MadScientist

I searched the forum for any of the versions of this of which I am aware and found none. If I missed it' date=' let me know.

 

In a certain village, it is the moral duty of every woman to shoot her husband at midnight if she determines that he has been unfaithful. If a husband is unfaithful, every woman in the village, except his wife, knows it. On day, a priestess arrived in the village, told the woman that she knew of at least one adulterer in the village, and left.

 

39 nights passed without incident. Then at midnight on the 40th night, several women shot their husbands.

 

How many adulterous husbands were shot that night?[/quote']

 

I can't give you an exact figure but all of the "adulterous husbands" were shot because the women don't shoot "husbands" that aren't adulterous.

 

There could have been one or more of the wives who just felt like murdering their husbands on that same night though, even though they'd never committed adultery. That has nothing to do with the number of adulterous husbands that were shot though.

 

Right??

 

I'm assuming "the priestess told the woman" was a typo and it should have been "the women" otherwise you'd have typed "a woman".

If it's not a typo then that means there is only one woman living in the village, since you didn't specify the priestess selected one woman from the group of women to talk to but you later go on to say "several women." so make your mind up.

 

 

If I'm wrong..

They would have had to conclude that since they don't know whether their husbands are adulterers or not that they have to shoot them just in case they might be.

I just thought I'd throw this out.

We can all visualise ourselves falling down an incredibly deep chasm, the feeling of falling to a certain death when we hit the rock hard floor that's waiting at the bottom of the chasm.

But we're all falling down a deep chasm all the time, aren't we??

There's no way of stopping the fall and once we hit the bottom we're going to be dead.

I tried to do something clever with it to help visualise time dilation.

You can mark off every foot in the hole in the ground so you can work out your feet per seconds. We have clocks and watches that we can use to work out our speed through the hole called time too but that gives us our seconds per feet.

And it's not just each of us that's individually falling through the hole called time, the entire universe is falling down it too.

The effects of time dilation mean you can either overtake the rest of the universe or let it rush on ahead.

Maybe someone else can add something to it or use it for something or..

All this talk about life coming to Earth on comets or metorites...

I have to ask - why couldn't life on Earth have started on Earth??

All the necessaries were available so there's no reason why it couldn't have.

We're all robots, when we're born we know nothing about anything, everything we know is given to us by outside sources. Even the things we figure out for ourselves are based upon information given to us in the past from outside sources.

We have all been in hypnotic states all our lives. You're in one right now, therefore I'm programming you in some way by giving you these facts.

I can't tell you to run around like a chicken because I can't get you into a deep enough hypnotic state but I can tell you not to think about a purple cat and you will think about a purple cat because you're in a weak hypnotic state.

The world around us is constantly suggesting new things for our minds to absorb.

Things need to be balanced out though. Children playing violent video games don't become violent unless there's not enough information provided to suggest that they don't become violent. Put another way - if they aren't exposed to enough peaceful data they probably will become violent.

It's the same with music, if a vicar listens to some "evil" music s/he's not going to turn into a violent God hating SOB, they've been programmed to be peaceful more than violent.

I'm guessing there is something in psychology relating to a variety of aggressive behaviors that people show' date=' some more than others. And I'm also guessing there's more than one kind of bully. I know some general reasons why people bully others, but I want to know about this kind of bully in particular.

I try to grab a rubber band on the floor and this guy slides down and grabs my wrist. He vehemently tries to pry my hand open, but I put it in my other hand. Then he starts twisting my hand, or at least the sleeve of the wrist I was wearing. Then he aims a rubber band gun at my face and threatens to shoot me. He then threatens to slap me if I don't give the rubber band to him. I decide to give it back to him as to not cause trouble. He then starts to act nice, saying he didn't mean any of it. Then he tries to befriend me by flattering me.

Some other things about him is that he tries to be the center of attention, pushes people when they're in his way, and tries to be nice to the teacher. According to the way he tried to befriend me, it also appears that he believes I can easily be taken advantage of.

Now, I don't want to just acquiesce next time. But I'll need to know where to hit him hard, not physically but mentally. What are the psychological characteristics of this kind of bully? What kind of mental games can I play with him? What do I say to make him cry? I know it's ironic, but I want my revenge! >:}[/quote']

 

 

We all have strategies for achieving goals. Some have more strategies than others, some have found strategies that work well and some can't find strategies that work at all.

In making this post you yourself are using one of your strategies for figuring out how to deal with this kind of bully, it's your "Asking for help" strategy, the way you asked for help is a sub strategy of that strategy. You knew that if you posted "Look you set of bastards, tell me how to deal with this bully now!!" then gone on to explain the facts in a similarly harsh fashion, nobody would have responded with anything positive, the strategy would have failed.

Sometime in your past you developed the strategy by asking for help in a clear, polite manner, you found that it worked so you stuck to it.

 

The bully you're describing has not yet figured out which strategies are the best to use to achieve some goals.

He sees a rubber band on the floor that he wants, I'm assuming that's the case because you mentioned he had a rubber band gun. So this wasn't an issue of "That guy wants that rubber band so I'll be a bastard and stop him from having it." He sees you going for it and the first strategy he tries is taking it by force, with you not being a weak person that strategy fails so he has to try another one and ask in friendly manner.

 

For some reason the world around him has told him applying force to people gets him what he wants. Either through watching his dad beat his mother so she'll cook his dinner or through beating people to get what he wants himself.

What you need to do is reprogram him.

 

When you refuse to give him the rubber band in a similarly aggressive manner to how he tried to obtain it, you had rapport with the part of him that was in control at that time, you were communicating with him on his own level.

If you'd gone to snap the rubber band saying "Agressiveness gets you nothing, if you'd asked nicely I would have probably given you the rubber band but.." then snap it.

That's a risky course of action to follow though, since he'll probably move into a more aggressive state and become violent.

 

Forget about revenge, it won't get you anything, the bully will still be a bully and he'll want revenge on you.

Get the teachers/tutors to reprogram him.

 

You need to formulate an effective strategy for programming the teachers to reprogram him in a way that won't leave you in the position of being a target for his revenge.

Make sure they know not mention your name or anything that he can connect back to you.

The best strategy I can come up with for you is to tell them to start keeping an eye on his behaviour, then they can catch him in the act and no one is grassing on anyone.

 

 

If you still want to get revenge on him you need to explain to him that he's an idiot, tell him to look around him and see how other people get things they want.

You can't do it face to face because you don't want to be beaten up.

Leave a note in his locker or somewhere he'll find it, make sure no one sees you. You might need to try a few notes - "Does your daddy beat your mummy." or "Poor little Johnny is too stupid to know how to get things he wants."

 

How about this??

Find out where he lives, write a few letters to him calling him stupid or attacking his families behaviour patterns.

In case it's not a strategy he's picked up from his parents, they might be perfectly nice people. Write a letter to his father or mother - "Your son is a bully." citing a few examples of what he's done to various people.

Be careful about how you find his address though, remember you don't want to become a target.

 

Whatever you do, don't be afraid of telling the teachers to keep an eye on him.

Bullies ruin lives, I should know because a few of them made a mess of me during my school years.

 

As for the slapping or shooting you with the rubber band gun, just stare him straight in the face and calmly ask "What will that get you??"

See, this guy's too stupid to be able to plan ahead so you've got to force him to plan ahead.

If his response is "Let's see." then he either slaps or shoots you just snap the rubber band, if he responds with yet more aggression step your response up. Tell the teacher or at least explain to him "If I tell the teacher you'll be put on detention or given some other form of punishment. What would you do then?? Beat me up?? If you did that you'd only receive an even harsher punishment. This would carry on until one of us is lying in a pool of blood, if it's me that's lying in that pool of blood it'll be you that's spending time in jail."

 

 

Hope that helps...

By split time, I mean that there is a different time from each part of the universe in a different part of the universe. Lets say that there is a planet that is many light years away with an advanced alien civilization living there. To them, the Earth may be in the time of the dinosaurs. To us, that planet may be an ancient civilization with no technology. However, the aliens may be a very advanced civilization. We just wouldn't know because their time is split from our time.

Let's do a hypothetical experiment.

We'll synchronise our watches, I'll go and stand on the Sun and at 9pm we'll both throw a ball into the air. After throwing your ball you look through a telescope and wait 8 minutes to see me throwing my ball into the air. We both threw our balls into the air at 9pm though.

Time is split though but for different reasons than you've used, time dilation.

The faster something moves through space the slower it moves through time, so a planet or solar system that's travelling really slowly and was born at the same time as ours will have aged more than ours.

At least that's the way I think things work, maybe one of the more knowledgable members could elaborate...

Shouldnt the universe have a diameter of 15 billion or so light years?

This might be my insanity creeping out, I haven't taken my pills for a few weeks.

What if the universe isn't expanding or never has expanded??

Say it remained at its original pinpoint size but everything inside it shrunk. I mentioned a few posts back about magically putting a 12 inch ruler in a black hole and it becoming miniscule in size but if you jumped in beside the ruler it would still be 12 inches.

Someone mentioned that gravity could possibly be a push effect instead of a pull effect, how would that fit in with my theory??

If every fundamental particle in the universe is shrinking in size as time passes then something must be applying a squashing force to them, could that be gravity??

We have to be looking at the appropriate time, and they have to be sending. If intelligent life arose somewhere that was then sending signals 10 million years ago, we wouldn't see them - we weren't looking then.

When I think about things like this I like to think what we'd do if we were the aliens exploring the galaxy.

One thing we could do with any newly formed solar systems or systems with simple life forming we find is leave messages in bottles, scatter a few beacons about with collision avoidance routines so they stand a better chance of surviving.

I suppose at that level of technology we could leave the beacons waiting for radio signals of a certain type which home in on the source and drop off the message.

And we may wonder how many millions of all kinds of flares are occuring at any one minute within the galaxy.

Not with distinctly recognisable patterns though.

And would'nt mankind be wiser and doubtlessly more efficient to expend effort on improving life on Earth and developing more knowledge rather than expend resources on senseless/plain stupid alien civilization lotteries ?

If they stopped spending billions researching new ways for us to kill each other we could easily afford to send a few signalling devices into space.

And you're right, after thinking about it I don't see what any alien civilisation that had developed worm hole, close to light speed or any other kind of superfast transport or even self sustainiing "generation ships" could teach us.

because I wanted to know how, using this model or similar, traveling through time could be represented.

The only thing I can think of that might be helpful is going back to a 3D video game analogy.

You'd need to find a fixed constant, like the speed of light, find out how long it takes for light to travel from one intersection to another then divide each particles xd, yd and zy by that fixed constant or something like that anyway. But that's more to do with counting frames per second and how to keep the frame rate at a constant speed.

Dunno if this'll help..

http://www.allegro.cc/forums/view_thread.php?_id=159670

Travelling backwards in time would be pretty simple, just turn the fixed constant into a negative and hope the laws of physics modelled in the game work in reverse too.

Well the X, Y and Z points of the 3D mesh that intersect at the step size of 1 (your increment size of 1 ) is for the location of the object but the 0.01 to 0.99 between those intersections are the size for the largest fundamental particles/energy that need to exist in the mesh.

What's this got to do with time travelling in reality though...

its not random. it is a number the computer gets based slightly on what its clock says when you ask it. the algorithm is complex enough that you wont be able to find the pattern, but the pattern is still there. as for all the gory details in between, i have no idea what it does to get the number, i just know that it isnt actually random.

That just about sums it up.

The gory details are just algorithms.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/gsl-ref_17.html#SEC271

Scroll down a little and you should see some of the formulas they use.

Also try googling random number generator source code.

I just read that the fastest meteorites can travel up to 160,000mph which is a significant difference to the 67,000mph the Earth travels around the sun at.

I was just wondering if the meteorite hunters take time dilation into account when dating a meteor rock.

If a chunk got blown off Mars 2 billion years ago because of time dilation when they carbon dated it they found it to be 1.999 billion years old. The process that affects the carbon allowing it to be dated would be slowed down by the time dilation, wouldn't it??

Don't forget they also have to escape the "Strange Barrier Force" thing that was detected acting on Voyager.

I don't suppose anyone has a link for info on this "strange barrier force" thing??

All I can find are too many references to Star Trek Voyager.

I'm going to assume a solar sailed powered vehicle can escape this STB. Some have asked about how effective the photons would be once it reached deep space.

I don't think it needs to be effective at all. Once it's free of our systems gravity it'll continue travelling until it hits something. I don't think it even needs to keep moving...

Plot a course out of our system to a point outside our system that another system will pass over. A bit like throwing a rock off our planet, waiting 365 days then picking it up again.

Another thing that I can't help wondering about.

How fast are these solar sail vehicles likely to travel??

I'm just curious as to whether they'll eventually overtake Voyager itself.

I just had a crazy idea that makes perfect sense to me.

I was watching the new'ish TV series called Lost, a few episodes ago they used rockets to signal to between 3 groups of people each a distance away.

If our Milky Way galaxy is fairly flat, then if we sent a huge rocket like an incredibly powerful nuclear bomb. Instead of sending the rocket towards the closest star send it vertically out of our galaxy. Then any alien civilisations looking to the stars would see it more visibly.

Even if the thickness of the galaxy between our system and the top/bottom edge would take 50,000 years sending it out perpendicular (I think that's the right word ) to our system would make it more visible to other sytems.

As they looked at our sun they'd see a huge burst of energy many miles above it.

Any comments??

The only problem I can see is what type of signalling device to send. I think a nuclear explosion would be too quick, they'd have to be looking towards our system at the right moment. So it'd need to hang about for a while. Maybe a series of nuclear explosions, maybe we could put all those old warheads to good use.

wow' date=' it sounds like a strange course of events that we'll be taking in the next 1000 years. Why would be lose something as useful as wavelengths to communicate. Telepathic phonecalls, and radio stations would be rather farfetched.

In any case, we shouldnt make any assumptions that an ET society would be using telepathy or any other form of communication that we cannot grasp (Though it may be true). If we cannot use that power, then how can we search for it? So, for now, lets just hope that any aliens out there would be sticking to radio signals to communicate (if they're as/more advanced than us in the first place)[/quote']

 

I was giving this some thought today and came up with this pile of garbage...

 

We started sending out our powerful enough to break into space radio signals about 60 years ago IIRC.

If we discover a more efficient means of long distance communiction than these strong radio signals next week and just stopped using them. We would only have been sending signals into space for 65 years. I dunno, maybe we'll start using something like entangled particles to communicate with instead of radio in 20 years.

Any alien civilisation with its own SETI program will only be able to pick us up for about 80 years. If they miss this window of opportunity they'd class Earth as having no intelligent life..

 

Some alien civilisations might discover this new more efficient distance communication method sooner than we will or some might take even longer than we will. So I'd guess at a window of between 60 to 150 years for most (not all!!) alien civilisations.

 

 

The other things I was thinking about is how paranoid alien worlds will be.

What if they discover radio technology late into their Superpowers development and their America decided it would be unwise to attract the attention of all these pspecies from other worlds that are probably hostile. So any radio technology would be classed as illegal.

Instead they stuck to wire communications which would speed up their development of fibre optic comms out of necessity. They'd then reach our as yet undiscovered communication method quicker than we will.

So some of them could be as or more advanced as we are without using radio signals.

Maybe they turn on their first radio receiver powerful enough to detect signals from space and pick up images showing nothing but violence. Then decide to turn off all their strongest radio transmitters.

 

 

I'm not saying SETI is a waste of time, we've obviously still got to try and find out if we are alone or not.

I`m putting this idea in here as it`s only half formulated and I might be totaly wrong!

that however is NOT an excuse for anyone to posts about aliens or god and sh!t !

Just let me tell you what God thinks about aliens and their sh!t for a minute... Only jokin..

I was considering Dimensions' date=' 2d can be represented on paper as a + sign.

it has length and width X and Y axis.

in 3D a Z axis is needed for height, so it`s like the + with a line running through the center making a full 720 degrees of space.

 

now then, for anything wishing to interset all of these coords simultaniously step by step, picture this

the + with line trough the center is placed in a square box, each of the boxes 6 faces has one end of a line in the middle of it.

 

if you travel from the top right back of the boxes corner, to the bottom left front of the boxes corner and call the start position 0

 

then the X, Y and Z coords will increment 1 each at the same time until the end of the other corner is reached.[/quote']

 

All the above sounds like how vectors work when writing a 3D video game.

X, Y but Z's the depth in/out of the "virtual cube". So far what you've said is easy for me to visualise by applying that model to it.

 

now the questions

 

instead of a single unit/point that travels, what if the point that moves isn`t a singularity but a 3d shape like a small sphere?

 

the coords would go wild! (mathematicaly workable sure) but then you`de end up with aspects of the same object being in the same place at the same time!

------------------------------------------

 

I considered the idea of a movement to intersect all dimensions in a 4d HyperCube but couldn`t visualise it well enough, and so here is where my ideas stop.

 

This is where I get stuck, using that same 3D video game "virtual cube" model of mine...

We create (well I program in C++ so I create) C++ objects with 3 variables, X, Y, Z plus an extra varibable for each XD, YD and ZD for direction, obviously more for acelleration or whatever..

 

So a sphere C++ object would have those 3 locations in space variables but it would still be a virtual sphere in virtual space. Obviously the sphere itself is drawn by the clever DirectX code but in the real universe the sphere itself is "drawn" by the atoms or more precicesly the photons bouncing off the atoms that make the sphere up...

 

So if I wanted to model a virtual sphere in my virtual cube I would have to create objects for enough virtual particles so when they were drawn to the screen there'd be enough pixels to show that virtual sphere.

 

Basically I reckon every particle in the universe needs to have its own X, Y and Z but because they're bonded together they all have the same XD, YD and ZD's with variations determined by speed of rotation.

 

 

I THINK what you're getting at though is that my C++ objects representing the individual fundamental particles would be 0 in size but you're saying in the real universe each fundamental particle has a certain size?? And reckon things go wild cos where those that extra size fit??

 

Sounds cool to me.

The only thing I can think of is each individual fundamental particle (given that it has some size) must leave gaps for its neighbours. The "fabric" of the universe would have to act like a 3 dimensional mesh and particles can only sit on the intersections with their extra bits existing in the gaps of the mesh.

 

Is that the kind of feedback you're looking for??

I burried it.

Yup.

I was hoping to find out if there'd be any more ways of ending that joke but...

I think it just depends which planetary body we send the right equipment to first.

If they send a Lada (no offence intended ) to Mars it's obviously not going to detect life even though it may exist there. If we send a proper probe to Venus we might detect it there...

So IMO it's down to the tech-heads at Nasa and whichever body they get the right equipment to first.

As for Europa, AFAIKnow I don't think they've actually proved that it's only the surface that's frozen water with liquid water beneath it. They're only theorising that the gravitational pull is causing enough friction inside to heat it up. Or am I wrong??

And as for water being a prerequisite for life, correct me if I'm wrong but...

Life on Earth started with amino acids in the water getting heated up by the release of thermal energy from the oceans floor. Wasn't that just a chemical reaction that fused the correct elements together to form proteins which later formed microbes??

So other liquids or perhaps even gasses could be used for the same process, couldn't they??

And silicon based life, doesn't cellular life just need several unique qualities. Like elements to form cells or elements to conduct electric currents for thinking with or using as a nervous system??

i think a gender in the profile would be ok idea.

 

as for the experiments just put it in the appropriate section.

 

laser stuff: classical mechanics

if not theres general science' date=' chemistry and general discussion normally cover most stuff.

 

as experiments normally fit nicely into an already made category i doubt a new thing will be made just for it.[/quote']

 

Ok.

I just figured it would be more convenient if we had a forum dedicated to experiments, if only so people could go in there when they're bored to look for something to do.

 

Like I know practically nothing about chemistry and I'm sure the chemistry boffins know of loads of cool experiments we could try at home using household materials.

Or the physics guys with stuff like cooking CD's in microwave ovens..

grrr...there is no nothingness. for anything to hover in anything it would need space. space was created in the big bang.

LOL

I know exactly what you mean but I struggle to describe the thing that didn't exist before the big bang.. What's the conventional terminology for it??

I had lots of fun once trying to explain the concept to a friend. He tried telling me there was this nothingness before the big bang which also surrounds our universe. I kept trying to explain to him that there was no nothingness there because in accordance with our perception of things - even nothing is something, it's like an empty place where things can exist but the "nothingness" I refer to there's nothing that could ever move into it.

The only way I could express it was by calling it a dimension before dimensions which never even existed... I think that blew his mind and he just accepted it to end the debate.

brane theory is the closest i will get to accepting a multiverse type deal thingy.

Yup agreed!!!

I like the idea of black holes sucking matter in to make miniverses but I think that's all it is, an idea... I see black holes more as matter to energy convertors of some kind.

As for parrallel universes where every possibility is played out, I can't accept those either.

I tend to agree with this idea that time is not a dimention. It appears to me as just a method of measuring the pasage of a moment from the future to the past. Noting that our view of the universe is distorted by the fact that all we see is history. I understand a dimention as somthing like width, depth, and hight. Time is somthing diferent.

I've got to agree with astromark but 1veedo and Severian left me behind ages and ages ago in another time dimention.

The only extra dimensions of time I can grasp are 2 sorts.

#1 At the quantum level in string theory where strings can do crazy things like exist in two places at one time. So strings can move forwards (maybe backwards??) and sideways, which I don't think is a really accurate description because when they move to the other place in space as well as time they're moving sideways... Then again we can't see what's going on yet.

#2 Is the multiverse theory where there have been multiple big bangs forming seperate universes in the original nothingness that our universe hovers about in. If these seperate big bangs happened at different times each universe could have a different number of seconds since creation variable.

These aren't really extra dimensions of time because it's just the seperate universes that exist in other dimensions with time flowing like it does in our universe.

Those are the (mem)branes you two guys are talking about, right??

If there are any more theories for how there could be time could be different I think we'd all like to know about them... Those of us who don't know about them yet anyway.

heres one:

 

When was the last date before October 2' date=' 2001 that is also a palindrome?

 

Or:

 

Of three men, one man always tells the truth, one always tells lies, and one answers yes or no randomly. Each man knows which man is who. You may ask three yes/no question to determine who is who. If you ask the same question to more than one person you must count it as question used for each person whom you ask. What three questions should you ask?[/quote']

 

Why is 2/10/2001 a palindrome?? Or is it that American thing 10/02/2001..

I'd guess at 30/11/1103.

 

as for the 3 men, I give up...

Since YT2095's opened the door to pretty silly riddles I'm going to put one even dafter to you..

One of my fellow patients at this fine asylum I currently reside at told me how he came to be in the neighbouring cell to me.

"

I used to be a foreman on various types of construction sites, there was this one stupid idiotic guy who worked for me, everything I told him to do he did it wrong, no matter how clearly I explained the simplest of jobs he screwed them up.

So finally I gave him one simple task to do but he even messed that up.

I'd told him to dig a hole 1 foot square, 2 feet deep and to dispose of the dirt from the hole once he'd dug it, what could be simpler??

When I returned the hole was there 1 foot square and 2 feet deep but there was still a pile of dirt close by the hole!!

By this time I was close to being finally driven insane by this guy so I asked him why the hole was there but the dirt from it hadn't been cleared away. So when he gave me his answer I just lost the plot completely and they carted me off to this funny farm we're in now.

"

What did the stupid idiotic hole digger say that finally drove this foreman into the padded cell next to mine??

You know that there's tomorrow after today, right? And a yesterday before today. But where does yesterday come after tomorrow?

In the dictionary??

Yesterday would appear listed AFTER Tomorrow.