity, or posthumanity to continue the ever noble quest for knowledge. Now that is a very long term goal, but it requires short term steps. The reason I'm so angry about all this is the complete lack of foresight displayed by Cameron. We are as a race entering a really fucking stormy period in our history, and the only way I see us making it through is together, and it's selfish ignorant people like Cameron and the Conservative, and lets be honest, a good number of other members of other parties and countries that kill that dream, and end up filling me and others like me who just want the best from humanity with despair.
Again I suppose I have gone a bit long term again. What can I say, maybe I get a little bit crazy when I'm impassioned, hm? Okay, how about you consider this. This move that Cameron has made, in all his infinite fucking wisdom, has improved nothing for Britain. For all his insistence's that he has made the best decision, he fails to acknowledge publicly that there is now going to be an agreement on a treaty that we will still be part of, that we will have no say in. He has isolated Britain from the European stage just when we need to be pulling together.
It's going to be difficult for me to press publish on this one, just because I know that this is a post forged purely from emotion and a day of resenting what I've heard on the radio, not excluding Cameron's smugger-than-thou voice. I try not to do politics because it's always a much more complicated mish mash of rat piss than I care to go into too much detail with, and I simply cannot cover the full spectrum of views that 'd like to. But post it I shall, because I suppose I need to stand for something once in a while, even if it's just on my little peninsula of the Internet. One cannot forever stand by and spectate, even if it just means starting by shouting abuse at the players.
Not Fanatically Anything has been with me for about a year and a half. In that time together we have tackled such far reaching topics as Physics, The 2010 Football World Cup, and music. And Pokemon. Lots of Pokemon. It is therefore with regret that I am considering moving on. This is what writing this post is to help me decide.
Note that when I say move on, I merely mean to a new blog. When I first started it, I was trying to think of something to focus on, and I found that I couldn't really think of anything I was really into. I mean music, sure, but there is already a glut of them and I really don't think I could say anything that hasn't already been said. Then I remembered my uncle's old band. I had only heard a cassette recording of them, but the name stuck with me. NFA, Not Fanatically Anything. I thought it sounded kinda cool, and, well, they weren't using it any more. It fit perfectly. AI'll do a blog in which I don't really focus on anything specific, where I can just jot down thoughts when they come me or whatever. The name was perfect, and has been something I could (ironically?) really get behind.
I still feel like that for the most part. The problem now is that I don't feel I can maintain a stance of non fanaticism going forward. There are events and circumstances happening in the world that demand of me, and make me demand of myself that I take a stance. The world is either falling apart, or morphing into something not all that desirable and it's impossible not to take a stance. Also I want to start some hobbies that take me away fromthe internet. I have recently excavated my interest in astronomy and am looking to get into that in a bigger way than occasionally peering through my £10 refractive in my room, and from reading a few magazines, it looks like 2012 is a great year to be getting into it.
So post about them here, James. But I can't. Not without changing the name, but, and there's the rub, the name has been with me throughout, and as such I feel a certain fondness for it. No, I cannot simply erase the entity for new.
So the final thought that I inevitably have arrived at is simply that I should start anew elsewhere. Create a new blog or blogs where I can focus on specifics. Should I let this thing weary away into the past? No, I imagine not. I should imagine I will come back from time to time with stories, or new RPG recordings. This was the first blog that I stuck for over a year, and I'm not about to totally abandon it now.
To be honest it wouldn't surprise me that by years end I've forgotten the damn new blog idea.
This in no way counts as a post, but I have to insist that you read this article/blog/whatever by one of my favourite people-I'll-never know Warren Ellis.
*boop*
"...huh? Whu..."
*boop*
"Whu...oh shit. Oh man oh man, SIR! SIR GET IN HERE!"
"What is it Simmonds, what-"
*boop*
"-Mother of God"
"It's showing life signs Sir! The NFA Blog! What do I do, sir?!"
"Stay calm Simmonds! Remember your training. Just keep an eye on it. Hopefully it will recover completely soon enough."
"Yes sir!"
To anticipate and dissuade any worries, I just want to mention that while this is in the first person, it is not, nor based on, me. I share some of his thoughts, that is inevitable, but mostly it is just a character study, of sorts. Ok, carry on.
While I'm here actually, do comment on what you read into him. I think it would be helpful and certainly pretty interesting.
___________
There was always something magical about the night. I imagine that were I freed of everyday responsibilities I would spend most of my waking hours there. That we should live in daylight I imagine to be a human construct, more suited to convienience of labour than the laughably named human "nature". As if there were anything to be called natural among humans. Ask a man from the past whether those walking the streets today are natural; what do you suppose his answer would be? In such a vain why should it be any more natural to live in day than to live in night?
This is an old argument, but one I have frequently with myself. Often this is followed by an urge to display my "new"found philosophy by throwing open the doors and walking into the night, and wouldn't you know it, this is one of those nights. I pull on my jacket and prepare myself for a stroll.
The air is brisk, as evidenced by my breath appearing before me. I play with it for a bit, make believe I'm smoking and the like. I never could resist that one. I keep in touch with my inner child to an appropriate extent, though usually only when no one is around to judge me as being childish. Usually only on these walks. I move on.
I wonder if anyone else has joined me in this place. I mentioned that the night is magical. I cannot be the only one who realises this. It touches ones muse in a way that daylight does not, cannot. It breeds a form of excitement, no doubt stemming from an instinctive fear of the dark. In the orange twilight of the city night we are brought to face that fear, but at a safe distance. Streetlights hold our fear at bay like the glass standing between you and the lions in the zoo. We are safe to look at it, study it. In my case this means pressing myself up against the glass in the conflicting hopes that it will both hold and that it will break and I will fall through, forced to face that which I would normally keep at a safe distance. I hear a noise in a dark alley.
A mental masochist, that is the phrase I use, most often in jest, to describe myself. I put myself in dangerous or difficult situations not because I'm foolish, or because I'm some sort of adrenalin junkie. Not because I wish to die but because I wish to find out how close I can get to the flame without being burnt. It's a purely scientific thing. A study of the self, in preperation of the event that I am put into a tricky situation not of my own design. The noise in the alley calls me. Not by name, or even on purpose. There is just a noise there that I feel requires my presence.
We are different at night. There is us in the day and us at night. It is a sad fact that most try to combine the two if not ignore one altogether. Our day selves, this is the one we show everyone else, because this is when we are on constant display. This may be a facade, or it may be one's actual self. But it is almost always responsible. The night however...The nightside is more primal. Our eyes look around franticly for...something. We are impulsive and rash, passionate and furious, and as my eyes grow used to the dark, I see a drunk playing with a cat in the same sense that that same cat probably played with a rodent earlier today, in the waking hours. I feel the impulse, the fury. I cry out and he stops.
There is music at night. Sure, the clubs and pubs. But I talk of the city itself. In the day it's noise. Cars, people, everyday goings on. But at night it becomes art, the beating heart of the city slowed to a relaxed throbing. Badum. Badum. Badum. My own heart mimics this heartbeat as the man walks towards me. He shouts some curses and, I imagine insults. He is in front of me now. I cannot hear him, so drunk am I on the night. I will him to hit me.
There is blood. Most of it is mine. The man runs away as I crawl to the cat. I spit bloody phlem on the ground and curl up with the cat. Did I start the fight? I cannot remember. Did I need it? Did I gain anything from this? Maybe. I pick up the cat and limp home. Maybe he'll be gone in the morning. But what did I gain? Well. There's a thought for my next walk.
It is almost judgement day for me and many like me. Yes, soon we shall be receiving our A Level results and for those of us who have applied whether or not we have gotten in to our desired universities. This year I suspect is an even more tense time than before as it is when we find out whether we will get in somewhere, anywhere, this year, or have to reapply next year and suffer the drastic increase in university fees that is to come. But that is not what I am here now to talk about.
This post is a much more personal one, and the result of a number of thoughts I have had over the last few weeks regarding what I'm going to do if my grades are...sub-standard, and that is the subject of why it is I want to go into physics. Certainly it has been a long time since I have considered anything else (other than writing, but I've worked out how that fits nicely into the physics thing, so no worried there) as a career path and life goal.
My personal statement, if I remember correctly (I daren't read it again. It was such a constrained piece of writing that I feel mildly suffocated just thinking about it) talked about how I have always loved physics, I have a telescope, blah blah blah, and superficially it is true. Of course it is, or I wouldn't have put it in my personal statement. I was that quiet kid throughout primary school, and that quiet nerd throughout secondary school, until eventually I was that slightly more outspoken science geek going into Churchill 6th Form. I was still unsure what exactly what I wanted from life, but I was fairly sure it lay in a sciency direction. Then it came time to apply for uni, and I went for physics because looking back, I recognised that that is simply what I wanted. Music was always a big part of my life, and for a short time, so was art, but they didn't strike me as valid career choices. The other sciences I viewed as being less interesting and slightly derivative of what I recognised as being a kind of source code for the universe. Tell me, when I put it like that, doesn't physics seem sheer magnitudes more interesting? My other choice was something Englishy, and that was tempting but physics proved the stronger pull. At any rate I had spent the last couple of years proclaiming it to be my destiny, so it would have been kind of odd to back out now.
Then it turned out my A Levels sucked. I can lay blame in a number of places but that is irrelevant to the story I am telling. To cut a getting increasingly long story short, I went to City of Bristol college, and knew throughout that physics is what I wanted to do, and so here I am waiting for the results that will at least let me get into a foundation course through clearing. Hopefully more, but what can I say? I'm good at thinking about contingency. Let's take a quick break to explore a few of the senarios I have developed contingency plans for. (Absolutely not just an excuse to share a Cracked video)
Anyway, I have continued my remarkable talent for making huge introductions, because yes, here is where we get to the main body of my thoughts. Now this is going to be some stream of consciousness stuff, so it might be kind of incoherent. I'll try to tidy it up a bit after, but you have been warned.
Actually, ok, before we continue we need to establish some assumptions. 1. The universe is real, not some simulation, I'm not in a coma, whatever. Yes, this is a genuine and constant fear of mine that I probably will explore here another time. For now however, it is irrelevant.
2. The universe is finite, has a beginning, and will likely have an end when it collapses on it's own gravity or heat death or whatever. It will end.
Anti-Depression aid.
Ok, so that last bit is a fairly large concern of mine. Humanity can keep spreading out into the stars. Maybe whatever we evolve into will meet extra-homo (as in the genus) life (I am being pretentious and avoiding extra terrestrial because it is likely by then that most of our species and its offshoots will have spread far beyond earth, and our sun will likely have red gianted long before anyway) and we will either befriend, exploit, kill or some combination them. Alternatively we may die off. I am under no illusions of the ability for a race to persist. For all the HFY stories, it is equally likely that we could be wiped out without warning. Either way it is easy to go on if we can still hope that some sign of us will remain of us forever, be it physical things, or knowledge, culture or something that we have passed on to other life. Then eventually the universe ends and everything is gone.
Not just destroyed. It is gone. Time ends, universe collapses, and it is like it never even existed. Maybe it will expand again, but that new universe might not bear any resemblance to ours. It might even have a completely different set of physics or maths.
So it's easy to think, with that idea, what is the point? Everything we achieve, what is the point if it eventually won't exist? I too felt that way for a short while. But, contrary to the beliefs of your average misunderstood teen, Nihilism is stupid. I thought to myself there are some fairly profound choices I have to make here. I can accept that life in the universe is pointless, ultimately fruitless, and kill myself, but that seemed rather unproductive. Productivity cannot exist if all is to be reduced to nothing and everything, but whatever. Second, I could go for the old "Enjoy life while I exist to enjoy it" thing, but that seems hedonistic and again, unproductive. Or I could accept that I am scared.
I am scared, and that is why I do physics. I am scared of what I don't know. I am scared of facing oblivion unprepared, and fuck it all I refuse to submit. I do physics because I refuse to run away from my fear. I may not achieve much in my academic life. I may even achieve greatness. Either way I shall die with the knowledge that I did my damnedest to progress humanity towards the point where we can take the universe by the throat and scream "Fuck you! We will not just end!". I can accept that my work might be the spin of a particle in a drop of water in the ocean, but the accumulation of all those drops over millions and billions of years will make that damned ocean.
I do physics because I refuse to accept the limits of our own universe. I do physics because otherwise I will have to resign myself to being thrown to it's whims.
I do physics because I am terrified, and that is fucking exhilarating.
This is something I heard on the radio this morning (BBC 5 Live, for those that care) and it got me thinking. This is certainly something I have heard before, so I thought I'd explore it briefly.
First off, I feel I should clarify that I mean cheating in the sense of taking questionable steps in the pursuit of success, not, as my quick google search revealed most people immediately think, the taking of another amorous partner at the same time as another who may object to such a union. That is a whole other kettle of fish.
The discussion on the radio was in regards to the Olympics, apparently a scant year away and obviously this is something where cheating is a big concern. Here we have athletes at peak physical condition, brutally murdering any remaining supposition that these games are meant to be performed by "amatures". You don't want to watch these people win a race and then find out they were artificially boosted. You would feel, well, cheated.
These are artificially boosted, and I feel cheated.
But it is clear to see why people do it. If you're, say, number 5 in the entire world, and you think that a small drug or another will give you the edge you need to reach that number 1 spot, all those moral questions you have been hearing through your athletic life might seem a little quieter in your head. The view of the top from below is a powerful motivator. And this is why I got thinking about the phrase in the first place. The reason an athlete would cheat is because they feel it will give them what they need to reach the top. A student will cheat academically in order to get good marks and subsequently (or so we have been lead to believe thus far) a good job and life. Or at least not to seem stupid. Your average roleplayer will be under constant internal pressure to fudge his or her dice rolls because they want their beloved character to succeed in their task, or at least not die.
So far we have seen the motivation of cheating to be athletic success, academic success, and critical success. There is a theme here. Let's carry it further. Gamblers: Financial success. Artists who plagiarise: Artistic or possibly Popularity success (i.e. being famous).
It is certainly possibly to achieve these aims without cheating. This requires hard work and determination. And so do we stumble upon another reason for cheating. Laziness. The student might not want high grades but they still don't want to fail. But studying is boring and difficult to get into, so it is much easier to write notes on his hand or ironically put much more effort into hiding a crib sheet on the label of a coke bottle than actually studying would have taken. Other examples are available but I am already pushing the limit on what can reasonably be considered "Brief discussion".
In conclusion, I have discussed a couple of motivations for cheating, but neither were cheating itself. Cheating for cheating's sake strikes me as being counter productive. If you have nothing to gain by cheating then you won't cheat. Thus do I disagree with the statement "Cheating is human nature". It isn't. The desire for success in one's endeavours, and tendency to follow the path or least resistance is, and these (among others, I'm sure) are what may lead to someone cheating.
I don't claim this to be a concrete answer. What do you think? Have I missed a glaringly obvious point to the contrary? Or am I a shining light or all that is right in the world? Thoughts in the comments.
Wow, the back screen for blogger has changed quite dramatically. It's much cleaner now, I think. A little jarring, but I'll get used to it. I'm not one to complain about petty UI changes.
In other news, my blog is no longer surrounded by baby/family blogs, but instead with seemingly WoWrelatedblogs. I consider this to be a vast improvement, and once my payday comes I may find myself adding another needle to that particular haystack. If you're unlucky.
So, this is just a quick word to ease the silence. I have been working what is essentially, and pretty much in fact, a full time job over the summer. I had hoped for some reason that this would allow me to think on story concepts and such like but unfortunately that has not transpired to be the case. I do however have a bit of a story on the go, and hopefully I will have that finished and proofread fairly soon. Nothing special, but kind of special to me, for reasons that I'm now noting down to go further into in a future post.
Finally there should be an About page coming soon, for potential new readers. Optimistic? Maybe, but it never hurts to be prepared, and I'd rather make new readers feel welcome. Basically I kinda want more than 3-5 regular readers, and after a year I think it's time I started doing something about that.
Oh buggery, yeah, I totally forgot, this blog has been running for over a year. This is officially the longest I have sustained a website of any description. I consider the goal set out for myself from the first post accomplished. Time for a new goal, methinks. Make it another year seems basic enough. I may add to that, but for now, let me thank you lovely few for reading this, being my friends and generally awesome people.
Fact. Social networking has ruined feeling sorry for yourself.
Time was that you could feel a bit sorry for yourself, get over it, move on. Now however it seems that people feel compelled to post such things on the various social networking sites of their choice.
So here's how it works.
Someone feels dissatisfied with life, having genuine reasons to be upset, and merely looking for a venue to vent.
Said someone posts it on facebook, looking as mentioned to vent, or maybe for a little sympathy. That's ok, we all want to feel loved.
Someone else notices this, and does the same. Wonderment! A piece of light therapy is born. Never let it be said that I believe holding up your emotions is a good idea. But here is where it gets tricky.
People start doing this lots. They start posting statuses (No, stati is pretentious hypercorrection) about every little gripe and moan.
Maybe to begin with it feels cathartic, but now it has become normal. The effect is nominal and the meaning has diminished.
People begin to notice this, and make fun of the people created in step 4, re-creating a culture in which it is deemed wrong to express one's self.
The people who now have genuine reasons to feel upset feel self conscious and feel even worse because they feel their thoughts and feelings are weak and unworthy.
Now, this is all purely hypothetical, and has no research or study to back it up that I know of, but I can take a guess at the next stage:
8. These people, needing an outlet, and perhaps nursing a mild inferiority complex, create personal blogs and share them only with close friends and perfect strangers.
How sweet is your adventure's soundtrack? 1. Don't Be Light (Malibu Remix) - Air
I'm seeing a young, smooth professor. He be cross stepping all the way to the lab, new trainers looking on in a mixture of fear and awe.
2. Opus Of The Black Sun - The Amorphous Androgynous
My rival is a...hippy. Psychedelic (rock), man. He has a soul patch growing, and wears John Lennon-esque sunglasses all the time. He uses a mixture of grass and psychic types. He probably does "use grass", for that matter.
3. Nowhere At The Edge Of Somewhere - The Amorphous Androgynous
Nice one iTunes. 531 artists and 13348 songs to choose from and you pick the next one from the same kerring album. Ah well, at least it works with the topic. Fighting to Psych Rock wouldn't be too bad.
Couldn't find a video, but it's more or less more of the same as above.
4. Immune to Gravity - Moth
Ok, so all wild pokemon are Indie fans. I guess it could be interpreted as me enjoying battling so much that it makes me "immune to gravity" as it were. "When you're with me I'm immune to gravity" could refer to my pokemon. Ah, this was one of my first albums. Memories.
5. Why Can't I Be You? - The Cure
Well that's self explanatory. Everyone I fight wants to be me. "You're so gorgeous I'll do anything! I'll kiss you from your feet to where your head begins!" ...Ok, you're getting a bit creepy there, Cooltrainer Nathan.
6. Sweetback - Curve
Tense and quiet, building into an energetic song that shouts power. I would love to battle to this. "If I were to die at this very moment, I'd be happy enough. Let fate decide if our future's going as high as the sky above." Those are gym battling thoughts, my friends.
7. Didjerama - Jamiroquai
Sounds like my Team X are nature lovers. Perhaps they aim to uncover the long lost grass type brother to Groudon and Kyogre, Forstrye, who wishes to cover the world in rainforest. You can imagine why he didn't do so well against his kin.
8. The Secret Life Of Dr Calgori - Abney Park
Or perhaps that is only a cover story...Steampunk Industrial for nature lovers? There's something more afoot here. Maybe the leader actually aims to destroy poor Forstrye, in order to wipe out the rainforests! That way he can easily build over the lands they used to inhabit! The cads!
I do however like the age old idea of a steampunk powered BBEG. At any rate Dr Calgori is my BBEG's name. Perhaps he use to be friends with my professor, but a parting of ideals lead them to become archrivals.
9. Widescreen - Xandria
Ok, so I guess the subplot is that my PC aims to bring down the established government, and celebrity culture and stuff. Maybe he fights against cruelty against pokemon.
This isn't one of their better songs.
10. Sam Rudich - Snowing
This song is on an album that has one of my favourite names, "Fuck Your Emotional Bullshit". But yeah, this is proper emo music. Slightly Math Rocky. This does mean, I suppose that my champion is a hipster emo math rock guy.
11. The Willing Well I: Fuel For The Feeding End - Coheed And Cambria
7 minutes. Long credits roll.
"Could this be that hard for me? To configure the new love and paint. To my new entity or banish it home to the grave I will not save... Your world"
In a surprise twist, the PC almost takes down the champion (who maybe was Dr Calgori!?), but only at the cost of his own physical form and sanity. Touched by chaos, his form twists and warps along with his mind, until he becomes...the new BBEG! The ultimate sacrifice, gone wrong.
That sounds like sequel talk to me.
12. Living The Wasted Life - Aesthetic Perfection
This is the theme of the being of chaos that Dr Calgori calls forth to battle me, the one that ultimately tears me form from me in a desperate bid to bring me down with it.
"Is this what's left of me, debilitated life. Look back and see nothing but my self wasted. Is this what's left of me? What's left will be destroyed. Is it ever ending my self-hatred?"
These are the thoughts it puts into my head (I guess it's a psychic type. Psychic/Dark sounds good.) that eventually reduce me to insanity.
"I am the cancer. I am the cause. I am the devil sitting on my left shoulder"
Who said pokemon can't be evil?
Well, that was fun. I invite you to do the same. Post it in the comments, or send me a link to your own blog or some thing.
It's fascinating, the number of people who need to say happy birthday on Facebook. Today is my girlfriend's birthday and her page is awash with people who are wishing her a happy birthday. And that's lovely. But here's the thing. She's not there. She left for the Download music festival days ago and won't read the message for days after. She even left a message on her page saying this, so there is no excuse for ignorance of the fact. I would wager most of these people have her number, and can contact her directly, but its almost as if they need to use Facebook.
So why? Is it more a selfish response? Do people need to be seen to have done it? Or has it just been so ingrained into the collective consciousness as the thing to do, much like the WoW player's robotic response of "gratz" to the input "ding". Either way it strikes me as demeaning the message, voiding it of feeling and emotion. Facebook messages are the cybermen of birthday greetings.
I thank those who may well have actually sent their wishes with true intention, but I fall back on my original observation that your social programming has blinded you to the option of giving her a call, or even just a fucking text.
It's been a while. More that two weeks, it seems. Sorry about that. With exams and whatnot, I decided I had better divert my attention for the time being. It has however occurred to me that after my exams I have a rather large amount of time to kill. As such, I intend to persue some personal interests in the time that I have free before university. When I'm not working that is.
One of them is to kick up my writing again, you may have noticed that I had a brief spell of storydom before, as mentioned, I remembered I had more important things to be concerned with, for the time being.
Secondly, and this ties nicely into the first is to get some serious reading done. This one is conveinient because it can be done at work, in the luls between angry people demanding my time. I have a large pile of books to burn through, and there's enough scrap paper in the office to write down any creative bursts of inspiration this gives me.
Thirdly, and this is a big one, is that I intend to get more musical. Somewhere down the line I stopped doing what was previously a lot of music. Violin, Saxophone, Piano, and to a lesser extent Guitar, Bass and Singing, these were all superceded by education. And so I have decided to pick up one of these again. Violin and piano I quit (albeit years apart) because I found the music and learning style to be oppressive and creatively stifling. Violin I still hold to be fairly boring however, so that's out. We actually destroyed our piano some time last year, due to it kinda being a piece of shit and not worth reselling. I still have some of the bits, but that shit ain't playing no more. I have a keyboard but it doesn't really respond the way I would like. So the piano is out. This leaves, much to my pleasure, the saxophone.
So that's that planned. I'll be doing some more revision posts, but hopefully my style will let even students of other subjects enjoy and learn. For now I leave you with one of the pieces that reminded me to get back into music. Concentrated class.
'Good morning, Mr Eddings. Here for your check up?'
'I am indeed Doctor. And might I say you're looking lovely as usual. Were I a younger man-'
'-you would date me in a heartbeat, yes I know. You told me last time, and the time before that.'
Dr Jordon smiled at the old man's good spirits. They were such a rare thing to come by in her clinic.
'Anyway, I'll get started with the usual. Have you had any complaints since your last check up?'
'Yes actually. I've had this nasty cough. The other doctor gave me a shot for it, but it doesn't seem to have done anything. I tell you, the work you put in keeping that damned virus out, and you can't solve a simple cough.'
The doctor's smile faltered. She had come across a sore in the back of the old man's head. The veins around it had blackened. She checked the man's chart.
'Mr Eddings, you haven't been to the clinic in a couple weeks.'
'Nonsense, I went to that new one down on Cathedral Road. I told you, the nice man gave me a shot for my cough.'
'Mr Eddings, there is no...one second, Mr Eddings.'
'Is everything alright dear?'
'It's alright Mr Eddings, nothing to worry about. Listen, I think the young doctor you saw before might have given you the wrong medication, so I'm going to give you something to sort that pesky cough out, ok?'
'You're an angel Dr Jordon.'
'You're kind to say so Mr Eddings. Too kind.'
__________
Dr Jordon wiped tears from her face while she waited for the barbiturates to take effect. For her own safety she would have to call the disposal team as soon as she could. For the moment however, she had a much more important duty to her people. She picked up a microphone and connected to the citywide PA. Her voice rang out strong through the streets. 'This is Dr Jordon, of the West Street clinic on the Emergency Broadcast. It has come to my attention that some new clinics have been appearing over the city. Please be forewarned, we have not authorised the construction of any new clinics. Should you enter one, you will be at great risk of exposure. I repeat, do not approach any new clinics you see...' She hesitated. '...They're back.'
'Fucks sake Karen. Play your character more carefully or I'll do something to teach you some fucking self preservation.'
'I told you before, Andy, that's my character's personality. Rash! Quick to anger! Hell, I put this in my back story. You had your chance to veto it!'
I checked my chronometer. We were 56 minutes into this session. The two friends argued over character sheets and RNGs, while Ben and I rolled our eyes and distracted ourselves. Thousands of shards of ferroliquid display loomed above the table, simulating weather. Currently it was raining fire.
'I had considered the possibility that you would be mature enough to play it sensibly. Clearly I was mistaken!'
'Fuck you!' Karen ripped up her character sheet with a level of drama reserved for the faux-angry. Truth was this happened at least once a session. It was tradition, and we had all come to expect it. No-one really minded. Actually, we suspected that there was something going on between them. I made a mental note to ask Andy about it. Social drama. Far more interesting than the shite you get on the entertainmentfeeds.
Karen shoved her seat aside, moving to leave. Right on cue, Ben send a single word message to her retinal display.
'Karen...'
That was all that was needed to stop her. She didn't want to leave and we didn't want her to leave, however pride dictated that she put up a little more resistance, and like clockwork, she shrugged Rich's hand away.
I logged in. 'Come on Karen. You know he has a point. You did almost cause a TPK.' I smiled. Karen sighed.
'Yeah, yeah. Sorry Andy.' She picked up her character sheet and let the smartpaper knit itself back together.
Andy smiled, pulled on his GMing hat and reopened his feedscreen. 'Ok, let's get moving. Roll for perception guys.'
'16.'
'13.'
'Yes! Natural 20!'
'You all see a pair of eyes watching you from the corner of the roo-'
'I shoot incendiary bolts at it!'
Just like that, nothing had happened. Like I said. Tradition.
The weather had changed to breezy sunshine. Karen shot Andy a look. They were definitely fucking. I smiled inwardly. It didn't really matter. As long as they kept it out of the game.
Fact: Evolutionary steps occur when a species develops a mutation that helps it survive better than previous iterations would.
Fact: If fictional media has taught me anything, it's that mutants with powers that manifest themselves overtly tend to be hunted down and inevitably killed by regular humanity.
Conclusion: The next evolutionary step for humans would require the humans with the new trait(s) to be indistinguishable from regular humanity.
Chilling Realisation: The next step of humanity could very well already be hiding among us, and, peaceful intentions or not, we won't know until they want us to know.
Aight, let's do some theft work. That's right, we're moving away from physics for a post in order to do law. Not as exciting as physics you say? Well, that's true. But it's still some substantial stuff! So stick on Rock of Ages by Def Leppard and let's do this thing.
Ok, starters a definition. Theft is the:
"Dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it."
S.1 (1) The Theft Act 1968
Christ that was a mouthful, one that essentially boils down to what most of us understand to be "nicking something". The academic might also add "for keepsies". Unfortunately the long thing is what you have to memorise, so let's see what we can do about helping that along.
For starters, lets sort out what this is all about, Appropriation:
"Any assumption by a person of the rights of the owner amounts to appropriation."
S.3 (1) Theft Act
Lots of words that basically mean a person doing something that suggests that they have the right to do that something. Obviously this includes stealing, subject matter and all, but it could also be breaking, selling, eating, anything that the owner has a right to do but you do not. You want an example? I'll give you two. Pitham and Hehl 1977, in which a dude made arrangements to sell some furniture that just wasn't his, and Morris 1973 where another guy swapped the price tags on two items in a shop, thus assuming the rights of the owner.
What the act does not cover is the issue of consent. It could be assumed that appropriation only occurs when there is no consent, but check this case out. Lawrence v MPC 1972. An Italian student was over here, and he took a taxi to some place. He offered £1 to the driver (I guess a relative lot back then), but the driver claimed it was not enough. It was in fact only 50p. The student subsequently offered his wallet to the unscrupulous driver, who took a further £6, a cheap fare now, but again, back then that is pretty horrible. Note that the student offered the wallet and thus the money, thus giving consent. The House of Lords called bullshit (I'm paraphrasing) and that:
"An accused could be said to appropriate even if he has the consent of the owner."
This has been ignored in some cases. See Eddy v Niman 1981 in which some likely lads put stuff in a trolley with the intent to steal. One of them however lost his nerve, but was arrested. He claimed that he had not actually appropriated anything, as he had the implied consent of the shop to put the goods in the trolley. That is how shops tend to work, after all. The QBD agreed. Using this and Morris (previously mentioned) Lord Roskill said that there could be no appropriation without "adverse interference" with the rights of the owner.
Still now we have two different rulings, one saying consent is a defence and another saying it is not. What ever would the courts do? Well, they looked to Gomez 1993. In shorts, dude told his manager that he could totally vouch for his friend's personal cheque. Turns out the cheque was actually stolen though. Shitsux. Gomez tried to get out of trouble by saying that the manager had consented. Naturally the House of Lords called BS on that, siding with the law as put in Lawrence with the poor Italian guy.
But no, they had more questions. Jesus fucking Christ. Did the ruling in Gomez apply where there was no deception? For this we have Gallasso 1993 and Mazo 1996, in which a carer and a maid respectively persuaded their sick and elderly charges to transfer their savings into their bank accounts.The Court of Appeal said that it was only appropriated if there was deception or force.
And then we have Hinks 2000. Long story short, a not to bright guy inherited a chunk of money. He was then befriended by some malicious harpy who persuaded him to transfer £60,000 into her account. She was convicted, but appealed. Thankfully the Lords smacked her appeal back down. It is worth noting that Lord Steyn said that the matter of deception of pressurisation did not relate to appropriation.
So I just covered 4 cases in which NOTHING WAS EVER CONFIRMED AND IN FACT ONLY MUDDIED UP MATTERS EVEN MORE. Ugh.
Aight. Next definition. Property:
"Property includes money and all other property, real or personal, including things in action and other intangible property."
You see that? They defined property as being property. They defined something with itself. THIS is what I have to deal with.
Sorry. Trying to stay professional. *ahem* So this includes:
Money
Real property - Land and buildings
S.4(1) says that this stuff can be stolen but (for fucks sake) this is misleading because S.4(2) says they can only be stolen:
By a trustee abusing his powers - selling a building that he is holding for a person to young to technically own it.
By severing things that form part of the land - uprooting trees and shrubbery, taking down bricks and such like
By a tenant who removes his landlord's fixtures and fittings - Kinda self explanatory, that one.
3. Personal Property - Stuff that is movable. Could be a paper plane, could be an actual plane. Includes pets and farm animals.
Dead body parts are not generally regarded as property, but if they have been messed around with, say, preserved, or altered or adapted, then it's a whole other kettle of fish. Kelly and Lindsey 1998, you know I didn't actually think people still robbed graves, but there you go. Ok, it wasn't technically that. A sculptor encouraged a lab assistant at the Royal College of surgeons to nick some body parts. As the parts were preserved, they were property, and the two were convicted of theft.
4.Things an Action - This is stuff that don't have physical existence. For example, shares in a company, or credit in a bank. I suppose this would also cover your WoW account as well.
5. Other intangible property - Like stored gas and air.
Things that CANNOT be stolen:
Land - Except as specified above
Electricity - A different act covers this
Information - Oxford v Moss A student "acquired" a draft of his exam questions, copied them, then left the paper where it could be found. Since the paper was findable, there was no intention to permanently deprive the paper, he was charged with theft of information. This kinda didn't work though. So, yeah.
Wild creatures - Ok, really? Did this come into question? They're wild. It's implied in the word that they have no owner.
Things picked from wild plants - See above. Oh but wait. If you see those berries you just picked, then it becomes property. But you can make jam from it for yourself. That's totally cool.
Ok, now we're defining Belonging to anotherS.5.
"Property shall be regarded as belonging to any person having possession or control of it, or having proprietary right or interest."
A rather long way to say that if you own something you own it. Of course it is not as simple as that. That is a fairly wide definition, so let's get into the minutiae.
The property can belong to someone who is not the owner. So if you hire something and it is stolen from you, that something is regarded as having been stolen from you as well as it's actual owner.
An owner can steal his own property from someone else who has a greater right to possess it. Turner 1971, A guy stole his own car from a garage that was working on it to avoid paying he was convicted of stealing his own car, which is pretty embarrassing. Let us take a moment to laugh at that guy.
Property given to you by mistake still belongs to another. This is one to catch you crafty people who might be being paid more that you should be, but not politely informing your employer of this. Attorney General Ref No. 1 1983. See also Shadorokh v Cigari 1988, where a bank error made it so that the accused's account had 286,000 rather than 28,600. Dude spent a chunk of the money and was subsequently picked up for appropriating the property of another.
Property given to you for a specific purpose still belongs to another. Davidge v Bunnet 1984 Contrary to many MANY not very funny two-guys-on-a-couch style webcomics, it actually isn't ok to take your flat's collective rent and spend it on video games. In this case a girl, in a remarkable act of sheer stupidity took the money and spent it on Christmas presents. Wain 1996 a dude took the money collected for the Telethon charity and kept it. Stuck it in his bank account. Seriously, do these people even think about what they are doing?
If there is not obligation to deal with the property in a specified way then the property does not belong to another. So tough luck if your travel agent goes bankrupt after taking your money, like in Hall 1973.
Lost property belongs to another contrary to popular unwritten law of the land "Finders keepers".
Abandoned property does not belong to another, so good news urban explorers. Don't be stealing stuff from dumpsters though. That could be...well, stealing.
Ok, time for a music break. Let's go for...ah, a song about an old timey outdated and thoroughly disagreeable law.
Next! Dishonesty. You know what that is, yeah? If you say no then you are either being dishonest, or you're not really at the academic level to be reading this blog. Don't let the Pokemon content fool you, this is some hardcore shit.
Pokemon: Serious business
Anyway, this is Section 2 of the surprisingly conveniently named Theft Act. Inconveniently, it does not define it. It defines what isn't it. It anti-defines it, I suppose.
Believing you have the legal right to appropriate.
Believing that the owner would consent, had he known the circumstances
Believing that the owner of lost property cannot be found by taking reasonable steps.
I reaffirm, the above things are totally ok. You're not going to be in trouble for, say, taking money from the till of your employer in order to buy a bandage for your cut hand, or picking up a tenner from the beach. See also Small 1988 where it was stated that if the accused really believed that a car had been abandoned, that he was not being dishonest.
Sadly there isn't much more in the way of help. Luckily there are however cases to help. Oh goody.
Feely 1973 in which a dude took some money from his employer's till, leaving an IOU.Because of this he claimed he was not being dishonest. The court of appeal said that "dishonest was an ordinary word" and to direct the jury to use their own standards of "common decency" which is a legal way of saying that the Court of Appeal really just couldn't be fucked.
Ok, I'm probably being cynical, however this left juries with a lot of discretion, and subsequently we now have a lot of inconsistencies.
But, oh gosh, it's Ghosh 1983 where a consultant took money for an operation that had not been carried out. He claimed that since he was already owed the money for other work, this was A OK. However Lord Lane set out these two questions that would subsequently be known as the Ghosh Test:
Was the accused's behaviour dishonest by the standards of reasonable and honest people?
and
Did the accused realise that reasonable and honest people would regard the act as dishonest?
Lord Lane also noted that modern day Robin Hoods would not be the much-sung heroes of their namesake. No, they would have to convince the jury that what they did was honest. Similarly those bastards who released the rage virus unto an unsuspecting Britain would have to do the same, before the jury ate their faces.
"Guilty!"
Ok, almost there. The final point, if you can remember all the way back then, is the Intention to Permanently Deprive. Funny thing. The prosecution don't even have to prove that there was a permanent deprivation. Only the intent is required.
Without IPD, the accused has merely "borrowed without permission" which sounds a lot like one of the get out clauses small kids use to avoid getting into trouble for...well, theft. There are, of course, exceptions.
Where the intention is "to treat the thing as his own to dispose of regardless of rights." - Marshall 1998. The defendants collected day pass tickets from passengers exiting underground stations. They then sold them to those entering the station. They claimed that there was no IPD as the tickets would eventually return to the ticket collected. This of course, was taking the Michael.
Where the intention was to "borrow" it (without permissions) "for a period or in circumstances making it to outright taking or disposal. - This is clearly to cover those who would try and get off on a technicality. "I wasn't technically permanently depriving it. He would have gotten it back within the decade."
Intending to return it but only after it's value or usefulness has declined. - Again, to catch the tricky bastards who want something for nothing. For example, if a guy took a movie ticket, and gave it back after it had been used, or even if the movie had finished, I suppose, not necessarily watched.
Intending to sell the stolen property back to it's unsuspecting owner.
Intending to return it but being unable to guarantee it because you have given it to a third party - Ok, some of this is starting to sound like some seriously immature stuff. What kind of pissant of a person gives something that is not theirs to someone else without the owner's permission?
Intending to return it but only if the owner meets your conditions - Ok, yeah, we are definitely in young child territory now. I say here, if you steal something and try to use these as excuses you are pretty much a bully. A small child bully who never grew up beyond Year 9.
Note that borrowing money without permission nearly always amounts to IPD, as the same matter that was take is unlikely to be returned. It's fairly cosmetic but there you go. See Velmuyl 1989, who, aside from furthering the cause of making it damn near impossible to memorise case names, also took £1000 from an office safe.
Final note on IPD in regards to Conditional Intent. This is where the accused only intends to deprive if he finds something worth stealing. What, and this is ok? Pissing hell, really? Apparently so. Easom 1971, some wanker of an accused rifled through some poor woman's bag, and didn't find anything worth stealing. Subsequently he did nothing wrong in the eyes of the law.
Ok, it's the final leg, guys. We just need to do some criticisms, and ones that are more fully formed than my sporadic ramblings and complaints. First up is Appropriation again.
We appropriate every day - This is based on the whole shopping thing. We take items that we do not technically own, but really it's all cool because there are all the other things to prove for theft that we just don't cover.
Creates an overlap between theft and deception - This is more or less what i was saying before about there being no clear law on when something is appropriation when it does or doesn't involve deception. Blame Gomez.
Contradicts the law on the passing of ownership - Civil law says that once you freely hand something over to someone else, it is theirs. Hinks suggests otherwise.
Next! Criticisms of the Ghosh Test
The subjective test may hinder the conviction of the unthinking or fanatical
The objective test is too dependent on the individual values of the jurors and leads to inconsistent verdicts - Well exactly. There is nothing clear to follow, so we are left with a bunch of spaghetti law. Then you get the people who are aware of the law but won't convict because they like the look of the defendant, or were convinced by him bursting into repentant tears, and decide to ignore the already muddy law.
The Ghosh test is too complex for juries - ...Really? I mean it's two relatively simple questions. Then again, gauging the intelligence of the people I work (job, not college) with, and reminding myself that these are the general public...Ok, fine. It's too complex. And that is sad.
And finally. The Criticisms of the Intention to Permanently Deprive
The Lloyd ruling is unsatisfactory - It is illogical that someone returning a half expired or partially broken drill bit might escape conviction.
The Easom ruling seems to defy common sense (implying that is at all uncommon in British law dohohohoho). People with conditional intent can escape conviction with nary a slap on the wrist.
Why do we even need IPD? - Is not someone taking something dishonestly enough? Why does it have to be a permanent deprivation? Were it not required, Lloyd and Easom would be convicted and it would all just generally be a lot easier.
And that's it. I am slowly coming to the realisation that law makes me sad. I'm sure it would be easier to deal with, however I also have maths and physics to handle. No, no doss subjects for me. Still, I'll plough through, don't you worry. My only concern is that one or all of my subjects will suffer because I stuck with what initially promised to be such an interesting subject. We shall see, we shall see...Anyway. See you next time.
Fact: When Toy Story's Andy grows up, he is going to resent his mother for "making him give his childhood toys away". Think about it, they represent his growing up. His entire childhood these toys have been growing in collection, forming mental bonds and familiarities. And now they're gone. Given away, as far as Andy knows, under the forced suggestion of his mum, and every time some spot of nostalgia hits him, there will be nothing to quell it. It's not like a grown man can seek out the house of a now, say, mid to late teens girl, and ask whether he can play with his toys for a bit? Just for a bit? I just want to see them. Don't shut the door on me! No! Woody! Woodyyyyy! Woo-Oh hello officer. Why yes there is a perfectly good explanation for why I am screaming woody on this young girls yard.
The Royal Wedding is tomorrow. Aren't you excited? This once in a life time event, this celebration of happiness and two of our future leaders in love? I'm not, as it happens. But it strikes me that there are a whole bunch of people who are.
There are some things that Americans believe about British people. We have bad teeth, we are constantly drinking tea, and we love our royals. We love them. We can't get through the day without singing God Save The [Gender Appropriate Monarchical Title], we embark on yearly pilgrimages to worship our representative of God. Is this true? I certainly don't. No, it seems, and admittedly I have only the perspective of a 20 year old who spends his time with mainly my age group + or - a couple years, that we, to be frank, don't give a damn. Yet curiously, Americans, who hold the belief, themselves seem to love our Queen, and indeed the royal family.
Believeing that we love our royals, and that we live in an Orwellian police state. Oh those crazy Americans.
I have gotten this far in my post and realised that's all I really have. Well, gosh, that wasn't very foresightful of me. In summary then, Americans believe we love the royals but we don't, we believe Americans to be thoroughly engrossed in their own affairs unless it means bombing some other country, but as it turns out, they love our emancipated rulers. Stereotypes are funny things.
But no, I don't much care for the wedding. Even as one who disagrees with the concept of marriage, I am happy for anyone who decides they love someone enough to remain with them til death, however it doesn't really enter into my life. It is just another wedding, though admittedly a fairly grandiose one. There is the possibility that young William will become our future king, but frankly that doesn't really enter into my life either. No, I shall not bother myself with the happenings of tomorrow, beyond wishing their royalnesses the best of luck, a happy future, and thanks for the extra day off college.
P.S. For Christ's sake news media, her name is Katherine, not Kate.
Ok, today we will be having a quick lesson on particle physics, because while that shit might seem easy, it'll sneak up on you, and you don't want to be let down by one of the most fun parts of A level physics, do you? Aight then, lets do this thing.
First off, the basics you should know. This is only a refresher post, or at least it plans to be, before I inevitably start digging into really interesting but ultimately irrelevant articles. Anyway. Atoms: Really fucking small. Made up of even smaller things called nucleons. These are your garden variety neutrons, protons. They make up the nucleus. Nucleon, nucleus, you see what they did there? Fucking genius. And of course we can't forget electrons. No, those little bastards will come into nearly every aspect of physics ever, somehow.
Now, we all know that protons, neutrons and electrons have charges 1, 0, and -1 respectively, right? Wrong, motherfucker. Those are relative charges. Relative to what? Doesn't matter, because you're now going to forget them. Same goes for those masses of 1, 1, and negligible. In fact, you can super forget them, because they are just plain wrong. No, now we break out the metric, wherein the proton has a charge of +1.6e-19 C (e means x10 to the power of...), an electron has the same, only -ve, and a neutron, well, the neutron still has 0, being neutral and all. Masses are 1.67e-27, 1.67e-27, and 9.11e-31 kg.
Isotopes you should know, atomic symbols you should know...ah, here we go. Basically, after realising that the nucleus was made up of nucleons, physicists considered than maybe something existed that was holding these things together, overcoming the electrostatic force that should be pushing them apart. A force, that effects the nucleons, a nuclear force, if you will. They called this the Strong Nuclear Force, and I have another fun little analogy for you. See, the force only actually works within 3-4fm, and beyond 0.5fm. It's like when you see someone from a distance, and you think "Hey, she's pretty cute. Attractive even!" But then you get a little closer and BLAM. She wasn't nearly as attractive as she seemed from a distance. She is actually kinda repulsive. Got it? Aight. Next song.
Ok, I'm pretty sure we all did radiation in GCSE. Here the only real difference is a small, but important addition to β radiation. When it happens, you get your high speed electron, your atom with +1 proton number, but you also get a neutral antiparticle called an antineutrino, specifically an antiELECTRONneutrino. Because it came with an electron. get it? These were discovered when scientists worked out that in β radiation, energy was being lost. This meant that either Conservation of Energy was bullshit, or another particle was being released here. They went with the latter, since the former had been so good to them in the past, but this went unproven for a further 20 years, when in 1956 there was executed the Cowan-Reines neutrino experiment.
Cowan and Reines used a nuclear reactor, as a source of 5×1013 neutrinos per second per square centimeter.
The neutrinos then interacted with protons in a tank of water, creating neutrons and positrons. Each positron created a pair of gamma rays when it annihilated with an electron. The gamma rays were detected by placing a scintillator material in a tank of water. As mentioned in the Discovery of the Nucleus article, and scintillator is a doohickey that flashes, scintillates, when it is hit by something, in this case gamma rays.
However, this experiment wasn't conclusive enough, so they came up with a second layer of certainty. They detected the neutrons by placing cadmium chloride into the tank. Cadmium is a bitchin' neutron absorber and gives off a gamma ray when it absorbs a neutron.
Most of this paragraph has been ripped from Wikipedia
The arrangement was such that the gamma ray from the cadmium would be detected 5 microseconds after the gamma ray from the positron, if it were truly produced by a neutrino.
Music break! Have one of the greatest pieces of soundtrack music ever composed.
To be honest, you don't need to know most of that shit. I just think it's interesting to know where our ideas come from. Point is we now know that neutrinos are everywhere, even more so than my claimed ability to play the guitar. Billions of them bombard us EVERY SECOND from our very own sun. These are grim days, friends, where our closest ally could also be our gravest threat. But I know that together we can be strong. We will prev--Oh, what, they're harmless? Well never mind then. Next!
Ok, most people know of photons as particles of light. However this is, well, not wrong, just inaccurate. Photons are actually the name given to bursts of electromagnetic waves, which, as you know, visible light is an example of. The idea was established by Einstein when he was working on photoelectricity, where electrons are emitted from metal when light is directed at it's surface, but that's something for another time. For now all you need to know is that LASERS are beams of photons with the same frequency. Note that the energy of a photon is given by hf, therefore is the number of photons passing a point per second is given by n, then the energy per second, i.e. the power of the laser of the specific frequency is given by the simple equation P=nhf.
Ok, here we go. I like this bit because it features a bit of Bristol talent. On 8 August 1902, one Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born in Bristol. 26 years later, two years ofter receiving his PhD from Cambridge, the same Bristolian predicted the existence of antimatter. 20 years earlier, Einstein had shown his whole fast particle=more mass thing, relating this with the infamous E=mc2. He also said however, that when a particle is at rest, it's rest mass (m) corresponds with it's rest energy (mc2), and that this energy must be included in the conservation thereof. Using this, Dirac predicted that when a particle and it's antiparticle meet, they annihilate. Furthermore, he predicted the reverse, known as pair production, wherein a photon will split into a particle-antiparticle pair, both of which will then piss off from each other. The rest is just maths.
It's kinda difficult to come across image macros that relate to particle physics.
Ok, positrons. Let's do a little on their discovery. They are the antiparticles of electrons, and could just as easily be referred to as antielectrons. Similarly, I suppose, electrons could be referred to as negatrons, and funnily enough, that's what they used to be known as. In short though, a dude called Carl Anderson, one of the more boring names I've ever heard of, was firing beta particles into a cloud chamber. He was then surprised to find that some trails were actually going in the opposite direction to that he has expected. Exciting stuff. Well, I suppose it was if you were there, but A Level seems to be specifically designed to reduce the most interesting stuff into grey sludge, which is a shame. Physics is such a beautiful subject, filled with elegance and wonderment, and this is lost on a majority of the population who just can't get past how god damn dull the initial learning of it is...Sorry, wrong meeting.
I'm going to leave it there folks. There is more about the weak nuclear force, and Feynmann diagrams, but that last bit kinda depressed me, so I'll leave that to you. Late'.
I was listening to the soundtrack through most of writing this.
This is being done on a boat, and as such without internet. Thus I am typing this up in OpenOffice, and without the Blogger Draft's curious ability to know exactly what I want to do with my images. So let's do this thing. Today I will be talking about, oh, lets go for capacitors. I do not like capacitors. So, all the more reason to learn about them, I guess. I shall however be recording my state of boredom through judicious use of reaction images.
This is going to be much more factual than historical, no internet and all, so all I'm working with is my textbook. So let's start with an idea of what a capacitor is. It stores charge. Nothing much else. Get two metal plates near each other, boom, you gots yourself a capacitor. Connect it to a battery blam, you've got a charged capacitor, the two plates actually having equal and opposite charges. This I because the same amount of electrons leave the plates as they do jump on. It's like a water flume. One kid comes out the bottom, the guy at the top pushes another one in. Eventually the first kid gets back to the top of the flume to be pushed down by the guard guy, who I guess in this metaphor represents the battery.
Ok, so, charging one of these bad boys. This can be done by hooking it up to a direct current right? So what we are going to do is stick in a variable resistor, an microammeter, and a voltmeter. Exciting stuff right? Hold on, it gets even better. The voltmeter could be a data logger, which sends data to a computer, about the p.d.. Or you could use a regular voltmeter and use a stopwatch to record the p.d. at regular intervals. Pussy. So now we have some badass information in the form of amperes, p.d., and time. You know what we can do with these? Fucking everything. We want to know how much the capacitor has charged by? Q=It, bitch. We have I, we have t, so you know what that means? Yeah you do you BAMF of a physicist you. We have motherfucking charge Q.
But shit son, there's more. We still got a V hanging around. That's where shit gets interesting. You see capacitors have their own damn quantity called capacitance. This is defined as the charge stored per unit pd. You know what that means? You got it. C=Q/V. We have p.d. V and thanks to our braniac skills above we have charge Q. You know what's coming. Go ahead, tell me, Feel good about it. You got it, we have capacitance C.
And oh shit, you know what? These capacitors are used in tonnes of everyday items, including smoothing circuits, back-up power supplies, timing circuits, pulse producing circuits, tuning circuits and filter circuits. Shit man, this last paragraph is like an electronics student's wet dream.
Ok, so we have the basics. Capacitors are like temporary batteries. And you know what batteries store? Energy. So you know what capacitors store? Energy. Excitement abound. Specifically Electrical potential energy. So, picture this. You have a bunch of electrons on a plate. You know, one of the plates the capacitor is made of. So the plate has a charge, yeah? Then you try to put another electron on the plate. This requires work do be done on the electron/charge. So you put that energy into putting that electron on the plate, and this becomes electrical potential energy. For a comparison, think about gravitational potential energy. You put energy into lifting an object onto a table, thereby giving the object EGP. Do you get it? Because I kinda do now. This actually feels kinda good.
But how much energy? Consider this in graph form. You mathsy people out there, you know what a graph gives you? Two things, other than the values it already represents. Yeah, the gradient and the area underneath. So now we are going to imagine a graph of charge Q against p.d V. Q is on the x axis and Q and V are directly proportional. You know what that kind of graph looks like I hope. Got it? Good because I'm not going to be mocking up one just for you. Besides, you were already doing so well. Feel free to draw your own if needed. Lets do this. Ok, think in graph terms, we have a capacitor with charge q and we want to add Δq to that value. This is represented on the graph by a vertical strip over Q. This area is the energy required to force that charge onto the plate. (Think of a particularly heavy kid in that water flume).
Excuse me, the original Pokemon theme tune came on iTunes. Just need to rock out.
That was awesome. Where were we? Right. Consider the strip on the graph. Now consider lots of those strips leading to 0Q. The energy still is represented by the area under the graph, but now its hella easy to work out. You know who to work out the area of a triangle? And shit brother, look what we have in that graph. Half base times height that shit, and what do you get? The equation for energy is what. E=½QV. Magic.
Christ I'm bored. And just as we get to the important bit. Charging and discharging these bad boys through a fixed resistor. OkOk, this tenuous metaphor represents the discharging of a capacitor, where the insults and general ill demeanor represent the resistor. So where as before the electron kids were continuous as long as the battery guard kept pushing, the resistor guard just doesn't care. As lots of kids that have built up are now spilling down the flume and possibly over the side of the rails. It's very messy. But the amount of kids falling down slows as there become less of them, and word goes around that this guard may have a thing against kids. Ok, it's not a perfect metaphor.
The point is that the decrease in kids happens exponentially. If we have Q0 kids at t=0, and then at t=1 we have 0.9 Q0 then at t=2 we with have 0.9*0.9Q0, etc etc.
Ok, just a couple more pages. Why is it exponential? Pretty much because some rearranged equations tell us so. Skipping some stuff, some how you end up with ΔQ/Q = -Δt/RC. This tells us that a fractional drop in charge ΔQ/Q is the same in any short interval of Δt during discharge. Rearrange that bastard a bit and you get ΔQ/Δt = -Q/RC. Δx/Δy? Its a differential equation mother fucker! But physicists leave maths to the mathemagicians. We just do some trickery and end up with Q=Q0 e-t/RC. Voila. We have created the time constant, RC. Let's just do a final check of my boredom.
In this episode Patrick and Yuki try their hand at fighting the local talent in Pewter City, while elsewhere a young mystic prepares himself for a gym battle, eventually going on to break Brock's Geodude with his shiny new Nidoran and it's Double Kick. Will the character's paths meet? Well obviously. Why did you even bother asking? Meanwhile, IRL the players are trying the Milk Challenge. Truly it is a laugh a minute here.
Finally I do some subtle railroading, and get the players to progress the plot. The main bulk of story starts with all the them facing...a random encounter! Has there ever been a less appropriate term for something? The team find some Shinx, one of which Yuki captures to the tune of "DO WANT IT'S CUTE", despite Redrinder's attempts to gain maximum Exp from them. Duri9ng the course of this battle we find out that Patrick's Diglett, Dig Dug is apparently some kind of eldritch abomination, who devours it's foes in order to gain their powers.
Under direction of a mysterious stranger shaped remarkably like two long bits of metal that might carry some form of locomotive, they make their way to a small village just off Route 3. Ceil is a small village with little to few ameneties. They are greeted by Everard Joss, the village reeve (mayor, more or less) who gruffly informs them that the person they were looking for, Tara Gillian, has long since moved to Johto with her family. The group investigates the Gillian household, and locate a trail of psychic energy leading out of the village towards a cave.
This cave is guarded by a man with two fierce looking dogs, a Houndour and a Houndoom. The team are undaunted however, as Redrinder possesses the Houndoom, forcing it to run off a cliff, breaking its neck in the fall. No, really.
Following last time's horrifying events, the team move on as if nothing ever happened. Clearly they have suppressed the most defiantely traumatic memory of the death of a living, sentient creature by one of their own and there is every possibility that this will come back to haunt them. Just saying.
Progressing through the cave, all kinds of creepy stuff happens, with patterns swirling on the wall, amassing in a slithering mess of red light in a subterranean dome. Redrinder's Growlithe uses Odor Sleuth, dispelling the illusion, revealing the Mismagius hidden beneath. The group enter battle with the ghost, taking chunks out of it's health until it disappears, much to the irritation of Redrinder, who assumed it had actually been beaten. They then set about pokemon hunting, resulting in many Zubat falling, and Redrinder catching a Gastly.
Redrinder, having been stolen away by the Mismagius that had previously escaped, finds his way back to the group. Having done so, the group decide that they need to rest up. Burning through some snakes they make it back to village of Ceil, where they are taken aside by a kindly old lady and given food and lodging for the night. They wake up in the morning and deide to do some investigating. Heading to the Gillian household, Redrinder finds a pendant that, upon using his mystic powers, he works out belongs to the same organisation as the guy who attacked the others in Pewter. Shock! He also gleans a vision of the cave interior, seeing a large carvern filled with trainers working their pokemon to the limit, and beyond, and at the centre of it all, is the mayor! What does this mean? Who are these people? What will happen next? Find out....in the next paragraph!
In which our heroes go back into the cave. Bonsai tries to search for Abra. In a cave. Yeah. He doesn't find any. When they progress they find themselves faced with a wall of pure shadow. After some brainstorming and experimenting, Bonsai and Patrick team up and create a field of electricity through the use of Mist and Thundershock. This breaks the consentration of the two Haunter blocking their path, revealing them to the group. They consequently beat them. Onwards they go, finally making it to the cavern seen in Matt's vision. Alas, Everard was expecting them and the hapless travellers find themselves facing a room full of trainers.
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