On Offence

Fuck you.

See what I did there? I just offended you, just like that. It was so easy. So easy, in fact, that it's perfectly possible to do it completely by accident. Everybody gets offended at one point in their life. If you tell me that you have never once been offended by anybody, ever, on any topic, then, frankly, you're wrong. In fact, if you were so bold as to make such a claim, I would go out of my way to offend you.

But it doesn't work like that. You can't offend someone if they know you're trying to offend them! It's as though the intent to cause harm instantly makes it less offensive! Meanwhile, accidental offences are so common, and yet so much more offensive. I might make some offhand remark about how your religion is misguided, make sweeping generalisations about you and whatever groups you may belong to, or crack a joke at your expense - knowing that it's just a joke, and yet you will still be offended.  Why is this? Why is it that one must not mean to offend before it actually occurs?

[[I wrote a huge paragraph here, then deleted it because it doesn't support my case whatsoever.]]

I thought about it, and the answer to me is this: The intent behind offence is completely irrelevant. What matters, is the belief behind it. Generally, offhand remarks will in some way reflect that person's beliefs, as an unintentional side-effect, rather than the sole purpose. However, if I say something for the sole purpose of creating offence, then it doesn't matter what my core beliefs are, because I'm ignoring them to offend you.  Does this make any sense?

Let's take a look at the word offence actually means. I don't have a dictionary on hand, and I can't be bothered to google it, so I'll be doing this by ear. Offence, or to be offensive, to offend. In warfare, when you are attacking, you are on the offensive, you are offending your opponent.  Offensive = attacking. Attacking implies damage. Therefore, if I'm right about both the root of the word, and beliefs, when you say "This offends me", you are really saying, "It is damaging to me to know that you believe that." And there it is. To know you believe that. Because we always want to see the best in people, we can't take offence if their beliefs do not come into account! Thus, a pessimist will always take offence, while an optimist, or just a naive person, will certainly take much less offence.

So there you have it, folks. If you want to offend someone, you have to make them really believe that YOU believe it.




I don't even know why I wrote this post any more.

Lorem Ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean ultrices congue libero, ut congue eros aliquam at. Praesent lacus sapien, consectetur vel porta vel, elementum sed enim. Nulla nulla enim, ornare eu vehicula sit amet, vehicula sit amet leo. Praesent massa mauris, adipiscing adipiscing aliquet non, ultrices quis diam. Morbi suscipit rhoncus vehicula. Vivamus gravida enim venenatis quam feugiat luctus. Vivamus pellentesque vehicula quam, at tristique eros blandit et. Maecenas eget pharetra elit. Donec pellentesque laoreet convallis. Nunc laoreet aliquet tortor vel lobortis. Fusce ante ante, blandit non viverra aliquet, tincidunt quis elit. Aliquam erat volutpat. Praesent dignissim, est sed varius eleifend, urna nisi condimentum felis, gravida convallis orci ipsum in lacus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.

Vestibulum enim lacus, varius a ullamcorper sit amet, fermentum vel orci. Proin lacinia tellus quis lacus ultricies laoreet. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Morbi in ultricies purus. Morbi semper consequat tellus vel rhoncus. Nulla scelerisque ligula nec augue tristique interdum. Nullam at dui ut magna euismod malesuada eu suscipit justo. Integer eleifend lacus ut elit blandit ultricies. Maecenas non lorem id elit auctor iaculis eget sodales velit.

Mauris blandit facilisis purus a porta. Etiam posuere felis vitae odio rhoncus congue. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Donec facilisis lacus ut elit porttitor in elementum felis facilisis. Praesent euismod dapibus neque, ut dictum lectus sagittis non. Integer lacus libero, faucibus ac rhoncus et, eleifend vitae sapien. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Praesent diam tellus, ornare ac suscipit sit amet, dictum quis diam. Quisque at ante nunc. Vestibulum nec felis quis dui interdum porttitor vel non lectus.

Fusce gravida tortor ac turpis porta eget dictum urna pharetra. Donec dui nulla, posuere sodales adipiscing et, gravida non eros. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque posuere nulla eget mauris vehicula sit amet congue diam molestie. Sed a dui ut diam gravida lobortis non in ligula. Phasellus nunc quam, vulputate dapibus vehicula vestibulum, molestie quis mauris. Nulla vel ligula consectetur leo hendrerit lacinia.

Quisque tincidunt, risus quis placerat placerat, dolor augue dignissim odio, id tincidunt ligula ipsum vitae tellus. Ut vulputate sagittis urna at venenatis. Aliquam vulputate neque tincidunt nunc faucibus egestas. Praesent eget facilisis nunc. Duis tristique, nisl id cursus volutpat, velit nisl faucibus velit, eget sodales urna orci quis risus. Curabitur lectus sapien, consequat interdum porta id, varius non arcu. Maecenas elementum lacinia lacus sit amet dapibus. Nunc sem justo, rutrum in tincidunt bibendum, blandit ac sapien. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Praesent dui justo, elementum ut egestas at, cursus ut dolor. Curabitur ac urna sed ligula scelerisque commodo. Duis eleifend mi non dolor cursus blandit. Phasellus hendrerit porta ante. Etiam est dolor, condimentum at viverra at, sagittis sed dui. Aenean tempus tellus quis diam scelerisque eget commodo mauris feugiat.

But seriously though, that burrito post is coming. I promise. The only reason I haven't written it yet is because "I'm researching" it's the only legit reason I have right now for eating burritos every day.

Words which I constantly misspell

And the words which I constantly misspell them as, in "no particular*" order:

*Order of how often I misspell them as that form, descending order^.

^Give or take.

Weird: wierd
The: Teh
Totally: Tottaly
Concert: huewfgp [[EDIT: That was totally supposed to be the only joke in this post. Which is why I should have come up with a more comprehensive list before writing it. And probably thought of a realistic word, rather than using a random word generator.]]




P.S: I am totally drunk while writing this. I definitely planned on having a list longer than four words.

P.P.S: You were tottaly hoping for a post about a burrito and society, weren't you? Stiff shit, I'll post whatever the fuck I want.

...Next post, though. I promise. Post after that, at the least.

You're all awesome.

You guys are awesome. Seriously. Just thought I'd put that out there. I honest-to-God have a whole TEN followers right now.

Which is exactly nine more than I ever expected.

And you also comment, as well. Which makes me feel loved.

That reminds me, I need to go and comment on you guys' blogs as well, don't I? Meh.

ANYWAY, back on track. I just wanted to thank you guys. And by doing so, open up the way for me to demand that you all, like, suggest this to your friends or some shit. Mainly because I suddenly feel greedy and I want to get a fairly decent-sized follower-base before I promptly sell out on them.

Of course, there's no need for you to feel pressured to do this. If you don't feel like going up to people and saying, "HEY! BLOG! HERE! LOOK!" then, please, don't. BUT, if you have a friend who is complaining to you that they need to waste ten minutes, then, by all means point them in this direction.


...


I feel all weird, asking people to do this. So, seriously, don't unless you really, REALLY know someone who would be into the sort of random crap I write about here.







I mainly wrote this post so that I could procrastinate off on writing the next post. Which, provided I refrain from more filler posts, will likely be about a burrito and society. Yes, that's right, I PLANNED A POST.


I might go back and delete like the entire first eight paragraphs of this post, but meh.


EDIT: So it turns out, I actually have ELEVEN followers. IT'S WORKING ALREADY!


EDIT 2: Oh, and if you're one of the people who have been told to go to this site as a result of this post, none of it applies to you. Go away. (Please don't)

Blog blog blog blog

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This was a blog post.

This is the post where I explain relativity...

...Using the exact same justification I have for almost every post to date.

Plus, every good blog needs one of these, right?

So, anyway. Down to business: Relativity.

Specifically special relativity because general relativity is weird confusing and generally (heheh) annoying.

So. Here are some things you need to know. The basics, if you will.

Back in the day, when people thought they knew everything about physics, there were two absolutes: Space and time. That is, one second is, was, and always will be, one second. The same for one metre. These two were related in lots of special ways (inbred twats), but the most simple of these was d = s.t.
Distance = speed times time. Speed was viewed as relative because it changed while time and distance changed.

HOWEVER, then a chap named Einstein came along, and he was all like, "You know, I wonder how fast light travels" (or some shit; don't quote me on this, they might have already known how fast light travelled). In fact, he wen't further than this. He said to himself, "Now I wonder if it's possible to go at the speed of light. What would that be like?"

So, he set off doing these weird wacked out 'thought-experiments', whereby he imagined a train. A train capable of ridiculously high speeds. Close-to-and-exceeding-the-speed-of-light type speeds. And he imagined himself sitting on this train, facing forward, staring at a mirror. Now, if the train was going at really high speeds, then, what would he experience?

[If I wasn't fucking lazy there'd be a picture here]

The general gist of that non-existent picture up there is that as he got closer and closer to the speed of light, some weird shit would happen, and as he exceeded it, well - the light that is reflected off his face into the mirror would never reach the mirror, as it was going at the same speed (or faster) than the light.

Now, I can't remember the reasoning behind this, but Einstein came out of this with two major points. Firstly, that it is impossible to exceed the speed of light, and secondly that the speed of light is constant, regardless of your frame of reference.

Now, that might not seem like much of a big deal, but that second one is the insane part of relativity. If you don't get frame of reference, then I'll explain it to you. Imagine you are in a car, travelling at, say, 10 m/s. Another car, travelling at 15 m/s passes you. Now, from your frame of reference,  that car is actually only travelling at 5 m/s. Which makes sense, right? I mean, you're already travelling at 10 m/s, so why would you see the car travelling that extra 10 m/s?

Conversely, if a car passes you in the other direction, going at 15 m/s, then you see it moving at 25 m/s. Because you're already travelling at 10 m/s the other way, so this car is actually passing you 10 m/s faster than what the guy in that car is reading on his speedometer.

The general gist of frame of reference is that if you are in a non-accelerating (A.K.A inertial) frame of reference, it is actually impossible to realise that you are moving, without some kind of outside reference source. The only reasons why you can tell that you're moving in the car are because a) the speedometer says so, b) you can see the earth moving past you, and c) you can feel the bumps in the road. But take out the speedo, and put yourself on a perfectly smooth road, and it might as well be that it's not you that's moving in reference to the earth, but the earth that's moving in reference to you.

Note that this only works in non-accelerating frames of reference. The moment you slow down or speed up, you get forces acting and you enter general relativity. Not good.

So... yeah. Where was I before this random (but necessary) sidetrack? Oh, right, yeah. Speed of light is a constant.

The reason why this is so trippy is because, with you're newly found knowledge of frame of reference, you know that speed is relative. Speeds change depending on what your own speed is, and it should be the same with light, right? (hehe, it rhymes)

WRONG. The speed of light is constant, regardless of frame of reference. Say, someone shines a light on you, while you are staying still. The light beam comes towards you at exactly the speed of light (roughly 3 hundred million m/s or 3x10^8 m/s), as you'd expect. Now, imagine that you are running away from this light beam, and apply your knowledge of frame of reference. Say, for simplicity's sake, you are running at half the speed of light when they switch on their torch. You pull out you're incredibly advanced measuring software to measure the speed of the light that's coming towards you. It should be roughly half of the speed of light. But it's not. Because the speed of light is constant, absolute. It is coming at you, still at 3x10^8 m/s. Which, when you think about it, is really weird.

One of the weirdest things about this is that there are some really interesting side-effects. Let's start of with simultaneity. Generally, when someone sees two things happen at the same time, someone else sees the same two things happen at the same time. Not so when you factor in relativity.

Thought experiment time! [insert relevant diagram here]

Let's examine the set up in that diagram. We have a train, travelling at high, constant speeds= (the actual speed doesn't really matter), with a light bulb in the middle. At each end of the train, we have a sensor which will itself emit a light when it detects the light from the lightbulb in the middle of the train. We also have a person sitting inside the train, directly below the light bulb, in the middle of the train.

Suppose this guy turns on the light bulb (why would he though? You're already going at ridiculously high speeds. Why would you want to worry about something as trivial as vision?). The light from the light bulb travels from the bulb to the sensors at each end, reaching each sensor at exactly the same time. Why wouldn't it? I mean, it's the same distance and the light is travelling at the same speed; the times are therefore exactly the same. The sensors activate, and each returns a light back to the person, who notices both new light sources at exactly the same time. This is important. And it makes sense, right?

Now, imagine that you are standing on a platform when you see this train go past. It's a perfectly clear train, so you have no problems seeing inside, and the guy happens to flip the switch at the exact moment that you are standing directly opposite him, at the station. What do you see? The correct answer would be "nothing, the train is already gone by the time I have any chance to think about it". But, since everyone in thought experiments are endowed with precision timing and pinpoint mental faculties, we're gonna have to work it out.

From your point of view, the train whizzes past. The light turns on, and the light rays travel from the light bulb to the sensor. Right so far. The light rays hit each sensor, at exactly the same time. WRONG! You see the light travelling at the speed of light! And the train travelling at half the speed of light! So by the time the light has travelled two-thirds of the way towards the back of the train, the sensor's already caught up with it! Conversely, even when the light has travelled the distance towards the front of the train, the sensor's moved on by then! It takes longer to reach the front of the train than it does the back! You do not see the sensors flash their lights at exactly the same time! Instead, you see them at different times! Exclamation marks!

That, my friends, is how relativity fucks up your shit.

There's a lot more to it than that, though (Alot more to it?). Time dilation, length contraction, mass dilation, energy to mass equivalence (e=mc^2)... aaaaaand, that's about it. But I'm too lazy to explain those to you, so I'll let the diagrams do it.

[more non-existent diagrams]




...But seriously, I'll explain time dilation, because that's the trippiest bit, in my opinion. The rest you can go and figure out for yourself or something. Be warned: there is another thought experiment comi-

Whoah, too late.

So, you're on that train again. Different carriage this time, I guess. This one has a super-fancy ultra-pro light clock. Deluxe. Gold edition. Or something. The basic premise behind a light clock is that it sends out a pulse of light, which bounces off a mirror, and arrives back at the clock. By knowing the exact speed of the light (you do) and the exact distance the light has to travel (you do as well), you can measure the time very accurately. So, as you're flying along at half the speed of light, you can tell the time. Whoopee. Does it matter? You're going to get anywhere you want to be in record time anyway, right? WRONG AGAIN. Y'see, it works like this. The train is moving along at half the speed of light. An observer from the platform or the ground next to the railway track or even from fucking space with a telescope (hint: IT DOESN'T MATTER) watches the train going past. Now, knowing that the speed of light is the same for all observers,  this guy can also use the light clock inside the train to measure the time, if he so chooses. Maybe he already has his own light clock. If he does, then he can go to hell. Nobody likes him. Rich-ass bitch, flaunting his wealth in front of all of us. We're trying to do SCIENCE here!

*ahem*

Anyway, the guy uses the light clock inside the train to measure the time. But - hang on! The train is moving! By the time the light has returned to the sensor, it's moved on! In fact, it's moved on by the time it hits the mirror, and moved even further by the time it returns to the sensor. If you chart the light beam's path, it looks a little like this:

[last non-existent diagram, I promise]

So you can see that the light beam actually has to travel diagonally up, then down. In fact, this makes the  path the light travels further than it was from inside the train! But wait, if d = s.t, then t=d/s. By making the distance longer, we're making time longer! DUN DUN DUUNNNN!!! So by travelling at high speeds, a longer time is actually passing by outside than inside. Which is why you might not make it in record time, anyway,

By doing some tricky maths, we can figure out that the relationship of the two times is that the time from the observer is actually the time from the one being observed (That might actually be the other way around), divided by the square root of one minus the speed the train is moving, squared, over the speed of light, squared. Or, t0 = tv/√(1-(v^2/c^2)).

That's time dilation. No, it's not time travel, it's barely even time control. In fact, using that formula, the only possible way to travel backwards in time, would be to travel at imaginary speeds. As in, quite literally something along the lines of i m/s. Which really isn't possible. Conversely, if it were possible to travel faster than light, the formula predicts that you would end up going through imaginary time. *insert spooky noises here*

Anyways, that's relativity. I didn't explain length contraction, or mass dilation, because honestly length contraction is like exactly the same thing except with the light clock sideways, and I can't remember the thought experiment for mass dilation.

Yeah.

Anyway.



Hope you enjoyed it, I guess.


I'mma go now.

I FUCKING LOVE JAGERBOMBS

Did I mention I like Jagerbombs?