I see that PeeZee is continuing his splenetic campaign against Caturday. But he won’t and can’t win, for cats are awesome. And, really, can you imagine a squid getting the Internet following of Maru, or a cephalopod-related humor site called “I can haz fish?” This is pure contrarianism.
So here’s two more plaudits for our feline friends:
et
Can you imagine a quantum-mechanical Gedankenexperiment that had a squid in a closed box with a radioactive atom and a vial of poison? It’s the cat in the box that makes that thought experiment so compelling. Schrödinger’s Squid wouldn’t sell. Besides, you’d have to fill the box with water.
h/t: Grania
I note that he offers no cephalopods, and three of the four are nice furry warm blooded mammals. He’s either starting to cave, or it’s a trap.
You realize that PZ is not the only squid aficionado in the blog world.
Bruce Schneier’s (more interesting) crypography blog is also a hotbed of things squid.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/11/friday_squid_bl_350.html
Well, if anybody were ever to actually carry out the experiment, I’m sure we’d both rather they did it with a squid….
b&
Besides, zombie squid are more apt than cats at faking being alive:
news.discovery.com/videos/animals-dancing-zombie-squid-explained.html
(Add your own “http://…”; hope I’ve avoided embedding the video!)
This is an awesome video, though kinda creepy. I remember doing a similar experiment in Chem class many, many years ago. (Good to know that there really was no pain felt… no brain, no pain.)
Don’t know about Schrodinger’s squid, but Schrodinger’s octopus would be out of the box in about three seconds flat.
Thanks for the morning laugh, Dr. C.
Schrodinger’s cat: first place winner on my personal list of favorite Caturday felids!
On the plus side, you wouldn’t have to open the box to know if there’s a dead squid inside.
Cephalopods are awesome, cats are cats. Next question.
That would be meaningless.
– An octopus would uncork the vial. Outcome: dead ock.
– A squid would bash its body out. Outcome: dead squid.
Cats, on the other hand, owns uncertainty as everything else. Who knows what will happen with a cat around?
My apologies. I didn’t mean that as a response to anyone.
A WordPress web engine can be so annoying!
I don’t know where I first heard this, but Heisenberg and Schrodinger are driving along in a car, and Heisenberg is a bit lead-footed. They are pulled over by a state trooper.
The trooper comes up to the window and says, “Do you know how fast you were going?”
Heisenberg says, “No, but I can tell you exactly where we were.”
Taken aback by this unusual response, the trooper says, “Do you mind popping the trunk?”
At this point Schrodinger shakes his head but Heisenberg presses the button anyway.
The trooper walks back, looks in the trunk and says, “Do you know you have a dead cat in here?”
Schrodinger says, “Well, _now_ I do!”
Holy crap! About the first cat cartoon — I just saw something similar on TV, an episode of The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, about the hidden world of urban squirrels. When squirrels bury their nut stash, they do it purposefully. First they triangulate between significant objects like rocks and trees, to find the right spot to bury their acorns and such. That way, they just retrace their route to be able to locate their buried treasures!
I haven’t been able to get the following video to play at the part about the squirrel finding its cache of acorns. (Around 14minutes)
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/Shows/The+Nature+of+Things/ID/2302224848/
The audio part works at that part but not the video. Maybe someone else will have better luck with this link.
There actually is aSchrödinger’s SQUID:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2395.1.summary