Reinventing the Sacred (False alarm)

I was alerted today to the existance of a relatively new book by Stuart Kauffman (a renowned researcher of complexity theory), called 'Reinventing the Sacred'. From the rumors about the book, it sounded as if the following claims are suggested there:

1. Complexity does not allow reduction of all phenomena to elementary particle physics.
   
2. Therefore we need a God to explain the highly complex systems all around us (including us).

I got all worked up and made a list of counter arguments, but before I published these thoughts, I went to www.amazon.com where a few pages of the book can be viewed for free. As it turns out, Kauffman does not believe in a creator God, and merely wants to use the word God to describe the 'creativity' of the world, that we should appreciate religiously. Bottom line, this is a publicity stunt that will probably be misunderstood by many as proof that important scientists believe in God. Too bad...

Yom Kippur 2008

So, what did you do on Yom Kippur? We went to a nice secluded beach with our friends, had a good meal, slept there in tents and drove back after Yom Kippur ended. All in all a good time. What did other people do? You can read about the riots in Acre on the news. Apparently an Arab drove his car into a non Arab region of Acre. That was enough for a bunch of trigger happy Jews to start rioting. The Muslim response was quick to follow. This demonstrates that the same dangerous seeds of violence exist in all religions. I strongly suggest checking out Richard Dawkins's book 'The God Delusion'. Some of his lectures can also be found on www.ted.com and www.youtube.com . Well, on that happy note I'll sign out. Have a good Sukot vacation and beware not to be cought without Lulav Hadas Etrog and Arava (I hope I got that right) in your Suka

;-)

Helium leak

The lab I work at has experienced liquid helium leaks for a while (a long long while...). As it turns out, a huge leak occured at the LHC. We are not alone!!!

137

The number 1/137 is an important constant in quantum mechanics, known as the fine structure constant (actually it is not exactly 1/137). Advocates of the Kabbalah note that 137 equals the word 'Kabbalah' in hebrew gimatria (gimatria is a method of assigning numbers to words). This amazing coincidence is then used as an example of the higher power (god) in action. Recently I found a nice internet site which gives gimatric synonims (words that have the same gimatric value). I found a few nice phrases that equal 137:

• 137='Homosexuals are good' : Perhaps this is a sign that all religious jews should reconsider their sexual tendencies?
• 137='Miluim' (Miluim means army reserve duty): Maybe this is a sign for the religious people (many of which are exempt) to recruit?
• 137='Bin Laden' : Well...

Feel free to use the gimatria site and find more 'amazing coincidences', it's fun.

bye 4 now

Amir (Amir = 251 = not interesting = Guliver)

The end of the world

Today at 9:00am Geneva time the new LHC particle accelerator satrted the new high energy experiments. Some concern was raised in the media regarding a possible catastrophe due to formation of a large black hole. Most scientists believe that there is no danger. However, in order to check that the large hadron collider didnt destroy the world yet , you can stay informed by visiting the site:

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Have a good day, and stay away from black holes.

The apartment chapter 1.5

So, today I went to the bureau of land registration to register the new apartment under our name. Last time I went there was an astounding success, I had all the proper documents and only waited sixty minutes in line. With this notch in my belt I entered the building, self confident and determined to get the job done. In the elevator I decided to check that I have all the documents… suddenly I discovered that my ID is not in my wallet. A few days ago when we were at the attorney’s place, he copied our IDs and returned them to Avigail. Never mind, I have my driver’s license and other cards, there is still a chance. I entered the office and looked for something or someone to guide me. I went to the desk clerk and asked her where to go in order to change apartment ownership. Surprisingly she said: “I do that, I need these papers and that papers…”. She didn’t even ask for my ID. So I start producing this paper and that paper… then she says: ”I need the official mortgage bills”. Suddenly I recall a vague memory, we are at the mortgage bank and the mortgage clerk says to us “congratulations, the mortgage was approved; the money will be transferred… Blah Blah Blah… the official mortgage bills will be ready in Blah Blah days, we will call you Blah Blah….”. Bottom line, I don’t have these papers. So I start asking the clerk if she would accept a fax from the bank, thus becoming the annoying person the irritates me when he stands in line before me, obviously doesn’t have the correct papers, and still tries to get away with it. The clerk refused, and I had to admit another bureaucratic defeat. But fear not, next time I will be armed to the teeth with ID’s mortgage bills, the works… Wish me luck.

Noise

Yesterday we saw a good film called Noise. It is about a guy (played by Tim Robbins) that lives in Manhattan, gets fed up with the noise (specifically with car alarms going off) and actually does something about it. Think about it, car alarms are completely useless. We all disregard them, and some researches show explicitly that they do not prevent car thefts at all. A Google search for 'ban useless car alarms' gave 124,000 results! The film also raises some questions as to how far do we have to go in order to really make a change. The advantage of Noise compared to the film Falling Down (Michael Douglas) is that the hero in Noise begins his journey as a rather normal person whereas in Falling Down, the hero is not normal to begin with. So, if you have some spare time on your hands, watch Noise, or go fix the world.

;-)

Scam artists

Oren Zarif (at picture) recently appeared at Yaron London and Moti Kirshenbaum's excellent TV show (Hebrew). As it turns out, Zarif runs a multi-million dollar business from 'helping' people with his 'psychokinetics' method. He recently asked all his employees to change their family names to Zarif since this name has a strong power of some sort. In the interview he uses such terms as frequency, energy and heat mixed with other terms such as stream of consciousness, the third eye (located at the center of our foreheads if you must ask)... At some point Yaron London asks Zarif to define the terms that he used, that's where the fun begun. Zarif couldn't give a good answer and Yaron called him a scam artist. That was a lot of fun to watch. A day later, Yaron London got some phone threats by Zrif's followers. Zarif's Internet site is filled with success stories of his 'work', but a quick Google search revealed the following facts:

1. He was interrogated several times under suspicion of fraud
2. He predicted a catastrophic earth quake in Israel which never occurred
3. He sent the prime minister a letter in which he describes a meeting with Stephen Hawking, saying that he affected Hawking's mind and improved his opinion of Israel's actions. He then demands to meet with any important figure that arrives to Israel. And asks that the PM give him a three day notice before any such meetings.

This reminds me of a funny story I heared from Eyal (a lab mate). He attended a meeting with some scammer which sold magnetic bracelets. The bracelets have positive healing powers blah blah blah... Eyal asked her what is the difference between the positive effect of the bracelets' magnetic field, and the negative effect of electromagnetic radiation from cellphones? She replied:" Don't you get it? the difference is in the 'electro'". Case closed.

Homemade recording studio

As you may or may not know, I play guitar for the funk/rock/pop band Kobayashi Porcelain (name taken from the film The usual suspects). We are currently working on a new album, but we do not have a lot of cash for it. So... yesterday 7:30am I picked up Sagi (the band leader, drums, vocals...) Guitar, amplifier, effects, cables, percussion instruments... we drove to Yanai (Sagi's brother, percussions, vocals, keyboards...) picked up the recording computer, hard drive, more cables, microphones, mixer, headphones ... drove to the holy city of Jerusalem to pick up some vintage keyboards, and finally drove to Ofer's (ex bass player for the band, now plays with Sagi on a seperate punk-pop project Action Attention!!!) paresnt's basement. Ofer set up a small rehersal room there. This is not an american standard basement, more like a small storage room. After finding the actual keys to the basement the fun began: setting up all the equipment in the room and running the cables to the mixer and computer outside the room. Bottom line, by the end of the day I didn't get to record a single note. So... Today im going back in... wish me luck...

*Top picture: Kobayashi Porcelain show at the Patiphone club

On the lighter side...

Well, yesterday I had a very good recording session . We are recording our version of Dani Ben Israel's 'Kapara', a classic 70's song. We might actually get Shlomo Mizrahi A.K.A. 'The Israeli Hendrix', who recorded the original song, to lay down a few track for us next week. Markey Funk is working with us and helped us A LOT during the last few days. Recording of this song constitutes a test run for the recording procedure of the whole upcoming album, and I think we are getting a lot out of it. The final mix should be ready in about a month... tell you all about it when it's done.

Back to the usual business, here are a few entertaining links regarding religion:

There is a big issue in the U.S.A. regarding teaching an 'alternative' to Darwin's evolution theory which is called 'intelligent design'. The intelligent design advocates use pseudoscientific arguments, and claim that life is so complex that an intelligent entity (GOD) must have designed it. An amusing retort is suggested in form of the new Church of the flying spaghetti monster which uses similar pseudoscience to prove that our creator is... well... a flying spaghetti monster (see picture at the top).

Here is another one: Scientology is a rising religion that believes in some ridiculous ideas. The founder of this religion is science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. The TV show South Park has a whole episode about them and some of their devoted believers (Tom Cruise...), you can see a small outtake from it on Youtube, or watch the whole episode online at http://www.southparkstudios.com/ season 9 episode 12. The late Isaac Hayes played a regular character at South Park (Chef), but after the Scientology episode was broadcast he quit the show.

Do you understand quantum mechanics?

The late professor Richard Feinman once said: "if someone says he understands quantum mechanics, he doesn't understand quantum mechanics". Is quantum mechanics such a mysterious theory? I claim that it is not. Thats is not to say that I posess some secret knowledge that no one else does, or that I have answears to some fundamental difficulties with the theory. I simply think that one needs to consider the meaning of the word 'understand'. We say that we understand the answer to some question, when the answer puts our mind at ease.

The most relevant example is that of Newton's laws: To those of us that studied and practiced some problems of Newtonian mechanics, these laws of motion and graviational force seem simple enough, even intuitive. Most of my coleagues say they understand Newton's laws. But do we really understand them? On close inspection these laws are quite weird. Many scientists and philosophers objected to the theory at the time that it was suggestd (a few persisted in objecting for many years later). According to Newton:

• 
  
  Every two bodies attract each other, no matter how far they are. This was objected to on philosophical grounds, asking how could there be action at a distance between two bodies that don't touch each other?


• 
  
  The force acts instantaniously. Information is exchanged between any two bodies at an infinite velocity.

These objections to the theory are important, they were solved by Einstein's general theory of relativity (1915) which is an extension of Newton's laws. But that does not mean that we do not understand Newton's laws. On the same token, people that study quantum mechanics and practice some problems, get an intuition about the theory. I think we CAN say we understand quantum mechanics just as we say we understand Newton's laws. As for the open question of the 'quantum mechanical measurement problem', this should be studied and hopefully a solution will be found one day which extends the quantum mechanics theory just as general relativity extended Newton laws.

The picture at the top shows the late Prof. Richard Feinman with his family. In the background you can see Feinman's car with 'Feinman diagrams' drawn on it.

Welcome

Welcome, this is my first bolgging attempt. First a few words about the blog's name: ħ is Planck's constant, a fundamental constant in quantum mechanics. This already hints to my interest in science, and probably to some subjects that will be discussed in this blog (in a popular manner that I hope the general public could follow). Other than science, I will share some thoughts on music, religion, and maybe a bit of philosophy. I am by no means an expert on any of these subjects (don't tell my lab instructor), therefore, any comments you have about what I say here are welcome.

The topic I have been thinking a bit about lately is atheism. I highly recommend viewing the talk by Richard Dawkins at TED.com (many other interesting talks there as well). It occurred to me that the transition from polytheism to monotheism originated from the Middle East. It would be nice if the next step – transition from monotheism to atheism (Richard Dawkins calls it "going one god further") would emerge from Israel. I wondered how many atheists live in Israel, so I checked at Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics... The population by religion table does not say how many atheists live in Israel. I strongly suspect that many atheists of Jewish decadence were written of as Jewish believers. So I searched on and finally I found a document which states that in 2005 out of all the citizens above the age of 20, about 40% claim to be not religious. This is a very encouraging figure. This puts Israel in the top line of atheist countries (compare to other countries). We should be aware of our power and use it to prevent the society's decay to mystic believes in karmas, reikis, auras and all sorts of relics. I'll leave you at that for now... until next time, more interesting information can be found at http://www.hofesh.org.il/ (origin of the comic strip at the top).