Several resources about Quantum Entanglement

Since we now have our first experiment demonstrating that time is an emergent quantum phenomenon, it's about time we rounded up some info on this quantum entanglement idea and see if we can corner it.

The Wiki.

A friendly introduction to the fundamental problem we're trying to solve:

Here's Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining it some more:

So what's the big deal? Putting it into the most basic possible terms: We've observed small particles in the universe that act like they're "talking to each other" and determining how to be, even after they're separated and shouldn't be able to affect each other. It's like we can slice a red apple in half, put each half in a box and send the two boxes to opposite sides of the world, then have somebody open one box and paint their half of the apple green, and then when somebody on the other side of the world opens the box with their half-apple in it, it's turned green too.

And we don't know how this works. We've been trying to find out since the time of Einstein. Einstein himself called this "a spooky action at a distance."

Not only are we observing the effect that two particles can have on each other, and not only is it instantaneous (defying everything we know about the speed of information alone), but it appears to even be possible to have the same thing happen when the entangled elements are separated not only by space, but time as well. So Israeli scientists have made photons affect each other even when they didn't coexist at the same time.

So either we're dead wrong about this, or we have a way to both time travel and teleport either information or physical actions instantly. It could be a flaw in our reasoning based on some fundamental shortcoming of human perception and reasoning.

A LiveScience infographic:

And finally, quantum entanglement has been simulated within the world of, of all things, Minecraft.

Are we nuts? Maybe. Maybe the universe is nuts, too.

Paul the Psychic Octopus

From 2008 to 2010, a pet octopus named "Paul" was given the rather burdensome chore of predicting the outcome of World Cup soccer matches. His handlers would put food into two boxes at a time, each box decorated with the flag of their respective country's teams, then whichever one Paul decided to chow down on first would be the predicted winner. Over his two-year career, Paul got it right 11 out of 13 times.

Of course, nobody's really suggesting that Paul was following soccer games. Rather, plain old luck doesn't put the odds too far away - one might get the same sort of record flipping a coin. Some have speculated that Paul was attracted to flags with horizontal stripes, which just raises the question of why countries with horizontally-striped flags should win soccer matches more often.

Paul was the subject of international fame - for an octopus, anyway - and was widely missed after his passing at old age of octopus years. And just when this story couldn't get any sillier, there's conspiracy theories around his passing.

Here's Paul in action during one of his televised picks:

Paul and his handler also got death threats and recipe suggestions after Paul's predictions proved accurate:

OK, now that's silly enough!

Norwegian town engineers mirrors reflecting sunlight to shine into town during dark winter months

I know this isn't the first time this has been done, but the town of Rjukan, Norway, is installing mirrors on top of local mountains to reflect light into the town square during the sunless winter months of the far north.

I always love stories like this, because they show off the clever audacity of the crafty ape we call man.

A related concept is that of daylighting, where architectural measures are taken to treat buildings with natural sunlight where possible.

And I mentioned this has been done before; specifically, in Viganella, Italy, mirrors were constructed on local mountaintops to reflect sunlight into the city's valley, which, due to the depth of the valley, was resigned to shadows for so long in the year. Here's the trailer for the documentary about Viganella's mirror:

Oh, and the town of Rattenberg, Austria, also did the same thing, for the same reason as Rjukan.

Space dreamer answers childhood call to destiny

A NASA / DARPA plan is underway to launch a "100-year" spaceship for deep space exploration. But while that's interesting of itself, I was struck by this wild anecdote:

"When Jack Sarfatti was 13 years old, he began receiving phone calls from a strange metallic voice that told him he would someday become part of an elite group of scientists exploring uncharted territory. Those calls, which he believes may have come from a computer on a spacecraft, proved a seminal influence on his life and led him to pursue a career that combined mainstream physics with an enduring interest in UFOs and the far-out reaches of science."

The program is just one of many ambitious attempts to kick the human race into its interstellar travel era. So far, Voyager is still the most distant man-made object in the universe, and it's just crossing the threshold out of our solar system. As Cecil Adams points out in this Straight Dope column:

"Then again, the thinking goes, if you can pinpoint where to look, you can accomplish seemingly miraculous feats. Just ask the project team for Voyager 1, which is still communicating with a spacecraft so far away its incoming radio signals have less than a twenty-billionth the power of a watch battery.

But let’s put that in perspective. Voyager 1 is the most distant manmade object in the universe, far beyond the orbit of Pluto. It’ll soon leave the outer reaches of the solar system behind and enter the depths of interstellar space. Even so, another 14,000 years will have to pass before Voyager attains a distance of one light year from earth. The star closest to us, Proxima Centauri, is more than four light years away."

...so at present technology, 100 years will be long enough to get, meh, a stone's throw from Earth, relatively speaking.

However, getting our space legs on might be a necessity at some point in the future, especially if we want to do anything about threats like 29075-1950-DA, the asteroid which has the greatest probability of hitting earth. It's only expected to muss our hair sometime about the year 2880, but it's still much too soon from now to comfortably put it off.

Here's a little presentation on this asteroid and other near-Earth objects, just to scare you a little bit:

Washington town erects giant lava lamp, for no apparent reason

Well, actually, there is an apparent reason: To attract tourist dollars. At least that's the plan according to the propaganda.

Which puts it right up there with 1000 other goofy roadside attractions peppering America. Honestly, it's the only damned charming thing about our country. How many times have foreign heads of power convened to discuss whether they're fed up with America's shit enough to nuke us already, and we were saved by somebody raising their hands and going, "But that would destroy the world's largest pencil in Baltimore, Maryland"? And the United States was spared once again.

Three random bursts of brilliant insanity from Jan Svankmajer

That's Jan Svankmajer - stop-motion animator who was one of the inspirations to Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame - in case you couldn't tell.

Iowa mystery - Who shot Ashley Okland?

Two years ago, real estate agent Ashley Okland was working in this model house in Des Moines Iowa:

...when someone came into the house behind her, shot her in the head and chest, and disappeared. There's been a reward posted for information on the case, totalling up to $150,000. And not a single lead.

The story has acquired some fame in my local vicinity. Because the crime happened when the area was still under development, there were no witnesses, and little hope of even catching a clue from surveillance video anywhere in the area. More baffling, Okland was a person completely free of scandal - she didn't appear to have any enemies, she was just an up-and-coming realtor who also volunteered at Big Brothers / Big Sisters. She's missed by many, all of whom express disbelief that anybody could have had a problem with her.

But this case, by itself, isn't nearly as mind--blowing as you might think, when you consider the fact that 1/3rd of homicides in the United States go unsolved. That's actually the mind--blowing part. Forget all the forensic technoporn on CSI, in the real world we just have 33% of murderers getting away with it.

A Riotous Robot Roundup

Every now and then I like to touch base with the robotics field just to see if their inventions are getting either any more useful or any less creepy.

Einstein robot:

A female walking robot, because otaku boys need some dates:

That's a vast improvement over the Honda ASIMO from a few years back, which had a gait that suggested that it had just crapped its pants.

Finally, this other-worldly specimen in development:

Yeah, if you could stay out of my nightmares, that'd be great.

For a morbid (but educational) time, read OSHA's published workplace fatalities report

OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) publishes weekly industrial accident reports on their site. A handful of some mind--blowing fatalities:

• "Employee crushed and killed by conveyor belt rollers undergoing maintenance."
• "Worker was killed when nail from a nail gun struck him in the eye."
• "Employee died after an explosion occurred while he was checking levels on a 400 barrel brine water holding tank."
• "Worker died after being caught in a stamping machine."
• "Worker was crushed to death when the trash compactor he was repairing was energized."
• "Worker died after being hit by several cars while handing out flyers."
• "Worker died after collapsing on the ground with seizures while working in a tobacco field with a heat index of 108 degrees."
• "Worker died after falling eight feet when the core drilling machine he was using hit rebar."
• "Worker died from exposure to hydrogen sulfide after stepping into 5-foot-deep hole containing oil slush."
• "Employee died from head injuries after a concrete block fell from a ceiling being repaired."

And those are just from this year!

And since you're here, here's some gruesome (but effective) workplace safety PSAs around YouTube:

There, now you'll NEVER go to work again! Happy Friday!

Poly couple's story turns into lurid nightmare of horrifying torture.

I don't usually post stuff of this nature here, but this is an exception just for the bizarre psychology of all three participants.

It begins with a husband and wife, whose marriage deteriorates and she takes on a lover. However, the story takes a bizarre twist when the lover moves in with the couple and they just go on like that. Then the wife and her lover lock the husband in a closet and keep him there for months, inflicting gruesome and horrifying abuse on him, including beatings, burnings, and slashing him with razor blades. The husband meekly accepts all this without trying to escape and even defends his tormenters when the police rescue him.

You heard it from me. Now here's the original story at the Toronto Star, but it's much more graphic and gruesome - reader discretion advised.

Three pretty messed-up people, in their own twisted little world.

Your Whacko Conspiracy Video of the Week

Meet Macon Carrington, who has his own YouTube channel and would like to have a word with you about the secret, horrific rituals that Scientologists and Freemasons inflict on hapless kids. With demonstrations on dolls and better special effects than most History Channel shows.

Oh, he's also nuttier than squirrel scat and hair-raisingly creepy besides.

DISCLAIMER: Which is not to say that Scientologists or Freemasons are exactly nice people, and in fact there is evidence that Scientologists have done mean stuff to people before.

Manhattan Solstice

Manhattanhenge is what happens when the sun lines up perfectly with the concrete-canyon streets of New York City. Due to the angle of the city's layout, this doesn't map to our traditional times of equinox and solstice, but New Yorkers mark their own.

The really, really BIG quasar group

Scientists discover a group of quasars out there lurking in the universe that defies all laws of physics as we know them so far, simply because it's bigger than any known scale of measurement we've ever needed. It's four billion light-years across! That's 4,000,000,000 light-years, the equal of 40,000 Milky Way galaxies side-to-side.

For now, the object is simply tagged the "Huge_LQG." There's plenty of time to fret over it, though, since it's about 9 billion years old as far as we can tell. Here is the world's fastest-talking science news reporter to explain it:

Now, before everybody goes on about how tiny and insignificant they feel because of this new revelation, let me report this old image/rant I did for my daily stupid a while back:

Australian PSA makes wonderfully dark, cute entertainment

All this just to say "Don't do stupid things around trains!" More about it here. Watch it over a few times and catch new details by each of the cast. I'm totally going to join animator Julian Frost's cult.

The latest roundup of Scientology's weirdness

The Hole

Pictured above: "The Hole", a private prison run by the members of Scientology. This facility in Riverside, California, recently came to light thanks to an expose book by Lawrence Wright. A full story on the writing of this work is here. To quote:

"Wright’s investigations into “The Hole,” a hidden Scientology gulag in southern California where errant Church members are sent to perform menial tasks and take part in 'orgies of self-abasement,' led him to break the story of an FBI investigation—since aborted—into human trafficking."

There are also more detailed descriptions of The Hole activities at the Wikipedia page. It basically sounds like a concentration camp straight out of the Holocaust or Khmer Rouge.

The child labor camp in Australia

Here is an Australian news magazine special on the "RPF", the Rehabilitation Project Force, a sprawling complex in the middle of an Australian suburb.

Kaja Ballo

In 2008, a young girl in France who was reportedly happy beforehand voluntarily took a personality test handed out by the church of Scientology. When she got the results, they apparently devastated her and she committed suicide, leaping to her death. Some speculation has had it that the church's method of tearing people down to convince them that they'll need the church in their lives had some bearing here.

In fact, all of the above stories have the theme of "disconnection" in common, the act of severing all ties with the world outside the church, be they family, friends, or professional. This is a practice in common throughout all cults and attempts at brainwashing.

Meanwhile, this column in Esquire cautions us that none of us should be too smug; given a weak enough moment, any one of us could be sucked into Scientology.

I close with a plea: We're all more aware about the cult of Scientology and what a nasty mental virus it is - our awareness of it is growing by the day. That's a good thing. But what OTHER things could we be seeing grow more prominent today that could turn into tomorrow's cult? We should be looking at those things, too.

Creepiest mall event ever

If the 400-pound guy in the photo gives you the creepers, you don't know the half of it yet. This is James Julius Beaudrie, now in court after a nationwide manhunt, charged with multiple counts of child molestation and child endangerment, having methodically molested three of his nine children on a continuing basis.

The remarkable thing is the circumstances surrounding the incidents. In the first place, the wife of James and mother of the children, Kijua Beaudrie, was not only complicit in the molestation, but actively aided the father by, for instance, sequestering the other kids in another room while the abuse was going on. For this, she's getting 30 years in prison.

But wait, it gets creepier! Kijua actually kept a diary of the abuse while she heard her own children sobbing in the other room.

But wait, it gets even creepier! All of this was going on in the back of a store at the Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines, Iowa.

That's right here in my home town, and I and my family have been shopping there for years. The mall, as with many malls across post-recession America, has a few stores dark and empty with bleak 'for lease' signs in the windows. So now we're thinking back on all the times we've gone shopping at that mall, and not known that meanwhile, in the back of one of the rooms...

Stiletto surgery - lopping off a toe to fit into your shoes

Well, anything for vanity, right?

There's been a number of stories about women getting extreme cosmetic foot surgery over the past decade. Daily Mail posts this one, and check the article further down for an infographic of various procedures. ABC News ran this story in 2012, and then there's this NYT article from 2003, which also quotes a survey about women getting foot surgery for a better shoe fit as far back as 1993.

Looks like the trend isn't going away! So consider, Prince Charming, the next time you fit that glass slipper on Cinderella, she just might have cheated to be sure she fits.

The thing is, some 90% of women wear shoes that are too narrow. And the pointy stiletto makes the matter worse, forcing the pressure all down on those tiny, vulnerable toes. But really, is it all to attract a man? Except for foot fetishists (who, even then, might prefer the whole, unaltered female foot, seeing as how they admire it so), most guys could care less how a woman's feet look. It is more of a competition between women that seems to be the driving force.

The fascination with women having tiny, impractical feet has deep cultural roots. You've probably heard of the Chinese practice of footbinding, a cruel practice in which a girl's feet are bound daily so as she grows, the bones of her feet gradually break and distort into an unnatural shape. Such outrage did it cause that a "foot emancipation society" formed in the Qing Dynasty, and formed one of the cornerstones of Chinese women's lib.

Yet here we are, a century later, practicing a similar custom and there's hardly a murmur of protest. One could definitely see where complications can arise in later years; the human foot puts on a lot of miles carrying a lot of weight in one lifetime, and missing a toe (as those who have had accidents can attest) makes walking harder. Nevertheless, women are already to risk malnutrition through eating disorders and the various complications of silicon breast implants, so what's one more toe?

Remembering Larry Hagman, a mind--blowing character

RIP Larry Hagman, the TV actor memorable for his iconic roles as "J.R. Ewing" in Dallas and "Tony Nelson" in I Dream of Jeannie, plus dozens of other shows. But did you know what his final wishes were?

"You wrote in your memoir, “Hello Darlin’,” that when you die, you want to be ground up in a wood chipper like Steve Buscemi’s character in the movie “Fargo.” Is this actually set down in your will?

Well, it’s hard to set down chipping. I don’t think that’s allowed. But I did want to be spread over a field and have marijuana and wheat planted and harvest it in a couple of years and then have a big marijuana cake, enough for 200 to 300 people. People would eat a little of Larry."

The above is an excerpt from this interview with the New York Times, just one of many outrageously goofy things the man said over the years. Hagman wasn't just a great actor, in person he was more fun than any of his roles. He enjoyed being a celebrity and being as mind--blowing as he wanted to be, all for a guffaw. We miss the hell out of you, Larry!

Intellipedia - A US government intelligence Wiki that mere mortals aren't allowed to view.

So I was browsing Wikipedia looking for creepy United States government intelligence agencies. Hey, they're a dime a dozen! Such as the "Information Awareness Office" (established at the height of the paranoid Bush years), which seems to be going out of its way to say "government spooks' world-wide conspiracy" with just their logo alone:

But then I linked along and discovered "Intellipedia", a collaborative database for sharing information between the various (multi-hydra-headed) intelligence communities. "Cool beans!" I exclaimed dorkily, because I've heard all about this open government thing and what better way for all of us US citizens to participate in our national security than to collaborate with US intelligence, right? And we cyber-denizens and open-source proponents know that "obscurity != security", right? Besides, if it's just intelligence about outside threats to the US, what could they possibly have to hide? If there's a terrorist plot afoot to bomb something, don't we all have a right - perhaps even a patriotic duty - to be informed?

Well, no, turns out that you need US security clearance just to view the damn thing! The link at Intellipedia stops you dead, demanding some kind of electronic passport called an "Intelink" to go any further. Ironic, considering that it's supplied by Google. Wait, who played that scare chord?

Well, there you go, you've heard of the "dark web" before? What could be darker?

Oh, and the FBI has its own "Bureaupedia" - and it's closed to public viewing as well. Fine then, catch your own criminals!

And more classified US websites. The thing that is impressive is just how large this is. The US basically has its own "shadow Internet". Now, pause and consider this point: Citizens frequently complain about how the US government seems out of touch with its people. Picture your own internal office intranet at work, if you have one. Naturally, if there's an artificial wall between public and private, you tend to stay on one side of it, right? So it just could be that government officials act as if they're ignorant of what the rest of us are thinking because they use their own Internet.

David Lynch started a real club based on Silencio from "Mulholland Drive"!

How arty can you get? The club is in Paris, and it really is modeled after the "Silencio" set from David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, along with numerous elements from other Lynch works. Awesome full story here.