Daily WTF

I mentioned that I have a new job in my last post. Well, our office is located in Midtown Atlanta, on W. Peachtree. There are plenty of places to eat around there, but I’m new and still broke, so I’ve been bringing turkey sandwiches and baggies of pretzels and applesauce and the like. It’s like school all over again, only less fun.

In any case, yesterday was the first day I ventured out of the office for lunch. One of my roommates works down the street from me, and the other drove up to meet us both. They told me to meet them at Colony Square, which is a big complex with lots of offices and a food court and stuff on Peachtree. Now, wouldn’t you think that W. Peachtree would be the west end of Peachtree? You’d be wrong. They're different streets. I walked a good bit (well, a few blocks) farther than I anticipated in my uncomfortable-yet-cute heels. But I digress.

After a delicious Chick-Fil-A Spicy Chicken Sandwich with the roommates at Colony Square, I hiked back to the office and diligently began to work (maybe). A couple of hours later, one of my coworkers Skyped me—“There’s a jumper on top of Colony Square,” she said.

Yikes. A Google News search yielded nothing, not even on the Atlanta Journal Constitution site. So we took to Twitter to find out what was going on (which is in itself an interesting commentary on how social media is the best new breaking news source, but that’s for some other time). @ajc had tweeted about the jumper, as had several individuals. Apparently, someone was sitting on the edge of the top of the building. They’d closed off Peachtree (not W. Peachtree, mind you) and everything.

An hour or two went by before I thought to check for updates on the story—back to Twitter. This time, though, this is what I found: "@ajc Yes, it is. He agreed to come down to meet TI. RT @edelvil: @ajc Did TI really talk that boy from jumping off?"

I’m sorry; what?

Now, a day later, we have a bit more information. According to the AJC, it was indeed Atlanta rapper T.I. to the rescue Wednesday afternoon. He heard about the debacle on the radio and rushed to the scene in hopes that he could help. Which, apparently, he could.

T.I.: Superman’s true secret identity? In any case, he can do whatever he likes.

Spooky Action at a Distance

You know what I don't get? Quantum entanglement.

Okay, sure, lots of people don't. Quantum mechanics in general is just a clusterfuck of physics nonsense to most people, probably. But I consider myself reasonably open to quantum ideas, whether or not I truly understand them.... but quantum entanglement is just fucking weird.



This is the description from Wikipedia:

Quantum entanglement, also called the quantum non-local connection, is a property of the quantum mechanical state of a system containing two or more objects, where the objects that make up the system are linked in a way such that one cannot adequately describe the quantum state of a constituent of the system without full mention of its counterparts, even if the individual objects are spatially separated.

Buuuh, let's rephrase that a little. If two particles are entangled, measuring the state of one particle, whatever that means, tells you what the result of measuring the state of the other particle will be, and it doesn't matter when or where the measurement is taken.

This is the easiest way I have ever been able to think of it: If two children are on a see-saw -- even if it's a thousand miles long -- you know that if one kid is down, the other has to be up. But no communication has to occur between the children for this to be the case; they are still connected and act as one single system. The concept of quantum entanglement is one of the reasons Einstein began to dislike quantum theory (as it was formulated), and he derisively referred to it as "spooky action at a distance."



Here's the kicker: entanglement occurs at roughly 10,000 times the speed of light. And that's a lower bound.




(The above article does a decent job explaining a little more of why entanglement is so damn weird, so I recommend reading it over. It's short, don't worry.)