Argh! We had something very very simple... then we started adding Unicode to it... now I'm not sure where the complexity will stop.
What we had was small
Then we added Unicode
Now it is too big
Via Josh Claybourn, an article about Peter Lynds:
Lynds, a 27-year-old college dropout from New Zealand, had developed a radical new theory of time. Those who had glimpsed Lynds' ideas - which a physics journal has agreed to publish - were predicting they would shake the science world to its foundations and would solve philosophical and mathematical conundrums that have puzzled the best minds for thousands of years. Some were already comparing the young author with Albert Einstein.
His big idea, put simply, is that time cannot be thought of in physical, definable quantities. To the uninitiated that may seem obvious, but to some physicists it's heresy. Current thinking in quantum mechanics relies on time being made up of tiny, discrete packages - just like light and energy.
Lynds goes on to say there is no moment at which time can be considered to have stopped - even for an instant - and so an object's position can never be precisely determined at any time. He claims this has implications for everything from quantum mechanics to the theories of Stephen Hawking.
I read his paper tonight, and it is pretty awesome, though it takes effort to read and I probably missed the significance of some things. Under his system it seems that time is simply a consequence of matter. It seems very significant, and I'm interested in what other implications this has. I'm not going to summarize more than the article did -- the paper is definitely worth reading and thinking about.
What's funny is I think I came up with the same idea when thinking about Zeno's paradoxes. He argues in his paper that his theory is a solution to them -- I was thinking about them a while ago, and I was like "Duh, this is only a problem if you assume time isn't continuous." Of course I didn't go on to systematize it like Lynds did 
Actually, I remembered last night that I had thought it was only if you assume space isn't continuous, not time. But that brings up another question I was wondering about while reading the article - is space continuous? What implications does the article have for that? Anyway, the paper is very impressive - go read it.
Charles relays a great first-hand account of things in Iraq:
The negative media portrait of the situation in Iraq doesn't correspond with what I've seen. Indeed, we were treated as liberating heroes when we arrived four months ago, and we continue to enjoy amicable relations with the local populace.
The "Arab Street" I've meet in Iraq loves--that's not too strong of a word--America and is deeply grateful for our presence. Far from resenting the American military, most Iraqis seem to fear that we will leave too soon and that in our absence the Baath Party tyranny will resume. This sentiment is readily apparent whenever we venture into the city. We don't make it far outside of our camp before throngs of happy, smiling children greet us.
"Good, good!" they yell, as they run into the street, often oblivious to oncoming traffic. They give us a hearty thumbs-up and vigorously wave and pump their hands. They are eager to see us and to talk with us. To them, it is clear, we are heroes who liberated them from Saddam Hussein.
"Bush good, Saddam bad!" many Iraqis tell us emphatically--and repeatedly. I'm not sure how George W. Bush is faring with the American public, but he's got a lock on Al Hillah.
Iraqis routinely ask me to "thank Mr. Bush for freeing us of Saddam" and tell me, "We are very grateful, because you have freed us of our worst nightmare, Saddam Hussein." (A lot of Iraqis speak surprisingly good English because most studied it in primary and secondary school.)
It all reminds me of my experience a decade ago in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Most ordinary Russians, Poles and Czechs hailed Ronald Reagan as a hero for bringing down the "evil empire" when few people had the courage even to call it that.
In much the same way, ordinary Iraqis have a tremendous reservoir of goodwill for the president who coined the term "axis of evil"--and who then acted to eradicate a primary source of that evil.
The Iraqis know who their foes are too. Two Iraqi children once spontaneously shouted to me, "France, Chirac!" while giving the thumbs-down sign and shaking their heads disapprovingly. The children quickly smiled and shouted "Bush!" while punching the sky.
Wow.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
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