Tuesday 19 May 2009

Tweet Tweet

As you will note, I put Twitter on the site yesterday. I reserve judgment for the time being, but as a marketer I need to keep up with the latest distribution media, so it’s purely for research purposes you understand. However, I can’t seem to login to my account via the blog widget, which appears to be a common problem that the Twitter people are not in a hurry to fix. At least when I’m on the road I can now update the blog – albeit very briefly and not in my usual succinct manner. Why use 1 word when 10 get the point across equally well?

The baptism for Twitter came last night as I was leaving the work car park and some arsehole in a brand new Merc rammed into the side of the car. Despite how it looks on the photo, the damage is relatively superficial and a decent panel beater worth his salt should be able to extract the dent. At 160k miles on the car I’m not about to go overboard in getting a new door.



I’m just a bit pissed off that the other driver’s damage (front nearside corner) was negligible.

Have you seen the latest Schweppes adverts. They’re under the umbrella tag line of ‘Experience Matters’. Previous ones (at least in the UK) were based on political issues and I must admit that if I ever saw them, they certainly never impinged on my consciousness and were a bit too esoteric for my tastes. This latest one, however, did cause me to chuckle.


Sorry for the quality, but I nicked it from the New Scientist site and it was an animated gif which I had to capture mid-transition. It sums up the current vogue among the glitterati for buying designer orphans.

In trying to find a decent copy of the ad I alighted on Schweppes’ website. Once there you’re asked which country site you would like to view, United Kingdom being one of the choices offered (as well as every conceivable Eastern European country north of Suez). However, when you click on the UK, a box appears telling you there is no UK site. SO WHY OFFER THE CHOICE OF A UK SITE IN THE FIRST PLACE? The lack of a UK site is doubly annoying seeing as the product was originally UK based before being demerged from Cadbury-Schweppes and transferred to Amercia under the Dr Pepper brand.

I was casting an eye over Lovely’s Blot yesterday (she too is building a house, but in France), in which she was complaining about – hushed whisper and quick glance from side to side – “female problems” and the thing. You know – the THING. Menopause! She wishes it were all over quickly. I had to comment that we males don’t get an easy time with hormones either; imagine the sheer exhaustion resulting from being driven to be competitive all the time, even when you don’t feel up to it - never mind about the social stigma associated with having no option but to act like overgrown schoolboys for most of our lives. Unlike women, who get relief from their raging hormones when menopause sets in, we alpha males remain hostage to surges of testosterone till our dying day.

On the subject of women’s problems, researchers have uncovered the first genetic evidence to explain differences in the length of women's fertile lives. However, given my readership is overwhelmingly female, I won’t bore you with the details.

I will, however, bore you with this:

I’ve recently been researching something called the Wave Structure of Matter; a paradigm which says matter does not exist as a point particle, but is the result of standing spherical waves within space-time, which are what make fundamental reality at its basic level. It is proof for the ‘interconnectedness of all things’ – something in which I tend to believe. While this theory is extremely elegant, satisfies Occam’s Razor and reconciles relativity with quantum mechanics (while overcoming many of the paradoxes of the Standard Model), it’s being totally ignored by the physics establishment, and I can only infer it’s because there are too many vested interests in the Standard Model of particle physics. It’s a conspiracy of silence, despite a renowned professor – Carver Mead - supporting it. Carver mead is Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology.

To quote Mead: "The quantum world is a world of waves, not particles. So we have to think of electron waves and proton waves and so on. Matter is 'incoherent' when all its waves have a different wavelength, implying a different momentum. On the other hand, if you take a pure quantum system – the electrons in a superconducting magnet, or the atoms in a laser – they are all in phase with one another, and they demonstrate the wave nature of matter on a large scale. Then you can see quite visibly what matter is down at its heart."

According to the establishment, there’s a thing called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which says you can’t know both the location and momentum of a quantum particle at the same time. Nether Einstein nor Schrodinger (of cat fame) were convinced, but Neils Bohr managed to shout them down, turned them, and we’re left with the consequences and (from what I gather) edifices built on sand. Bohr and Von Neumann refused to believe that a laser, which is a coherent macro quantum device, was possible, but today it’s embedded in every CD and DVD player and it works on the principle of coherent light – or in other words, knowing both the location and momentum of particles (or rather waves) at the same time, or else you wouldn’t be able to make the light coherent.

Here’s an interview with Dr Milo Wolff, who first thought up WSM. And here’s a website dedicated to it. However, try to find an academic site that mention it and you draw a complete blank. There aren’t even any refuting it – it’s simply ignored.

More worrying than anything (and I’m not your typical conspiracy theorist) is the fact that a philosopher of science, Geoff Hazlehurst, wrote a Wiki page for WSM a couple of years ago and it was subsequently deleted – not by Geoff himself- for reasons that just don’t stack up when analysed.

It’s a fact, however, that new paradigms take time to overcome entrenched views of an academic establishment having the inertia of a large quadrant of a small galaxy, many members of which made their name and fame within the old paradigm. While the scientific method does eventually triumph, the scientific establishment tends to behave like organized religion; sticking to dogma, becoming its high priests and refusing to peer-review that which they consider heretical and thus barring intellectual dissent and publication of important new research which may upset the applecart – or professorial chair.

To quote Charles Darwin: “Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. But I look with confidence to the future to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.”

Talking about the Old Guard; did you know that Darth (call me Dave) Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, is surrounded by more Old Etonians than any Conservative leader since Harold MacMillan? Despite being a product of the public school system myself, I’m not sure I’d want government-by-old-school. Smacks too much of cronyism. Apparently he’s also 5th cousin, twice removed, to the Queen.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have eventually managed to get back onto your site - I even sent you a message via mine as for the last week it has been impossible to scroll through your blog and Firefox freezes and I have to force quit.

Saw that you mused about giving up blogging as readership was down - perhaps everyone was having the same problem as me?

Probably because you have been Twittering ...

Chairman Bill said...

Drag: It may have had something to do with some extraneous link, which took a week to drop off the bottom of the blog and go into archive. Sall investigate and see what went into archive last.

Chairman Bill said...

Obviously, from the registration, the Merc wasn't brand new. However, it was brand new from the perspective of the owner, as he'd only taken delivery of it a week ago.

Chairman Bill said...

I've just noticed that refreshing the blog page results in it switching between yesterday's blog and today's.

♥ Braja said...

Damn, you wrote a book! Took me a all DAY to read it ;)

Readership has been down lately on blogs, but I see it across the board; these things come and go and it doesn't have any lasting impact ...

Chairman Bill said...

Braja: Come on - the hitcounter stats say less than 10 minutes!

Gretel said...

Maybe they are speed readers like me.

Chairman Bill said...

PG: A day and 10 minutes are not the same - even when speed reading - unless one is travelling at near light-speed in relation to the other observer, in which case time becomes a relative notion. Sunday afternoons are another example of relativity.

kapgaf said...

I have just spent about half an hour looking into this WSM thing. That stuff is complicated for anyone who, like me, has little or no grasp of quantum mechanics. Nevetheless, I would like to get my head round this - an evening down the pub with someone in the know, a few beers and words of one syllable might do the trick but that isn't going to happen - any helpful ideas ?

Pearl said...

It's not even 8:30 in the a.m. over here and your blog has filled my brain for the day.

I have to go home now and lay down in a puddle of sunlight on the floor, try to recoup.
:-)
Pearl

Chairman Bill said...

Kapgaf: Mmmm - not in words of one syllabubble. Look up "How to make a universe - parts 1-3" on YouTube, and there's a guy called Tomes who explains it, and then goes off into another theory aligned to WSM.

Pearl: Remember they're waves, not photons.

Ms Scarlet said...

THE THING!!! Do I look old enough to be dealing with THE THING?????
I will forgive you this time due to your references to the Schweppes advert...
Sx

A Woman Of No Importance said...

Did someone mention buying an orphan??! I'd like a green one please, to match my Prada seal-skin handbag?

And Twitter - that's so last year, TC - Try the Vindolanda tablets for real staying power!

Chairman Bill said...

SB: Well, one simply can't tell these days. Just look at Joan Rivers, for heaven's sake!

Woman: Good grief - I'm only just getting to grips with t'internet.