3 mini-phlogs: Schrodinger, Schedule, Meaningless --- Yesterday I spent some time rereading (for probably the 3rd or 4th time) Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. In this chapter Dirk and Richard were discussing Schrodinger's Cat (I'm omitting the emphasized "o" for maximum compatibility with various gopher clients). I'm sure you've heard of this thought experiment but here's the TLDR version: put a cat in a box, in the box is some poison gas in a container that will be triggered to release if a sensor picks up a stray electron. Also in the box is some (nonlethal) amount of radioactive material that has a 50% probability of decaying (thus sending off a stray electron) during the time the cat is in the box. Now the necessary time has elapsed, either the quantum mechanical effect of radioactive decay happened or didn't, either the electron hit the detector or didn't, either the gas was released or wasn't, and either the cat is alive or isn't. At this point the cat is both dead and alive (in a superstate) and it's only when the box is opened and the result is observed that the cat enters a final, definitive, state: dead xor alive. It's just a thought experiment because there's no way to actually carry out the experiment, nor should you because ... animal cruelty. However in the book Dirk was talking about some people who were actually trying the experiment and their workaround was to use a psychic to determine the aliveness of the cat. But Richard argued that is observation. The whole reason I bring this up is to call attention to something no one seems to think about or want to discuss whenever this thought experiment is rehashed: Why does it have to be a *human* observer? Is the cat not an observer as well? Also, if the implication is that an obsercation is required in order for quantum superstates to collapse into macro-scale "regular" states, and form physical matter and physical (Newtonian) laws; laws that are predictable and measurable, not probabilistic, then who was doing the observing before humans were around? Who was doing the observing before any living observer was around? How was the observer manifested into the macroverse? Please don't say "God", that's the religious person's answer for any question that doesn't yet have an answer. Anyway this book was written in the 1980's and I *think* since then some scientists have been reaching other conclusions on superstates. My personal hypothesis, and this is coming from a layman, is more along the lines of the multiverse, that your observation of the cat shifted you (the observer) into the universe where the cat was dead xor into the universe where the cat was live. I bet you thought I fat-fingered "or" when I put "xor" and then got curious when I did it again. Exclusive-or (xor) means one or the other but not both. ----- I only recently realized that I am going to have go move Chips 'n Dip up an hour because aNONradio is on a UTC clock (which doesn't shift with Daylight Savings Time) while the rest of my life is on Eastern time which does shift with DST. I already had to make a shift in my work schedule to accommodate starting at 16:00 (local) without risking being in a meeting that is *supposed* to end at that time but can go long. But I can't push my work schedule back another hour. Every Wednesday work has a meeting from 14:00-15:00 (local) and this could go long, so if I'm going to go on at 15:00 then either I have to do it while I'm still in a meeting or I'm going to have to prerecord the episodes and have aNONradio run them automatically which makes the whole show kind of boring for me. I have written in previous phlogs about why I even find doing the show enjoyable, it reminds me of my time doing live broadcasting in television and I enjoy the feeling that I'm listening to this music *with* other people, we're grooving together. But that makes me wonder to what extent that is actually happening and not just in my mind. How many people are actually listening while I'm broadcasting? I can see the number of people connected to the stream (and it's a pretty small number, especially lately), but those may be just people who always keep the stream going and just turn the volume down whenever they're not listening. It seems that aNONradio has a minimum baseline number of listeners at all times and that leads me to think that maybe these aren't actually listeners at all but mearly machines connected to the stream and nothing more. I thought about moving the show down one hour, asking for the 21:00 time slot. However I don't want to start at that time during the summer months because ... well, quite frankly I miss my wife and I'm sick of sitting in the office in front of a computer, I want to get out from behind the screens, get some dinner, sit down on the couch with her, and just do our thing. So, another idea that I had, was to have both time slots and fill the other hour with something else. But I don't really have time to put together *another* hour long show so I could either rerun an older Chips 'n Dip (option a), or ask my wife to put together a show of her own for me to upload (option b). She seems to be mildly interested in doing this, I think. Sometimes she just does things because she thinks I want her to. I specifically told her "only do this if this sounds like fun to you, don't do it *for* me". She still seemed to be interested but it's hard to gauge how much. Option A, I'm not keen on because two hours of any one genre of music might be a bit much and by the time I come on with the live show in the 2nd hour the audience (if, indeed there even *is* an audience) is already saturated with demoscene music. Option B, could work but there's multiple ways to go about it: Option B1: Ask to extend my time slot to two hours and rename the show to include the name of my wife's show (she's thinking "Mood Swings" since her musical tastes are varied and eclectic), so that would put it on the schedule labeled "Chips 'n Dip / Mood Swings". This would work technically but it's not the best thing for the schedule. It's confusing to try to understand what show starts when. Option B2: Have my wife create an SDF account, get it validated, and have her request the time slot on her own (with my help). This would show up as two separate shows on the schedule but someone in membership (SDF admins) would then need to edit the schedule every 6 months to swap our time slots. I'm not sure they'd want to do that. I posted this on bboard on the anonradio area asking for suggestions and included a poll but that was days ago and no one has responded which then brings me back to my earlier point: Is anyone even listening? Does this even matter to anyone besides me? Is all of this just a waste of time? Over the past week or so I've had a growing feeling that nothing I do really matters in any meaningful way. At this point I'm thinking I'll just prerecord my show for a little while and if that means I no longer take any pleasure from making the show, if it just becomes a chore, and no one even seems to be listening or caring, then I'll probably just stop altogether. ----- I've been thinking of stopping a lot of things lately. I've been rethinking the whole structure of my life. The work I do, worrying about retirement, always looking to the future for some peace and tranquility. Every day I'm more and more ready to walk away from "The American Dream" and make some drastic course-changes. I don't have the same ties like most people do. My wife and I don't have friends and family in the area, we don't have children (anymore), so the daily struggle to make ends-meet and play the capitalism game isn't really worth it. Just doing it because it's what I've always done and it's all I know but when I really think about it, I think I'd like 5 or so years of freedom and peace and tranquility then oblivion after that rather than to keep on keeping on with the "game" trying to see how long I can go and for what? Because neither my wife nor myself are happy and the American lifestyle is making us less happy as we age and start to break down and really have nothing to show for our strugles except being surrounded by predators trying to sue us or con us or pull some kind of shenanigans. There is really not much in our lives right now that is fulfilling or worthwhile. Honestly, it should have been different from the very beginning. Nothing about the way people live in capitalistic societies is healthy or worthwhile. .