The h Bar

@Loong Reminds me of a Karnevalssitzung where the speaker did the "Kölle"-"Alaaf" call-and-response and then shouted "Sieg!". Most of the audience shouted "Heil!" before they realized what they were doing...

AccidentalFourierTransform

5:14 PM

Emilio Pisanty

@0celo7 what you mean to say is that Americans can't be bothered to look up other countries' anthems even when they're hosting an international sporting event

which seems to be what happened

(with malice being the only other explanation I can conceive of)

skullpetrol

Considering the current pres. That's not too far fetched :P

Malice I mean.

MartianCactus

@YashasSamaga i still dont understand why increase in entropy would stop the cycle

Loong

@skullpetrol here it is: youtu.be/vbpN--WiwEU?t=54

John Rennie

@BernardoMeurer the uber alles in the German national anthem means above all your personal concerns not above all other countries. That is, you should put the good of the country first and above your own good.

Bernardo Meurer

5:25 PM

@JohnRennie What's inherently wrong with that?

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty yes

skullpetrol

Cool @Loong Thanks for sharing.

Bernardo Meurer

I mean, I wouldn't want to do that, but I don't see something horribly bad with it

0celo7

@ACuriousMind HA

@skullpetrol What?

John Rennie

@BernardoMeurer Nothing. I'm just pointing out that it's widely misinterpreted especially given the Nazi era.

0celo7

5:26 PM

You're going to get us all banned with words like that

ACuriousMind

@BernardoMeurer Nothing. The first stanza is problematic because of its history as the Nazi anthem and because the rivers it outlines as the borders of "Germany" are not the actual German borders, not because of the über alles as such.

0celo7

"actual German borders"

Emilio Pisanty

@ACuriousMind nowhere near the current German borders, you mean

0celo7

That's only because you lost the war

John Rennie

@BernardoMeurer When a certain leader who shall not be named say America first he does mean American interests should dominate over those of other countries.

Bernardo Meurer

5:28 PM

@ACuriousMind Meh, I don't see a problem with it I guess, it's not chanting anything horrible per-se

dmckee

@JohnRennie In the end it doesn't matter. While I am sure that it is intended to promote a spirit of community and helping each other it is so very easily understood as subjugating ones own goals to a destructive nationalism that it scares me, anyway.

Loong

@JohnRennie Actually, "Germany above all else" was originally intended to mean that the united Germany is more important than its individual small states.

0celo7

@JohnRennie Is there something wrong with that?

dmckee

Think what a populist demagogue would do with such a line.

0celo7

@AccidentalFourierTransform where are your swastikas now?

Emilio Pisanty

5:29 PM

@0celo7 have you actually looked up the rivers in question?

John Rennie

@0celo7 I am commenting only on Bernardo's statements about the German national anthem. No other inference should be taken.

Emilio Pisanty

One is to the west of Luxembourg, once is strictly in Italy, and one is the border between Russia and Lithuania

ACuriousMind

@BernardoMeurer You can argue "actual" semantics all you want, most Germans will still think you're a neo-Nazi if you're singing it unironically, and that is exactly the signal you're sending when you sing it. Saying "I'm not actually saying something horrible" is a pretty weak excuse.

Emilio Pisanty

^ that

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty The Reich was that large, no?

Emilio Pisanty

5:30 PM

@0celo7 which Reich is this?

0celo7

Third

Emilio Pisanty

Briefly

Bernardo Meurer

@ACuriousMind I'm criticising exactly the fact that people will call you a Nazi for singing something that is not Nazi in nature IMO

0celo7

When the song was written, did Germany have territorial claims over those rivers?

Bernardo Meurer

It's just nationalist

Emilio Pisanty

5:31 PM

@0celo7 But if that's your justification for "the anthem is OK" then it's essentially saying "the anthem's OK because modern Germany is exactly the same as Nazi Germany"

dmckee

@0celo7 There certainly can be. In one reading it denies the value of human beings born outside our particular sphere, which is a pretty #$(*&%# excuse for morality.

Bernardo Meurer

@EmilioPisanty Was that directed at me?

0celo7

@dmckee Morality goes out the window as soon as there's a state...

dmckee

Which is no excuse for being a immoral twit.

We may have to live in the world that is, but we shouldn't contribute to the poor state of things.

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty I'm not saying anything about whether the song is OK or not. I'm curious about the history.

@dmckee I'm sure people who support such things would say that not being nationalistic would be contributing to the poor state of things.

Emilio Pisanty

5:35 PM

I'm not at all sure why people think this is controversial. Symbols are meaningless until and unless people imbue them with meaning. Modern Germany has a strong consensus that the first stanza symbolizes the Nazi Germany and that it's not OK to use it. The rest of the world just needs to suck it up and respect that.

Deutschlandlied

The "Deutschlandlied" (English: "Song of Germany", German pronunciation: [ˈdɔʏtʃlantˌliːt]; also known as "Das Lied der Deutschen" or "The Song of the Germans"), or part of it, has been the national anthem of Germany since 1922, except in East Germany, whose anthem was "Auferstanden aus Ruinen" ("Risen from Ruins") from 1949 to 1990. Since World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany, only the third stanza has been used as the national anthem. The stanza's beginning, "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit" ("Unity and Justice and Freedom") is considered the unofficial national motto of Germany, and is...

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty I have the tab open already, thank you though.

skullpetrol

@JohnRennie et al youtu.be/W4lq_Canldc

University Challenge 2013-14 Maths & Physics Compilation

►

ACuriousMind

@BernardoMeurer ...words, and especially fixed phrases such as songs, have meaning beyond their literal semantics. If you sing Die Internationale, you're signalling to everyone that you're a socialist or communist. If you sing the first stanza of the Deutschlandlied, you're signalling to everyone that you're a Nazi. What's there to "criticize" about this very evident fact?

0celo7

@JohnRennie How about we change topics to balls?

Emilio Pisanty

@0celo7 the song predates any reasonable understanding of Germany as a state by about thirty years. Thus the question is pretty meaningless.

0celo7

5:37 PM

@EmilioPisanty Ok then.

Don't need to phrase it like that.

Bernardo Meurer

@ACuriousMind The fact that people are imbuing something with meaning in a way that I believe they should not?

0celo7

@BernardoMeurer If we start listing all the stupid symbols, we'd be here for days.

Emilio Pisanty

At the time, there was a pretty strong debate regarding how the former Holy Roman Empire territories should reorganize themselves, given how badly they had come out of the Napoleonic wars. Some sides called for smaller states, some sides called for a single state that covered all the places that were linguistically / culturally German.

John Rennie

@skullpetrol I am not watching that! The chances of humiliation are just too great :-)

Bernardo Meurer

Hail Bismark

Emilio Pisanty

5:39 PM

(This modulo my relatively limited understanding of the period, and homogeneizing several very different periods)

the Deutschlandlied is an obvious call for the latter

skullpetrol

@JohnRennie :D

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty I know that

But were there states that went to those rivers?

that didn't end up joining main Germany

Emilio Pisanty

Yes

Austria for one

skullpetrol

Let's change the topic please @0celo7

ACuriousMind

@BernardoMeurer Yeah, good luck with that.

Bernardo Meurer

5:42 PM

@ACuriousMind Good luck with what? I'm just expressing a thought

John Rennie

Congratulate me chaps, I have just successfully repaired my bicycle!

Emilio Pisanty

@BernardoMeurer thought being "I am right and 80 million Germans are wrong" about how they think about themselves?

@JohnRennie kudos

Bernardo Meurer

@EmilioPisanty Wat, when did I say I was right and they were wrong? What is wrong with you people?

When did I ever not let them think for themselves?

All I did was express an opinion

ACuriousMind

@BernardoMeurer Good luck with getting anyone to accept your idea of what meaning they "should" attribute to a symbol if they don't already agree with you. I find the idea of a "correct" symbolism pointless (and if you do too, you shouldn't argue how people "should" imbue things).

Emilio Pisanty

6 mins ago, by Bernardo Meurer

@ACuriousMind The fact that people are imbuing something with meaning in a way that I believe they should not?

skullpetrol

5:44 PM

Congrats @JohnRennie

David Z

Let me take this opportunity to point out that the conversation seems to be heading in an inappropriate direction, before it gets to the point where using moderator powers becomes necessary...

Bernardo Meurer

@EmilioPisanty Yes, that's just my belief, nothing else.

@ACuriousMind I'm not trying to get anyone to do anything!

0celo7

@skullpetrol Why do I have to change the topic?

skullpetrol

Shhhh

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty and I are calmly discussing some history.

Emilio Pisanty

5:45 PM

@BernardoMeurer So, yeah. You believe you are right and they are wrong. I don't see how that is not the only reading of what you said.

@0celo7 pretty much

skullpetrol

NOW! @0celo7 shhhh.,.

Bernardo Meurer

@EmilioPisanty Sure, so you're trying to point out that I'm not allowed to have an opinion unless I'm German?

John Rennie

That was a traumatic experience. I've spent the last five minutes filing what little is left of my nails into a not too ragged state.

0celo7

@skullpetrol What?

skullpetrol

:-/

Go watch this:

John Rennie

5:47 PM

Who flagged that? Whoever it was seriously needs to get a grip.

Emilio Pisanty

@BernardoMeurer I'm trying to point out that you don't get to criticize Germans for disagreeing with you about how they think about their own country and its associated symbolism.

skullpetrol

University Challenge 2013-14 Maths & Physics Compilation

►

Go watch*

Bernardo Meurer

@skullpetrol these guys aren't that smart, they get all the analysis questions wrong

skullpetrol

Did you watch?

45 minutes.

Bernardo Meurer

@EmilioPisanty
1. Yes I do, who are you to criticise how I think about anything?
2. I'm not criticising their point of view, I'm just sharing my own

John Rennie

5:49 PM

Good grief, and Ryan is now suspended for 30 minutes. Whoever flagged that comment seriously needs to learn some frakking topology.

Bernardo Meurer

Someone suspended Ryan over him talking about closed balls?

David Z

@JohnRennie I beg to differ. Sure, it was innocent in context to the people involved, but this is a public chat room and we should be conscious of how conversations are perceived by outsiders, non-regulars, and other chatters. I would consider that message to be on the fringe of what should be appropriate here.

Bernardo Meurer

What's wrong with you people

ACuriousMind

@BernardoMeurer Uh, you said: "I'm criticising exactly the fact that people will call you a Nazi for singing something that is not Nazi in nature IMO" - and now you're saying you're "not crticizing their point of view"?

Emilio Pisanty

@BernardoMeurer mate, that's pretty much your exact words. "What's there to criticize?" "Just the fact that..."

John Rennie

5:50 PM

@BernardoMeurer isn't it open sets you use for defining a manifold?

Bernardo Meurer

@ACuriousMind My point of view happens to clash with their's

@JohnRennie You can use both

@DavidZ It's not Ryan's fault that a topological term happens to be named the same as the male scrotum

skullpetrol

It is how you use it.

John Rennie

@BernardoMeurer how did you know my scrotum was named genus

Emilio Pisanty

@BernardoMeurer wow, yeah, I'm out of this one.

ACuriousMind

@BernardoMeurer He's also smart enough to know how that sentence sounded without context and that the SE rude/offensive flag system shows flagged messages without context to random 10k users across the chat network.

Emilio Pisanty

5:53 PM

anyways

The World Is Slowly Running Out Of Sand

►

apparently that's actually a thing?

Bernardo Meurer

@EmilioPisanty I learned with kellyanne conway

Emilio Pisanty

@BernardoMeurer you mean the The Onion piece from 22 Jan? My condolences.

MartianCactus

is the height of the respective trough and peak of a wave the same?

Bernardo Meurer

@ACuriousMind So you're saying that if people misinterpret something, it's the fault of who said it? That sounds unreasonable

ACuriousMind

@EmilioPisanty You do like Tom Scott, don't you?

Bernardo Meurer

5:54 PM

@EmilioPisanty Lol

Emilio Pisanty

@ACuriousMind yeah, not all of it, but he does have some good stuff

MartianCactus

take a pulse in a wave

is the height of the trough and the crest the same?

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus where's the zero?

i.e. from where are you measuring these heights

MartianCactus

amplitude*

ACuriousMind

@BernardoMeurer Yes, I'm saying that if the misunderstanding was to be expected and could easily have been avoided then it is the fault of the speaker if they still choose the ambiguous version.

MartianCactus

5:56 PM

the amplitude i am talking about

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus ... amplitude about what point?

David Z

@BernardoMeurer I guess this conversation should probably be taken over to the Meta room, but anyway: we have to strike a balance between the speaker's intent and the potential for misinterpretation by listeners. Since this is such a public room, here the balance is shifted a bit in favor of the latter, compared to a separate chat room.

Bernardo Meurer

@ACuriousMind You cannot infer someone's intentions

Emilio Pisanty

if you're defining it about the midpoint between troughs and peaks then obviously yes

MartianCactus

amplitude is the distance between the resting position of a wave to the trough/crest of the wave

is the amplitude of the trough and the crest the same?

Emilio Pisanty

5:58 PM

@MartianCactus so this wave of yours has a resting position?

ACuriousMind

@BernardoMeurer I can. You can. Everyone constantly infers other people's intentions. We just can't be certain we're correct.

MartianCactus

wait a sec

David Z

I've got to go anyway, don't let the room explode in my absence

Bernardo Meurer

@ACuriousMind So you're okay with punishing people incorrectly basing it solely on what you think they meant?

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus Main point is, if all you're doing is watching the wave, then it's not guaranteed.

e.g. what if the height before and after the pulse are different?

that can still satisfy the wave equation

But even if you do have a natural zero, the claim need not be true

John Rennie

6:00 PM

@MartianCactus the sorts of waves you're likely to meet are symmetrical in the positive and negative direction.

So the depth of a trough is equal to the height of a peak.

Emilio Pisanty

simplest counterexample is an EM pulse in 1D with waveform $$E(x,t)=E_0e^{-(x-ct)^2/\sigma^2}(\cos(kx-\omega t)+a\cos(2(kx-\omega t)))$$

where $0<a<1$ in the archetypical case

John Rennie

But in general it's possible to construct all sorts of weird functions where this isn't true.

Emilio Pisanty

@JohnRennie you're likely to meet if you stick to handling boring waves =P

John Rennie

@EmilioPisanty IIRC Martiancactus is still at school.

Emilio Pisanty

@JohnRennie just teasing

point is, plenty of standard examples will look symmetrical, but if you restrict yourself to that then you'll lose out on half the interesting examples.

ACuriousMind

6:03 PM

@BernardoMeurer Where did I say that? We were talking about misunderstanding, not "punishment". But yes, as far as rudeness goes, if you say something that will be interpreted as rude by a reasonable human being then I'm fine with punishing you for it.

Bernardo Meurer

@ACuriousMind And let me guess, your definition of a reasonable human being is a snowflake as always

4

MartianCactus

mainly what i am asking is

John Rennie

We seem to be in a fractious mood this evening. For the record it's been a beautiful sunny day in Chester and I got my pushbike working again!! :-)

Emilio Pisanty

@BernardoMeurer guys, take this to chat.meta

AccidentalFourierTransform

@BernardoMeurer let it go, you're wasting your credibility

MartianCactus

6:05 PM

Bernardo Meurer

@AccidentalFourierTransform Meh

MartianCactus

is that distance always going to be the same?

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus no

MartianCactus

so a wave can look like that?

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus plenty possible

MartianCactus

6:06 PM

oh

but the way i was explained how waves work

ACuriousMind

@BernardoMeurer k, if you really have more to say let's continue this here but honestly if you're asking me to define what a reasonable human being is I don't think we'll have a fruitful conversation :P

MartianCactus

they say that in case of a transveral wave, you take a rope and you jiggle it up and down

skullpetrol

Do you have an equation?

John Rennie

@MartianCactus the solutions to the wave equation are plane waves, and for those the peak and trough distances are the same.

MartianCactus

wont that make a wave with respective altitudes equal?

Bernardo Meurer

6:07 PM

@ACuriousMind I'll just leave it alone for now, it just seems oddly arbitrary

MartianCactus

what is the wave equation>

John Rennie

But we can combine plane waves and the combination will also be a solution of the wave equation, and the combination of different plane waves can be asymmetric.

@MartianCactus the wave equation is the differential equation that describes the waves moving in your rope.

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus here's one example from experiment

red line is the physical waveform

that's a pulse of IR light

MartianCactus

oh

Emilio Pisanty

colour-map-gathingammy is the experimental data from which we infer the waveform

up top is the experimental configuration

MartianCactus

6:10 PM

but the amplitudes of the respective peaks and troughs look quite equal to me

like when 1 peak is high up, the next trough is equally deep

Emilio Pisanty

Optical attosecond pulses and tracking the nonlinear response of bound electrons, M. Th. Hassan et al., Nature 530, 66–70 (2016).

MartianCactus

and when one peak is low the next trough is equally shallow

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus not sure how you figure that

MartianCactus

no wait

yeah that happens only in some cases

but why are they not always equal?

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus draw a line at $E=0$

MartianCactus

6:12 PM

i mean when you jiggle a rope

Emilio Pisanty

that's where you measure peak/trough amplitude from

@MartianCactus because they are not required to

MartianCactus

when you jiggle a rope the resulting troughs and peaks are are equal right?

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus you jiggle a rope and you get a single peak and no troughs. There's your counterexample right there.

MartianCactus

because the same amount of energy is being transmitted

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus no such requirement

MartianCactus

6:14 PM

oh..

so i am wrong?

you CAN end up with different heights of peaks and troughs when you jiggle a rope?

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus yes

MartianCactus

also what is E=0 ?

Emilio Pisanty

depending a bit on what we're talking about

@MartianCactus electric field equal to zero

@MartianCactus Just be very careful about taking conclusions from one model and thinking that they apply to all possible waves

AccidentalFourierTransform

-3

Q: Riemann Hypothesis

Some numbers have the special property that they cannot be expressed as the product of two smaller numbers, e.g., 2, 3, 5, 7, etc. Such numbers are called prime numbers, and they play an important role, both in pure mathematics and its applications. The distribution of such prime numbers among ...

Emilio Pisanty

but if this is a rope lying on the ground and you're jiggling it vertically, you can just send a single peak with no troughs down the line.

AccidentalFourierTransform

6:17 PM

@ACuriousMind should I tell him about my approach to QM?

skullpetrol

"Your" approach?

AccidentalFourierTransform

Feb 1 at 19:18, by AccidentalFourierTransform

So I've been working on this little project of mine

@skullpetrol read the comments below ^

0celo7

I'm very confused about my suspension.

Is "shove down throat" too violent?

Emilio Pisanty

@AccidentalFourierTransform If you get that published you can have a 500rep bounty on me, (swappable for a fair number of beers if you want)

@0celo7 I think it was your comment about topology. See discussion above between bernardo and acm.

0celo7

Yeah, I don't understand what the issue was?

@ACuriousMind I don't see how my comment would mean anything violent

skullpetrol

6:23 PM

I see. @AccidentalFourierTransform

AccidentalFourierTransform

@EmilioPisanty you mean in a peer reviewed journal, right?

Emilio Pisanty

@AccidentalFourierTransform yes, obviously

AccidentalFourierTransform

oh :-(

skullpetrol

How about "inappropriate"? @0celo7

Let it go pal.

MartianCactus

@EmilioPisanty "electric field equal to zero" i still dont understand

0celo7

6:25 PM

I don't understand why!

skullpetrol

Chill

MartianCactus

is there electric field differences in a wave?

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus what did you think an electromagnetic wave was?

it's a wave whose signal is an electric (and a magnetic) field

MartianCactus

idk i havent studied them

0celo7

@JohnRennie Funnily enough, you can define a metric topology in terms of closed balls. I recently saw this in Yosida's Functional Analysis

MartianCactus

6:26 PM

signal?

0celo7

That is, you define the open sets in terms of closed balls.

MartianCactus

sorry but all i know about a wave is frequency, wavelength, time period

bear with me im high schooler

skullpetrol

We will :-)

Take your time.

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus there are waves where the peaks and troughs are not actual things going up and down (like they are in jiggled strings or waves on water)

easiest example is sound waves

where the "thing" that's travelling is an increase/decrease in pressure

there's this thing that's called an electric field

it has a zero

you can get disturbances on it

those disturbances travel as waves

those waves are called light

also radio/infrared/microwaves/xrays/whatever

AccidentalFourierTransform

we should have an add on how to crop a picture

Emilio Pisanty

6:34 PM

In this specific case, the disturbance has peaky bits and troughy bits, measured from this zero thing that's externally determined. The heights of the peaks and the troughs have no relationship to each other.

I don't know how else to put this to be honest

MartianCactus

mind blown

so light is actially

disturbances in the electric field?

thats cool

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus yes

MartianCactus

and so my mistake was

i was taking one theory

and applying it on a different wave

which is not the wave described in the theory..

isn't that right?

so what i have learned it, there are 2 types o waves, transversal and longitudnal

then whats up with this new electric wave?

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus I'm pretty sure your conclusions were wrong in the original model, but in any case yes, there are models where your conclusion is right but you cannot take those conclusions unchanged to other things you want to call wave

@MartianCactus it's transversal

MartianCactus

how were they wrong in the original model?

Emilio Pisanty

6:39 PM

the electric field is a vector at each point, and the wave can only travel orthogonal to the direction of the electric field (essentially).

@MartianCactus you never actually specified a model, which is what made this very hard to deal with, so it's impossible to tell.

skullpetrol

That's why I asked if you have an equation.

MartianCactus

but i did say jiggling a rope

Emilio Pisanty

i.e. "jiggles on a string" can be up/down or side-to-side

and they're pretty different

MartianCactus

up and down..

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus now you say it, and you want us to redo the whole analysis?

MartianCactus

6:41 PM

@skullpetrol sorry i didnt see your comment maybe i was doing something else :(

nah

Emilio Pisanty

anyways, as I said, you can make a single peak with no troughs, so that's an immediate counterexample (i.e. your claim was wrong in the original model as well)

MartianCactus

that thing i told about the jiggling te rope

here it is

Introduction to waves | Mechanical waves and sound | Physics | Khan Academy

►

the starting 3 min of that video

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus just grab a rope and put it on the ground

MartianCactus

wait

done

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus so jiggle it up once and see what happens

MartianCactus

6:44 PM

its too fast to see D:

alrigt

i did it slower

and the trough and the crest seemed to be the same height and depth

@EmilioPisanty

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus look, if you're not going to apply common sense to stuff I'm not that up to this

anonymous

@help We can take any object to be an independent system on which forces are acting and neglect internal forces. Please be more clear with your question.

MartianCactus

but

all i am saying is according to the way is is explained in the video

the troughs and peaks SHOULD be of the same length

wait..

Emilio Pisanty

@MartianCactus and I'm saying that if you're not going to apply your common sense to the stuff you learn then there's very little point in learning

MartianCactus

thats only gonna happen IF hen you jiggle it, you move you hand the same distance both ways from the zero point

oh i got it :D

sorry for irritating you :P

Emilio Pisanty