Re: [FRIAM] How do forces work?
Yes, I definitely wanted Bruce's post. *-- Russ Abbott* *_* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ * vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach *_* On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Owen Densmore o...@backspaces.net wrote: On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Stephen Guerin stephen.gue...@redfish.com wrote: Aya, it turns out Bruce recently unsubscribed from FRIAM. I hope you guys on the list are happy with your signal to noise ratio ;-)Just kidding...keep it up. OT, but: I think we failed a test. Maybe we should split the list? Or use wedtech exclusively for physics, programming, etc? I now simply don't know who is on what list, nor what their interests are. I'm sure Russ wanted Bruce's post, right? -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
[FRIAM] Splitting? was Re: How do forces work?
Some (semi-serious) suggestions around how to split the list (use subgroups): Philosophy Physics of Quanta and the Continuum Phunny stuff Phuture trends in sociology/crowd sourcing/etc. Sophtware oh and... Complexity and ABM Seems neither Mailman (the current listserv) nor Google Groups support subgroups tho'. FWIW, Lsoft's Listserve might, see http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/maestro/4.0/htmlhelp/data%20administrator/ClassicLSListTargetGroups.html - where they are called Target Groups. Robert C On 4/20/13 10:47 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Stephen Guerin stephen.gue...@redfish.com mailto:stephen.gue...@redfish.comwrote: Aya, it turns out Bruce recently unsubscribed from FRIAM. I hope you guys on the list are happy with your signal to noise ratio ;-) Just kidding...keep it up. OT, but: I think we failed a test. Maybe we should split the list? Or use wedtech exclusively for physics, programming, etc? I now simply don't know who is on what list, nor what their interests are. I'm sure Russ wanted Bruce's post, right? -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
[FRIAM] PHPLint
Quick question... Does anyone have any experience/success compiling and running PHPLint http://www.icosaedro.it/phplint/index.html on Mac OSX (Mountain Lion)? Are there alternatives? Thanks Robert C FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] How do forces work?
When I asked AskA{Mathematician,
Physicist}http://www.askamathematician.com/ the
force question, here's the answer I got -- which includes a pointer to the
Feynman video mentioned earlier.
In quantum field theory we talk about forces being conveyed by force
carriers. Photons for the Electromagnetic force, W+, W-, and Z bosons for
the Nuclear Weak force, and Gluons for the Nuclear Strong force. There's
also a theoretical particle called the Graviton for gravity, but there
are a lot of issues with that.
As for the more fundamental question of how those carriers do anything at
all, or why they interact with some particles but not others (e.g., photons
only interact with charged particles), there unfortunately may never be a
particularly good answer for that.
There's a video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8 where
Feynman addresses (a little snarkily) this very problem.
*-- Russ Abbott*
*_*
*** Professor, Computer Science*
* California State University, Los Angeles*
* My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688*
* Google voice: 747-*999-5105
Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
* vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach
*_*
On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 11:31 PM, Russ Abbott russ.abb...@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, I definitely wanted Bruce's post.
*-- Russ Abbott*
*_*
*** Professor, Computer Science*
* California State University, Los Angeles*
* My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688*
* Google voice: 747-*999-5105
Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
* vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach
*_*
On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Owen Densmore o...@backspaces.netwrote:
On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Stephen Guerin
stephen.gue...@redfish.com wrote:
Aya, it turns out Bruce recently unsubscribed from FRIAM. I hope you
guys on the list are happy with your signal to noise ratio ;-)Just
kidding...keep it up.
OT, but: I think we failed a test. Maybe we should split the list? Or
use wedtech exclusively for physics, programming, etc?
I now simply don't know who is on what list, nor what their interests
are. I'm sure Russ wanted Bruce's post, right?
-- Owen
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] How do forces work?
S - I'd like to think Gil and I could take credit for running Bruce off with our Light/Dark Boson/Lepton nonsensery but I think he's hardier than that! Carry On! - S Aya, it turns out Bruce recently unsubscribed from FRIAM. I hope you guys on the list are happy with your signal to noise ratio ;-)Just kidding...keep it up. Anyway, Bruce, as I had hoped, had a nice response, albeit offlist. If you want to respond to this thread, please cc: Bruce. I copy his response below. //** Bruce Sherwood response offlist Feynman diagrams give one visualization of forces. In this picture, consider two electrons moving near each other. With a calculable probability, one of the electrons may emit a photon, the carrier of the electromagnetic interaction, and this electron recoils. The other electron absorbs the photon and recoils. At least for electric repulsion, this is a nice way to think about the interaction, but it has obvious problems for talking about attraction. The exchanged photon is a virtual photon which unlike unbound photons has mass. At the individual interaction vertices (emission event and absorption event) momentum and energy need not be conserved, but for the two-electron system momentum and energy are conserved. For the strong (nuclear) interaction, the interaction carrier is the gluon. It is thought that the gravitational interaction is carried by a gravitron but we have no direct evidence for this. The weak interaction is mediated by the W and Z bosons and is so similar to electromagnetism that one speaks of the electroweak interaction. A key example is neutron decay, and here is the story: http://matterandinteractions.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/neutron-decay/ Or, if you have an up-to-date browser and a graphics card with GPUs, here is a central animation from that article: http://www.glowscript.org/#/user/Bruce_Sherwood/folder/Pub/program/NeutronDecay On the other hand, the March 2013 issue of the American Journal of Physics has a very interesting and perhaps important article by Art Hobson on the modern (last few decades) perspective on quantum mechanics. Maybe this is familiar to you, but it wasn't to me. The basic idea he reviews is that everything is fields; there are no particles. Here is what seems to me a key paragraph in the conclusion: Thus Schrodinger's Psi(x,t) is a spatially extended field representing the probability amplitude for an electron (i.e., the electron-positron field) to interact at x rather than an amplitude for finding, upon measurement, a particle. In fact, the field Psi(x,t) is the so-called particle. Fields are all there is. There is a popular science book by Rodney Brooks on the subject: At amazon.com http://amazon.com search for Fields of Color: The theory that escaped Einstein. Brooks was a student of Schwinger, a major contributor to quantum field theory. Here are related references, dug out by Stephen: http://physics.uark.edu/Hobson/pubs/05.03.AJP.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4616 http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/henry.hobson.pdf I've finished the Brooks book. It's not very well written and much of it is taken up with material that is familiar to physicists (but needs to be there for the nonphysicist reader). The main message is however very clear. He feels that it is deeply unfortunate that the quantum field theory (QTF) developed especially by Schwinger has been way underappreciated by the physics community in general, and the Feynman emphasis on particles (and particle exchange) has had unfortunate consequences. He makes a convincing case that for several decades the big names (Weinberg, Wilczek, etc.) have all worked within the QTF framework. He stresses that wave-particle duality is a mistake which unnecessarily makes quantum phenomena more paradoxical than they need be. I checked with a powerful theorist colleague at NCSU who agrees with the basic thrust of these arguments, though he's not comfortable with the phrasing, There are no particles. He says that all reputable quantum field theory texts spend a lot of careful time defining what is meant by a particle in this context. Bruce P.S. The Kindle version of the Brooks book had badly mangled format, but a few days ago Amazon updated my copy so that it now looks good. **// Bruce Sherwood response offlist BTW, the book I recommended to Bruce was by Rodney A. Brooks. I was surprised he was writing on QFT and was excited as I assumed it would have a lucid explanation as he tends to write well. The book actually isn't as great as I had hoped. I had assumed it would be the same Rodney Brooks we know from the Alife/robotics world from MIT. Turns out there's another Rodney A. Brooks that was in Cambridge, MA with Schwinger who had a career at NIH and then retired to New Zealand. Oh well. --- -. . ..-. .. ... - .-- --- ..-. .. ... stephen.gue...@redfish.com 1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505 office: (505) 995-0206
Re: [FRIAM] How do forces work?
I know I am not qualified to join this discussion, but may I say just one thing? As we struggle with our data from our accelerators n' stuff, we bring to bear models from our experience . metaphors. The language of your discussion is full of such metaphors, and full, also, of expressions of pain that these metaphors are not only incomplete -- all metaphors are incomplete - but that they are incompletete in ways that are essential to the phenomena you are trying to account for. Now, it seems to me, that this conversation is like the conversation that would ensure if we were to see a unicorn drinking out of the fountain at St. Johns, but did not have the mythology of unicorns, or even the word, unicorn, to bring to bear. We would instantly start to apply incomplete models. It's a whacking great horse! One of us would say. Yeah, but, it's got a narwhale tooth sticking out of its forehead. Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Sunday, April 21, 2013 1:40 PM To: stephen.gue...@redfish.com; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How do forces work? S - I'd like to think Gil and I could take credit for running Bruce off with our Light/Dark Boson/Lepton nonsensery but I think he's hardier than that! Carry On! - S Aya, it turns out Bruce recently unsubscribed from FRIAM. I hope you guys on the list are happy with your signal to noise ratio ;-)Just kidding...keep it up. Anyway, Bruce, as I had hoped, had a nice response, albeit offlist. If you want to respond to this thread, please cc: Bruce. I copy his response below. //** Bruce Sherwood response offlist Feynman diagrams give one visualization of forces. In this picture, consider two electrons moving near each other. With a calculable probability, one of the electrons may emit a photon, the carrier of the electromagnetic interaction, and this electron recoils. The other electron absorbs the photon and recoils. At least for electric repulsion, this is a nice way to think about the interaction, but it has obvious problems for talking about attraction. The exchanged photon is a virtual photon which unlike unbound photons has mass. At the individual interaction vertices (emission event and absorption event) momentum and energy need not be conserved, but for the two-electron system momentum and energy are conserved. For the strong (nuclear) interaction, the interaction carrier is the gluon. It is thought that the gravitational interaction is carried by a gravitron but we have no direct evidence for this. The weak interaction is mediated by the W and Z bosons and is so similar to electromagnetism that one speaks of the electroweak interaction. A key example is neutron decay, and here is the story: http://matterandinteractions.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/neutron-decay/ Or, if you have an up-to-date browser and a graphics card with GPUs, here is a central animation from that article: http://www.glowscript.org/#/user/Bruce_Sherwood/folder/Pub/program/NeutronDe cay On the other hand, the March 2013 issue of the American Journal of Physics has a very interesting and perhaps important article by Art Hobson on the modern (last few decades) perspective on quantum mechanics. Maybe this is familiar to you, but it wasn't to me. The basic idea he reviews is that everything is fields; there are no particles. Here is what seems to me a key paragraph in the conclusion: Thus Schrodinger's Psi(x,t) is a spatially extended field representing the probability amplitude for an electron (i.e., the electron-positron field) to interact at x rather than an amplitude for finding, upon measurement, a particle. In fact, the field Psi(x,t) is the so-called particle. Fields are all there is. There is a popular science book by Rodney Brooks on the subject: At amazon.com search for Fields of Color: The theory that escaped Einstein. Brooks was a student of Schwinger, a major contributor to quantum field theory. Here are related references, dug out by Stephen: http://physics.uark.edu/Hobson/pubs/05.03.AJP.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4616 http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/henry.hobson.pdf I've finished the Brooks book. It's not very well written and much of it is taken up with material that is familiar to physicists (but needs to be there for the nonphysicist reader). The main message is however very clear. He feels that it is deeply unfortunate that the quantum field theory (QTF) developed especially by Schwinger has been way underappreciated by the physics community in general, and the Feynman emphasis on particles (and particle exchange) has had unfortunate consequences. He makes a convincing case that for several decades the big names (Weinberg, Wilczek, etc.) have all worked within the QTF framework. He stresses that wave-particle duality is a mistake which unnecessarily makes quantum phenomena more paradoxical than they need be. I checked with a powerful theorist
Re: [FRIAM] digital ethics
In relation to this, AFAIC, if it aint in open access, it aint visible. I can count on one hand the number of times in the last 10 years I've rooted around using my university's journal subscription to download the official journal copy of a paper. Usually, the stuff I am informed by is, in descending order a) in arXiv, b) in some other open access journal, c) a preprint (preferably electronic) that the author sent me, or found by means of a Google search. I have to be completely desparate to go though universities onlione subscription. I have never actually paid for a copy of an article, and at $35 a pop, doubt I ever will. As a consequence, ever since journals started asking me to sign over copyright, I insist that I retain a license to publish the articles in an open access preprint server, and on my on personal web server. This quite often involved striking out text, or adding text to the copyright transfer agreement, along with my signature. For the first few years I did this, there was no pushback (did the publishers ever read the returned copyright transfer agreement?), however once it had the effect of delaying the publication of a collection by about a month while their IP lawyers argued the toss. In the end, I got my license, and the publication went ahead with my contribution. More recently, I've found that the copyright transfer forms include explicit licensing back to the author of certain rights, such as posting on institutional or other eprint servers. I can't claim to have single-handedly reformed the academic publishing industry - I'm sure there must have others arguing their corner like me - but it must've helped. Back to the original topic - in today's world, having your article on arXiv is no guarantee it will be noticed by anybody, but if its not there, it's almost certain to be ignored. Cheers On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 03:31:48PM -0600, Owen Densmore wrote: Agreed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz Although I've found: - The recent revolution by scholars against paper tyranny hopeful - Many authors are posting their papers on their websites The ACM was one of the worst, making the Turing Awards for-pay On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 3:21 PM, Stephen Guerin stephen.gue...@redfish.comwrote: What about independent researchers not associated with a library system trying to browse academic papers (funded by taxpayers) held behind academic journal paywalls for $35/copy? -S --- -. . ..-. .. ... - .-- --- ..-. .. ... stephen.gue...@redfish.com 1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505 office: (505) 995-0206 tollfree: (888) 414-3855 mobile: (505) 577-5828 fax: (505) 819-5952 tw: @redfishgroup skype: redfishgroup gvoice: (505) 216-6226 redfish.com | simtable.com On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Edward Angel an...@cs.unm.edu wrote: Owen, As you know, I've never had any real objection to your position and I agree as to the lack of a reasonable modern distribution system. I do get upset when the conversation approaches the I think the price is too high so I'm justified in making an illegal copy. Ed __ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel On Apr 18, 2013, at 2:30 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: I too have had to build an ethics, so to speak. Books: For quite a while, I simply downloaded books to see if I wanted to buy them. I deleted the download and purchased the book if I liked the download. Also download books if I have the paper version. EBooks: Similar. Then came the problem of formats. For example, Amazon only provides kindle format (.mobi/.azw) while tech books provide three formats (.pdf, .mobi, .epub). I found myself downloading pdf versions of .azw's because the silly books referred to pages. Hopefully Az will finally come around, but until they do, and the book is not available in multiple formats, I'll download a pdf if need be. Almost all tech books are ebooks and on my iPad. Video: I downloaded old TV shows which were not available otherwise. Also, our net was DSL, so too slow for streaming, even youtube! With a new faster network, cable, we're looking at Amazon primarily, and have Az Prime so many videos are available free. We also have NetFlix streaming but don't seem to use it. We stopped NetFlix DVDs when they hit a 30% failure rate. Not sure about Hulu, don't use it now. We record, TiVo, a LOT of sports and cooking shows and re-runs on SciFi channel. Papers/Magazines: Thus far I have not payed for NYTimes. They let me read N a month, and I believe allow click-throughs to not count against the
