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Current Thoughts in String Theory

Posted by michael on from the elephants-all-the-way-down dept.

DrLudicrous writes "The NYTimes is running a nice little synopsis of the current ideas in string theory. Apparently, there is still quite a bit of disagreement about how to interpret the various theories, with some string theorists supporting a semi-deterministic worldview a la Einstein (God does not play dice), while others believe our universe is just one possibility among many, with respect to various physical parameters."

20 of 391 comments (clear)

  1. burp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    burp

  2. fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    fp

  3. Blow Holes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    The blow holes of whales spout water, which comes out in a string that is incondusive to developing a theory.

  4. ha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    well la dee da

  5. While pondering String Theory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Why not have a SPEEDBALL?

    Some people find heroin boring and cocaine fake. However in meeting with those substances caution is advised, as one should not underestimate their addictive potential. The use of both substances at the same time poses even a bigger problem. With a rather small bag of heroin and cocaine one can transform his mood at will, for a few hours at least. What starts as a test drive can easily become an addiction if hits psychologically fertile ground. Before one realizes, snorting cocaine and heroin becomes a repeated thing. How otherwise, when just a nice fat line of good cocaine can elevate mood. As soon as plateau is achieved one starts on heroin and makes into a blissful, removed High. Your body feels electric as waves of cocaine rushes overlay with the numbing softness of the opiate. Problems, inhibitions, all bad feelings seem a past history as now thanks to some C&H you have been magically transformed to a more blessed plane of existence. In fact you are chemically pushing the pleasure buttons in your brain so this feels For Real. Navigation is easy. You want more lucidity and energy .. just do a line of cocaine .. More relaxed dreamy state ? No problem .. a small line of H will level you off perfectly. Your existential pain is Nullified. The Problems of Life seem small to your unlimited good-feel powers. You feel Fun. Coming Down ??? Just Do Some More.

    What was an excursion into some plant byproducts becomes a small obsession. For a fistful of 10 dollar bills you Can Feel like a King of small Country. Of course its fake, But the pleasure centers of your brain are buzzed up for Real. This is the grand trap of The Speedball. Once you learn to derive pleasure from it, develop the need for that Instant, almost sexual in kind gratification, the tiny white hands of those powders grab you. However this might seem like no cause for alarm. You might say to yourself, that you're bigger than this little pile on the mirror. But as many cases around have shown, people greatly underestimate their potential for addicting to masturbatory, chemical self gratification. Then the harsh reality creeps in, as tolerance to mix builds and regular doses don't suffice to acheive the nirvana. You're a pendulum of moods as you await the weekend to do your "thing"- rock a bit , feel good with no effort. That is the last warning to get out of the roller-coaster to hell. The ride is tremendous, But the price of admission is Very High.

    Upgrading to every 3rd, 2nd or daily use you pay first installments on the ticket. Its your good feelings. As the psychological need for the Chemical nirvana grows - so does your dose and tolerance. This quickly leads to withdrawal symptoms. As your mind spends more time nulled out, you are growing uneasy with being sober. Coping skills go out of the window. Without The Superhuman Power of the speed-ball you.re just a measly depressed, withdrawing wreck of a human. It feels like you have lost the ability to maintain a decent level of pleasure inducing brain juices without chemical help. You are No longer Indulging in the speedball, you're Living it. It becomes your vitamin, food. You do lots of cocaine to get out of bed, more heroine to go to sleep, and mix to your own pleasure during the day. Any thought of stopping is buried, as lack of those now Essential nutrients causes you to be in literal physical and emotional pain that is torturous. As the habit progresses your performance and finances take a dive. After all, now you need $60 a day to feel good, and a $100 worth to party. Soon it grows into ridiculous sums. but by then it's already too late. The trap locks. You are a prisoner now, and getting and absorbing the mix is your utmost priority, next to breathing and actually higher than eating, or for that matter anything else. The pain of withdrawal becomes so intense, you are fully capable of committing acts that you would never really consider in a sober state.

    Stealing, "Borrowing" money, pro

  6. Jessica Lynch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    I'd sure like to have wild sex with Jessica Lynch.

    She's hot!

    1. Re:Jessica Lynch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      I wonder how long it will be until we'll have fake Jessica Lynch porn pics on the net.

  7. String theory 101 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    One starts with a non-empty finite set called the alphabet; strings are then defined as finite sequences of elements from the alphabet, including the empty sequence. The set of all strings over a given alphabet, together with string concatentation, then forms a monoid, in fact a free monoid. Formal languages, the central objects of study, are defined as subsets of this monoid.

    The free monoid construction, so fundamental in formal language theory, is of course part of a monad, with the inclusion of letters as singleton words as unit and the concatenation of strings of words as multplication.

    Similarly, we have the (covariant) powerset monad with the singleton map as unit and the union operation as multiplication. Its Eilenberg-Moore
    algebras are just SUP-semilattices (having arbitrary suprema).

    These monads are linked by a distributive law in the sense of Beck

    (69): \delta_X : (PX)^* --> P(X^*) maps a string of subsets to the set of words where the i-th letter belongs to the i-th subset. The resulting composite monad has unital quantales a EM-algebras.
    Moreover, the powerset monad on set lifts to a powerset monad on monn (the category of EM-algebras of the free monoid monad), again with unital quantales as EM-algebras.

    Passing from powersets PX to sets of finite subsets FX, the distributive law \delta restricts accordingly. The finite powerset monad over set has sup-semilattices as EM-algebras (finite suprema), while its lift to mon has so-called "dioids" as EM-algebras.

    Now formal language theory *should* be concerned with studying "interesting" submonads

    - either of the composite of the free monoid monad and the powerset monad over set,

    - or of the lifted powerset monad over mon.

    These submonads in turn should "contain"

    - the composite of the free monoid monad with the sup-semilattice monad over set, respectively

    - the dioid-monad over mon.

    "Interesting" submonads would be those which admit a Kleene star operation (which the latter two do not). The least submonad which does just gives rise to regular languages/subset; its EM-Algebras being the Kleene algebras.

    1. Re:String theory 101 by InvaderXimian · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Captain Obvious to the rescue!

  8. My own String theory by wille_faler · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Besides the obvious (tight body wild girls wear string more than chubby down-to-earth girls): Women tend to use string a whole lot more during the early stages of dating and a relationship. As the relationship nears a more "safe" stage were the initial heat is over, they start sneaking in the "b-team" underwear: grandmas nickers and worn-in panties, just saving the more s*xy string lingere for "special ocassions". Its an evil and sneaky practice, but thats the string theory for you. Oh the humanity!

  9. Our space brothers will splane it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Our little space brothers will splane it all to us just before the comet kills us all.

    or something like that

  10. Michio Kaku by InvaderXimian · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Wonder why they didn't include anything by Michio Kaku in there, I mean, when I think "Super String Theory," "Michio Kaku" pops to mind.

    And yeah, long long story...

    Funny words from the story:
    paradoxically
    fudge factor
    repulsion
    zoo

  11. the only string theory I'm intersted in by Savatte · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    is the theory that dairy manufacturers can charge over a dollar for a candy bar-sized piece of processed mozzarella cheese. Sometimes I wish I had thought of such a beautiful mark-up. But then I remember that I'm lactose intolerant.

  12. I beg your pardon? e/n by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I just came here to eat a bunch of food and get fat. The ton of people I'm related to and sort-of related to aren't really here yet.I did a
    lot of writing about some unpleasant parts of my past earlier this evening. That's about all I want to say about that right now. That's good. So it's still quiet. When it comes time to eat, I'll retreat back into this room with my food, let Winamp play and hope people don't poke their head in to bug me and ask me dumb question. I have this terrible slightly cramp-ish ache thing in my arm. Right arm. In the bicep-ish area. I haven't had it for a while. I hate it. It
    aches and feels like someone is squeezing my arm and jamming four fingers into the muscle just before the hairy bit under my arm.

    And I wonder if you think of me and like me and feel for me now the same way I know you did before we had that conversation. I shouldn't freak about it, though. We're doing it at a more leisurely pace now.I wanted to be sleeping. It's just nice to know whether or not all the same
    feelings are still there. Hm. I should finally do laundry today. And dishes, too, actually. But I'm not going to do both in one day."My back hurts so bad I want to throw up."

    I got paid today which, as always, means I'm gettin' food from somewhere tonight. I'm thinking
    pizza. That could be good. On that note, I really don't feel like talking at all anymore for the rest of the day.I lost 5 CDs to that
    big fat homosexual jerk Timmy over that one dumb misunderstanding, and it made me want to strangle him. I was a good boy, by the way. I sat
    close to her on the couch, but I was way too nervous to, you know, touch her or anything.My head hurts. I'm hungry and I need a shower.Man, I got another one of these fucking weird things in my e-mail. After a long while, I kind of started playing with her hair, though, which was nice, and eventually I felt comfortable enough to
    put my arm around her. I maybe sorta played with her ear and touched her face a little... bah, she is really so pretty and soft and nice-smelling and such.

    After the movie was over, around 11:30-ish, we
    went to the 704 in Canton because a couple of Amy's friends were there hanging out. 704 is, of course, a gay bar. I went there once before
    with Big Fat Gay Tim after work that one time.I work at the cheese factory, which is why I found that question about guys in white clothes and boots walking around exceptionally amusing.

    Anybody who tried to tell me that band Evanescence was "good" is a fucking dirty
    liar.

    Think I'm gettin' Hardee's for dinner tonight. Or maybe pizza. Or chicken from a pizza place. Blarg, I don't know. The idea of making food doesn't appeal to me at the moment. I don't have a life. I'm not missing out on anything. Sigh. I guess I've made my own bed. Look where I'm stuck now, the state everthing is in.

    Yep.. my doing, pretty much.

  13. Hilarious! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I'm gonna go get me a speedball right now.

  14. You completely inhale the pastes in crust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    It has come to my attention that you completely inhale the pastes in crust. Read on for more about this fascinating topic.

    The world went into shock a few weeks ago when goatse.info reported the results of a study which concluded that inhaling paste is a very dangerous pastime, one that no one is advised to take up. Eventually, everyone adapted to the new state of affairs and began inhaling other things. Almost everyone, that is. But not you! According to my records, you still inhale paste!

    Why?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!

    You moron, you idiot, you imbecile, you gay nigger ! Arg! You make me so fucking sick! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.

  15. Re:direct link by TMB · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Here's a little piece of javascript you can save as a bookmark that automatically fills out the registration form with random junk (modified by me based on code by Jason Day found on www.majcher.com:

    javascript:function getString(len){var chars=new Array('a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k', 'l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x ','y','z','A','B','C','D','E','F','G','H','I','J', 'K','L','M','N','O','P','Q','R','S','T','U','V','W ','X','Y','Z','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9', '0');var str=chars[Math.floor(Math.random()*52)];for(var i=1;i<len;i++){ str=str+chars[Math.floor(Math.random()*62)]}return str}function getDigits(len){var chars=new Array('0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9');var str=chars[Math.floor(Math.random()*10)];for(var i=1;i<len;i++){ str=str+chars[Math.floor(Math.random()*10)]}return str}function setFields(){var idx,F=document.forms;for(var i=0;i<F.length;i++){ if(F[i].action.toUpperCase().indexOf('REGI')!=-1){ idx=i;break}}var login=getString(Math.floor(Math.random()*8)+6);var passw=getString(8);var email=getString(Math.floor(Math.random()*4)+12)+ '@'+getString(Math.floor(Math.random()*5)+4)+ '.com';document.forms[idx].login.value=login; document.forms[idx].passwd1.value=passw; document.forms[idx].passwd2.value=passw; document.forms[idx].email.value=email; document.forms[idx].saveoption_check.checked=false ; if(Math.random()>0.5){ document.forms[idx].gender_check[0].checked=true} else{ document.forms[idx].gender_check[1].checked=true} document.forms[idx].zip.value=getDigits(5); document.forms[idx].birth_year.value= Math.floor(Math.random()*70)+20; document.forms[idx].country.options[ Math.floor(Math.random()*238)].selected=true; document.forms[idx].income_select.options[ Math.floor(Math.random()*10)+1].selected=true; document.forms[idx].industry_select.options[ Math.floor(Math.random()*36)+1].selected=true; document.forms[idx].title_select.options[ Math.floor(Math.random()*36)+1].selected=true; document.forms[idx].function_select.options[ Math.floor(Math.random()*16)+1].selected=true; document.forms[idx].paper_select.options[ Math.floor(Math.random()*4)+1].selected=true} setFields();void(null)

    [TMB]

  16. Re:Fringe science, or valid? by charon_on_acheron · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "1) If I shoot sillystring at the hot blonde across the room, will she sleep with me, or slap me?"

    Reminds me of a day at Hooters a few years back. Two kids were running around the restaurant, having a fun time. I think they were a boy about 10, and his sister who was 8, give or take a year each. They ran up to one of the waitresses, and the sister wanted to have her picture taken with her. So the two get next to each other, and the brother has the camera. When he pushes the button, silly string shoots out, all over the waitress' cleavage. The waitress never stopped smiling, but I'm sure she wanted to strangle him. I thought it was hilarious, myself.

  17. About gods and dices by ja · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Why do everybody (or every second) have to get the concept of a god intermingled with nuclear science?

    It is not like we are running for president, so get over it!

    mvh // Jens MAndreasen

    --

    send + more == money? ...
  18. Re:In Soviet Russia... by Billy+Donahue · · Score: -1, Offtopic


    Oh come on, how's that a troll?

    --
    -- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk