unforum

[Tenshi Akui]

Has anyone else been reading these papers?

[SLACKJAW]

I read the tortoise and heel one and the one about the universe being finite with no beginning or end. A lot of it was over my head, especially the second one. Anyone understand them enough to concisely explain them?

[phonon81]

New blog post....he's moved deeper in the forest and is feeling alone. Feels like something is coming. He also mentions something I don't remember/get: the kid with the damn wobble board again??

[faeryqueen21]

All I have to say is: Where can I get a phone like his? It takes pretty sweet pictures.

[Gregoriev]

[SLACKJAW]

De-stegging

[Tenshi Akui]

To answer the wobble bored thing. Post three

[Trustiva]

A wobble board is an instrument. It's a large wooden board and you shake it in the air so that it makes sounds. In ancient times they made "thunder" sounds with it in theatre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wobble_board

[jiodek]

I go to a well known US engineering/sci/tech uni, so I'll read them ASAP. For now, I'm at work, so I won't be able to get very far.

ETA: So, these papers aren't quite as dense or long as I'd expected. I've only briefly glanced at the Zeno and Discontinuity papers, but here's the gist of it:
The paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise is drawn from the fact that we place a relative location on Achilles (and the Tortoise, depending on your frame of reference) at any given instant in time. Lynds makes the argument that there is no such thing as an instant in time. We can only measure infinitely small passages of time, but even those are not instantaneous. (I.e., if the object is in motion at any given speed for even the smallest amount of time--Lynds's Einstein's Train example uses 100kph for 10^-25 sec, the object still travels some very small distance--2.7^-21 cm.) As a result, we can't really assign instantaneous location to an object, because there are no instants, so the entire premise of the paradox is faulty. (I.e., if there were an infinitesimally small measure of time for which you could determine a relative position, then the object would not be in motion at all because a measure of time is still a duration.)

I hope that was easier to understand than Lynds's paper. I'll try to read the Indeterminacy and Discontinuity paper in greater detail and get through the Universe paper in a little bit.

[Aki]

I don't know if this IS related to the Dark Tower, but there is a phenomenon in the story called a Thinny (or Thinney?) that makes a nasty warbly sound (like playing a saw) and is a place where reality is thin, and you can sometimes pass through to another world.

I'm going to follow this one, esp if it's Dark Tower related- maybe all the re-reading of all the books I've done over the years will come in handy.

[Bartock]

Im excited about this following a Dark Toweresque storyline as well.

And not that I think it will be necessary, but I got brand new copies of all of the books for Christmas this past year, so if we do need to do any looking up, then I'll make sure they are on hand.

[Tenshi Akui]

New post and new vid.. kinda wierd.

[Luna131]

I've been lurking you guys and then saw the vid today and it reminded me of Gollum. I'm not familiar with the Dark Tower series...is there a gollum looking thing in it?

[jiodek]

That SOUNDS like backwards speech to me. But I feel like it would be odd if little imps spoke English in reverse.

[degravedi]

Wow...that's some really nice production value on the imp.