This is probably the first of many drafts. Please excuse the poor writing, grammar and possible misuses of scientific principles

Bernard's Watch is the most dangerous item mankind can ever exist: A physics layman's speculation

Abstract: The watch used in the television show 'Bernard's Watch' once activated will instantly destroy the user and could possible destroy every living thing that is alive when used. I will attempt to show this using my (limited) knowledge of physics

History: Me and my brother were in the car the other day and he casually asked me what ability I would rather have: the ability to stop time, or to go back in time. It was an innocent question, but it got me angry. I get the feeling this could have been inspired by the guy in Heroes, but I will always remember the show Bernard's Watch that showed me the premise. It's pretty simple: a young kid is given a watch by...someone, and this watch has the ability to stop time. A simple premise, and to be honest, it was pretty fun to watch when I was younger. And the things he did with it were amazing! But looking back, I can't help but take my pedantic anger at the idea of stopping time, and have decided to explore what would happen if such a watch existed. I'm not going to lie, it's been ages since I did A-Level physics, and I pretty much got an 'E' in my final grades, so I can't say that what I'm going to say is accurate, only what I can remember. I do hope that people will help correct me, as with experts on the topic, this could get very interesting. ANYWAY...

Setting the scene:Bernard has had enough of old man McGrumpy. He's mean, and cold, and won't chuck back Bernard's prized football in the garden. Bernard's had enough. 'What if I were to use my special watch, stop time and then punch him in the knee? That'll show him!'. Brilliant! Bernard walks over to old man McGrumpy. He waves at him. McGrumpy shakes his fist. Bernard reaches into his pickets, gets out his watch, and stops time.

And now, the shit hits the fan.

For argument's sake we are going to say that only Bernard is allowed to move. Everything else is stationary and can't be moved. After 20 seconds of Bernard's time, everything will go back to normal and time will be unfroven.

Right, the first thing that Bernard would notice is that everything would go dark. He wou;dn't be able to see anything. This is because the light that would be emitted or reflected off objects would be paused, and would therefore be unable to get to his eyes so he could see. Bernard would just be stumbling around the ground, with no idea where McGrumpy is. But that's a walk in the park compared to what happens next.

The second law of thermodynamics says that heat and pressure will try to reach an equilibrium if there is an industribution of said properties. That's why when you're in a spaceship and open the hatch, everything will be sucked out quickly, because there's hardly any air in space and the air 'wants' to have an even distribution throughout the universe, so it rushes out. Now here's the problem: Heat is the kinetic energy of particles vibrating. If you have an atom or partical that is vibrating very fast, it's going to be hot, vise-versa if it's not vibrating fast. When time is paused, the only particles that are going to be vibrating in the universe are going to be the one's of Bernard. All other atoms would be at a standstill. So what does this mean? It means, that when Bernard stops time, he will be exposed to the coldest tempreture you can get, absolute zero. All the heat in his body would be sucked from his body and he will probably freeze instantly. Think that's the worst that will happen. Think again!

There's also the law of inertia. Earth is rotating at 400 miles an hour, whilst hurtiling around the sun, and that's hurtiling around the galaxy. The galaxy, is estimated to be moving at a distance of roughly 600 kilometres a second. Now, if you're standing on a moving car, and it suddenly stops, you're going to keep moving. If the galaxy stops moving, and that was going at 600 km a second, and you're not part of the time that's stopped, you're going to keep moving. Bernard would be catapulted at 600 km a second into the atmosphere. In theory, it shouldn't matter if he's inside or not: If there are no forces in the atoms int he walls or ceiling to repel back the forces in the atom in him, he should just pass through the ceiling. He has twenty secons until the time goes back to normal, so by the time it starts again, Bernard will be 12,000 km away from everyone he loved, everything he has ever known, and old man McGrumpy. And twenty seconds is up starting... now! It's over!

Exept for one final, and probably the most dangerous consequence yet. In zero seconds, he has moved 12,000 km. There is a formuler that states that states that the acceleration of an object is related to his mass and the force subjected to him to make him go that speed. The long story short is that nothing with mass can ever accelerate to the speed of light, as it would require an infinate ammount of energy, and would create an infinate ammount of mass. But that can't happen right? Well guess what! Bernard just accelarated from standing completly still to 600 km in no time at all. It takes light 0.000003 seconds to travel one km, so Bernard has definatly accelerated fasted than light. So, Bernard would gain an infinate mass, enveloping the Earth, the sun, the solar system... If it's observable, Bernard will eventually envelop it. And he wanted to do was show old man McGrumpy a thing or too about being more repectful.

Conclusion:
Suspending belief that you can't pause time, what was considered to be just a fun gift to help someone do things he or she couldn't get away with, turns out to be the biggest threat to all things in the universe. I apologise for the shoddy writting, and hopefully someone will help make it look more pleasing, as well as correcting some of the mistakes that I have most likely made. Maybe it's possible to do more a different analyses of another show.

Ruining A Person's Day- The Spotify Edition

What you'll need:
-A computer
-Access to Spotify
-A friend

-Find a person with a Spotify account, make sure they're logged in to their account

-Look at their account and note down the names of their playlists

-Create a new account with a name almost exactly similar to theirs. For example, if their account is 'Gamerboy1989', choose 'Gamerboy1988'.

-Create a load of playlists.

-Name the playlist word for word after their playlist.

-Fill the playlists with the most inane music you can find. My personal facorates are Mr Methane's classic retelling of Robin Hood, or how about Halloween Fart Sounds?

-Call the person in and ask why they have such bad playlists.

- Observe and enjoy the shriek and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I haven't done this one yet, but hopefully you'll have more balls than I do.

Blind Faith
Famous Ol Spice
White Sky
No Quarter

The Simulation hyothesis





Right, I've been meaning to write an interesting blog post and the subject is pretty interesting, could help if you could correct me on anything if I'm wrong. It's also not going to be that great a quality, and I'm sure it will have a few spelling erros. Sorry for this.

Right, so philosophers have always been asking questions about reality and what is real and what can be known to be real. Descartes, a notable philosopher penned the idea of an evil demon who could provide an illusion to the senses, so the victim couldn't know anything beyond what was given to him. Very crude example, but the idea suddenly regained new popularity with another take on the hypothesis that we may be under the influence of an evil genious which was called by some philosophers the Brain-In-A-VAT thought experiment. Basically, out senses are provided to us with electrical signals from the eyes, ears etc. If a genious and computer which was powerful enough could isolate a brain and connect to the right parts of it, sending appropriate electrical signals, the brain could be fooled into believing that it was still in a body, in a famililar environment.

Hopefully that should explain what has taken philosophers decades and centuries to ponder over. But one recent philospher argues that perhaps it's not even philosophically possible but probable that we are in a similar situation, all of us. The name of the philosopher is Nick Bostrom, and he's a professor at Oxford University. Bostrom argues that chances are we are living in a computer simulation, based on a extrapolated data and educated guesses. These are as followed:

Three things will happen:

1. Humanity will destroy itself before it can produce ancestor simulations that can simulate thinking beings.

2.Humanity will have the technology to create simulations but wil refrain from creating them.

3.We are almost certain to be living in a simualation.

Woah! Ancestor simulations! What the hell are they? Well


Are they even possible? Well, a case could certainly be put forward that the technology's possible even if it isn't possible now. We have in a way been creating simulations for a while now. You could say that the first simulation we created was the game Pong. Look now to the Halo series or the newest Grand Theft Auto to see how much we've progressed. You can thank Moore's Law for that. Moore's law essestiantially guesses that the ammoutn of transistors in a chip that you can buty for $1000 doubles every eighteen months. So basically the average computer's power doubles every one and a half years. Some theoriests believe that computing will be so powerful that by 2030 we'll have virtual reality that's almost indistinguishable from real life in terms of the graphics of a computer.

The other thing that some theoriests have estimated is the advancement of artifical intelligence that equals human intelligence by the year 2030. So within a computer we have a mind. Perhaps it will even think like us. Well, going back to our Brain-In-A-VAT senario, what if we engineer the mind so that when subjected to the equivilant of electircal impulses to where it could experience stimulai from the external world, then perhaps we could simulate an environment for it where it couldn't tell the difference between the simulated world and real life.

So how does this imply we're in a simulation? Well the theory is that at first the technology would be costly (both in resources and with money) so only one or two simulations could be created. But as computing power cheapens and becomes more powerful, then more can be created. The supercomputers that were around thirty years ago are now as powerful as an ordinary calculater found in a home. So the supercomputers that produce a simulation at first are like the supercomputers we had thirty years ago: they will become overshadowed by its predesessors in power. Perhaps the computers will be so powerful that anyone with a personal computer can simulate a mind and an internal world for the mind. Potentially billions of simulations will be created. So here's the point: if we're outnumbered by billions of simulations, what makes us sure that we're the first simulation? What makes us so sure that we're the original. Perhaps it's turtles all the way down.

Of course, this depends on many things, like whether Moore's law will continue for the next few decades. But it's interesting definately, and it's probably one of the stonger arguments for a creator of our universe.

So what does this mean for us? Well for one, it means we can go 'Woah man' without having pot, but some people have already started theologising about what this means for us. One guy has suggested we're likely to be deleted by the year 2050. He argues that as soon as we start creating simulations, in order to stop stacking, our creates will delete us. I'm not sold on this idea, why would a creator be so ashamed or in such a hurry to witness such an interesting find in the simualtion. Anyway, the link to the website of the simulation hypothesis can be found here. There are a varity of interesting links on that site. The orginal paper describing the simulation hypothesis can be found here.

Test post

- What!? How embarrising, a grown man, walking around with a balloon!
-Wait, a guitar solo, followed by a synthesiser solo followed by another guitar solo followed by the Pirates of the Caribbean theme tune? Yes please.

Oops! When I started to do the 'List of 2012 Contenders for the American election' I should have notified myself that I don't actually know much about them except for Romney or Palin. Oh well, I've got other things to write about. Hopefully going to do a post on Nick Bostrom and stuff, so stay tuned!

Honk

One of the downsides to not writing on a constant basis for an audience, no matter how small, is as soon as there's a shotage in writing, due to family problems, lack of time etc there's suddenly a big gap in between where a vast ammount of changes can occur. There's a big gap between one of my entries and my breakdown, which came out of no where, or in the case I'm trying to highlight, gains in interests which might not rivit the previous audience. In this case, American politics. I'm trying to start this blog up again and give it a use so maybe my new founded interest can play a role in the reforming of the blog. So here it is, the new blog, with a fun new section!

The Next President of The United States?...

So each president is limited to two four-year-terms, and as you, having not lived in a cave for half your life will no, President Barack Obama will be up for another term in two years. But he's proved to be a very controversial president. The economic stimulus package, plus the health care act have been controversial enough to spring a new movement up within a very short ammount of time. Can he be beaten? Well, yes and no. Part of the question depends on the Republican candidate and how he/she holds up int he campaign. So to give you an idea of who the next president of the United States could be, here are some notes on the most popular candidates. This will be done in installments; it's too daunting to write a really long blog article, so without further ado, I give you Mitt Romney:
Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney is the former governer of Massachusetts. Before the stint, he was CEO of Bain & Company and the president of the 2002 Winter Olympics, where he lifted both events/companies out of financial crises. When governor, he managed to turn a three billion dollar deficit into a six hundred million dollar surplus. Pretty impressive huh? With stubborn unemployment numbers, and the economy to lose two percentage points if the houses passes the Republican spending cuts, Obama may face some serious competition from the man with an MBA from Harvard, a man who calls himself 'Mr Economy'. He will have no problem getting votes from the business community. Except there's a problem:

When Mitt was governor of Massachusetts, he signed into law a health care act which required everyone to purchase health insurence (The US does not have a National Health Service or any universial health care for its citizens). The bill also subsidised costs so lower-income families could afford to buy insurence. In effect, this bill expanded coverage to nearly everyone in Massitussits. So why is this a problem?

Well, the bill looks suspicially like the bill Barack Obama passed last year, the bill which catalysed an entire movement of people (The Tea Party). The bill which Republicans are almost unanimus in condemming as an unnessary and a costly increase in government. Romney, somewhat bravely praised the bill, arguing that the difference with the state bill, called RomneyCare is different from Obamacare is due to state issues, and has called the Obamacare bill a great abuse of power. That hasn't stopped Obama from camparing the similarities to the bills and lavishing praise on the Governer. If Romney fails to get the Republican nomination, it will be this bill.

Coming soon, Mike Huckabee...

Harry Reid moves forward with reform vote

Tea partiers in two camps: Sarah Palin vs. Ron Paul

If you want to know how Obama's doing with his promises, you can't go wrong with the Obamameter