Fallen

Fallen from Sascha Geddert on Vimeo.

One of my favorite little videos in a long time, that one.  As someone else put it, "When people ask me how I can be at peace without belief in god or an afterlife, now I can just show them Fallen and save myself a lot of time and effort."  I love the way the meteor shakes his little butt with anticipation when he first learns to have fun with his situation, just like Finn wiggles his butt before attacking a fake rattle-mouse on the floor.

I've been reading a lot of physics, lately, particularly quantum mechanics and the various interpretations.  The basic theory makes sense, but the interpretations seem to be stretching credulity.  For example, there's the Many Worlds interpretation of QM, which says that every time there's a quantum decision to be made, the universe splits in two.  Apparently Stephen Hawking believes in that one.

And then there's the Copenhagen Interpretation, which says that faster than light signaling is possible between entangled particles.  Niels Bohr (my personal hero) believed that one; in fact, he was its primary author.

I dunno, I think trying to interpret beyond what the simple equations are telling you is probably a futile exercise, unless there is something that you can actually experimentally verify, and for now there's nothing like that.  There is something to be said for not fighting the situation that you're in.

Godless Heathens Muster

Pharyngula readers meetup, Pike Brewery, Seattle, 7/27/2010

So, we ended up heading down to Seattle to meet PZ Meyers, principal over at pharyngula, and a fine time was had by all.  PZ is the fella in the green shirt on the left, about 2nd or 3rd from the far end of the table.  He is much the way I expected him to be: gracious and down to earth, but clearly nobody's fool.  The rest of the folks were an amusing mix of overeducated scientists (an epidemiologist sat across from me, and a university professor beside me), geeks & nerds, free spirited near-hippies, and young radicals with agendas.  In short, my kinda people.  And everyone was friendly and garrulous.  I quickly got locked into a fascinating conversation with a biology grad student, the epidemiologist, and the professor, and the four of us ended up talking animatedly for two and a half hours.  Partway through, PZ came around and introduced himself, and stayed to chat for 30 minutes or so, before moving on around the table to talk to the rest.  Also about that time, a UW undergraduate appeared who had the biggest smile I think I've ever seen on a human being that was not the result of Photoshop manipulation, and he turned out to be an extremely thoughtful and good-natured guy who jumped right in to the debate over how to define ourselves ("atheist? nontheist?  empiricist? agnostic?").  

All in all, a very good evening, and it makes me want to find a local skeptics group.  Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking and didn't get a picture of the Lyndon LaRouche supporters outside the pub holding signs of the president and shouting "IMPEACH THE ONE!".... sigh.  I love visiting Seattle.  The Crazy™ there is palpable.  Here in Bellingham the best that we can really muster is the guy looking like a santa-in-flannel who walks up and down Railroad Ave. with an eye patch and a parrot on his shoulder, but that's just endearing, not truly loony.

In the end, we all exchanged business cards with emails and phone numbers, and I might actually keep in touch with some of these folks, since they all actually live within a couple hours' drive of me.

I will end with a shout-out to the wait staff at the Pike Brewery: those folks were awesome.  Professional, fast, courteous, and cheery, even after it got FRICKIN' CROWDED.  I can't recommend the beer in general (although the stout is passable and the Monk's Uncle Trippel is, as I mentioned, stellar), but the wait staff make it a worthy destination.