We can't stop here - this is bat country!

[cybermule]

Had a lousy night, as the more Holmesian of you may have gathered from the timestamps on some of my comments! To make up for it though, I've had an excellent day. Got up fairly late after some snoozing and took things to the tip, marvelling as I did so as to why someone would buy a wicker chair only to offload it in apparently new condition.

Boggling mildy at human nature always puts me in a good mood for the day, so I then headed to the local nursery to pick up some bargainous child slaves. Hahah. Garden centre, obviously, where I picked up a cut-price wisteria, some purple slate chippings and a couple of nice pots. I then spent a very pleasant hour or two chilling in the garden with a pen and notebook, scheming on some plans for my garden in particular and my life in general. I've also been astonishingly productive with regards to my OU essay on chronology in news stories - half done! My tutor may even get it early as a special present for him repeatedly complimenting me by calling attention to my quixotic nature. Sorry, but I just view that as praise :P

I was going to make some notes on the nature of time from picking the brains of my physicist friend. As they're dull, whimsical and of subjective interest, I'm going to put them

1. At one level, we can see that time is bi-directional. Some physical processes (Schrodinger, Newton) are time-reversible.
   
2. At another level, time's arrow is very obvious e.g. entropy
   
3. Awareness of entropy is obvious in the hankering of philosophers and writers after a "lost golden age" (e.g. classical poets and Renaissance)
   
4. bearing in mind the dubious certainty of point (3), my own idealistic nature and the subjective perception of time by mankind (Castaneda, trips, Levi-Strauss music/mythology analogy) - what next?
   (read "The Characteristics of Physical Law" (Feynman (biploar?)).
   

Comments

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Last time I went to the tip I came back with as much as I took - nice '50s oak chest of drawers. Needs some restoration and a new top, but I did need one and it saves me making drawers.

Usually we go shopping at the dump; propane cylinders and copper sheet (old immersion heaters)


How bi-directional is time ? Half of Newton is, but the gravitational chunk is strongly directed. Even regarding Schrodinger as a “physical” process is pushing it – more people today believe in Angels dancing on the points of crystals than believe in Copenhagen. But an 8 year old can easily understand the 2nd Law, if you phrase it as “Bedrooms don’t tidy themselves” (for they all believe in the Spontaneous Untidiness and “It Wasn’t Me” theories). So the perception of physics, by and applied to the mainstream, is that of a directed time.

About the only thing I got out of reading Hawking’s ABHOT was the notion that entropy wasn’t “time’s arrow”, but rather that an ever-increasing entropy was the a priorio cause of time’s directionality.

Yet these are still quite modern concepts. Post Renaissance, post Enlightenment even. The formalised concept of entropy comes from the thermodynamics work surrounding early steam engines in the late 18th. Before this, the long-term view of Western cosmology was still rooted in notions of eternal Creators, even if Middle Earth faced a final doomsday (Although the Norse Ragnarok was going to rend Asgard and all nine worlds as well). Only after the work of people like Carnot was the notion of inevitable entropy even expressable as a nameable concept.

The poets have always hankered for a Golden Age. But this was seen as a “pre Fall” condition, a state before a specific event, rather than just an earlier stage of an inevitable slide. There was still the idea that there could be a future Golden Age, which is contrary to the entropian view. Millenial Christianity still holds onto to this view. There’s no “redemption” with entropy, not even for Milton


I'm supposed to be working today, now that the Linux box is finally working. Tomorrow I might go over to Wales and fire the Trebuchet (visitors welcome !)

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

Heheh - I'll leave the scinetific stuff for another day as I've baked my brain gardening all afternoon. But I did like the comments - wasn't expecting anyone to read them, let alone start an interesting thread!

Yes - drawers do seem to be a complete arse to make from what I've witnessed. Are the cocktail cabinet and trays your own creations? I'm assuming they are and can now see why you downplayed the chair! That cocktail cabinet is insane (in a good way) - how do you do the blue finish?

What flavour Linux? Is your trebuchet quite twangy? I saw some at the medieval event at Berkley Castle, but I was tired, wet and over-hyped the whole thing. Let me know next time you're setting up a firing range :)

[quercus.livejournal.com]

All the codesmiths.com/shed/ stuff is mine.

A lot of the metal stuff I do ends up with some sort of hot oil finish on it. It's just a posher and more controlled version of a blackened wok. To do something the size of a gas cylinder I use a monstrous gas burner that's supposed to be for stripping barnacles off ships.

The treb hasn't been fired in years, and not properly since we upgraded the weight box. Should be fun !
I'll be up on the hills above Pontypool with jarkman tomorrow. We'll probably take the little mangonels too.
You're welcome to come over if you want to (07970 468006)