Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Schrodingers' Inmate

In 1935 physicist Erwin Schrodinger put forth one of those oddly ridiculous theories that seem to make quantum physicists go completely berserk. It stated that if you put a cat in a sealed and shielded box with a geiger counter and a vial of poison, in which the poison would be released only if the geiger counter measured any radiation, that until you looked into the box, the cat would neither be alive nor dead.

I'm not talking about "living dead", or zombie cats or anything like that. I leave that sort of thing to Stephen King. It's talking about a state of quantum uncertainty. Because the observer, through the act of observing, alters that which is observed, then a process that is not observed therefore did not occur until it was observed!

Which is all complete rubbish, as far as most things are concerned. It's one of those "If a tree falls in the forest" things.

But I will take the notion and run with it as far as I can for the sake of this post.

On thursday last when I left work to go home we had an offender at or on his way to the hospital. He had coded out..... shuffled off that mortal coil.... gone to that great penitentiary in the sky, as it were. The EMT's had "zapped" him several times on the way there. Brought him back to life. And apparently the efforts were still occurring as I left. Vinnie told me the phone calls were still coming. He's alive..... he's dead.... he's alive... he's dead.....

Therefore in a purely solipsistic and quantum mechanics point of view in my universe, that inmate is neither dead nor alive but in some sort of limbo. And I'm sure that Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle works into it somewhere.

Obviously, I'm no quantum physicist. And apparently Schrodinger didn't know to call the control center and ask questions. I just called and Little B (Big B's nephew) told me that the dude lived and is actually improving at this moment.

I'm not sure why this incident stayed in my mind. I didn't know the inmate. As far as I know I had never met him. I suspect that that odd little bit of my mind that loves horrible jokes hung onto it just to join it with the whole cat thing for some soft of odd laugh.

That's probably it.

In other news: You may have noticed that ads have popped up on the blog. I have ventured into the world of Googles AdSense program just to see what it is all about. Apparently I will make a penny or so if someone clicks on one of those ads. No takers, so far, tho. I will grow tired of them soon and make them go away.

And I finally got a few hits in Africa, completing my roll call of the continents. I've wisely decided to leave Antarctica out of the competition.

Hmmm.... reading this again back from the top, I'm not very happy with it. Doesn't hold together well. Pfui. Frack it.

I'll try to be more coherent tomorrow.

5 comments:

  1. The majority of my posts aren't coherent. Eh....

    Whoever 'gets it', gets it. :-P

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  2. Actually they say he is BRAIN DEAD. I will let you know since I'm doing the 16 hr hospital run on Fri(my rdo)ooooooo...24hrs comp time!!! YEA!!!

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  3. Amy- I try to at least have continuity. Didn't even have that going. I was completely derailed.

    Squiddly-- So how is brain dead to be considered "improving"? Well, okay, I can see it in some cases. But really? Does Little B have a clue what he is talking about? Somebody needs to check their sources!

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  4. I heard brain dead the day he left from the guy that rode the heli to the hospital.
    Day shift said he was getting better yesterday, then said he wasn't brain dead today...

    In any case, they pulled the plug today and he was rehabiitated today after 27 minutes.
    Guaranteed to never reoffend.

    How's that sound for getting better.

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  5. yea..unfortunately I got a call at home from lt B.H. that our little feller died, so I dont get my 24 hrs comp time. I told B.H. to revive him..no way was an inmate gonna mess me out of easy comp time. He said NO.

    Vinnie- I have it on GOOD authority...he was hit 5 times with the A.E.D. before the meat wagon arrived. Once you shock, it locks you out for 2 min. So he was without o2 to the brain for about 15 min before resus.

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