Anyone can be passionate about physics. Anyone:
A homeless man is on trial in San Mateo County on charges that he smacked a fellow transient in the face with a skateboard as the victim was engaged in a conversation about quantum physics, authorities said today.
Man. Reminds me of grad school.
The article goes on:
The attack was witnessed by two other people
Oh, too bad! There goes the defense; the observers collapsed the wave function. Otherwise, he could’ve pleaded guilty and not guilty.
Tip o’ the Bose Einstein condensate to ntolman.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
100% pure awesome.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Just when you thought you had heard it all.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
I lol-ed so hard, I think I cracked a rib.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Meh, this kinda thing happens every day…
in CRAZYTOWN :O !!!!
June 24th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Let me guess a NASA astrophysicist who was laid off and rendered homeless during the Bush Jr era?
Pity the defendant / assaulter wasn’t named Schroedinger (spelling?) :
“Hey! What did you say you’ve done to my cat!?!”
June 24th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
I want to know the specifics of their fight. This is the first time I’ve heard of a fist fight breaking over physics.
Oddly enough over in the next column of this page there is a review for your book “Death from the skies” that says “Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan.” The image of Sagan punching *anyone* is itself oddly amusing.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Maybe the homeless man got confused and just got really frustated? ^_^
June 24th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Ya-know, if all the atoms lines up just right, that skateboard could quantum-mechanically tunnel straight through my head.
Wanna try it?
June 24th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
“pleaded and not guilty” ?
June 24th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Does that mean that physicists can’t find a job?
June 25th, 2009 at 12:05 am
The smackee probably tried to use quantum theory to explain why homeopathy does too work.
We’ve all been there.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:18 am
Best follow-up line, from Wagner James Au in the BB comments:
“Fava retaliated by tossing mangy alley cat nicknamed Schrödinger at his assailant.”
June 25th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Oh no, he wasn’t homeless. All quantum physicists look like that after a rough night
June 25th, 2009 at 12:30 am
That Wave Function joke was spot on Phil: I absolve you of blame for all previous bad puns!
June 25th, 2009 at 12:39 am
Nothing against the homeless (I would say this about anyone else in the general public), but that hobo was probably talking more about Deepak Chopra-style mind-over-matter “quantum” wooism than anything of intellectual heft.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Hey, that’s where I live! It’s not unusual for fights to break out between believers in loop quantum gravity and string theory. It’s been tough for physicists here ever since they had to come back from Waxahachie and found the whole town taken over by Genentech.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:07 am
This is indeed strange. The most bizarre thing I’ve seen though was in Madrid. Mickey Mouse and an armless man got into a fight over begging turf. They ended up wrestling on the ground together. Weirdly hilarious. Too shocked to take photos unfortunately.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:07 am
Could have been worse, a fight over classical physics might have been fatal.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:26 am
When I lived in San Francisco, I think I saw weird stuff like this just about every day. Seriously.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:27 am
I hope the guy that got hit was spouting that What The Bleep Do We Know garbage. If so he totally deserved it!
June 25th, 2009 at 3:00 am
So the victim was Schrodinged?
J/P=?
June 25th, 2009 at 4:45 am
I think it’s an appropriate time to link to the Seanachai.
http://www.theseanachai.com/2005/01/12/a-round-on-werner/
June 25th, 2009 at 4:49 am
This is what happens when we cut science funding. Before, it was scientists sending angry e-mails and then taking out their frustrations on either a bottle of gin or their grad students. But now? Tsk, tsk. Homeless quantum theorists roaming the streets. Soon they will form gangs, riding on their quanta-cycles, robbing Higgs particles… When will we wake up and get these dangerous people locked back where they belong?!?! Fund our academic cloisters before you find your daughter doing lines of pure theoretical math and rebelling against Einsteinian physics!!!! Wake up!!!!
June 25th, 2009 at 5:23 am
lol – at least they argued over something important
June 25th, 2009 at 5:58 am
And it happened in my most favorite city, SF!! wtf (what the frack)…
June 25th, 2009 at 6:06 am
They don’t say the aggressor was involved in the conversation… actually, it looks as he wasn’t, just hit “a fellow transient”.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:13 am
If the offender meant to give the victim a reality check, then that is a violent way of doing it indeed.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Sounds like the quantum Lotto ticket. It’s both a winner and a loser until you check the numbers.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:31 am
At least it wasn’t a math problem or the guy may have lost the tip of his nose like Tycho Brahe!
June 25th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Phil wrote:
“Oh, too bad! There goes the defense; the observers collapsed the wave function. Otherwise, he could’ve pleaded guilty and not guilty.”
One of your best lines. Ever. And there have been a few.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:44 am
I remember reading from an older issue of Discover Mag about quantum mechanics allowing the possibility of a parallel universe.
Maybe, just maybe, the attacker wanted to prove that things are not always parallel, they could also be perpendicular.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:10 am
4. zaardvark Says:
June 24th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Meh, this kinda thing happens every day…
in CRAZYTOWN :O !!!!
——————————————
It said they were homeless – not crazy.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Stone Age Scientist:
Perhaps one was arguing the validity of Solipsism and the other was a classical physicist, attempting to show him just how wrong he was,,,
Gary 7
June 25th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Insane in the M-brane
June 25th, 2009 at 8:19 am
#5:
I always assumed that Schroedinger didn’t use his own cat in his thought experiment.
In fact, it was my understanding that it was Bohr’s cat.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:29 am
RE: #8, doofus
That’s just what I was thinking after reading the article. The so-called “assault” could have simply been a tunneling experiment.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Solipsism and quantum mechanics have a lot in common. They’re both in-determinant,,,
Gary 7
June 25th, 2009 at 8:34 am
GROOOAAAN!
June 25th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Gary 7 @ #28,
See, this is why Phil left San Francisco for a boulder.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:58 am
I only hit him because he was trying to leap before his mission was accomplished. Those kids still needed his help.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Not Guilty! The observers affected the event!
June 25th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Well gosh darn it all – Every joke that went through my head has been said already!
I’m really going to have to check this blog earlier in the morning!
June 25th, 2009 at 9:43 am
It’s said that when Glasgow was the European City of Culture, you could witness two drunken men punching each other over how many islands are in the Japanese Archipelago…
June 25th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Phil, did you just feel a slap just behind your left ear? If you did, we’re entangled and you just got a spooky hand smack from a distance.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Best pun to date
Oh to be on a jury where the crime had no witnesses. “I say that the defendent is both guilty and not guilty!”
June 25th, 2009 at 10:58 am
CafeenMan Said:
“It said they were homeless – not crazy.”
Certainly. They may not have been crazy. Just the same, way over in CRAZYTOWN :O !!!!, this sort of thing happens every day.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:22 am
The person attacked with the skateboard, Stephen Fava, allegedly worked in the field of physics before falling on hard times and ending up homeless. This according to a radio report, although I can’t seem to find any additional information about where he worked or what he did anywhere in print — everything online seems to link to the SF Chronicle article which is just the barebones facts of the assault.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:22 am
I never thought I would laugh so hard I would cry…at work…because of quantum humor…even though I had to look up “Solipsism”.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:50 am
This reminds me of Zuckers idea to draw attention to science…Hmmm. Maybe I should call Dana White.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
[...] want to randomly discuss particle physics or quantum mechanics in San Francisco, beware of getting hit with in the face with a skateboard. I suppose they were discussing the uncertainty principle as it applies to blunt instruments of [...]
June 25th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
GREAT JOKE!!!!
lololol, pitty that is only for us nerds….
hehe
June 25th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Hmmmm — sounds like the defendant was effectively making the point that while quantum physics may indeed explain everything, classic physics is all you need on the street …
June 25th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Thats hilarious Phil! Antropically speaking, our universe was designed for that blog post!
June 25th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
“There goes the defense; the observers collapsed the wave function.”
Brilliant Phil that made me LOL at work which resulted in an explanation of the joke which as we know makes it not as funny. Still Bravo.
Regards,
Caleb
June 25th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Isn’t it just like a theoretician to bring Quantum Mechanics to a Newtonian physics fight!
June 25th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
If you hit a uranium atom with a neutron, the uranium atom will wobble and split.
If you hit a homeless guy in the face with a skateboard, the homeless guy will wobble and his lip will split.
The first event complies with the laws of quantum physics, the second event with the law of the street.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Wow, I’d never expected this Onion story to come (almost) true!
June 25th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Shouldn’t the story have read…
“The attack didn’t really take place until witnessed by two other people”?
June 25th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
@# 34. Donald Says: “Insane in the M-brane”
LOL. Right up there with the best of them. But only for the hip-hip quantum theorists out there…
June 25th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
This also brings to mind the story of Robert Burnham. After being laid off from Lowell, he seemingly disappeared; but it was later surmised that he’d spent the last years of his life homeless in southern California, selling paintings of cats from a sidewalk to earn a few dollars from time to time.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
In the Multiverse however – it may be a regular occurrence- and with many variations.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:01 am
60. T.E.L.
I knew a software engineer employed by Sun Microsystems who, after mentioning in an interview for a magazine(I think it was People Mag) that LSD had stimulated his creative juices, was terminated and effectively black balled in the industry. He made his way after that creating fractal toys and selling them at Dead concerts. Haven’t seen him in a dozen years but the point of this is,,,until you have an income independent of others bias, never admit in print to breaking the law of the land, no matter how stupid that law may be,,,or you could end up on the street.
GAry 7
June 26th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
“Ex physicist becomes entangled with a crime.”
June 27th, 2009 at 6:04 am
@ 60. T.E.L. :
Is that the Robert Burnham who wrote the epic three volume ‘Burnham’s Celestial Handbooks’ – I thought he ended up as an editor of ‘Astronomy’ magazine? (Puzzled.)
Sad story anyhow. As is that noted in
# 62 Gary Ansorge
What a waste. What a shame.
Although I think perhaps the saddest stories of genius destroyed for bias are what happened to computer genius Alfred Turing … & the inventor of the blood transfusion.
June 27th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Read the update, it gets better! He was aquitted.
Deputy District Attorney Sharon Cho said the jury that acquitted Keller of assault and battery charges couldn’t sort out the conflicting statements of prosecution witnesses.
“The jury just felt unable to really know what happened out there,” Cho said.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
StevoR Said:
“Is that the Robert Burnham who wrote the epic three volume ‘Burnham’s Celestial Handbooks’ – I thought he ended up as an editor of ‘Astronomy’ magazine? (Puzzled.)”
He is the author of the handbook, but he’s not the magazine editor. This has been cited as a point of confusion for many people. Almost everyone who’d ever heard of Burnham the astronomy author just (reasonably) assumed he was Burnham the astronomy magazine editor. No one was aware of how he’d hit upon such hard times because apparently he was gainfully employed in the publishing business, putting his knowledge to good use.
June 28th, 2009 at 3:18 am
I think the man is lying, when he says it has anything to do with the collapse of the wavefunction.
Otherwise he would have used a surfboard, and not a skateboard!
June 28th, 2009 at 6:28 am
64. StevoR
I believe that should be Alan Turing, at least, that’s the name Wikipedia uses in it’s bio of him.
HArd to remember that it was only a half century ago that nearly anyone not in the center of the power structure was not only castigated but imprisoned.
See how far we’ve come?
GAry 7
June 30th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
#65 o.o Quantum physics at its best. My guess is that the accuracy of the observers testimony went down because the accuracy of the guy’s aim went up