The Irish Stout Anomaly

          On the evening of Friday, Oct 1st my friend Andreea invited me for a pint of our favorite brew: Guinness. Our place of choice is usually the Garage Hall on Pta. Romana. However, in that evening there was going to be a football match and on football nights the Garage Hall becomes a small stadium with its giant projection screen and noisy football supporters.
  
          So we decided to go bar-hopping trying to find a nice, football-free pub for our pint of Guinness, good music and a relaxing chat.
An overly-optimistic undertaking, for those who know Bucharest pubs and their football and loud crap music infested environments.

          Andreea swore she won’t go to the Centru Veche (Lipscani) area so we started our pub prospection around Universitate.

          A brief peek at Edgar’s Pub proved infructiferous as the only available table was too smoky and too chilly as it was the nearest to the door and the wind bit shrewdly in that evening.

          Next stop was Coyote Café but they were having live music band that night: too noisy and impossible to hold conversation in normal voice levels.

           And so the inevitable happened: We ended up in Centru Veche, in a pub called Dirty Harry’s, which, oddly had an LCD screen ready for the football; the waiter told us they would tune it on the match later but for some mysterious reason was kept showing Schwarzenegger’s movie Eraser.

          We finally ordered our two pints of Guinness.

          Now Guinness is not your average beer. It’s not even called “beer”, it is a stout. And it has some very important characteristics: its creaminess, the creaminess of the head (the foam on top of the beer) and the famous Guinness cascade of bubbles.

          The creaminess of the beer caused not only by its ingredients but mainly because the brewery injects liquid nitrogen in the mix along with carbon dioxide to completely eliminate the presence of oxygen, which would cause the beer to oxidize and alter its flavor.

          The creaminess of the head is achieved when the pressure in the liquid is released as the beer is draught, causing the nitrogen to expand.

          As the radius of the bubbles are inversely proportional to the surface tension of the liquid, the creamy liquid wins the fight against the pressure of the bubbles, making them smaller and smaller bubbles means creamy head.

          The famous Guinness cascade effect is caused by a hydrodynamic effect called entrainment.

          As the beer is draught into the glass and the pressure is released, bubbles start to form.  Bubbles close to the surface of the glass tend to cling to it causing drag and slowing down the bubbles ascent. Now bubbles in the center of the glass are free to rise to the surface, forming an ascending column of bubbles. The movement of the rising column of bubbles creates a current by entrainment of the surrounding liquid. As the beer column rises in the center, the beer in the outside surroundings tend to move in the opposite direction, causing the bubbles to fall towards the bottom like a cascade.

          Purist bartenders tend to pour Guinness very slowly to optimize the creamy and cascade effects. According to the Guinness company itself, a perfect pint of Guinness should take 119.53 seconds to be poured.

          Of course, we can’t expect bartenders in Bucharest to do it like that but I expected at least to get a pint of Guinness when I order one.

          When the waitress brought our pints it was obvious that something was wrong. The beer was too transparent, not creamy. The head was not creamy at all. It just looked like ordinary head from a carbon dioxide mixed beer. And it certainly didn’t have the characteristic bubble cascade.

          One sip of it and it was confirmed: Guinness it was NOT. It tasted just like an ordinary black beer like Silva Bruna.

          I took the glasses to the bar and told the bartender that I had ordered Guinness not Silva Bruna. He said it IS Guinness and I raised the glass against the light for him to see the watery non-creaminess of the black liquid that he was selling as Guinness.

          He still claimed that it IS Guinness.
          I suggested he taste it.

          Using a straw like a pipette he extracted some of the liquid from my glass and tasted it. Then his argument changed to: “Well then the problem is at the producer as I just connect the keg that comes from Guinness to the machine.”

          I asked him if he’s really suggesting that I should complain to the producer and his response was the Romanian trademark: “Pai, nu-e vina mea!" (It's not my fault!).
          As I saw that I wasn’t going to get anywhere arguing with him I told him I’ll keep the Silva Bruna he was selling as Guinness but I wasn’t coming back to that place. And of course, his answer was yet another Romanian trade mark response: “Treaba ta.” (That’s your business).

          This is how Dirty Harry’s won a distinguished place in my black list of pubs to avoid.

          So if you’re considering going to Dirty Harry's, you've got to ask yourself one question: 

          Do I feel lucky? 
          Well, do ya, punk?

Retrocausality, positronic androids and transdimensional gypsies

Android Evolution

         (Originally posted on  Apr 11, 2007 04:49)

         One of the worst problems I have in this country is ... Wait, let me put on my flame retardant clothes because I know I'll be flamed for saying this... Racism. I know most of you will not believe it or will simply refuse to believe it, but it is true. 

         In Bucharest the problem is not so bad that I can't go out in the streets, but in Ploiesti it was. I couldn't go out in the streets without being mocked or verbally insulted in one form or another, invariably involving racism. And in the extreme cases I was even physically threatened. 

         And some of my "friends" who don't believe or who refuse to believe that this can happen tried to explain to me that it doesn't really happen, that there's no such thing as racism or xenophobia in this utopic country. Yeah, right. And I am Mickey Mouse's pet hamster. 

         So they tried to concot the most absurd excuses as to why do I have the "illusion" that these things happen. And of all the most fantastic ones, the most used is that it's all my fault. Let me point out that this theory was presented to me by my supposed "friends". You see, it seems to be fashionable these days for friends to show support to other friends by trying to convince that whatever bad things happen to you it’s either a lie or it's all your own fault. With friends like these, eh? 

         Anyway, their theory is that people mock or insult me on the streets because I do not like to be mocked or insulted.

         Huh?
         Helloooo??
         Am I missing something??

         I do not assume that people are idiots. Why? Because I do not like it done to me. Even though obviously someone is doing it ... well, you know... the other cheek and all.
         Soooooo, assuming that these "friends" are in possession of fairly stable mental faculties, how do we explain the fact that I am being insulted because I do not like to be insulted? 

         I've been mulling over this for quite some time. Time enough to come up with some theories.

First of all, let's make a few conventions:

A = Foreigner person who does not accept being racially insulted
B = Person who racially insults A
PhF = Philosopher "Friend"

A is walking on the streets.
A enters the visual field of B.
B verbally assaults A with racial expletives. 

         If you consider the possibility that B may be racist or xenophobe, the explanation to this situation is quite straightforward and you may even point out that the very fact that B is verbally assaulting A with racist expletives is good evidence that B is indeed racist or xenophobe. 

         However, PhF categorically dismiss this possibility, postulating that "this sort of things (racism and xenophobia) do not exist in my country".
After arbitrarily postulating the non-existence of racism and xenophobia in this country, PhF is now faced with the daunting task of offering A an explanation to B's acts that supports her own postulate against A's more simple explanation. 

         Relegating Occam's Razor to the dark depths of the lowest drawer of the last cupboard of her mind and now brandishing a Chatton's Anti-Razor, or perhaps more appropriately a Cabtree's Bludgeon (which is expressed as: "No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated." Although I believe that the use of the terms "intellect" and "coherent" in this particular case is highly dubious, to say the least), PhF contrives the theory that B's acts, namely his racial insults towards A, are a direct consequence of the fact that A repudiates such insults. 

         So what we have here is a phenomenon that reverses causality, allowing an effect to occur before its cause. Such phenomenon is, of course, called Retrocausality.
         Now, seriously, can what happens in the future affect the present, and can the present affect the past? 

         When we examine two related events, isn't the cause, by its own definition, the one that has to precede the effect?
Common sense tells us that influencing the past is impossible -- what's done is done, right? 

         Established physics does not generally accept retrocausality. A number of theories allowing retrocausality have been proposed by respected scientists, including Feynman, Wheeler and Tomonaga. However, these theories allow only for particles or photons or even positrons to travel back in time, confining them to the realm of Quantum Electrodynamics and no one so far has come up with an acceptable enough experiment that proves these theories and in general, models appearing to permit retrocausality or time travel to occur are often thought to possess mathematical artifacts or to simply be conceptually flawed. 

         Now even if we grant the PhFs a very generously huge benefit of doubt and allow for retrocausality to be possible, we still have to account for the mechanism by which the information that A repudiates racial insults reaches B's knowledge. Could this information be encrypted into positrons and then beamed back to the past and then incorporated into B's brain without causing matter/antimatter annihilation? Maybe, if we employ an even bigger Cabtree Bludgeon and theorize that B is an incredibly advanced android with a positronic brain contained by an incredibly stable electromagnetic field that isolates it from contact to ordinary matter. 

         Well, if we start swinging Cabtree Bludgeons like class D science fiction movies then why not using parallel universes too, eh?

         The concept of parallel universes is sometimes conjectured to allow for a continual splitting of possible worldlines into many different alternative realities. This would mean that B is a time traveler and every time he disturbs the time-space continuum he enters a different parallel universe, possessing the knowledge of A's disapproval for B's insults and hoping that in the next parallel universe A still disapproves of B's insults. Whew! 

         Come on people, let's get serious.
         Let me give you a real life example. The last time I was racially insulted on the streets happened about a week ago. I was on my way home from the office and when I entered the visual field of two gypsies pulling a cart full of scrap metal they instantly started yelling "china" at me. I instinctively allowed them a glimpse of a digital display (also known as "giving them the finger"Smiley, which caused them to change their verbal assault from "china" to substandard impersonations of Bruce Lee. 

         Let me point out that this behavior is not exclusive of gypsies. Oh no. I got this kind of reaction from people of all walks of life. From kids to students, taxi drivers, housewives, shopkeepers, policemen. Once, in Ploiesti I was walking on the streets and in the opposite direction came a woman in her early 40s with a baby on her arms. In the moment she saw me she started yelling "China, china, china china..." for the entire duration of the encounter. I was walking pretty fast so I could even hear the Doppler Effect on the chant! It sounded like "china, china, china, china, china, china, china, china, china, china..." 

         But for the sake of simplicity, let's keep with the current example.
         Now let's still pour copious amounts of doubt benefit on PhF's theories and invoke Arthur C. Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

         Then I ask you: If you were a robotics genius able to construct positronic androids so advanced that they are indistinguishable from ordinary human beings and capable of receiving a positronic stream of data from the future that allow them to influence the causality of events, would you make them look and act like metal scavenger gypsy morons??
Or do you believe that metal scavenger gypsies are transdimensional time travelers? 

         Now let's order another truck full of benefit of doubt and still consider that all this is possible. We are then left with the question: Why??
Or, to use more precise scientific terms: "Why the fuck???"
What is the purpose of all this?? Why would a robotics genius construct a gypsy-like android capable of receiving positronic data stream about the future? For what purpose? 

         To give foreigners the “illusion” of a xenophobic country so that PhFs can exercise their exotic retrocausal quantum electrodynamics theories?
Are PhFs hiring positronic robotics geniuses just to be able to humiliate foreigners? 

         If so, is the income offered by PhFs bigger than using their positronic androids to tune their positron data stream into lottery results than into offended foreigners? 

         Come on people, let's get serious.
Allow me to unsheathe my own Occam's Razor and slash some corners here.
Tell me (and be honest!) which proposition you think is more likely:

1 - Racism and xenophobia DO NOT exist in this advanced and utopic country but science and technology are so far advanced that roboticists can produce positronic androids capable of receiving transtemporal positronic data streams containing information about the future, disrupting the time-space continuum and reversing causality.

2 - Racism and xenophobia DO NOT exist in this advanced and utopic country but some citizens are capable of transdimensional time-travel jumping from one parallel universe to the next with the purpose of insulting foreigners with an unknown reason but NOT because of racism or xenophobia.

2 - Racism and xenophobia DO exist in this country. There are racists and xenophobes in this country who are perhaps frustrated by the fact that other countries may be more advanced than their glorious one and they need an escape goat to vent their frustrations. And/or they are simply too irrational and territorial that they instinctively feel that foreigners are invading their territories and, enslaved by their own instinct, bark to protect their territories. And they also probably pee around their houses to mark their territories.

         Occam's Razor principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

         Some people often oversimplify this statement as: "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." It is a gross oversimplification but it's easier to understand and in the case at hand it fits properly. 

         So now that you have your Occam's Razor in hands, tell me: Isn't easier to believe that some people in this country are racists than to believe that there are crazy roboticists in conspiracy with amateur quantum electrodynamic physicists or transdimensional time-travel capable people? 

         I know which ones to Occam-nize. Do you?

The cat/buttered-bread perpetual motion machine

         (Originally posted on Mar 8, 2007 3:54)

         Last night I came home late and slightly peckish so I decided to eat some bread. 

         While I was buttering the bread Cathleen (that's my cat) was as usual perched on a chair observing me. Observing the food in movement, actually.

         In that moment I remembered the ages old physical law that says that a slice of bread always land butter side down. And then next I remembered that old law that says that cats always land on their feet. And of course this led me to that ages old theory of the cat/buttered-bread perpetual motion machine. You know what I'm talking about. The theory that says that if you strap a slice of buttered bread butter side up on the back of a cat, and throw them in the air the bread will tend to land butter side down while the cat will tend to land on its feet. Both tendencies will try to cancel each other and the contraption will then rotate, possibly with enough torque to generate free energy.

         So... Have anyone here tried it? If so, does it work? Does the contraption actually rotate or just hover stationary in the air? If it rotates, how much torque does it generate? Well, I'm sure this will depend on the mass of the cat so, roughly speaking, how much torque you think a medium sized female birman would generate?

         Ooooh, it makes me wonder... 

 

E=mc2

         (Originally posted on Mar 5, 2007 4:29)
 
         Ok, enough about the non-stairwaytoheavenability of karaoke bars.
It's past the time we talk about something serious in this blog.
         This is one that I've been mulling about since I was a kid.
         Everybody knows that E=mc2, which directly relates energy and mass.
It says that the greater the mass of an object, the greater its energy.
Therefore, the reverse should also be true. The greater the energy, the greater the mass.

         I'm no Einstein so I don't know what kind of energy are we talking about here. So what I wonder is: Will any kind of energy do? I mean... Like potential gravitational energy, for example? If you pick your left shoe from the floor and hold it a meter above the ground you increase its potential gravitational energy, right? So therefore do you increase it's mass? Of course in the case of this example the numbers would be almost infinitely small. BUT does it happen?? Or how about thermal energy. Does heating your ibric on the stove increase it's mass? It should, right? The theory grants that higher the velocity of an object, the bigger the mass, right? And when the velocity of an object approaches the speed of light its mass will tend to infinity. So I guess what I've been wondering about is right. Right?

        Well, I don't expect any physicists to be reading this blog but if any of you know anything about this, please let me know.