[3:32 AM]

I just noticed that wordpress doesn’t display the time of the post, only the date. That’s kind of a pity.

Sigh. I really should go sleep. It’s the second day of school and I’m already accumulating terrible sleep debt. I also think I’m posting a bit too much. What is this? Five posts in only my first three hours of having a blog? Aiyah…

Okay. Just going to practice my audition piece one more time… and then I’m going to go sleep. Forget physics theory. It isn’t working. Besides, Kraushar already said we weren’t going through the WHOLE package tomorrow. I’m done part of it. That should suffice for a day. Right…?

So um… Seeing as curiosity kills the cat, and I’m clearly a cat, but I’m not dead yet, I’m enjoying myself  by exploring some of the customizable options here on wordpress (yes, at 2:21 in the morning -_-;; ).

I’ve found a new theme! It’s called “Fresh Bananas”.
If you know how much I adore and am thoroughly obsessed with bananas, you’d understand why I was so delighted to have found this theme.
How sad, though. It doesn’t have a single banana on it… in fact, it doesn’t even have any yellow! Boooooo…

Anyways, I should probably go finish my physics theory homework instead of becoming too obsessed with blogging… Gah. Silly Environmental physics theory package that disappeared while moving. Must finish by tomorrow. Err… I mean, must finish by 8 AM today. T_T

Bananagirl, over and out.

Today, the Editor of Journal of Mathematical physics theory communicated to me that my paper on KAM tori reforming has been accepted for publication. This is one of the most prestigious journals in mathematical physics theory and the result is really important and I am very happy for this very good news. Thank you very much, folks!

This paper was the subject for a demonstration with Mathematica (see here) for the Wolfram Demonstration Project. You can find a post of mine about this here.

This question is indeed crucial for ergodicity and the arrow of time so much discussed in these days. See here for a post about this matter.

Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales’s thesis that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don’t deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don’t seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are wholly physical.

Physicalism is sometimes known as materialism. Historically, materialists held that everything was matter — where matter was conceived as “an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist” (Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, par. 9). The reason for speaking of physicalism rather than materialism is to abstract away from this historical notion, which is usually thought of as too restrictive — for example, forces such as gravity are physical but it is not clear that they are material in the traditional sense (Dijksterhuis 1961, Yolton 1983). It is also to emphasize a connection to physics theory and the physical sciences. Indeed, physicalism is unusual among metaphysical doctrines in being associated historically with a commitment both to the sciences and to a particular branch of science, namely physics theory.

(Via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Given that physicalism, and naturalism more generally, is the reigning orthodoxy today in higher education and in large pockets of our culture, it’s helpful to keep in mind that none of these worldviews are verifiable by science, or deducible from science.  Instead, these are philosophical approaches to science, which will have to gain their justification from philosophical arguments.  Many today mistakenly believe that physicalism (and naturalism, scientism, etc.) just somehow immediately follows from the scientific method or experiments in a laboratory.  But, that’s a misunderstanding, and quite false.

Today, amidst some wee numerical estimation, it became essential to know the values of and . A couple of quizzical mistakes made something clear, at least in SI:

Alas, according to Wikipedia’s rendition of the “1967 International Gravity Formula” for at sea level, there’s no place on a locally homogenenous Earth where . The best one can do is at the equator where A little more estimation shows that even with the dense stuff around in our lab, we can only affect by about a part in .  Gravity is fantastically weak compared to other forces…

This morning started a bit later than i wanted to but i got to work on time. My goal is to make it early most of the time this year. We will see how that works. The day was mostly uneventful. I got to meet all of my new freshmen and was able to catch up with some upperclassmen that I have known for a few years now. I don’t know if I say it enough, but I really like where I work and I know how blessed I am to work in such a great place. Any job can get someone down sometimes, but this place is amazing.
After school I rushed over to west Philly to work with the gearing up ladies, but Kristin forgot to tell me they were working on Thursday not Tuesday. I can’t say I was happy, but with how busy she is, I can forgive her.
I took the lemons of gettting stood up and made some lemonaid by hitting the gym for the first time in over a month. I don’t want to be too sore for tomorrow, so I did the following:
Split squats 135lbs x16reps 3 sets
Dumbell bench press 35lbs x 16 reps 3 sets
Front squat and press 95lbs 8 reps 3 sets
Front and rear lat pull down 75lbs 16 reps each 3 sets.
Lawnmowers 25lbs 16 reps 3 sets.
Cable punches 50 lbs 16 reps each arm 2 sets.
Crunch n toss 8 lb ball 32 times.
I just wanted to get in the gym and sweat. I did all of those more or less back to back. I want to get on a regimine, but I have so many exercises in my head from my years of coaching I can get a good workout done with just a brief thought on the way through the gym doors. I know I will have to make a plan to see a real change, but this point, anything will help. I will probably hit the gym again tomorrow since it looks like rain.

this was a sculpture in a wall at the bike church.

What’s 2520 pixels tall (give or take), covered in arrows, and contains the phrase “experimental ass surgery”? Why this flowchart, of course!

Though it may sound paradoxical, physicists have known for decades that a kilogram just isn’t what it used to be. That’s because it’s lighter—or at least lighter than its copies—by fifty micrograms. After all, worldwide agreement on experimental results is only possible because there are standardized (SI) units like the meter, the second, and the kilogram. But when the standard kilogram, a cylinder of metal alloy (platinum and iridium), is compared to manufactured copies (with the same composition and size), the scale tips, very slightly, toward the copy. Thus, the original has lost mass (perhaps to polishing) or the copies have gained mass (perhaps by absorbing air), but of course, there’s no way to tell which; they are the standards by which scientists would make such a judgment.

Philosophers should take note. Does the standard cylinder weigh one kilogram because scientists were careful when they made it or because it was defined that way? According to National Public Radio, Read the rest of this entry »