vuo's New Writeups

Quantum teleportation (idea)

2006-04-13T01:29:18Z

So, get a friend to lie down under a glass desk. Take a coin. Flip it. Do you get to decide whether it's heads or tails? No. Quanta are similarly random, too.

So, have it land on the glass desk. Right after both of you have received the image of the coin, effectively instantly, both of you know if it's heads or tails on the other side. Is this teleportation? No.

Quantum "teleportation" is comparable to this. You can't decide the state of the separated quanta. But both of the observers get to know immediately which random state appeared. Nothing but information gets actually "teleported", and even that information can't be decided beforehand by anyone. So, faster-than-light teleportation does not result from quantum entanglement.

Nexium (thing)

2005-12-11T19:53:21Z

Nexium is a brand name for S-omeprazole, a drug that reduces gastric acid secretion, of the British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca. It is used to treat peptic ulcers, duodenal ulcers, and to relieve acid reflux (heartburn) symptoms, such as erosive esophagitis. It is a proton pump inhibitor, which works by decreasing stomach acid secretion.

AstraZeneca already had an omeprazole product in the market, namely Prilosec, and its competetors sold omeprazole analogues. Now, the analogues of omeprazole itself are not more or less effective, and there is no reason to choose one over omeprazole, so no company had an edge over other.

But, omeprazole is an chiral compound. That is, there is an atom, called chiral center, with four different substituents on it. This makes it necessarily asymmetric. If you change the places of two substituents, it will no longer be the same molecule, but its mirror image, or another enantiomer. This may not seem like a big deal, but in…

telic grammar (idea)

2005-07-20T17:35:55Z

Telicity is a grammatical contrast that indicates whether the intended result has been achieved. This adds the so-called telic entity to the sentence - the telic entity has a very strict meaning in the sense that the action must be complete as intended. Without the telic entity, the meaning is vague - it may or may not be complete. One system of denoting this is with the case of the object, as in Finnish: the object is marked as "finished" (telic action), or "unfinished/unknown" (atelic action). Another marking is with a verbal prefix, as in German and Czech, where the action is marked with a prefix, if it is telic and perfective. Estonian uses both systems. Also, the Piraha (Pirahã) language is reported to contrast telicity.

This text is mostly about Fennic telicity; any Piraha speakers are welcome to protest.

Telicity is not the same as the perfective verb aspect (in e.g. Germanic languages or Slavic languages) even though these two often coincide.…

E2 Title Edit Siding and Repair Yard (idea)

2005-02-19T19:14:18Z

The second writeup is not about home distillation. The given method does not effectively separate water and alcohol. It will remove all sorts of gunk from the drink, because it's colloidal and serves as crystallization nuclei. Maybe "freezing purification"?

excessive case (idea)

2005-01-05T22:51:04Z

In linguistics, the excessive case indicates a transformation away from a state. This case completes the "going in, being in, going out" paradigm:

translative - transform into a state. "Appointed a minister", nimitettiin ministeriksi.
essive - existence in a state. "Stays a minister", pysyy ministerinä.
excessive - transform away from a state. "Fired from the minister's job", sai potkut ministerintä.

Observe the similarity to the illative, inessive and elative cases (into, in, out from the inside something) for physical locations. This is an actual "hole in our thinking" we're unaware of. Notice how the state - "job" - has to explicitly stated; "fired from a minister" is incorrect.

Only some Eastern dialects of Finnish, like Karelian and Savo, use this case. Its case ending is -nta/ntä depending on vowel harmony. Because its use is so limited geographically, it has not entered standard Finnish.…

hazing in the military (idea)

2004-11-18T03:15:35Z

The definition of "hazing in the military" is: the misuse of the superior's power by violating human dignity. Sometimes, it may be hard to draw a line between standard practice and hazing, but the difference is the intent. Orders necessary for military training is not hazing, but just about everything else is. Without a reasonable cause, there should not be any "punishment". Modern hazing, or pennalism, was originated in German universities as far as from the 17th century. It was always a rite of initiation.

Many armies are notorious for their severe hazing, such as the Russian army, where 300(!) conscripts a year die as a result of hazing. The second-year conscripts bully, assault, torture and humiliate the recruits: Russians call this dedovshchina, "the rule of the grandfathers". They even collect protection money in sums of e.g. $170 a month. Another place famous for hazing is the French Foreign Legion. Practices such as kicking, beating and pinning are common in the…