Physics by Tweet is even worse than Politics by Tweet.

Steve, you have too much free time on your hands. Get on up to the new ax throwing bar near you and work off some stress.

String lengths are different, longer closer to the camera. Longer strings = slower movement.

The pendulums are of monotonically increasing lengths back to front, so they have different frequencies

“why does it especially slow down the ones closest”

Their strings are around 10% longer, creating a period 1.21 times as long.

The camera angle obscures it a bit, but they’re all pendulums with different length cords. So they have different periods. The differing periods cause them to combine in pretty ways over time.

I gotta say, this is as cool as fuck. The piano playing of Stairway to Heaven is subpar, though.

Yep, the Period = 2π √L/g, so the periods are proportional to the square roots of the string lengths. I bet they had to adjust those string lengths painstakingly with screws up top before they could get this video right.

Yes, and the balls aren’t bumping into each other at all, or at least no more than incidentally. The different periods are going in and out of phase. The chaos is perceptual unlike actual chaotic systems where control is arbitrarily difficult because the system is too sensitive.

That is beautiful but only because we see it from our motionless reference point. Put a camera on one of the pool balls and it probably just looks chaotic until the balls are at rest again. That is why it took so long to work out our place in the solar system. We assumed the earth was a motionless reference point and the sun and planets moved around us.

I presume you’re snarking in your hypothesis?

There is no lateral banging of the balls. This is just another example of harmonic motion, rather like the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse video you posted, but without any additional energy added to the system after the initial displacement of the balls.

This is a classic illustration of the physics of angular motion. Each ball is an approximation of an ideal simple pendulum, and the motion of each ball will be governed by the same physics equations. The periodicity of each ball is approximated by the equation T=2*pi*sqrt(L/g), where L is the length of the string and g is the force of gravity, which is constant. So the only variable is L, the length of the string.

In the illustration depicted in the video each the strings get successively longer from back to front, so the periodicity gets successively longer from back to front. Periodicity is the inverse of frequency, so the frequency gets successively shorter from back to front. You can confirm this by focusing on the frequency of any two adjacent balls throughout the video.

To the extent there’s an illusion here, it might be that the vertical posts of the framework are tricking your brain into focusing on linear motion, rather than angular motion. The vertical posts may be tricking your brain into believing that the balls are traveling the same distance between the vertical posts at different velocities, but they are not. The balls are traveling in an arc, not in a line, and the arc of each successive ball from back to front is slightly longer than its predecessor, because each successive string is slightly longer.

Note that the mass of the pendulum is not a variable of the period equation, which means you can do the same experiment with balls of different masses, like bowling balls, pool balls, and golf balls, in a single drop, but it might not have looked quite as cool.

Exactly, NJ Transit Commuter. I’ll add that there is no interaction between the balls. Each simply swings at its own frequency.

HEY!!! NO STAIRWAY!!!!!

denied 😉

That is beautiful. Pendula of different periods arranged in order of their lengths. One can think of the way the planets with their different orbital periods occasionally line up.

So what’s the moral of the story? Order on the edge of chaos…Multiple Equillibrium points….Nature reconfigures itself over and over again….In the long run we are all dead……I got a kick out of the fluid helical structure…..I think I saw Barbara’s McClintock’s jumping genes in there….Her experiments were conducted right down the road from Mr. and Mrs. Derbyshire……

The lesson for America:America’s social and cultural DNA is being mutated into a new equilibrium…..which will be America as a giant filthy stinking toilet…..congenial to the trillion year reign of the filthy fucking cockroach….Bill and Hillary Clinton and John Bolton smiling:”Behold our spawn!!!!……….

If Per Bak’s Sand Pile Model is relevant….How close are we to that last nudge that sends America into a new configuration…..THE REIGN OF THE BLATARIA!!!!

OT: Has Steve seen the video for ‘Not OK’.

It’s a giant cry for help from gen Y/Z women.

What you’re seeing, I think, is the various periods of the pendula which are probably similarly spaced, so they keep coming back into sync at various points in time.

To take a toy example, if you take three pendula, and assume one pendulum is in the middle every second, another every 2 seconds, and another every 3 seconds, then every 6 seconds they will all line up nicely in the middle, and the rest of the time they will have various other patterns. Presumably they picked the periods of the pendula so they would make pretty patterns.

There’s probably a more concise explanation using the words ‘Fourier transform’.

Maybe I have had way too many cappuccinos so far this morning…..but if I had way too many….it’s got my brain locked into thinking about the video in terms of nucleotides….DNA….genes…..genetic regulatory networks…..bistability…..

Steve

You asked the question “Why diversity?”…..There is a variation on this question:”Why is the World Green?”……The Late Ecologist Biologist Lawrence Slobodkin wrote a book on this very topic:”Why is the World Green?”…..It’s a book I thought you would be interested in….Amazon has Slobodkin’s book….

It looks like the black 8 ball in the middle is in the lead on the first swing, but quickly the maroon striped 15 ball at the far end takes the lead.

The black ball gets held back by white physics. It’s movement can only be explained by an epicycle caused by systemic periodicityism.

There is no cue ball because it would be white and this is a diverse group.

That’s an interesting point:Is the video an example of a continuous dynamical system?….or a discrete dynamical system?….The Fourier Transform lives in the Universe of Linearity…mathematically speaking….But the video suggest s0me chaos….as does the Pendulum model….

Steve, you’re old enough to remember. In the 70’s, when people like this tweeter were looking at lava lamps and the front cover of Dark Side of the Moon, using the word “trippy” and so on (and listening to the same music as in the video)…

Was it bien pensant opinion then that such goofy flim flam was equivalent to a serious academic discipline like philosophy or physics, or is this a more recent social/cultural development?

“Beautiful physics”, for fuck’s sake.

On-Topic: “Pi” (such an uninteresting number)

Numbers are pretty basic. Graphs are where it’s at.

Very Off-Topic:

Yang says SNL novice should not be fired over Chinese racial slur, drowned out by PC crowd

“Damn, Chinatown is f**king nuts,” Gillis says in the clip, referring to the ability of Chinese immigrants to build up their sprawling enclaves in the blink of an eye and without apparent opposition from the locals. “Let the f**king ch*nks live there.”

The clip, originally a part of Gillis’ and fellow comedian Matt McCusker’s September 2018 podcast, began making waves on Friday, sending Twitter into an uproar, with many calling on NBC to fire Gillis, a day after he was hired along with the first Chinese-American SNL cast member.

Let’s switch to Europe:

In my teenage years I used to mock postmodernism by giving interpretations about how, say, road signs were examples of the marginalization of Native Americans (white on the inside, red border).

It won’t surprise anyone I had a very, very late romantic debut.

If I remember correctly, the Fourier series has to do with the harmonic frequencies? So at certain times, they should sync up.

Presumably, it was easier to get a set of pool balls than to get some that were identical. I agree that having them all identical might be better. But they are putting this together with what they have.

As someone who has assembled proof of concept experiments (HTSC on a string, versus having a supermagnet to levitate), I am sympathetic to the concerns of practicality and expense. The rest of the apparatus seems to be great. And the filming was effective.

Don’t be a hater:

I thought this was interesting:

“Coupled Oscillators and Biological Synchronization “ by Steven H Strogatz and Ian Stewart….

Steve

Slobodkin’s book is attempt to explain Predatory-Prey Asymmetry…..

Holy shit, I didn’t even notice the title of this post!

In the Spirit of the Mighty Taleb…..The video…It sure as hell looks a bona-fide correlation if there there ever was one….a very robust one at that…..and you don’t have to know a gd thing about Borel Sets….Sigma Algebra…and Measure Theory……. to know it to be a bona-fide correlation:BEHOLD THE BEAUTIFULL CORRELATION IN THE VIDEO!!!!!!

Steve

Very “nice” of you not to post my comments in this thread……

There are 15 balls. The closest one does 54 cycles, the second one does 55, …, and the last one does 68. I presume this was engineered with screws that adjust the string lengths, so you can carefully calibrate the periods. The first and last balls are automatic – you just wait until the fast ball does 14 more cycles than the slow one. Then you must adjust the intermediate strings to get the right periods and synchronization.

Physics is fun 😍 pic.twitter.com/2a71C59r5V

— Physics & Astronomy Zone (@ZonePhysics) September 14, 2019

Another perspective.

The pendulums have the same length. Same period. They oscillate in and out of phase because their motion is coupled through small energy transfer through the mounting pegs. This is a really hairy homework problem in undergraduate mechanics. Not in the first chapter and it’s too long to be on an exam. It’s like two hours to solve one problem and the solution goes on for two and a half pages.

OT: The place we buy groceries has bagboys who pilot the cart to our car, and they all wear nametags, so I got in the habit of making conversation by asking if they’d read any good books lately… Except it quickly started seeming awkward when they were black, because it really does imply a preference for kids who try to get smarter. But today the black bagger’s nametag said “G” and I joked “Can I call you G?” and when he said yes I tried to think of something hip to say, but what came out was “How’s it hanging, G?” Long story short, we’re changing our name and moving out of state.

The tragedy of postmodernism is that any mockery of it eventually becomes part of its mainstream. If you repeated your interpretation today, you would be treated as exceptionally clear-sighted.

It would be tempting to make a Youtube video with a Native American actor explaining your theory. Send a copy to Elizabeth Warren. When she fails to give a satisfactory reply, an indignant letter to the press would launch a storm of outrage.

It does not look like chaos and it isn’t chaos. It’s just regular periodicity with minor variations.

Heinrich Heine did the same – mock the – in his case: romantic -zeitgeist. No lack of dates at all though. Maybe the better poet?

“I do not wonder at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies; that all is and must be pictorial; that the rainbow, and the curve of the horizon, and the arch of the blue vault are only results from the organism of the eye. There is no need for foolish amateurs to fetch me to admire a garden of flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or a waterfall, when I cannot look without seeing splendor and grace. How idle to choose a random sparkle here or there, when the indwelling necessity plants the rose of beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the central intention of Nature to be harmony and joy.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Fate”

Oh, how far we have fallen, worshipful of studied, willful, militant ugliness and rejecting natural, objective reality: https://www.takimag.com/article/the_ugly_truth_theodore_dalrymple/

” . . . the key to all ages is—Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men at all times, and even in heroes in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom and fear. This gives force to the strong,—that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.” ~ Emerson, “Power”

They all have different lengths so they all have different periods. They sync up from time to time because periods are multiples of others. Nothing magical.

It’s neither “order” or “chaos” but when you define yourself by your “scienceness”, xkcd-style, you have to come up with this mystical sounding blather to remind people you’re on a different plane than they are.

Heinrich Heine was a better poet than me? I would think so.

The point was that I was such a dweeb, reading fricking National Review and Commentary in high school –who does that?–that I was making jokes about something nobody around me had even heard of and expecting people to be impressed with my sophistication.

(For the younger commenters, this was way before ‘cuckservatives’ and the like–this was about as far right as I was reasonably going to get.)

Half of the commentariat is probably thinking, “Why didn’t you get beat up?” It was a nice part of New York. In retrospect this may have been a bad thing.

The funny thing is that right-wing politics is one of those interests, kind of like Dungeons and Dragons and math, that will keep you from getting laid. I seemed to have an unerring instinct for those. Heine, well, poetry’s always worked. After that it was rock music, and after that, rap, I imagine. STEM gets you paid, the arts get you laid.

Two posts in a row about racking balls.

Right. Some discussion of this at https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/billiard-ball-pendulum-wave
which links to an explanation (numbers are a little different since post video is longer than 60 seconds?) at https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/pendulum-waves

How it works:

The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations. When all 15 pendulums are started together, they quickly fall out of sync—their relative phases continuously change because of their different periods of oscillation. However, after 60 seconds they will all have executed an integral number of oscillations and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

Ah…that figures. Thank you!

One of these few areas that combine science (to calculate the oscillations) and art (to figure out what looks pretty).

Damn….I thought at first it was actually paying Stairway to Heaven. Not impressed.

First time I’ve heard Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” on the piano.

Lots of truth to that.

The professors I knew who were banging co-eds well into their 50s were usually social science or liberal arts or even fine arts, and they were about as far left as Chomsky; sometimes further.

One exception for something remotely resembling STEM — I knew a guy who taught human sexuality. His live-in girlfriend was 30 years younger, and hot. Or, there was an anthropologist who shacked up with one of his grad students. The hard sciences, well, I had a few ladies chasing me, but not as many.

After a while women start looking for someone who can get the $$$$$. That is when the STEM guys finally get laid.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pend.html
Pendulum period increases with the square root of the length. In other words a pendulum with four times the length will tick half as fast.

If the pendula were linked in any nontrivial way the motion would be chaotic, having no discernible pattern.

Or, as Heartiste used to say, ‘alpha f****s, beta bucks’.

You were a scientist? I used to read your old 2Blowhards blog (that was you, right?) and it was all about the arts. Shifted your interests late in life? (Nothing wrong with that, of course, just unusual.)

I suspect the ‘professors banging co-eds well int their 50s’ were a big reason for #MeToo.

I probably shouldn’t admit it but that would have piqued my interest.

Tiny Duck: What dis?

STEM gets you paid, the arts get you laid.

And –
Getting paid gets you laid.
And –
Gettng laid uses up your pay.
The viciuos circle of life.

No, I had nothing to do with the 2 blowhards blog.

Ah, forget it. My apologies.

There’s probably a way to turn being a right-wing intellectual to your advantage. I have no idea what it is.

If you take out the black ball and replace it with the white ball the rest of the diversity might assimilate.

Right. It has to be carefully calculated, or you would get immediate chaos and never see a return to order. In fact, if they let the apparatus run through more cycles the balls will become less and less aligned at the end of each cycle, and eventually all order will be lost anyway.

OT but iStevey – Old timey dems vs woke dems. >

A Woke District Race in Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH (KDKA-TV) — In 1992, public defender Lisa Middleman represented an 18-year old white teen accused of encouraging younger teens of writing racist epithets, including the n-word, on the home of an interracial couple.

“It was thirty years ago,” Middleman told KDKA political editor Jon Delano on Wednesday.

In transcripts obtained by KDKA investigator Andy Sheehan, Middleman, now running as an Independent for District Attorney against incumbent Stephen Zappala, defended her striking or removing African Americans from that jury.

Delano: “Is that what you were doing?”

Middleman: “It was thirty years ago so I don’t remember the jurors. I don’t remember who they were, what they were about.”

The Highland Park native says back then she would judge potential jurors by their reactions to the charges when read to them.

Middleman: “There would be people that shook their heads. There would be people that would look at me like they were looking daggers through me so you knew who it was who would not be fair to your client.”

Delano: “Just on their reactions?”

Middleman: “Sometimes yes, just on their reactions.”

Delano: “On their looks?”

Middleman: “No, no.”

The transcript shows her defending striking black women because they were fat, telling the judge, “I do not like big, fat, sloppy people on my jury. If you’re that big and you’re that fat, you don’t care a lot about what you look like, and you don’t care about a lot of things.”

“It’s a sarcastic horrible thing to say, and I shouldn’t have said it,” Middleman says.

But Middleman defends her fat comments, saying she was deliberately mocking the DA’s charge of racism.

Delano: “Did you believe that at the time?”

Middleman: “No, and I don’t believe it now.”

Delano: “Then why did you say it?”

Middleman: “I was being as outrageous and over-the-top as I possibly could.”

Perhaps you’re confusing ‘Paleo Liberal’ with Paleo Retiree, another thoughtful iSteve commenter.

I was a high school NR reader too. I think that particular brand of right-wing politics is bad for getting laid. At least in high school. However, there may be other forms of right-wingism that are not so stifling. I think the lead singer from KISS was right wing, for example.

If you had waited a bit, you might have fared better. I went on an NR cruise once and there were opportunities with the single women. But I was long out of high school at that point.

May I say that these balls don’t look trippy in my eyes?

OT

You know, if Biden wins the nomination, it could be an unintentionally funny race after all:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1172904996880441350.html

Hmmm … I would have thought the black eight ball needs the transfer of energy from the cue ball in order to keep up with the rest.

OT, in today’s Google Doodle we learn of the greatest botantist of all time. Carl Linnaeus. Oh, sorry just kidding, he’s just some dead white guy. The greatest botanist of all time is Ynes Mexia.

She is a really colorful Mexican person.

Here is Ynes in real life:

Why she looks more like a person of pallor. Let’s google her colorful background and see what’s up:

Ynés Mexía was born in Washington, D.C. on May 24, 1870, to her Mexican diplomat father, Enrique Mexía, and Sarah Wilmer. The marriage broke up in 1873, when Ynés was three years old, and her father went back to Mexico City. Her mother took the children, including Ynés and six others from a previous marriage,[and moved to …. Mexia, Texas. Mexía spent most of her childhood in Texas and received her secondary education in private schools in Philadelphia and Ontario, Canada.

Why this doesn’t sound very Mexican at all. But at least she is a great scientist, right?

In 1921 [when she was 51 after her last marriage broke up], she matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, motivated by trips with the Sierra Club, where a botany class sparked her interest in the field; however, she never received a degree. Mexía began her botany career at the age of 55 with a 1925 trip to western Mexico under the tutelage of Roxanna Ferris, a botanist at Stanford University. Mexía fell off a cliff and was injured, halting the trip…

Well if perhaps not the greatest botanist, then she was sure ONE of the greatest. This is our future – our greatest figures will be half-brown dabblers and screw-ups.

There is no cue ball because it would be white and this is a diverse group.

I guess physics corrects all mistakes.

You are mistaken , now there is chaos , order will come with Entropy .

LOL. That would totally make sense.

why in the world do the balls sometimes divide themselves up into 2 or 3 seemingly coordinated groups? What do the balls in each group have in common? To me, that’s the oddest thing about this.

The only thing more overplayed than “Stairway to Hallucination” is “Free Bird”. Both were blacklisted at some stations for that reason.

It’s Sunday.

bored identity is surprised that Uncle Sailer is so far ignoring Trippy Physics of The National Nball Team under Nevertrumping Septuagenarian Piece of Popovich :

“… I’m a rich white guy, and I’m sick to my stomach thinking about it.

I can’t imagine being a Muslim right now, or a woman, or an African American, a Hispanic, a handicapped person. How disenfranchised they might feel.

And for anyone in those groups that voted for him (Trump), it’s just beyond my comprehension how they ignore all of that.

My final conclusion is, my big fear is — we are Rome.”

Gregg Popovich , November 11, 2016

https://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/spurs/article/Gregg-Popovich-uncensored-Discusses-the-10609311.php

Classic Pop in China.

“Just write, don’t coach. Just write” pic.twitter.com/tIJ8SkAheW

— Dime (@DimeUPROXX) September 11, 2019

What did Coach Pop say to Sasha Djordjevic before the USA vs. Serbia game in China? #FIBAWorldCup #FIBAWC2019 #FIBAWC #SCKina2019 pic.twitter.com/0486PtTdcd

— Alex Krstanovic (@acabgd) September 12, 2019

7th place, after defeating…Poland, Pop?

Well, then do as the Romans do :

Yes, from the chaos of putative racial equality arises order in the form of Anglo-Saxon superiority, which is why your parents, Mr. Sanders, decided to emigrate to America, the best space humans have ever created.

Nice noticing, Jack.

Although, an older Ynes has slightly more pronounced Apocalypto Charm :

She is as Mexican as Louis CK

Carefully calculating simple physics is easy. The making it work right for real part, the engineering, IOW, is harder. If you did want to use different size balls (to prove a point, but it wouldn’t look as pretty) then you’d need to make sure your effective length for each one is what you want. See, even though mass is not a part of the period, the center of mass still matters for length. Everything’s more complex than the diagram in the physics or dynamics book.

I would have some adjustment screws at the top to set the pivot point. Then, I’d do some timings over as long as 5 minutes or so (maybe do a bunch at once, if I could handle it), then calculate my errors, and take up line or add a bit accordingly, for each.

Anyway, pretty damn cool, except, as noted, Hairway to Steven on the piano – don’t know about that…

Is he the Paleo Diet guy? What’s with all these ancient commenters?

Mexía fell off a cliff and was injured, halting the trip…

No, the trip and fall part apparently went fine. It was the stop at the bottom that halted her from a more illustrious career and more time out in the sun for her Google Doodle photo op.

Was that joke too obtuse trippy for y’all?

LOL. Nothing wrong with having old guys on a conservative site, don’t you think?

Not at all, SFG. I’d first heard “paleo” with respect to politics, as applied to paleoconservatives. I think I’m down with most of those guys.

Which kind of suggests that to get diversity right, one has to painstakingly adjust who gets in.

OT:
https://abc7ny.com/society/over-70-arrested-in-immigration-protest-at-nyc-microsoft-store-/5540677/

Over 70 arrested in immigration protest at Microsoft store in Manhattan

Sunday, September 15, 2019 8:25AM
NEW YORK — Dozens of immigration policy protesters have been arrested at a demonstration outside a Microsoft store in New York City.

Police say they took 76 people into custody Saturday who blocked traffic near the Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan.

The protesters criticized Microsoft for doing business with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

They decried what they called the agency’s racist campaign against immigrants and asylum seekers.

A Microsoft spokeswoman says the company closed the store for the rest of the day.

The protest comes amid mounting criticism of companies working with ICE.

Some of Microsoft’s own employees demanded last year that it cancel its data processing contract with ICE.

Saturday’s march and sit-in was organized by a coalition called Close the Camps NYC.

Yeah, me too. I think that’s the point behind ‘paleoliberal’…he’s in the same relationship to modern liberalism as paleocons were to neocons, so he’s more into economic redistribution and going after the rich than a lot of this weird woke stuff. (I support immigration restriction to slow the pace of social change and allow America to persist intact against the coming disruptions of climate change, basically, though I would also like to see the nation retain as much of its historic character as possible.) That’s more or less where I am, though I’ve always felt myself to be a nonpolitical conservative…I like old things, old architecture, old painting, wood and marble over glass and steel. Even if I can’t appreciate the fine points of 1000 paintings of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus in a museum, there’s an obvious artistry to them missing in a Pollock or a Rothko.

One of the few nice things about being from NYC was with all the crap the glories of Western Civ were always on display. That painting of Washington crossing the Delaware they put on history books, some analog of which every nation must have? You can go and see it. Some un-PC book by Anthony Burgess or Louis-Ferdinand Celine? On sale in Argosy or the Strand, heavily discounted of course. Machiavelli’s actual theatrical work? Saw it on the West Side. You throw the sand against the wind, and the wind blows it back again…

She may have been 0% indian. Her mother was english american, her father could pass for English too.
Painting of him here:

https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt0k40016b/?docId=kt0k40016b&brand=oac4&layout=printable-details

OT – But I found some more Not-National-News:

Will County authorities find more than 2,200 ‘preserved fetal remains’
Preserved fetal remains discovered in home of dead abortion doctor

https://www.theherald-news.com/2019/09/14/will-county-authorities-find-more-than-2-200-preserved-fetal-remains/atpvnk6/

Well, on the right you have National Review and Ben Shapiro types, and then Romper Stomper types. It’s pretty obvious which ones tickle young women’s fancies.

All told, right wing guys probably get more action. I’d base this on divorce statistics in heavily right wing professions, such as the military, police, firefighting, etc. The high divorce rates indicate a lot of fooling around.

I’d go so far as to say that among straight gentile whites promiscuity is a bigger problem for the right than the left.

Yes, you got it.

Okay, I am getting old. 60 as a matter of fact.

But one thing I have noticed. It appears to be the Oligarchs who win every battle. The Oligarchs want a society which is culturally not just liberal, but in complete flux. And they want a regressive tax system, less government regulation, etc.

There is a paradox that it takes a certain amount of conservatism to be what I consider a real old fashioned liberal. We had a system by which working people could live a good life, and we junked it. And the Oligarchs were the ones to junk it, because it made them rich beyond all imagination.

True, we had a society that was racist and misogynistic and homophobic. But in many ways screwing over the bottom 99% of us to benefit the top .01% makes life even worse for minorities, women and blacks.

Yeah, I agree. I often wonder what would have happened if the left won the economic war and the right the culture war.

Look like Fabio

Yeah, I agree. I often wonder what would have happened if the left won the economic war and the right the culture war.

That happened in the USSR and China. So we already have the data.

Machiavelli’s actual theatrical work? Saw it on the West Side.

The Mandrake was Tom Hanks’s only Broadway appearance.

I saw it performed in Mankato, of all places. It was put on during the “marriage amendment” election season, but slipped under the radar. It deals with third party reproduction, i.e., sperm “donation”.

Machiavelli dealt with this issue hundreds of years before anyone else!

Here’s a translation by Wallace Shawn, who could very well have played the sad sack cuckolded noble himself:

There’s probably a way to turn being a right-wing intellectual to your advantage. I have no idea what it is.

Look like Fabio

Spend like Taki.

Ahhhh… no. They oscillate in and out of phase because the period of the motion is determined by the length of the string, and each sting is of a different length. Seriously, are you blind?

OT: Rumor has it that the reason the lawfare group is going after Kavanaugh again is because they have word that Ginsberg’s health is deteriorating.

Or, as Heartiste used to say, ‘alpha f****s, beta bucks’.

And Heartiste deserves some sort of honorable mention for packing so much horseshit into four words. Obviously, in any sort of real competition, the betas would not have any bucks, so that kind of crosses off that arm of the dichotomy right there. The existence of socially constructed wealth distorts a lot of things in the short term, but in the long term a man is wealthy because he is powerful, he does not become wealthy otherwise.

And STEM is a downwardly mobile career choice these days. I don’t know how the idea keeps circulating around, despite the contrary reality before our very eyes, that STEM is a worthwhile educational pathway that will pay off in the long run. It is the walking definition of pattern-work, tailor-fricking-made to be eviscerated in a race to the bottom. The fact that modern society cannot persist without a large number of competent programmers and engineers has been confounded with the assumption that these brain-workers will conveniently materialize when needed, but that is not the case. The most brilliant, most capable minds have already surveyed the bleak reality and turned away, leaving industry in the hands of second-raters. The will to power today manifests itself in the fields of finance and show business, with contemporary “politics” being a grotesque combination thereof. Yet even this era is coming to a close. In the future, in an exhausted world of no growth and no possibility of creative combinations, the only path open to the ambitious will be the unwearying, prudential care for what already exists.

Why, she looks like she could be a great-grandmother of our first American Indian president.

No doubt both got lots of Indian blood from their pah-paws.

Nothing wrong with having old guys on a conservative site, don’t you think?

Except for the fact that they are, by definition, utter failures at conserving. These are the same cucky shits under whose watch we have devolved from the Space Age into lower primate primitivism. Their only real value is to serve as object lessons on how to utterly fail.

I don’t think it’s Christian to wish ill on anyone but I do think that if RBG were to suddenly and unexpectedly, painlessly drop clean over dead America would greatly benefit. Unfortunately, I doubt Trump has the understanding of what we need in a Supreme Court nominee, to take advantage of this.

My advice would be to look at the state courts of conservative states and find someone who has little ideological tail but who evinces the right instincts, and is not a Yale or Harvard grad, and who preferably had some life experience before going to a decent but not Ivy League law school. You want someone the ABA will call qualified, but not extremely or even very well qualified. Someone whose selection will more mystify than outrage the Left.

Just make sure he has no unknown skeletons-known ones might be okay,e.g, he had a youthful indiscretion but that’s in the public record now, etc.

Then let him be the strict constructionist you already established he is, and don’t worry about his brilliant argumentation or lack thereof. It isn’t going to matter because no one in power cares. You just want a reliable strict constructionist vote and for him to be young enough he’ll be there a while.

Yes, cool pendulum physics…but the piano playing is atrocious.

There is no chaos. It’s just that sometimes the order gets too subtle for us to be able to see it.

> Old guys’ only real value is to serve as object lessons on how to utterly fail.

Thanks! You’ll do better.

The professors I knew who were banging co-eds well into their 50s were usually social science or liberal arts or even fine arts, and they were about as far left as Chomsky; sometimes further.

Is that because of the Professors? Or because of the type of young women who go into those fields? Likely a Venn diagram of both. Though it is also true that Leftists, as a general rule, are moral degenerates, hence these Professors have no internal filter stopping them from taking advantage of the little chippies in their charge.

But one thing I have noticed. It appears to be the Oligarchs who win every battle. The Oligarchs want a society which is culturally not just liberal, but in complete flux.

Naturally, because that prevents the riff-raff from banding together and setting up the guillotines. The lessons of the French Revolution were not lost on the Oligarch class. Though I also think that among some of the them, they are really like The Joker and they just like to watch things burn.

And they want a regressive tax system, less government regulation, etc.

I think only the Koch brothers side of the Oligarchs care about taxes. The Jewish types care more about social control. And LESS government regulation? Absolutely not. If they could, they’d have you fill out a form every time you needed to wipe your ass. The entire global warming scam is just a roundabout way to increasing petty regulations.

There is a paradox that it takes a certain amount of conservatism to be what I consider a real old fashioned liberal. We had a system by which working people could live a good life, and we junked it. And the Oligarchs were the ones to junk it, because it made them rich beyond all imagination.

Completely agree with that. But let’s be real: this was also part of the transfer from WASP ruling class to Jewish ruling class. The next turn of the wheel will be the joint Jewish-Asian ruling class, and things are really going to get fun!

True, we had a society that was racist and misogynistic and homophobic.

No we didn’t. That’s all retconning. We had a society that understood the realities of racial and sexual differences, and knew that homosexuality was a degeneracy. And they acted accordingly. And it was never as bad as Leftist mythology makes it out to be.

But in many ways screwing over the bottom 99% of us to benefit the top .01% makes life even worse for minorities, women and blacks.

Yeah, but it makes life worse mostly for white people.

Math/physics question:

If I toss a room temperature Bud Ice beer can into the freezer will the mass of the aluminum decrease, increase or stay the same?

Naw, it was just talking points for the Democrat candidates, who all got some air time when they demanded that Kavanaugh be impeached. The “lawfare” group know that the actual chance of Kav being impeached by 2/3 vote of the Senate (at least this Senate) is zero. Boy, the Senate is going to be busy, what with the impeachment trial of Trump and Kavanaugh and probably some others too – how will they have time to do gun control and immigration reform?

Today’s “correction” is that the other woman who was supposedly dick slapped by Kav says that she has no recollection of this ever happening – Kav was ratted out by a fellow Yalie male nemesis Clintonista. So both Kav and the victim have no recollection of the event but we are supposed to impeach him for perjury because a 3rd party with a political ax to grind says that it happened. Welcome to Clown World.

I don’t know whether you are talking about short term or long term (or what this means in actual # of years) or whether you are talking about a recession or a full blown apocalypse. Sure there is some point where being a good shot with a squirrel gun is better than mad programming skilz but I really don’t envision things actually falling apart to that extent. There is really a lot of ruin in a nation and future America is going to be closer to Brazil than it is to Venezuela. In Brazil there are favelas that are red in tooth and claw but there are also factories where they make pretty good jet planes.

The US has already had one (or if you count Trump two) show business Presidents (oddly, both from the “right”) and has survived. If we are going to have a future with robot factories and driverless cars (and I think that we will) someone is going to have to design and program those robots and those cars. Will this be hugely lucrative work? Probably not – STEM types usually get paid OK coming out of college but the pay doesn’t go up much in later years unless you transition into management. But this is exactly what smarter, less spergy STEM types do. If you are spergy you should be glad that you have a decent job coding and don’t have to spend your life in a monastery copying manuscripts or whatever spergy guys used to do in the past.

Rumours of the demise of “the lead singer from Kiss” are greatly exaggerated. He takes the verb is, not was. Being clever enough to be alive, he is also clever enough to know nobody gives a shit – nor should they, particularly – about musicians’ political opinions.

Paul Stanley on his politics:

I don’t know what’s more embarrassing, these musicians and actors talking about politics in interviews or the media actually giving them credibility about it…. It’s absurd that a celebrity could speak out on the economy or politics with no more justification than a hit album or a movie. Not to deride Gene, but I just think he’s part of a symptom of absurdity where you’ll see somebody on television whose only criteria for being there is success in a field far away from what they’re being asked about. I really don’t know who is more ridiculous, the celebrity answering these political questions or the person asking them.

I’m usually not at a loss for words, but this whole celebrity political thing always gets me. It’s so embarrassing to see people with absolutely no inside knowledge of anything they are talking about. I have friends who are intimately involved with world affairs and these are the people who won’t give opinions like these celebrities do. For my friends, it’s far more complex and sensitive than that, unlike these celebrities who read some newspaper story, or watch CNN, and then spout out some opinion on something they truly don’t know anything about.

(You may be thinking of Gene Simmons, who sings lead vocals on several (by no means most) of Kiss’ songs, but is not, properly speaking, their lead vocalist – that’s Stanley’s role; at a typical concert, Simmons might sing lead on two or three songs. Simmons is mentioned in Stanley’s statement above, and Simmons is indeed frequently vocal about his political views, which mostly trend libertarian.)

Back to your point, and apropos of Stanley’s: the guys in Kiss got (and get) laid because they are rockstars, not because of their politics one way or another. And unless he is considering a serious relationship leading to marriage, any other man should be getting laid or not without regard to his politics. Sure, females are conformists, and therefore mostly crazy leftists. Just don’t talk about politics at all around women: most, though leftists deep down, could not even articulate why, and don’t much care about politics except to repeat what is fashionable, because some hag said so on The View. You think Simmons and Stanley were pooh-poohing the Equal Rights Amendment in 1983 to their imminent conquests?! No, they were telling funny stories or talking about their songs, showing off their wealth, and so on.

Off topic, c/o The Gray Hag “The Further Adventures of Judge Kavanaugh” has just made its debut.

Here we go again!

Thanks! Michael Harriot is now my most recently discovered hilarious writer.

That’s an insult to clowns!

why in the world do the balls sometimes divide themselves up into 2 or 3 seemingly coordinated groups? What do the balls in each group have in common? To me, that’s the oddest thing about this.

Because of common divisors (and other relationships, e.g. modulo division) in the frequencies. If you look at the Harvard link I gave above: https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/pendulum-waves
they say:

One instance of interest to note is at 30 seconds (halfway through the cycle), when half of the pendulums are at one amplitude maximum and the other half are at the opposite amplitude maximum.

The 15 pendulums supposedly have integer frequencies of 51-65 oscillations per 60 seconds. They are started from one extreme so 60 seconds later they will all return to the same place. At 30 seconds the even frequencies will be at the starting point while the odd frequencies will be at the opposite extreme (180 degrees out of phase). Apparently the frequencies aren’t exactly as stated, so you see this around 48 seconds in the video (The balls are released at 5 seconds and resynchronize at 90 seconds).

To give an idea of relationships, here are the divisors for each of the frequencies (after the MORE). I was lazy and copied from https://www.dcode.fr/divisors-list-number

You can see how the even odd example would extend to other divisors. So dividing by 3, at 20 and 40 seconds you would see three groups based on frequency modulo 3 = 0,1,2 and the groups will be 120 degrees out of phase. You can see this around 34 and 62 seconds in the video.

Similarly for dividing by 4 giving four groups 90 degrees out of phase. You can see this around 26 and 69 seconds in the video.

Here are all the time points I noted above to make it easier to see the relationships.
5, 26, 34, 48, 62, 69, 90
Or removing the 5 second starting offset to make things even more apparent.
0, 21, 29, 43, 57, 64, 85
Roughly speaking.
0, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 1

You and your racist second law of thermodynamics!

You are not wrong, Sir.

Not The Onion:

Apparently some woke Coloured Person claims recent efforts to remove defecation* due to the overpopulation in Seattle by hosing down the streets and sidewalks is racist, because firehoses were used to disperse rioters oppress Coloured Persons in days of yore.

*Vagabonds and vagrants are apparently pooping in the streets there, as they do now in many favelas hives anthills Global, Vibrant Cities of the F.U.S.A.

I was disappointed the protestor did not take the opportunity to exhort us all about the evils of baking and heating furnaces what with combustion’s traumatising association with certain events of the 1940s in Europe….

I wonder whether there is some shareware oscilloscope (simulation) software where you could put up sine waves of various frequencies and visually illustrate these interrelationships pairwise? Nothing beats (no pun intended) seeing the physical pendula doing their dance but with the right software you could simulate them with a lot less effort. It might also be interesting to transpose these to frequencies in the audio range so you could hear the sounds going in and out of phase with each other.

Groovy Physics:

Pendulum Waves:A lesson in aliasing…….James A Flaten….Kevin A Prendo…..American Journal of Physics…

And after a short skip and a hop:onto Quantum Revival Theory…….

Aliasing is the core-central idea of the video…….aliasing comes from signal processing engineering….also an importing concept in missile targeting warfare…..Think Pandtirs S-1…S-300s…S-400s…Buks…..

Also:Aliasing in Pendulum Waves…..Wolfram Demonstrations….

You need a Native American actor you say?

*Cries in Italian.*

“Apparently some woke Coloured Person claims recent efforts to remove defecation* due to the overpopulation in Seattle by hosing down the streets and sidewalks is racist, because firehoses were used to disperse rioters oppress Coloured Persons in days of yore.”

Does this unconsciously suggest that black people view themselves as akin to fecal matter? That black bodies and brown plops (depending on fiber and nutrition) are one of the same?

Good luck trying to fight fires without hoses. Also, rescuing blacks from burning homes is just stealing black agency. You better put them back white boy.

I think that militant atheists get excited by this kind of thing (the illusion of order, etc.) because it vaguely relates to whether or not there is a God or something.

Hm. I seem to remember the Law of Conservation of Mass.

Or does that refer to Catholic services?

Here is a simulator (with source) of multiple pendulums. The page links to a live demo.
https://github.com/lmarkus/pendulum
I don’t think that is exactly what you asked for, but close enough?

For anyone interested in building their own physical version:
https://www.arborsci.com/blogs/cool/pendulum-wave-seems-like-magic-but-its-physics

This statement there confirms Achmed E Newman’s comment 8.

The ability to make fine adjustments to the length is necessary so the device can come back to line after two or even three cycles.

Audio idea is interesting, but I’m not sure how that would work. Anyone else?

Go to a hamfest and pick up a couple of HP 200CD oscillators and a usable CRT scope.

The interference principle of heterodyning waves was how audio signal generators worked, in fact, before Hewlett and Packard invented the circuit that got them off to the races with this very product. They had two low RF oscillators, one fixed and one variable, and heterodyned them to get the difference frequency. This was used in the now much sought after (for the parts) Western Electric 19C and many copies thereof. These devices also produce many unintended artifacts, making them useless for their intended purpose today (testing pairs on voice circuits to handle traffic like T-1) but interesting to electronic music experimenters.

It’s been done with metronomes….

Ahh! We Kraftwerk aficionados liked this. Gen X for the win!

“If I put an empty room temperature Bud Ice beer can into the freezer will ialuminum’s mass decrease, increase or stay the same?”

Decrease.

E = mc².

c² is a constant, therefore energy is proportional to mass. By lowering the energy when placing can in freezer we lower its mass. The frozen can would weigh less, although no scale could detect the decreased weight of the colder aluminum.

I would imagine that was referring to Gene, even though he and Paul are equal partners in the enterprise. Gene has always been the one most associated with the band. To wit, someone posted a picture of Paul on here a few weeks ago and the poster didn’t know who he was. Gene is instantly recognizable.

If the temperature of a 1 kg. mass is allowed to change by 1 °C, its mass changes by 1.5 picograms (1.5×10−12 g). An alu. can weighs around 15g or 0.015 kg and chilling it might take 15 C off of its temperature, so the change in mass is around 1/3 of a picogram or 0.000 000 000 000 3 grams. You would need a really good scale.

As for conservation of mass, refrigerators just move heat, so whatever objects are heated by the refrigerator (the condenser coil) gains the mass lost by the beer can.

I gotta say, that is the most egregious mis-use of an equation I’ve ever seen. Adam, that equation relates the amount of energy released in a nuclear reaction to the mass of the material converted.

Your Bud (or Bud Light, or Bud Ice,) can undergoes a decrease in it’s internal energy, “U”, (or “u” on a per-mass basis) with a decrease in temperature, with that internal energy going to 0 at a T of absolute zero. Its mass doesn’t decrease – you are just pulling out an equation that has absolutely nothing to do with a Bud Ice can in a freezer, unless your freezer is part of a secret ABNW program! (Adult Beverage Nuclear Weapsons)

Just so you know, the aluminum can would have a (20C – (-18C)) * .5 kJ/kg-C * 0.014 kg) = 0.27 kJ or a 270 J decrease in it’s internal energy going from room T to a normal freezer Temp.

If you somehow converted that mass to energy, the formula would create 1 1/4 x 10^15 J or just over 1 Trillion kilo-Joules. To put it in terms the nuclear bomb guys use (where 1 “ton” equals the energy released by exploding 1 ton of TNT, which is about 4 GJ), your beer can would be a 1/3 Megaton nuclear weapon. That’s not even counting if you fissioned off the beer! (Probably a bit lower with a Bud… now a nuclear Guinness, wow!)

Something is very wrong with your math. The increase in mass is equal to energy/ c2. c2 (the speed of light squared) is a very large number so when you divide energy by that # you end up with a very small change in mass. The answer depends on the specific heat of the substance. For example, when water is heated it gains about 1.11×10−17 kg of mass for every joule of heat added to the water. So 270 joules of energy would result in a change in mass but a very, very tiny, immeasurable increase, well beyond our ability to measure the change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence

I think this is where you slip up:

If you somehow converted that mass to energy, the formula would create 1 1/4 x 10^15 J or just over 1 Trillion kilo-Joules.

You already told us how much energy is lost – 270 J. That converts to a certain (very small) amount of mass and if you reverse the equation, you get 270 J back again. There’s no way to make 270J equal a trillion kJ.

To give you an idea of the magnitude, in the Hiroshima explosion the mass change was .7 grams or about 1/3 the weight of a dime. Going the other way, the very large # c2 is in the numerator so a very small change in mass will result in a very large change in energy.

I switched what I was calculating between paragraphs, Jack.

The 1st calculation was the amount of energy lost to the air in the fridge (hence, eventually to the outside via the condenser) from the Temp drop. Does it really lose mass by getting colder? Who says? It may be that very teeny amount you calculated, but how does the formula E=mc^ apply at all?

The 2nd calculation was the amount of energy you’d get by converting the 14 grams of Al of the can into energy in a nuclear reaction (just using E=mc^2)

BTW, that 7 gm mass change in the “Little Boy” atomic bomb resulting in 15 ktons (equivalent TNT) per Wiki. That means it was nowhere near the maximum energy release per E=mc^2.

Let’s do it:
E = 0.007 kg * (300,000,000 m/s)^2 = 6.3 x 10^14 kg-m/s^2 = 6.3 x 10^14 J. Each ton TNT equivalent is (per wiki, hopefully right) 4 GJ of energy. Divide it out and you get 157 kT yield.

That happens to be right at 1/2 of what I wrote for the beer can, just because coincidentally it’s about twice what you say was the mass lost in the “Little Boy” A-bomb. I know, Al is not bomb material, of course. Also, we get only 1/10 of what Einstein’s most famous formula says. Why is that? Are you sure it wasn’t 0.7 gm, Jack. That’d make more sense. One could say the bomb was only 10% efficient, but then inefficiency means nothing more than wasted energy, and when your goal is to blow stuff up, I think there’s no such thing!

I read your wiki link, but let me ask you this. If I bring that beer can down to absolute zero, does it weigh nothing? Heck no, so a reduction in internal energy cannot relate to its mass via that equation. Maybe absolute zero doesn’t mean what I think it does. Hmmm, I could have fried my brain a lot easier today with a couple of cold Bud Ices. ;-}

It may be that very teeny amount you calculated, but how does the formula E=mc^ apply at all?

It applies anywhere and everywhere, to all type of energy and any mass. It just doesn’t have much practical application outside of nuclear reactions because ordinary changes in energy (getting hotter, spinning faster, etc.) don’t change the mass by a significant amount – the mass is changing, just not by very much (and by not very much we mean picograms).

The 2nd calculation was the amount of energy you’d get by converting the 14 grams of Al of the can into energy in a nuclear reaction (just using E=mc^2)

Changing the temperature of the can by a few degrees doesn’t convert its entire mass into energy, only a tiny amount of it – such a tiny amount that we ignore this change in mass for all practical purposes and consider the mass to be constant. No one knows how to convert the mass of Al into useful amounts of energy – the only thing we know how to do is to split apart certain radioactive elements like uranium. After they split, the sum of all the masses of fission products does not quite add up to the mass of the original uranium and that tiny difference gets converted into a huge amount of energy. There’s no way on earth you could turn 14g of Al completely into energy but if you could then I think that something is still wrong with your math because as I said before the entire Hiroshima explosion only consumed .7g of mass.

Yes, 0.7g, that’s what I wrote in the 1st place.

Absolute zero just means that the molecules are no long moving at all so they can’t get any colder. It doesn’t mean that they have lost their mass. The change in mass is computed the same way you computed the change in energy for refrigerator temperatures, except that instead of a 18C temperature drop you have a 290C temperature drop, a factor of 15x more. So instead of losing on the order of 10 -13g of mass, you lose on the order of 10 -12 grams, still an immeasurable loss. And once you are down to absolute zero there’s no way to shrink the mass any more by removing heat since you’ve removed as much as possible. Absolute zero also sets a floor on the mass of an object.

Jack, I know that. That’s my point. If you reduce internal energy to 0, then how could E=mc^2 possibly apply? It obviously does not, to internal energy, and we can talk about a body at rest in our inertial reference frame. Show me the energy. The left side is 0, but the right side is not. There is no significant loss of mass, so Einstein’s equation cannot apply.

Yes, you did, my bad there. I missed that decimal place, which makes my math correct (wiki says right around 15 ktons TNT-equiv, meaning of course the simple E=mc^2 works out with that 0.7 grams mass gone). I use the leading 0 there to make it more readable, but I can’t put that on you.

It’s still not significant, but I said a 38 C T-drop, from room T to a standard freezer T (~ 0 F or -18C). Do you get it, dropping the internal energy by that factor of 7.7 brings the internal energy to 0 as all molecular/atomic(?) motion supposedly stops. Because one can’t get an object to 0 K (or 0 R), only very close, we can’t do this, but any floor on the mass means E absolutely does not equal mc^2. ΔE doesn’t equal Δmc^2 either, by the very simple arithmetic we’ve been writing about.

There is probably some weird stuff that Physicist Dave could correct us on involving the mass of any object having kinetic energy relative to the center of the Universe, meaning even at 0 K, it DOES have lots of energy, hence explaining its still-existent mass. If we stopped the whole Universe dead in its tracks, we may see things get lighter …

No, every particle has a minimum energy, called it’s rest energy, even if it is not in motion (relative to the observer), which corresponds to its mass according to the well known formula. You can ADD energy to a particle’s rest energy (which increase its mass) but you can never reduce it below that minimum just as you can’t chill things below absolute zero. The inertial mass of an object is a fundamental property of the universe and can’t be disappeared in stable elements. Every proton, neutron, etc. has a certain rest mass and therefore a certain rest energy. The rest energy of most things is pretty well locked up so there’s no way to harvest it. There’s a huge amount of energy locked into that beer can but there’s no way to reduce its mass below its rest mass. You can INCREASE it (very slightly) by heating it up, throwing it, spinning it, etc. but you can’t reduce it below the rest mass at absolute zero.

This is why nuclear fission is such a big deal because it is one of the few ways in the universe that you can actually reduce mass. Somehow when you do the bookkeeping on a fission reaction, the debits (the original mass) do not quite equal the credits (the mass of the resulting particles) and the difference appears as energy.