THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
03/23/07 -- Vol. 25, No. 38, Whole Number 1433
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Space Failure (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Heisenberg's Uncertainty or Schroedinger's Cat?
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The Bird and the Bard (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
THE LAST MIMZY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
300 (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Supernovae, and
Footballs (letters of comment by Dan Cox,
Mike Glyer, Gerald S. Williams,
and Peter Rubinstein)
Puzzle Answer (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
This Week's Reading (INVERTED WORLD, MISSION OF GRAVITY,
"Into Darkness", and BLACK COFFEE)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Space Failure (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Sadly the Persephone Probe, sent to Mars to search for signs of
the presence of water, prematurely ceased transmission shortly
after splashdown. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Heisenberg's Uncertainty or Schroedinger's Cat? (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Several people have contacted me suggesting that the contention
that one cannot observe a phenomenon without affecting it was not
taken from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle but from the
Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment. This is a highly
counter-intuitive interpretation that certain phenomena do not
occur until they are observed. Schroedinger suggests that the
observation actually triggers the occurrence, though there is no
implication that the observation modifies the final effect. No, I
was not mistakenly talking about the Schroedinger's Cat
phenomenon. I have not heard that example applied to the
macro-world by anyone but me. I referred to a friend as a
Schroedinger's Guest. As much as you would ask him, you never
knew if he would show up at an event until he actually arrived or
the event was over and the wave form collapsed. I realize now
that this is much better as an example of true uncertainty.
No, the misapplication of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to
the macro-world does occur as suggested below:
http://tinyurl.com/2oqjfe
and
http://www.physics4kids.com/files/mod_quantum.html
The first points out that it is not true, the second still
mis-interprets Heisenberg.
Wikipedia on "Observer Effect" says basically makes the same point
I did:
"The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is also frequently, but
incorrectly, confused with the 'observer effect'. The uncertainty
principle actually describes how precisely we may measure the
position and momentum of a particle at the same time."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Bird and the Bard (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
We are getting to the time of the year I have bird trouble. It
is my habit to feed the birds and squirrels in my back yard.
Generally they get along with each other. Some of the squirrels
can be bullies to the birds and the other squirrels in their
territoriality of feeding. A selfish squirrel will chase another
one off if that victim has found a patch of ground with good
seeds. Well, a little of that is not bad. But there are two
things that make life difficult for my birds and squirrels and
they only retreat. One is the weekly lawn mower. No animal
wants to challenge that. But the other is when my backyard is
invaded by a gang in black. It is almost like Marlon Brando's
gang coming into town in THE WILD ONE, but in this case they do
not come riding in, they come flying.
A vicious pack of marauding birds has moved into our
neighborhood. They are entirely the wrong element. Individually
they would be fine, but this is a mob and they steal the seed
that I leave intended for the locals. They make a real racket
also. Like the soundtrack of Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, but not so
much electronic enhancement . . . yet. Just what are these ADs
(avian delinquents)? They are starlings. And they are a real
pain. And it is all the fault of William Shakespeare Fandom.
They may just be a curse as bad as the birds. I shouldn't say too
much because some of my best friends are Shakies. I know they
prefer to be called "Shakers," but they are all Shakies to me. A
so-called Shaker is just a Shakie who wants to look down on other
Shakies. It isn't bad enough that they DO Shakespeare in the
Park, some of them actually try to transform the park.
In seems back around 1890 a drug manufacturer and Shakie named
Eugene Scheiffelin wanted to recreate the wonderful world of
Shakespeare right in New York's Central Park. Shakespeare talks a
lot about birds and particularly singing birds. You know, "where
late the sweet birds sang." That sort of thing. Scheiffelin
decided that he wanted to turn New York City into a little
Shakespearean paradise. He was planning to make it some Avon on
the Hudson. He decided it would be really groovy if we had all
the varieties of singing birds that Shakespeare knew right here in
New York City.
Well, there it was in Henry IV, Part 1, Act I, Scene III.
Hotspur says:
He said he would not ransom Mortimer;
Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer;
But I will find him when he lies asleep,
And in his ear I'll holla Mortimer!
Nay,
I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but Mortimer, and give it him,
To keep his anger still in motion.
That is it. That is the only place that Shakespeare mentions
starlings. It was a stupid prank in the play suggested by the
aptly-named Hotspur, but Scheiffelin topped it with into a more
stupid one. If Shakespeare knew of starlings, we needed them in
Central Park. People need to be able to see starlings. So
Scheiffelin brought sixty on the little monsters from Europe and
released them in Central Park. We lucked out and they died out.
(I hate to put it that way. I like birds. But they did not
belong here.) Undaunted Scheiffelin brought over forty more
starlings and released them in the park. That was it. Thanks a
lot, Mr. Scheiffelin. Thank you, Mr. Shakespeare. Hotspur, you
are a stupid clot.
Starlings eat just about anything they can put their stupid beaks
around. They nest in all sort of places in all kinds of
different habitats from tropical to frigid. They swarm in
numbers that make them look more like wasps from a hive traveling
in flocks numbering in the thousands. There are about
200,000,000 of them in the United States. They get these numbers
by fast breeding and pushing other birds out of the habitats they
want. They are carriers of histoplasmosis and other diseases.
If any animal deserves the nickname "flying rats," it is
Starlings.
If there are more fans of Shakespeare out there, may I suggest a
trip to Stratford on Avon in England. It is a delightful trip.
Do that rather than bringing Shakespeare's birds to the United
States. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE LAST MIMZY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: A box of toys from the future transforms a young brother
and sister into something beyond human. Only one or two ideas
were taken from the Lewis Padgett story "Mimsy Were the
Borogroves," supposedly the source of the story. The film
becomes a sort of low-budget variation on E.T. with a lackluster
rag-doll bunny standing in for E.T. The film may work better on
the small screen than in theaters. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
Lewis Padgett was a pen name used by the husband-and-wife writing
team of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore. Though both were noted
science fiction writers in their own right, together they created
the third writer Padgett. In 1943 they published what would
prove to be one of their most popular stories "Mimsy Were the
Borogroves". In that story two contemporary children discover a
box of educational toys from the far future. These toys are far
beyond their contemporary technology. There is an abacus with
beads on wires that seemingly go into other dimensions and a doll
that teaches internal anatomy. But the toys also modify the
children's thought patterns to something alien. Most of the
story is a conversation by adults on how the child's mind works
and how alien it can be to the adult mind. The Lewis Carroll
poem referred to in the title is used as an example of the result
of inscrutable alien thinking. The written story is really seen
from the point of view of adults and the intended reading
audience is adult. Robert Shaye, usually a film producer, has
made a children's film loosely based on this story.
One or two of the original ideas made it into Robert Shaye's film
adaptation of the story, THE LAST MIMZY. The point of view
mostly moves to the children who are given special powers by the
toys in a mystical manner. In the adaptation, the slightly
understandable educational toys are turned into what are
basically tools of magic. One of which is what appears on the
surface to be a rabbit rag doll named Mimzy. Another toy is a
collection of rocks that obey mental commands. Chris O'Neil and
Rhiannon Leigh Wryn play Noah and Emma Wilder, brother and sister
who on a vacation in the Seattle area find a box with mysterious
toys that we have been told has been sent back from the far
future. It is not entirely clear how these toys are educational,
but the effects soon are obvious. Noah finds he has the ability
to control spiders with sound and uses it to create a nifty
science fair project, perhaps worthy of a Nobel Prize. Emma
finds she has telekinetic powers over rocks from the box. And
she gets the rabbit doll Mimzy who talks to her in funny sounds,
but which has in phenomenal fund of knowledge. Soon adults get
involved. Not long afterward the government finds out that
something strange is going on and moves in to investigate.
James V. Hart and Carol Skilken are credited with reworking the
Padgett story so it could be filmed, with Bruce Joel Rubin and
Toby Emmerich writing the screenplay from that story. Rubin
wrote JACOB'S LADDER, GHOST, and a personal favorite of mine--at
least the first two thirds of it--BRAINSTORM. Toby Emmerich
wrote a reasonably good science fiction film, FREQUENCY. That is
writing talent, but the story is just a little too much like E.T.
THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL on a pinchpenny special-effects budget.
The rag doll bunny Mimzy just does not have enough personality to
really make the audience care for her (him?). The film also
takes a turn for some New Age mysticism that complicates the
story line but adds little.
The changing of the children, which in the story was at least
distressing, is handled in the film as if it is magical and
wonderful. The story does have some charm, and if the characters
are not fully three-dimensional, they are at least more than one-
dimensional. Of particular note is a somewhat overweight
babysitter. Now usually (and all too often) such a character
would be used for a little comic relief. In this film she
endearingly talks to Emma like an equal and is presented
positively. A Homeland Security official (played by Michael
Clarke Duncan in an ill-fitting suit) may not seem to adults like
he is completely competent, but he also seems to have his decent
side. The bewildered parents are played by Joely Richardson (of
"Nip/Tuck") and Timothy Hutton.
With only a light whiff of the original story this film should be
enjoyable enough for children, but will perhaps be not quite
enough to enthuse their parents. This is more a children's film
than a family film. I rate THE LAST MINZY a +1 on the -4 to +4
scale or 6/10.
A list of sources for the original story can be found at:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?189840
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0768212/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: 300 (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This film shows us why they did not let Robert E. Howard
write history books and why they did not allow Frank Frazetta to
illustrate them. This is a macho, violent, and very bloody re-
telling of the previously-true story of the Battle of
Thermopylae. It is overblown with hyperbole that needed computer
animation to visualize. This is actually a very bad telling of
the story, but it is just the kind of thing to get some of the
teenage audience interested in history. Rating: high +1 (-4 to
+4) or 6/10
What the Battle of the Alamo was for Texas history the Battle of
Thermopylae was for ancient Greece. This was a time when there
was just barely was a Greece. It was more a collection of city-
states constantly at war with each other. Meanwhile in Persia,
King Xerxes had inherited the Persian Empire from his father.
Some of his holdings were in what is now called Turkey and the
Athenians had captured and burned Sardis, part of the empire.
Xerxes swore revenge and wanted to add Greece to his holdings.
He brought what was then the largest army that had ever existed
and invaded Greece. Suddenly the warring city-states of Greece
had a common enemy. But they did not have the unity to fight it
together.
Sparta was the most warlike of the states. The King of Sparta
was Leonidas. He took his personal guard of 300 soldiers and
decided to face the Persians at the only place where that was
possible. Whoever entered Greece had to pass through the natural
bottleneck at Thermopylae. There cliffs of stone almost fell off
into the sea. There was a narrow pass between rock and water.
(That is not how they showed it in the film.) With a team of
three hundred Spartans blocking the pass (and a few thousand
other defenders from other cities like Thespiae who usually are
not mentioned) the Persians could not proceed. They would have
to kill the 300 men blocking their way. But the Spartans were
probably the best fighting men in the world. Xerxes had quantity
but the Spartans had quality.
One of those great films I remember from my youth is Rudolph
Maté's THE 300 SPARTANS. In this film Richard Egan played the
mighty Leonidas. Probably inspired by the same film I saw, Frank
Miller and Lynn Varley adapted the story of the battle to graphic
novel form. Now a film has been made from the graphic novel and
along the line a very great deal has been changed. The story has
become a giant graphic novel for the screen. Somewhere along the
way the story seems to have been heavily influenced by stories of
Conan the Barbarian. Xerxes (played by Rodrigo Santoro) has
become a giant and a sorcerer and wears about three times too
much jewelry and far too many piercings. Leonidas is a barrel-
chested and bloody fighter (Gerard Butler looking in this a lot
like Brian Blessed).
The graphic adaptation combines animation and live-action, making
this a sort of a SIN CITY-STATE. The historian Herodotus, who
first told the story of the battle, no doubt exaggerated somewhat
to make it a better story, but even he would have been
dumbfounded to see the images so distorted for excessive dramatic
effect. For example Xerxes martials into the battle huge
elephants and a rhinoceros used like tanks. (I do not remember
anybody in history ever using a rhinoceros in battle.) The
treacherous Greek, Ephialtes, is reduced here to looking like
Quasimodo with a sword.
Because the filmmakers can completely control the images we see,
frequently scenes do not make sense. We see people leaving long
dramatic shadows on the floor of a temple, for example, with no
light source behind them. The script is amateurish and cribs
dialog from better films such as GOLDFINGER ("Choose your next
words carefully. They may be your last.") There are barrels of
blood spilled in this film and rolling heads. Director Zack
Snyder takes out all the stops including several he desperately
needed.
How does one rate a film like this? The history is terrible.
The visual images are done sloppily so that they do not make
sense. Little care was taken to avoid showing things like
smallpox vaccinations. What we have is a vulgar and over-
dramatic retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. But as vulgar
and over-dramatic retellings of history go, this one is not bad.
It is definitely a leader in the vulgar and over-dramatic
retellings of history field. It is an entertaining comic book
for the screen. It may lose points for inaccuracies, but it is
entertaining in a very-Grand Guignol sort of manner. And if I
had seen this film as a kid, I might have had much the same
reaction I have now as an adult. It would have been, "This can't
be history. This can't be what it was like. Now I want to read
about it and find out what it really was like and how much of
this is really true." Hey, bad history films can do some good.
I rate 300 a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Hey kid, do you want to read about some *real* heroes? This is
Herodotus on the Battle of Thermopylae. It is where the film 300
started: http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Herother.html
One historian's take on the errors:
http://www.thestar.com/artsentertainment/article/190493
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0416449/fullcredits
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Supernovae, and
Footballs (letters of comment by Dan Cox, Mike Glyer,
Gerald S. Williams, and Peter Rubinstein)
Several people wrote in response to Mark's comments on the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in the 03/16/07 issue of the MT
VOID, and in particular on whether obseving a supernova or a
football changes the supernova or football.
Dan Cox gives a historical perspective:
Tycho's supernova was approximately 7,500 light years from Earth
(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020912.html). Remember, Tycho
did his observations without a telescope.
He did build instruments that let him measure parallax of various
objects, better than it had been measured to date. Parallax is
how an object appears to be in a different position (relative to
some background) when observed from different locations. He
measured the parallax of a particular comet, and determined that
it was further than the moon. Prior to that atmospheric gas was
a candidate explanation for comets. He measured the parallax of
the 1572 supernova. That is, he observed that whatever parallax
it had was too small for his instruments to observe. He got
similar results trying to measure parallax for other stars. This
led him to conclude that either (1) Copernicus was wrong, and the
Earth was not revolving around the Sun, or (2) the stars were an
unbelievable distance away. The distance was in fact unbelievable
to Tycho, so he chose as his answer (1) the Earth was not
revolving around the Sun. (reference:
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/brahe.html).
Shakespeare may have remembered this supernova, as he refers to
something like it in Hamlet (see
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/34/).
Tycho's observations of Mars provided the data that Kepler used
to show that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse, and that the Sun
was at one focus of this ellipse. Eventually Isaac Newton derived
laws of gravity that explained elliptical orbits. [-dtc]
Mike Glyer writes, "This is a case where I am sympathetic with
the point you want to make, though not the analogy used to make
it. Here the 'something' that is being observed is the light
from the supernova which reached Tycho Brahe's eye, not the
supernova event itself." [-mg]
Mark responds, "And with observing the football isn't what you
are observing is the light from the football and not the football
itself? Visual observation is interacting with light and not the
object itself. Isn't the difference between observing the
football and the supernova is a question of degree (in this case
of distance) and not of difference of character. In fact the
football need not even still be in existence the instant it is
observed, though it would have to go out of existence in a very,
very small fraction of a second earlier, say something less than
40 ft/C, which is a very small interval of time." [-mrl]
Mike responds to Mark, "Then I suppose the light-from-the-football
and the light-from-the-supernova have the identical deficiency as
exemplars of the uncertainty principle. Neither observation
requires a physical interaction with the event. In fact, while
it's true that my grasp of theoretical physics isn't a lot better
than one of my ancestors wearing an animal skin and banging two
rocks together, the Wikipedia would lead me to believe we're both
talking about something else--'...observer effect refers to
changes that the act of observing will make on the phenomenon
being observed. For example, for us to 'see' an electron, a photon
must first interact with it, and this interaction will change the
path of that electron.' True? Not true?" [-mg]
Mark answers, "Yes, and that was my point. I think you and I
would say we observe the football. We can observe some things
without affecting them, contrary to popular philosophy. We can
observe things like supernovae and footballs in flight. We cannot
observe individual electrons without affecting them, perhaps.
There are limits to observability, but the people who think that
Heisenberg said that you can observe nothing without affecting it
are misusing Heisenberg's principle. Now perhaps it is true that
if we need to illuminate something (like an electron) in order to
observe it then we can illuminate nothing without affecting it.
But things you would see without taking any action but observation
you have not affected." [-mrl]
Jerry Williams suggests, "Perhaps SN1572/Tycho's Nova was merely
in a superposition of states along with Schrodinger's Cat? :-)
Seriously, quantum communication methods rely on this type of
back-and-forth-through-time operation. As long as there were
no other previous observable effects, there's no violation of
causality. Of course, it would be a bit of a leap to say that
everything that's unknown is really in some form of quantum
superposition, but it does make for some interesting thought
experiments." [-gsw]
And Pete Rubinstein writes:
However, a remarkable result follows from a variation of the
double-slit experiment, in which detectors are placed in each of
the two slits, in an attempt to determine which slit the photon
passes through on its way to the screen. Placing a detector even
in just one of the slits will result in the disappearance of the
interference pattern. The detection of a photon involves a
physical interaction between the photon and the detector of the
sort that physically changes the detector. (If nothing changed
in the detector, it would not detect anything.) If two photons
of the same frequency were emitted at the same time they would be
coherent. If they went through two unobstructed slits then they
would remain coherent and arriving at the screen at the same time
but laterally displaced from each other they would exhibit
interference. However, if one or both of them were to encounter
a detector, then they would fall out of step with each other,
that is, they would decohere. They would then arrive at the
screen at slightly different times and could not interfere
because the first to arrive would have already interacted with
the screen before the second got there. If only one photon is
involved, it must be detected at one or the other detector, and
its continued path goes forward only from the slit where it was
detected.
The Copenhagen interpretation posits the existence of probability
waves which describe the likelihood of finding the particle at a
given location. Until the particle is detected at any location
along this probability wave, it effectively exists at every
point. Thus, when the particle could be passing through either
of the two slits, it will actually pass through both, and so an
interference pattern results. But if the particle is detected at
one of the two slits, then it can no longer be passing through
both—its presence must become manifested at one or the other, and
so no interference pattern appears.
So, until you observe the football, it's actually everywhere!
When you observe it, it is restricted to occupying the space
where you have observed it. This also accounts for my favorite
team always losing when I watch! [-pir]
Mark responds, "I can't claim I follow all of that, but you are
describing a much deeper subatomic phenomenon than the original
examined by Heisenberg. It is difficult for me to accept
physical universe where behavior is different based on whether
the activity is observed or not. In the case of the supernova
and the football you are doing nothing to perturb the phenomenon
and just observing. That is only intercepting and interpreting
the photons coming off of the football. I don't think that
Heisenberg ever implied that affected the football itself. In
the experiment that you cite there is considerably more
interference (no pun intended)." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Puzzle Answer (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
In response to Evelyn's comments on A HAIRCUT IN HORSE TOWN in the
03/16/07 issue of the MT VOID, David Goldfarb writes:
You knew that when you printed the puzzle, you were going to get
people writing in to answer it, right?
[The puzzle was:] "You have fifty black balls, fifty white balls,
and two boxes. You are allowed to distribute the balls between
the two boxes any way you want. Then the boxes are shuffled. You
then >pick a box, and (without looking) a ball out of that book.
Is >there any way to improve your odds of choosing a black ball to
more than 50%?"
Sure. Put one black ball in one box, and all the rest of the
balls in the other. That gives you a 50% chance of a 100% chance
of getting black, and a 50% chance of a 49.5% of getting black,
raising your overall odds to almost 75%. (To be precise,
148/198.) [-dg]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
INVERTED WORLD by Christopher Priest (ISBN unknown) is an older
novel; it was written in 1974. Yet it displays the same complex
structure and (possibly) unreliable narrator that his later
novels such as THE AFFIRMATION (1981), THE GLAMOUR (1984), THE
QUIET WOMAN (1990), THE PRESTIGE (1996), and THE SEPARATION
(2003). Trying to discuss it is impossible without giving some
spoilers, so if you want to be surprised by the turns and
revelations, read no more of my comments on the book.
Helward Mann lives in City Earth, apparently an enclosed city
that moves along a track which is picked up from behind the City
and re-laid in front of it. Time is measured in distance (the
narration begins "I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty
miles"), but there is more to it than just a different metric, as
Mann discovers when he is sent on a mission "Down Past" (and
later, "Up Future"). There is the question of *why* the City
needs to keep moving, and a host of other mysteries. One
reviewer compared this to Hal Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY
(ISBN-10 0-575-07708-5, ISBN-13 978-0-575-07708-9) in its basis
in hard science (physics) as the nature of the "sense of wonder".
I found myself reminded of "Into Darkness" by Greg Egan (in
AXIOMATIC, ISBN-10 0-061-05265-5, ISBN-13 978-0-061-05265-1),
which it's emphasis on strange warpings of space and time. My
one objection would be that Priest seems to assume, if not a
Lamarckian view, then at least some notion of the exterior
environment affecting future generations in a very unlikely way.
He also seems to postulate that subjective views can in some
sense affect objective reality, or perhaps more precisely, that
two observers in the same frame of reference can perceive
physical realities such as light and gravity very differently
from each other. This may be a hint of things to come in
Priest's future novels, full of differences in perception,
unreliable narrators, and other disorienting elements. Highly
recommended.
BLACK COFFEE by Agatha Christie and Charles Osborne (ISBN-10
0-312-97007-2, ISBN-13 978-0-312-97007-9) is, like THE UNEXPECTED
GUEST, a novel expanded by Osborne from a play by Christie. As
with that book, this is shorter, more straightforward, and more
predictable than novels actually written by Christie. If you're
looking for a quick read, though, it will do the trick. (If you
wonder why I am reading these, I am trying to catch up on all the
Christies I have not read. I think I have read all her works
written under her own name except for the collections PROBLEM AT
POLLENSA BAY and WHILE THE LIGHT LASTS, and two stories from THE
LISTERDALE MYSTERY.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The silliest woman can manage a clever man;
but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
-- Rudyard Kipling Plain Tales from the Hills