Mission

Yes, I am very upset by the physics disclosure conspiracy in this country. "We have to do something immediately!" "Harumph, Harumph, Harumph!" "I didn't get a harumph outta that guy!" "Give the Governor a harumph!" "Harumph harumph!" "You watch your ass..." The guy's probably upset because he couldn't understand the books he read. You physics folks are disguising what you know in a thicket of mathematical equations. "Mongo only pawn in game of life."

Deal. Just to warn you: I primarily stick to single malt scotch, cognac and wine. (I'll bet you Ps never wake up in the middle of the night trying to integrate your bedsheets. I don't even read my Chaos books after 5pm, they just keep me awake late turning ideas over and over.)

I believe (bicamerally) that we are each unique, bringing strengths and weaknesses to each situation at which we arrive. These strengths/weaknesses (for they're opposite sides of the same coin) are either genetic or they're not. They're either learned or they're not. The experts argue both sides with magnificent eloquence. My mind does not rest until I've settled on something. It can keep me up at night. I can't explain it any further than that. It's mystical.

(shrug) Been like that for as long as I can remember: make order from chaos. I knew the cat thing was wrong. I'm looking to closely at the model. Intuitively it does not make sense to me, but I respect Feynman as an expert and will do my best to keep up with him. As for NPR...you get what you pay for.

Better than most people, I suspect. At least I reach of level of completion where I am content to move on to the next creative venture. Now for the obverse point: Ps help Js to break out of their staid, hidebound ruts. NTPs and NTJs connect on the (highly) theoretical level as Thinking and iNtuitive types, where most types just roll their eyes. Like this. So here we have the many minds theory. Now that, to borrow a phrase, "in the end, it is just a model. Not the real thing." I don't like it, personally. There's no way to prove it's even true if I understand it correctly. The problem with Schrödinger's mangy cat is that it is a deterministic event: the damned thing is either dead or it's not. It's only indeterminate in the observer's mind. This "viewer affects the results at the quantum level" thing sounds awfully bizarre to poor old Mission. It has given way in several cases to what appears to me to be mysticism. I have heard religious maunderings where the speaker tries to coopt quantum mechanics as proof God is at work and man cannot control his destiny, etc. I wonder if God created us to amuse him - "Look at what they've come up with this time!" Duchess (if she reads any of this tripe) may take me to task on these points because my understanding of Quantum Mechanics is pretty neanderthal and hers is not. I am awaiting Feynman's tapes on Basic QM (among several other tapes) with the optimistic hope that I will be able to understand enough of them. However it did lead me to the phrase "quantum decoherence" which I love. It basically means that quantum mechanical behavior becomes simple system behavior. Or the indeterminate is determined to become determinate. BTW, chaotic systems are examples of how order becomes chaotic, which contains pockets of order that become chaotic, which contains pockets of order that become chaotic, which... The beaches at Nevis were quite nice when I was last there. Several are practically deserted.

Kung Fu Hustle is one of my personal favorites. All the sensibilities of a WB cartoon combined with a Bruce Lee movie. "Number one killers. Expensive, yes, but worth every penny!" "No! Number one is the Beast, the world's top killer. He was so dedicated to kung fu, he went crazy. I heard he's now in an asylum." "So you're the top killers now." "Strictly speaking, we're just musicians." (From Kung Fu Hustle, not for guessing.)

Say, I started that offshoot topic, didn't I? See, Ps have a more developed ability to learn for the sake of learning. Js tend to search for purpose in everything. I am in INTJ, very strongly typed all the way across the spectrum. But I can also make the test come out however I like it to as well. Still, before I understood it well enough to do that, I took it and came out strongly typed. NTPs and NTJs often make for good pairings in that the Ps create all this marvelous stuff and then move along to the next thing. When paired with a J, the Js are good at ideating with the NTP and then will apply the idea - NTJs can help NTPs to focus. Or so I read.

Well...then...um...that's what they're good for! You know, I seem to remember reading something about that in Feynman's bio. Oh boy. I may have a hard time with those Feynman tapes...we shall see. Maybe now that I'm interested I shall thank my long gone prof. Perhaps I should go back and re-read chapters 2 & 3 of my Intro to Comm Theory book. (Nothing tastier than crow, now, is there? ) John, I'll bet you're an I or E NTP.

You'd be amazed at how closely those two things can align. Simply amazed. (At least he didn't switch from math at the eleventh hour and get his doctorate in Electrical Engineering. I had a professor for Communication Theory who did that. We spent the whole class examining proofs of LaPlace and Fourier transforms. What a wasted class! Who the hell cares about the proofs of Fourier transforms? (Not me. ) I mean, what are they really good for?). My ex-wife (a math major with an MBA) wanted me to take a class in topology. She thought I'd like it, but I couldn't figure out what I'd do with it. In retrospect, she was probably right. Topology is quite interesting and has applications to the things I'm reading about.

Chistopher Lee was in one of the all-time bestest and most wunnerfullist movies: Gremlins II: The New Batch. The man is simply amazing. He has a career longer than a gaggle of your average stars combined. (Interesting that he could not be identified almost immediately. He's quite distinctive looking.)

Dogma - death of free will. Yet we cling to it so. What's interesting about chaos theory is that it does describe certain real world systems quite well. The human nervous sytem. The beating of the heart and the irregular beating of the diseased heart. Smoke dissipating in the air. The coastline of England (that might interest you, John). Cloud patterns. It's better than most theories - in fact it flies in the face of many systems where most things are held constant or ignored due to their non-linear nature (noise in electronics, friction in pendulum systems, etc.) At it's heart it is just another theory, but there is more realism imbedded than usual. Complex systems are fascinating. I used to write off the complexity as irrelevant, just as we were taught in Physics and Engineering classes, but Chaos Theory focuses on them. The question (to me) becomes: is there a mathematical system that can describe the workings of our minds? Or shall we give up and ascribe it to some mystical process (and attribute it to some god or God or modern substitute for g(G)od? I have more tripe to peddle on this topic, but I submitted it to batch this weekend and am awaiting results. What does this mean? I like to think I am somewhat open to new ideas. You've just got to prove they have value. If you like Nightingale's ideas, check out his processionary caterpiller essay, John. My basic problem with infinite realities is that you alone have googleplex of decisions to make, literally thousands each day ("Yes, the Idea Man! What're his hopes and dreams, his desires and aspirations? Does he think all the time or does he set aside a certain portion of the day? How tall is he and what's his shoe size? Where does he sleep and what does he eat for breakfast? Does he put jam on his toast or doesn't he put jam on his toast, and if not why not and since when?"). Each decision you make would reset all the decisions you will make, leading to an almost infinitude of other decisions branching off from each decision you make, producing an infinitude of decisions for you alone! Multiply that all the people that have, do and will exist and it's mind boggling. Plus there are interactive decisions that will affect other people leading to an increasingly complex branchings of decisions. Where the hell are all these alternate realities? ("You're not thinking fourth dimensionally!" "Yeah, I know, I got a real problem with that.") It doesn't seem logical to me. Perhaps this is why you think I have a "tight" mind.

I went to rent it last night on Duchess' recommendation (she's proven to be a very good barometer of my movie tastes so far - loved The Transporter - it would never have occurred to me to use bike pedals in quite that way...). However, the movie rental place didn't have it. So I continued wiring plugs in my bedroom instead of watching a movie. I'll try Walletbuster when I get another opportunity.

If blackjohn and I are involved in a thread, it's apt to devolve into philosophy. BTW, this is the greatest thread ever invented. You're never off topic, even when it turns into a chat thread. Thanks, Patrick!

I probably won't know much more than I know now about it. My family reunites (my brother and two sisters are scattered all over the country) once a year to go on a monstrosity of a family vacation - which is WDW this year. As it happened, there is an AutoCad convention right after TG in Orlando and I'm staying for that as well. I'll pm you come mid-November and see if we can arrange something. Maybe we could meet at Pleasure Island? (Er, I don't quite mean that like it reads. ) Perhaps Hurricane could make it too. (We could argue politics. )

Oops! Inside joke (sort of). It's all explained in this thread.

I'll be at WDW and thereabouts the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through December 1st. It would be fun to hook up with you locals if you're going to be around at that time. (I really want to see Pleasure Island - I hear it's supposed to be a Disney rendition of Key West.)

You know, I've been meaning to bring that up. What does that mean? (Even chaos theory can't explain it.)

Sophia, you do realize that many of the WB cartoons were specifically making fun of Disney's dopier entries? Chee! I did forget that bit, John. I guess I'll have to watch it another hundred times until I get it right.

*Sigh* I really want an iPod. I could put all my movie scores on it and torture people by playing them through my car stereo using that broadcasting attachment.

"Cannnn't you see that...I'm...much...sweet-er? Youuuuuuuu are my type of guyyyyyyy. Let me straighten your tie and...I...shall dance...for you."

The ultimate Bugs Bunny cartoon (for me) is The Rabbit of Seville where Bugs and Elmer joust (physically, musically and otherwise) over the Barber of Seville set. "Yes, you're next! You'rrrre so next!" Sure, What's Opera, Doc? is a Classic and all, but for sheer comedy, you can't beat Rabbit of Seville. Second is Bully for Bugs where Bugs, having missed the left turn at Albuquerque, takes on one of his largest (and dumbest) foes. "What an imbezel! What an ultramaroon!" Eddie Selzer (head of the cartoon studio at the time) upon seeing a sketch of a bull on Jones desk told Jones and writer Michael Maltese something like, "No cartoons about bull fights! There's nothing funny about bull fights!" Of course, this lead Jones and Maltese to create this hilarious cartoon. Chuck Jones is one of my all-time favoritist heroes.

mst3k = Mystery Science Theatre 3000 If you've never seen one, make it a point to rent one. They're hilariously absurd!

Here's a photo of me in my spider cap on a dive boat on the Great Barrier Reef looking extraordinarily stupid: (I'm doing "fan hands" which was a running scuba joke invented by three idiots on the trip. )

Captain Winslow, this site has a whole forum devoted to the Key West Pirates festival. Check it out here. I was there once (2001 I think), but I missed the bulk of the festivities. I got a nice Key West Pirate Festival 2001 cap - which I lost in the outback in Australia. Easy come, easy go. I bought an outback redback spider cap to replace it. (I'm not being very helpful here, am I?) Who doesn't like Jimmy Buffett? If you think you don't like him, you've got to go to one of his shows; you will instantly start liking him, I think.

Mad Magazine and Warner Brothers Cartoons had a major impact on my formulative years. (I think that explains a lot.) ________________ "No, no, no, no! Not the wed one! Don't ever push the wed one!"