Never let Dr. Ostfeld make you dinner
Sep. 7th, 2004 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoySo today in philosophy, now that we'd finished most housekeeping issues and didn't have a half day, Dr. Grieco had us introduce ourselves. Something which, by the way, we never finished. So it got to Yelena, and she notes about how she tends to overanalyze things. "Ah. And what, exactly," says Dr. Grieco, "is to analyze?" And some suggestions are given; I think of saying "to break something down", noting that that's what it means etymologically (although really I only know that's what the "lyze" part means, I don't know about the "ana"), but I don't get around to saying it and eventually Dr. Grieco does say that it means to break something down, and I start nodding, because I'm expecting him to note the etymology. But he doesn't. But that's really not the point of this story. The point is, he says, to break something down, and someone else adds, and to put it back together again. And Dr. Grieco says, and hopefully to get what you originally started with.
And I say, "Or perhaps to get two copies of what you originally started with."
Now of course, when later recounting this story to Tom and Chris, at this point they started laughing, but in the class, everyone seems to take this seriously, as a comment about how sometimes you can copy something without destroying the original, and I just sort of stop listening at this point, I'm just thinking, wow.
I mean, I'm the only real math nerd in the class (Emily and Vlad certainly don't count), so I suppose I shouldn't have expected anyone to get it. But then I know I'd definitely told Mike about Banach-Tarski, so I would have thought he would have - I mean, Banach-Tarski isn't exactly the sort of thing you forget very soon.
...yeah. On to material science, where Dr. Ostfeld talked about glasses, and, what we care about for this entry, how they can shatter due to thermal shock or other reasons, and how different types of glass are more or less resistant to this. And he gives the example of making a turkey on the wrong sort of glass and taking it out of the oven only to find that the... whatever it is that's supporting it... shatters as you carry it to the table.
"I mean the real problem isn't that the turkey falls on the floor," he says. "You can probably cover that up. [See title of entry.] It's that now you've got glass all over, and in your turkey, and how are you going to explain that?" "It's seasoning!" someone shouts.
Dr. Ostfeld: "Now lead is a problem, because it kills you."
In other news, "blue" is not an element. Dr. Galitskiy continues to call me "Gary". He also refers to Choketsu as "Yuga".
And I definitely need to change my locker to the 1st-floor senior hallway, because unless I want to carry my lunchbox around all day (which is what I did today), I would have to go back and forth across the entire school *twice* every day due to my schedule of Nevard-lunch-Nevard.
The Jellyfish of Pass-Equivalence guards my locker. Ryan attempted to invade with the Euglena of Death-Pacifism, but the Jellyfish managed to untie it.
-Sniffnoy
POSTSCRIPT: You know, I just realized. Considering that apparently nobody knew what I was referring to, it's kind of strange that nobody asked what I *actually* meant.
--
"It's OK, BenZor. Windows isn't real. It's just a fairytale Linux users
use to scare their kids."
-NiffTuRNaL (bash.org)
And I say, "Or perhaps to get two copies of what you originally started with."
Now of course, when later recounting this story to Tom and Chris, at this point they started laughing, but in the class, everyone seems to take this seriously, as a comment about how sometimes you can copy something without destroying the original, and I just sort of stop listening at this point, I'm just thinking, wow.
I mean, I'm the only real math nerd in the class (Emily and Vlad certainly don't count), so I suppose I shouldn't have expected anyone to get it. But then I know I'd definitely told Mike about Banach-Tarski, so I would have thought he would have - I mean, Banach-Tarski isn't exactly the sort of thing you forget very soon.
...yeah. On to material science, where Dr. Ostfeld talked about glasses, and, what we care about for this entry, how they can shatter due to thermal shock or other reasons, and how different types of glass are more or less resistant to this. And he gives the example of making a turkey on the wrong sort of glass and taking it out of the oven only to find that the... whatever it is that's supporting it... shatters as you carry it to the table.
"I mean the real problem isn't that the turkey falls on the floor," he says. "You can probably cover that up. [See title of entry.] It's that now you've got glass all over, and in your turkey, and how are you going to explain that?" "It's seasoning!" someone shouts.
Dr. Ostfeld: "Now lead is a problem, because it kills you."
In other news, "blue" is not an element. Dr. Galitskiy continues to call me "Gary". He also refers to Choketsu as "Yuga".
And I definitely need to change my locker to the 1st-floor senior hallway, because unless I want to carry my lunchbox around all day (which is what I did today), I would have to go back and forth across the entire school *twice* every day due to my schedule of Nevard-lunch-Nevard.
The Jellyfish of Pass-Equivalence guards my locker. Ryan attempted to invade with the Euglena of Death-Pacifism, but the Jellyfish managed to untie it.
-Sniffnoy
POSTSCRIPT: You know, I just realized. Considering that apparently nobody knew what I was referring to, it's kind of strange that nobody asked what I *actually* meant.
--
"It's OK, BenZor. Windows isn't real. It's just a fairytale Linux users
use to scare their kids."
-NiffTuRNaL (bash.org)
no subject
Date: 2004-09-07 05:53 pm (UTC)So, there tend to be Russian and English versions of most names. Well, the russian version of "Harry" is pronounced "Gary." So, people with strong Russian accents will probably pronounce your name as "Gary."
The same idea, I presume, goes for people with strong X accents, for almost any language X.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-07 06:18 pm (UTC)pretty hot discussion though, even if we were operating from a weird beginning.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-07 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-07 06:39 pm (UTC)You may find that your off-the-wall "Harry-equite" statements are not out of the relm of Philosophy. Everything is taken` in consiteration, I find it funny that you had to find that out.
Wanna discuss on how to sepreate one original and get two copys of the original? :=D
no subject
Date: 2004-09-07 07:24 pm (UTC)In summary...
The Banach-Tarski Paradox states that it is possible to take a ball, a solid ball in 3-space, and cut it up into finitely many pieces (originally done with 6, but it can actually be done with only 5), and rearrange these pieces (using just rotations and translations, nothing weird)... to get *2* copies of the original ball. As in, each with the same volume as the original ball.
Now, this is not actually a paradox, it is just horribly, horribly, counterintuitive. As you might expect from something so counterintuitive (and nonconstructive; the theorem doesn't actually state *how* to do such a thing; well it does give a general way, but it's impossible to specify a specific way, TTBOMK), the proof relies on our good old nonconstructive friend the Axiom of Choice. Now, when Banach and Tarski first came up with their "paradox", they used it as a reason why they should get rid of the Axiom of Choice; they expected the reaction "Oh wow, this is really badness. We have to get rid of this axiom." Mathematicians being the perverse people they are, the reaction was instead "Oh wow, this is utter coolness! We have to keep this axiom!"
Now, you're cutting up a ball, rearranging the parts, putting them back together... the volume ought to be preserved, right? It shouldn't double. So where's the trick? It's not that you're cutting it up into infinitely many pieces, because you're only cutting it into 5 pieces. Nor are you doing anything weird to the pieces... the answer is that the pieces themselves are weird. Specifically, they are so weird that they don't have a volume. No, they don't have 0 volume, they simply do not have a volume. So it's perfectly OK that you can combine them to form things of two different volumes, because the laws of volume don't really apply to them. Now, it is of course impossible to do such a thing in the physical universe, not only because actual things are made of atoms and you can't pull extra atoms out of thin air (or rather, vacuum (which I suppose could be said to be *very* thin air)), but also because you could never make a knife that could ever actually cut an actual ball into the required pieces.