Stupid Thoughts To Give You A Cheap Laugh

• "They will be the first generation who won't match the prosperity of their parents." Ain't it the truth. It's a thought I've had more than once. I'm ambivalent about finding it analytically tenable.


• Of all of the crazinesses of particle physicists, the notion of a "graviton" – a particle that...um...mediates, I suppose, is the best way to put it, gravity – is one. [Sic.] But, see, my understanding is that some see gravity as a force – á la the strong and weak nuclear forces –; and forces are neither energy nor mass. So, OK, the graviton transports gravitational force between massive bodies. But how does it deliver the force? I really don't see the logical difference between a bunch o' particles delivering gravitational force over subatomic distances and massive bodies exchanging gravitational forces over "macro" distances. So, as a matter of logic, I'm partial to Einstein's relativistic explanation of gravity as a warping of space-time.
  
  Now, some of the graviton-boosters got excited when they seemed to peg down the speed of gravity a while ago, because it seemed to be about the speed of light and, hey! That's the universal speed limit which applies to, you know, particles! And, as far as I can tell, there was really no theoretical reason why a non-particulate gravity should have a speed limit. Newton thought it acted instantaneously. Ergo, the very presence of one seemed to be taken as de facto evidence for the particulate theory of gravity.
  
  The recent identification of black–hole-ular evidence for the gravitational warping of space-time by massive bodies brought all of this to mind again. Whatever the hell space-time is (and the mere thought of it really addles my pate), it's bendable. So, mass bends it. But just like when you drop a rock in water, or a cone onto the green grid of 3-D land, it takes a while for the disturbance to spread (or "propagate," as the eggheads like to say). Why should the stuff of space-time be any different? Gravity isn't a force, it's the name we give to "the warping of space-time," or at least one aspect thereof. Gravity is "warped space-time," space-time is a medium of some sort [see next paragraph but one], and, like all media of which I know, it takes time for effects to travel through them. No need for gravitons.
  
  What's really cool is the idea that this might mean that moving bodies, especially those travelling at relativistic speeds, might leave gravitational wakes behind them.
  
  And since I'm on a tangential topic, I really would like to know what the stuff of electromagnetism is, and how it's logically different from the old idea of the "ether." I mean, the whole notion of the "Wave" part of photonic duality presumes some sort of medium, but it only gets called "electromagnetism." So, fine, that's what it's called — but I want to know what it is.
  
  
• I had a thought about an analogy between language (or maybe it was the hermeneutic spiral?) and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but I don't remember what it was. Similarly, something about language and the holographic theory of memory.
  
  
• Wild weather going on this morning. It reminds me of a day in Sheffield, UK, when upon walking through the sun-filled doorway I stepped into a decent rain falling from the only cloud in the sky; but my walk to school got me out from beneath it pretty quickly. A couple of hours later I looked up from my microscope into a torrential downpour from the overcast. The next hour I looked up to see a cloudless sky. An hour later, the snow had already covered the grass. But when I went to lunch in another hour, the sky was clear again and the grass was perky and green. And I am not exagerrating.