I know almost nothing about the man, William (Will) Shakespeare. Over the centuries, scholars have questioned many of the details of his life including his birth, circumstances of his death, his sexuality, and his authorship of various works. It seems it might not be possible for any modern person to know anything they can fully trust about the man himself.
I’ve yet to take a college course on Shakespeare or perform in one of his plays. I have attended theatrical performances and watched movie enactments. Mostly, I’ve read his plays and his poetry, not much more. His work is suffused in unique hues, which easily identify his authorship. When reading Shakespeare, my interest is always in his unusual use of language, which appeals to me more than that of any other English-speaking writer or poet.
Shakespeare, whoever he was, had a gift for language which seems to have seduced nearly every person of letters I’ve ever met. He had a talent for drawing attention to the nuances of meaning through a peculiar juxtaposition of his singular syntax with unexpected context.
Shakespeare’s pen tugs and pulls on the corroded wires in our brains to make new schematics. His ink flushes out the rust and lubricates the synapses to enable fresh and completely radical transformations of our internal world. Best of all, his complex literary architecture provides a grand space where readers can safely explore many of the raw subtleties of life, love, power, sorrow, decline and death.
I love Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s language thrills me. I agree with Poet Laureate, Donald Hall, who once observed that Shakespeare’s writing is among the most densely strewn (with gems) of any literature in the world.
In this article are collected — from Shakespeare’s Sonnets — over one-hundred and fifty of his brightest jewels and most dazzling gemstones. I don’t much care about the size or carat of a crystal — or its clarity. Color and cut are what fascinate me. If the excerpt doesn’t sparkle, it isn’t on my list.
The scintillas in this sample are in order of their appearance in the Sonnets. They make up a kind of Reader’s Digest abridgement, which should enable readers to glean some of Shakespeare’s best lines without having to spend several hours reading all one-hundred and fifty-four chapters.
…making a famine where abundance lies, thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, and dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now, will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held.
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee calls back the lovely April of her prime.
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
…sap check’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, beauty o’ersnow’d and bareness everywhere: then, were not summer’s distillation left, a liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass…
…thou art much too fair to be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.
Sweets with sweets war not…
Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye that thou consumes thyself in single life?
Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye that thou consumes thyself in single life?
The world will be thy widow and still weep…
But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end, and kept unused, the user so destroys it.
For thou art so possess’d with murderous hate that ‘gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire, seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate which to repair should be thy chief desire.
Make thee another self, for love of me.
…violet past prime, and sable curls all silver’d o’re with white…
…barren rage of death’s eternal cold…
Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.
…wasteful Time debateth with Decay to change your day of youth to sullied night…
…my verse…is but as a tomb which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines…
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws, and burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood…
Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong, my love shall in my verse ever live young.
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; a man in hue, all hues in his controlling, which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems…
…not so bright as those gold candles fix’d in heaven’s air…
For all that beauty that doth cover thee is but the seemly raiment of my heart…
For at a frown they in their glory die. The painful warrior famoused for fight, after a thousand victories once foil’d, is from the book of honor razed quite, and all the rest forgot for which he toil’d.
…thy soul’s thought, all naked… …puts apparel on my tatter’d loving.
…thy soul’s thought, all naked… …puts apparel on my tatter’d loving, to show me worthy of thy sweet respect…
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, looking on darkness which the blind do see…
…like a jewel hung in ghastly night, makes black night beauteous and her old face new…
But day by night, and night by day, oppress’d? And each, though enemies to either’s reign, do in consent shake hands to torture me…
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, for precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, and weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe, and moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight…
Thou are the grave where buried love doth live…
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss: the offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief to him that bears the strong offence’s cross. Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, and they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.
…clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun…
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, and loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, although thou steal thee all my poverty; and yet, love knows, it is a greater grief to bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.
…thy beauty and thy straying youth, who lead thee in their riot even there where thou are forced to break a twofold truth; hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee; thine, by thy beauty being false to me.
If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain, and losing her, my friend hath found that loss; both find each other, and I lose both twain, and both for my sake lay on me this cross; but here’s the joy; my friend and I are one; sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone.
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
All days are nights to see till I see thee, and nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land.
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
A closet never pierced with crystal eyes…
Mine eye’s due is thy outward part, and my heart’s right thy inward love of heart.
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother…
…my jewels trifles are…
But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are, most worthy of comfort, now my greatest grief, thou, best of dearest and mine only care, art left the prey of every vulgar thief.
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass and scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye…
To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws, since why to love I can allege no cause.
For that same groan doth put this in my mind; my grief lies onward and my joy behind.
So am I as the rich, whose blessed key can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure, the which he will not every hour survey, for blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure?
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem for that sweet odor which doth in it live.
They live unwoo’d and unrespected fade, die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; of their sweet deaths are sweetest odors made…
So true a fool is love that in your will, though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell; not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.
…show me your image in some antique book…
O, that record could with a backward look, even of five hundred courses of the sun, show me your image in some antique book…
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end; each changing place with that which goes before, in sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth and delves the parallels in beauty’s brow, feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth, and nothing stands but for his scythe to mow…
O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great: it is my love that keeps mine eye awake…
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye and all my soul and all my every part; and for this sin there is no remedy, it is so grounded in my heart.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed, beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity…
And all those beauties whereof now he’s king are vanishing or vanish’d out of sight, stealing away the treasure of his spring…
…against confounding ages cruel knife, that he should never cut from memory my sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life…
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain advantage on the kingdom of the shore…
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain advantage on the kingdom of the shore, and the firm soil win of the watery main, increasing store with loss and loss with store…
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, that Time will come and take my love away.
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, but sad mortality o’ersways their power, how with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out against the wreckful siege of battering days, when rocks impregnable are not so stout, nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O, none, unless this miracle have might, that in black ink my love may still shine bright.
…right perfection wrongly disgraced…
Why should false painting imitate his cheek and steal dead seeing of his living hue?
They look into the beauty of thy mind, and that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds; then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind, to thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds…
For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair; the ornament of beauty is suspect, a crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.
When I perhaps compounded am with clay, do not so much as my poor name rehearse, but let your love even with my life decay…
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth, and so should you, to love things nothing worth.
…when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold…
…when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold…
…as after sunset fadeth in the west, which by and by black night doth take away, Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
…the coward conquest of a wretch’s knife…
The worth of that is that which it contains, and that is this, and this with thee remains.
…for the peace of you I hold such strife as ‘twixt a miser and his wealth is found…
Why is my verse so barren of new pride, so far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside to new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know time’s thievish progress to eternity.
Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing and heavy ignorance aloft to fly…
…being wreck’d, I am a worthless boat…
When all the breathers of this world are dead; you still shall live — such virtue hath my pen — where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
…making their tomb the womb wherein they grew…
…upon thy side against myself I’ll fight, and prove thee virtuous…
Thy love is better than high birth to me…
Thy love is better than high birth to me, richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost, of more delight than hawks or horses be; and having thee, of all men’s pride I boast: wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take all this away and me most wretched make.
But what’s so blessed-fair that fears no blot? Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.
In many’s looks the false heart’s history is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange…
How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow…
They that have the power to hurt and will do none…
…who, moving others, are themselves as stone, unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow…
They are the lords and owners of their faces…
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
O, what a mansion have those vices got which for their habitation chose out thee, where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot…
The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.
As on the finger of a throned queen the basest jewel will be well esteemed…
How many lambs might the stern wolf betray, if like a lamb he could his looks translate!
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, bearing the wanton burden of the prime, like widow’d wombs after their lord’s decease…
…hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit…
…roses fearfully on thorns did stand…
…eternal love in love’s fresh case…
Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life…
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured…
So that eternal love in love’s fresh case weighs not the dust and injury of age, nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, but makes antiquity for aye his page…
…mine eye is in my mind…
My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue.
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, creating every bad a perfect best…
If it be poison’d, ’tis the lesser sin that mine eye loves it and doth first begin.
But reckoning time, whose million’d accidents creep in ‘twixt vows and change decrees of kings, tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents, divert strong minds to the course of altering things…
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds…
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come: love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.
Bring me within the level of your frown, but shoot not at me with your waken’d hate…
…to prevent our maladies unseen, we sicken to shun sickness when we purge…
…drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within…
O benefit of ill! Now I find true that better is by evil still made better; and ruin’d love, when it is built anew, grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken as I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time…
…how hard true sorrow hits…
‘Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d…
For why should others’ false adulterate eyes give salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, which in their wills count bad what I think good?
Unless this general evil they maintain, all men are bad, and in their badness reign.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire what thou dost foist upon us that is old…
To this I witness call the fools of time, which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
…black beauty’s successive heir…
…fairing the foul with art’s false borrow’d face…
…none knows well to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action…
…as a swallowed bait on purpose laid to make the taker mad…
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
And in some perfumes is there more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, as those whose beauties proudly make them cruel…
…a torment thrice threefold thus to be cross’d.
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still…
…thus far for love my love-suit, sweet, fulfil.
Make but my name thy love, and love that still, and then thou lovest me, for my name is Will.
…to put fair truth upon so foul a face…
When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies…
And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust, and age in love loves not to have years told: therefore I lie with her and she with me, and in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.
…the manner of my pity-wanting pain…
As testy sick men, when their deaths be near, no news but health from their physicians know…
Only my plague thus far I count my gain, that she that makes me sin awards me pain.
…my female evil tempteth my better angel from my side…
Two loves I have of comfort and despair, which like two spirits do suggest me still: the better angel is a man right fair, the worser spirit a woman color’d ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil tempteth my better angel from my side, and would corrupt my saint to be a devil, wooing his purity with her foul pride.
Yet this shall I ne’re know, but live in doubt, till my bad angel fire my good one out.
Those lips that Love’s own hand did make breathed forth the sound that said I hate.
I hate from hate away she threw, and saved my life, saying not you.
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, and Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
O, how can Love’s eye be true, that is so vex’d with watching and with tears?
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.
…all my best doth worship thy defect, commanded by the motion of thine eyes…
But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind; those that can see thou lovest, and I am blind.
Who taught thee how to love thee more the more I hear and see just cause of hate?
…the bath for my help lies where Cupid got new fire…
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee…
For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I, to swear against the truth so foul a lie.
I, sick, withal, the help of bath desired … but found no cure: the bath for my help lies where Cupid got new fire — my mistress’ eyes.
People hate me. People have hated on me my whole life, but never more than now, it seems, in my old age, when I need their love so bad. If they only knew how their hatred weakens me and any hope I have for happiness. Maybe they’d relent and welcome me into their friendly world.
But I don’t think so. If they knew how much I hurt, they’d hate me more, shun and isolate me even further, just to watch me suffer.
Rod Smart was the leading rusher for the Las Vegas Outlaws of the short-lived XFL. His career took him to both the CFL and NFL, where he played in Super Bowl 38 for the Carolina Panthers. On the last play of the game, with the Panthers trailing 32-29 and only 4 seconds left on the clock, Rod Smart received the New England Patriots kick-off. He was unable to score the game-winning touch-down.
As Torrold DeShaun “Rod” Smart, the would-be NFL star, once said: I feel as if everyone hates me, from my mom to my dad and even my brothers and sisters; everyone ”Hates Me.”
All hope abandon, ye who enter here…
The first time I learned people hate me was at the Army boot-camp for officer-candidates at Fort Benning, Georgia during the summer of 1968. I went there to train after becoming an officer candidate to avoid the military draft during the Vietnam War.
It was a period in our history when the government conscripted hundreds of thousands of young men to fight in Vietnam. Exemptions from the draft (called deferments) had been given to college students for years, but no longer.
Students across the country began competing to get into Army ROTC training programs, because they were the only sure way to stay in school and avoid military service, at least temporarily. At my school, I was one of only eighteen students (out of a pool of several thousand applicants) who qualified for officer training.
I felt lucky, because now I could finish my education. Maybe, by the time of my graduation, the war would be over.
Cadets who enjoyed push-ups (and were good at them) thrived in officer training camp.
At officer boot-camp that summer, in the humid choking heat of Georgia, the training began. The recruits were, like me, the cream of the crop, the best of the best, from some of the finest colleges and universities in the USA and around the world. I’ve not been with smarter, worthier people than those who shared my summer of ’68 at Fort Benning.
We found ourselves trapped in the grasp of some of the most ignorant, mean-spirited drill sergeants I’ve ever encountered. Their mission was to squeeze each recruit through a juice-grinder to see what we were made of and to prove to the military how strong (or how weak) were our minds and bodies.
They cursed us, abused us, deprived us of sleep and dignity, and told us we were over-privileged swamp scum, not worthy of the army. They convinced me they meant every word.
Drill-sergeants ask a young recruit whether he prefers caramel or strawberry syrup on his French soufflé.
In chow-lines, gnarly swamp-people with missing teeth menaced and taunted us by swearing, shoving and pointing fingers. One officer forced recruits to eat their own cigarettes.
During a month-and-a-half of hell, I watched people go beserk on the firing range, collapse with seizures due to excessive heat and lack of water, quit the program, and go mad.
All I thought about during those forty-two days in Hell was this: it can’t last forever. I can survive, I can hold on, I can sleep again with my sweet girl-friend, Mary-Ann, who loves me. All this pain, this agony, will fade to an unpleasant memory, nothing more, in good time.
Studies conducted on young men adept at crawling through mud beneath barbed-wire show that they enjoy the taste of dirt more than cadets who lack this skill.
But, of course, I was naïve. Every dinner has its dessert, its crème-de-la-crème, its grand-finale, its coup-de-grace. Boot-camp was no different.
Two days before the end of training, the Army announced that each cadet in every forty-three-man platoon would participate in mandatory peer-reviews of their fellows. Drill Instructors — armed with notepads and pencils — ordered every officer-candidate to rank every other officer-candidate, from top to bottom.
Worst of all, the DIs forced each cadet to write an explanatory paragraph about each soldier they placed in the bottom-five. I think I remember trying to say something nice about each one of the five I chose.
As it happened, the evening after the peer-review, one of the cadets broke into the administration building and stole the reviews. Word got around, and soon a few dozen cadets, including me, gathered outside the barracks to rummage through them, their summaries and explanatory comments.
I discovered that my fellow cadets ranked me third from the bottom. I couldn’t grasp it, it seemed so unreal, so I read the comments. Apparently, I lost equipment, stole things, went AWOL, and was generally unprepared and unkempt.
I lacked the intelligence required to lead, lacked problem solving skills, etc. etc., on and on. I kept checking the name to see if it was mine. Nothing written about me was true.
This photo, retrieved from the Army Archive, shows Billy Lee on his last day of boot camp. He is the cadet lying on the stretcher, apparently too drunk to walk the quarter-mile to a waiting bus.
It occurred to me that all of it — all the negativity and cruelty; every last hateful condemning word — was going to be part of my permanent record, my profile, which would follow me forever in the army and beyond.
Why, I asked myself over and over, would people who I thought were my friends write nasty, untrue, career-ending things about me? I couldn’t work out the answer.
Officer training camp broke me. I spent the next two days drunk, sobbing silently inside myself. On the last day, while the other cadets scurried to leave, I writhed on the floor by my bunk, unable to pack my things or police my area. Psychological trauma and grief immobilized me. The pain of being hated ruined me. I never recovered.
Billy Lee
Editor’s note:This article has been a fictionalized compilation of actual events, which occurred during two training camps — the first at Fort Benning, Georgia; the second at Fort Riley, Kansas the following summer. The stolen peer-reviews incident occurred at Fort Riley during the summer of 1969.
Incidents in the two camps have been conflated by Billy Lee to make a more comprehensible read. The incidents are true. The order is true. But events happened over consecutive camps — basic training and advanced infantry training the following summer.
P.S. Since writing this article, some people have asked me if, over the years, I might not have garnered some insight into why my ROTC compatriots at Fort Riley rejected me. (At Fort Benning, peer reviews weren’t conducted.)
The answer is yes, but these insights weren’t included in the article, so that readers (who might not know me well) could experience the wonder I felt. In truth, (allow me first to lie; the truth is too painful) I was well-connected and proud. People hate arrogance, and that is what I was. I received special treatment from higher-ups. That, and my attitude, didn’t go over well. (Will you permit me to do some preliminary blame-shifting?)
General Boatwright was two months older than my dad. Like my dad, he was a Warrior who dedicated his life to the defense of the United States of America.
General Boatwright, the base commander at Fort Riley — who knew my dad — gave me an escort on his private plane to camp. I boasted about it. Later, he flew to our bivouac-site with a half dozen helicopters and called me out of formation (as I remember it, with a bull-horn) to interview me in front of everyone about camp conditions. I remember he asked about the food and how we were treated. I told him everything was great.
The General invited me to what I think I remember was his daughter’s birthday celebration, which meant I had to abandon my buddies to harsh camp conditions, while I partied.
Later, I wrote a thank-you letter to the General, which a drill instructor somehow managed to intercept. He read it aloud at morning reveille to my gathered platoon. In front of everyone, the outraged DI tore up my letter, while he explained so that even a child could understand: cadets don’t write letters to Generals.
None of these incidents helped me get a good peer review. (Listen to me shuck and jive over these irrelevant incidents. Patience, please. I’m working my way to truth, but it’s hard)
The most damaging things that happened were self-inflicted. I remember bragging about myself to others. (Here comes partial self-serving approximations of truth.) I told wildly exaggerated stories to hide the truth about myself from others. The truth was, I hated the choices I made. I bragged about myself, but I bragged about things no one should be proud of — like the details of my sex-life.
I self-destructed. Yes, I hated the Army. Yes, I hated war. Yes, I trapped myself in a place I didn’t want to be. I made it embarrassingly obvious to everyone. I hated myself.
Yes, I hated the Army. Yes, I hated war.
I couldn’t believe the terrible decisions I’d made. I couldn’t believe what a coward I was; how I caved to the powerful idiots who took us into the genocidal killing-field that was Vietnam for no other purpose than to test our newest equipment and evaluate our effectiveness to wage war. (More tangential bullshit is on its way.)
I found myself in a space I didn’t want to be, doing things I didn’t believe, for reasons that made no sense. I was scared to pay the price that came with resisting the evil I saw so clearly once I immersed myself in it. I had abandoned my point of view, my sense of what was right and wrong; my identity; my sense of self; my integrity. (If only any of this were true!)
Why, under the stress of basic training, did I turn on myself? Why did I manipulate others to turn on me? Why did I work so hard to bring the Universe of judgment and condemnation down on my pathetic-loathing-self? I would have to wait until many years later in therapy to learn the answers. (And I can never share them. Why don’t you understand? It’s killing me. I’m so afraid.)
I became obnoxious and inauthentic. It must have been obvious to everyone but me. It’s a wonder one of the cadets didn’t shoot me. They turned on me, because to them I was a sick puppy and a phony to boot. I wouldn’t own up. I was a coward. I refused to embrace the truth about myself.
Today, it’s clear to me that way back then in the fevered heat of officer training camp my peers would have ranked me at the very bottom of the pile had it not been for a couple of loving, perceptive souls who shared my pain and placed me, mercifully, carefully, near the very top.
Their act of kindness meant that when the scores were averaged, two other cadets would suffer the excruciating shame of being hated even more than me. Imagine. Hated more than me! HaHa! HaHaHa! Burp.
Last month we published tweets from my first thirty days on Twitter. This month, we publish a sampling of my best tweets ever, gleaned from the three years I tweeted regularly. A lot of thought went into each tweet when it was composed, and more thought has gone into selecting the “finalists” which made it into this new collection. I hope readers find them entertaining and thought provoking.
I’ve come to regret tweeting some of my original tweets, which, in retrospect, seemed to me too emotional and extreme. My son once told me my tweets were dumb. After reviewing all of them, it’s clear he was right about at least some of them. I no longer tweet regularly on Twitter.
Anyway, get ready for a controversial ride. These tweets are hot. If you disagree or have doubts or if you’re simply curious, click on the many embedded links to learn more.
Note: links have been added to some of the original tweets to provide readers with background and context. A few tweets have been edited for clarity.
If acorns tasted better, there’d be no need for farming.
The squirrels in our neighborhood have opposable thumbs & sometimes stand upright.
An airline CEO told a friend that 24 Al-Qaeda crews were active on 911. I know, sounds crazy.
Where’d daddy go? He died, momma. When’d he die? Two months ago, momma. Oh, did I kill him? Alzheimer’s 101
In the old days cigarette butts were everywhere. Now you rarely see one.
Living forever, or just one day, feels the same. We live in the present.
Going for a walk. Hope the packs of wolf-coyote hybrids NatGeo says are out there don’t eat me.
Has it occurred to anyone else that the Restasis lady may, in fact, be an alien?
We have freedom of speech as long as nobody listens.
If USA GNP was divided equally, every family of four would get $200,000 per year. [($15.2 T/309 M) * 4 ].
Clean coal is only clean before you dig it up and actually touch it.
During the next 25,000 years, containment structures for nuclear weapons will corrode & release plutonium killing all life on earth.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 40 – Son: Dad! Stop Twitter now! You sound loopy! Me: You don’t understand, son. I’m free.
What we learned during the past 10 years: throwing an election has consequences.
Have waited 50 years to vacation on a Cuban beach. Still waiting.
I’m old and cold and not very bold; my teeth are inlaid with gold. My chin has a fold; I’m covered with mold; when I go, my nose I must hold.
We don’t need a revolution. We just need to limit how much people can steal before they have to divest. No more billionaires. http://www.theguardian.com/video
Pre-Civil War plantation owners were some of the most effective job-creators in our nation’s history.
Ayn Rand Objectivism is a modern day Divine Right of Kings written to convince the gullible that billionaires have a moral right to rule.
Squirrels have developed agriculture. They plant trees and store walnuts which they eat out-of-season.
NBC reported that Boehner avoided receiving-line at holiday party last night, so he wouldn’t have to shake Obama’s hand.
At the root of our fiscal-cliff crisis is the belief by the GOP that the country is not worth saving as long as Obama remains President.
RT @ReformedBroker: “If Buffett didn’t exist, the rich would have to invent him.” http://t.co/Xz3HHVCj
Billionaire media owners want Americans to think there is something cute and innocent about British-royalty.
The GOP is fighting a war, not for freedom or fairness, but for the idea that a handful of families are entitled to own everything.
All the good jobs go to the children of the wealthy.
Want to limit corruption? Make it a felony to keep more than $15M per year or own an estate larger than $150M.
Billionaires are every bit as wicked as anyone else. The difference is, they have a billion dollars. That’s scary, or it should be.
GOP named Right to Work law to hide its intent to weaken/wreck unions and drive down wages and benefits.
If athletes and actors make millions, what do you think the people who pay them make?
Michigan GOP exempted cops and fire fighters from Right to Work law. Cops won’t get the “benefits” of working for less money.
Hundreds of cops are standing guard around Michigan State Capitol through Thursday. Cops exempted from Right to Work by GOP bill. https://www.youtube.com/watch
Someone said boxing is morally wrong, because one human has to inflict injury on another human to win.
Billionaire advertisers in Michigan are calling RTW “Freedom to Work.” Yet they won’t free cops and firefighters. They need them on their side.
Can we please raise taxes on the wealthy to stop the looting? If you are greedy, go to Russia or Mexico and loot there.
I remember that in the 1960s most Americans thought Nelson Mandela was a black communist thug who should rot in prison. Times change.
If America was free, most companies would be employee-owned and most companies would have unions.
Lack of limits on the personal wealth of its rulers is what wrecks Capitalism for the vast underclass who must endure it.
GOP leaders are charging protestors who crossed police-lines with felonies. So, now we have political prisoners in Michigan.
If Right to Work is so great, why did the GOP exempt police and fire unions? GOP is not interested in fair play, apparently.
The way to balance our budget is to spend more money on the poor, elderly and disabled. It’s counter-intuitive but always works.
If it weren’t for six billionaires who own 85% of the media, we would be arguing about how much to increase Medicare and Social Security.
GOP deficits are always the result of looting. Think of all the money wealthy families stole from the USA during Bush years.
Since the Reagan era the wealthy have had no limits on what they can make and keep. It’s why they loot.
Unless limits are placed on personal incomes and estate size, capitalism always devolves into a kind of feudalism.
GOP advertisers are flooding Michigan with this message: Protect collective bargaining. Support Freedom to Work. Right out of Orwell’s 1984.
Amazing how Michigan GOP sprung Right to Work on us at the very moment a mega-million dollar ad campaign for its passage appeared.
It’s already impossible to start a Union in Michigan. Right to Work will enable business owners to kill off the few that still exist. https://www.youtube.com/watch
Surprise attack on Unions by Rick Snyder and GOP was well-planned and executed. Felony charges against protestors is the frosting on their cake.
The wealthy work overtime to undermine confidence in elected government.
Billionaires, some tied to drugs and guns, know how to get their way. It’s not easy to speak truth to them.
People think unlimited wealth is an incentive for innovation. Not true. It enables looting and the suppression of competition.
Regular viewers of Fox News don’t get that the joke is on them. Sad.
It’s un-American to let kids inherit vast wealth they didn’t work for. It threatens our freedom. http://t.co/8tsf3aPj
There isn’t a gun made that can defend against a government-sponsored SWAT team. Get real, NRA.
More Guns = Less Crime; Clean Coal; Right to Work; Virtue of Selfishness; Gated Community; Genetically Modified Food; all wrong.
MI GOP passed a law to allow concealed guns in church, schools, stadiums and daycares.
Am told the shooter was draped in Kevlar. Teacher with a gun would have been helpless.
Was doing good until the President mentioned a six year old who knew karate and wanted to lead everyone to safety.
I started tweeting during the summer of 2011. It was the summer after the Fukushima nuclear disaster; the Blackberry Riots in England raged; Hurricane Irene ravaged our east coast; the launch of the Endeavour marked the end of the USA space shuttle program; Libyan citizens overthrew and assassinated Muammar Gaddafi; Navy Seals killed Osama Bin-laden; the Tea Party rocketed to prominence in the 2010 elections; Obama-Care ignited its roll-out and a ramp-up of a GOP war of opposition; etc., etc.; on and on. There was a lot to tweet about.
In the first thirty days, my follower base grew from zero to over one-hundred. This fast start made such an impression on me that I ended up tweeting for almost three years, trying pretty much everything I could think of to enlarge my follower base even more. But, try as I did, my followers never numbered more than 275. What was most discouraging: three-fourths of them, on closer inspection, didn’t seem to be real people. They were organizations, or marketers, selling things like books and self-improvement programs.
Today I use twitter to follow lists of people and organizations I’ve collected to help me keep-up in subjects that interest me like science, politics, religion, government and French language. The enthusiasm of the early days has faded. It no longer matters if anyone follows me or not. I rarely tweet anythinganymore.
Twitter announced they would send a complete list of a tweeter’s tweets to any tweeter who requested them. I took them up on it. The following tweets are a sample from the first 30-days of my twitter history. I tweeted a lot of interesting tweets back in the day, it now seems, mostly to bots.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 1 – My first tweet, everybody. Let me know if it worked.
I’m tweeting in bed. Have signed-up to follow lots of cool people & organizations. Seems to be working good.
I think the rich thought they would recoup Iraq war costs thru mineral/oil acquisitions. Oops!
I’m loving Twitter!
Immersed in fields and waves, we create the material world by observing them.
The old Confederacy (the New Tea Party) won’t be led by a colored man.
After WW2, the rich rewarded our young soldiers by loaning money for college and homes. They built the middle class their grandkids forgot.
You can describe green by math to a blind person who will then know everything & nothing about it. Feynman http://t.co/yZQRR5J
TWITTER-LOG: Day 16 – where are the sad places in twitter-world? …find the voices…who in this valley sheds the poison tears…?
The less you pay “the help” the harder they work & the more efficient your business. It’s a win/win all around.
Eliminating social security/Medicare helps elderly be more self-reliant & lowers the tax burden. It’s a win/win all around.
GOP leaders know when they smite their enemies on the “other cheek” they not only hurt them, but it’s in the Bible.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 17 – tossed out some “political” tweets. Lost a few, gained a few (followers, that is).
Obama is gracious toward adversaries; works hard; sincere; informed, smart, educated. These are virtues, GOP!
Obama took out Bin-laden, and you didn’t. So shut up! Obama isn’t “the worst danger facing the USA.” You are, GOP.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 17.5 – seems like copious tweeters & celebrities have the most followers.
Lagrangian method to discover differential equations is magic… here’s why it works. http://t.co/oRlpYc0
TWITTER-LOG: Day 19 – posted a math instructional video… lost followers…
Grand-daughters refuse McDonalds for lunch. Say it makes you fat. What?
@profbriancox Are there any subatomic particles that can be detected twice?
@profbriancox In Young experiment, if emitter is moved off-center to one side, do detectors behind slits see changed hit ratios?
@ProfBrianCox Is it not true that a soap-bubble, passing a phalanx of bubble detectors, will be detected only once by only one detector?
TWITTER-LOG: Day 19.5 – picked up 11 followers today, 7 tweeter-marketers…no hookers, no relatives…
During Depression, USA had 25% unemployed, but women weren’t counted. Otherwise, rate would have been closer to 75%.
Quantum intuition: imagine particles as soap bubbles with oscillating surface waves. Bubble stretches to fill space but can “pop” only once on only one detector. Some paradoxes resolve.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 20 – Sometimes tweeting feels like tossing into the vast ocean a little message in a bottle. Who will find? Who will read?
TWITTER-LOG: Day 20.5 – am thinking there might be a point where twitter peeps reach a critical mass & start multiplying geometrically.
Planck length defined at 35 decimal places. Irrational Pi forces a quantum bubble (that wants to be round) to oscillate.
Genes can spread among species by viruses. Expect hi-level intelligence to become pervasive over next million years or so.
Starving Columbian missionary wakes up to find tape worm crawling out of his throat seeking food, wife just told me.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 21 – seems like tweeters use weekends to cull follower herds. Those culled never told why.
Qaddafi needs to pursue a new career but unfortunately for him, his views aren’t extreme enough to become a Fox News commentator.
Lied to get away to tweet for an hour…oops! Just got caught.
Let’s do a “maximum wage.” Set it to 1,000 times minimum wage. Then watch Congress raise minimum wage fast.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 22 – feeling like my tweeter legs are finally beneath me, planted firmly in the twitter air!
Military school used to be where parents sent their sons to avoid desegregation.
To celebrate Bin-laden kill, blocked Fox. Quit Xanax. I feel good!
TWITTER-LOG: Day 23 – Incredible. After 23 days of idiotic tweeting, 84 people I’ve never met follow me. In a year they could be millions!
After USSR collapsed in the 80’s, recall reading USA bought their earthquake weapon to keep it out of terrorist hands. Maybe there were 2.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 24 – sometimes someone follows me who has thousands of followers but no tweets. Who are these people? What do they want?
Y U NO FORROW ME? CUZ I NO TREET RIKE U?
One of the best non-math explanations of light to be found… http://t.co/2DwMAtm
Cheney said his book would make “heads explode.” He wrote the book to blow up people’s heads! How cruel.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 26 – tweeted about lost dog & fawn. Now receive tweets from animal lovers who don’t follow me. How does Twitter do it?
Since bees are attracted by UV light, would spreading sunscreen on flowers make them invisible to bees? Someone do the experiment & get back to me.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.25 – tweeting a complex idea is not so hard if you leave stuff out & simplify.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.5 – Tweeters cull their follower herds on weekends.
Michigan has clean water, clean air and lakes you can drink from. It does not have hurricanes and 100-degree weather.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.75 – My greatest fear is that someone might un-follow me.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.8 – Too immersed in Twitter, wife says. Can’t worry about that now. Finding new ways to enhance follower base.
NBC, CBS, NBC, etc. love to cover weather, because all they have to do is look at satellite pics & make up stuff. Maybe look outside once in a while.
You might be rich if you always take steaks and lobsters to potlucks.
You might be rich if the local swim club holds swim-meets in your family pool.
You might be rich if it takes six guys with moving van a week to steal enough stuff for you to notice.
You might be rich if the only way to your house is by helicopter.
A small piece of light with just the right color can dislodge an electron. Does that make it a particle? No.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 27 – no one in my family follows me. They don’t want to encourage my twitter obsession. Who needs family? 98 followers!
One of the most controversial & censored movies ever. Oliver Reed & Vanessa Redgrave. 1971; Devils. http://t.co/szuL64C
Have contracted either dengue fever, West Nile virus, bacterial meningitis, esophageal cancer, or swimmer’s ear.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 27.5 – got my 100th follower today. Feel serene & deeply comforted.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 28 – added twitter traffic makes hurricane, earthquake, & nuclear meltdown “venues of opportunity” to harvest additional followers.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 28.5 – changing profile pic entails a risk to my follower base I’m unwilling to take at this time.
Anyone who hasn’t figured out that Fox News is a brainwashing mental institution wants to be lied to.
Saw mentally challenged woman splashing at the beach. She kept saying to no one in particular, “I’m having fun! I’m having fun!” Don’t know why I started crying.
When we tweet, though we be infested by lice and every sundry sort of squirmin’ vermin, we become beautiful, like birds.
Wife accuses me of being deaf. What she can’t see is, I’m also blind.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 28.75 – having mastered follower and blocking tools, I am now more confident than ever that only beautiful people will live within my twitter sphere.
If geometry is quantum — that is, granular — then no irrational numbers can exist in physics. They round to 35 places. Imagine the implications. http://t.co/AWXKIIE
Objects that want to be round can’t do it in quantum (granular) space. Due to a forced round-off of PI, they must oscillate between two real boundaries.
Quantum oscillations are incredibly small compared to anything we know. But a granular quantum geometry demands them.
We love billionaires, because their PR bureaucracy brainwashes us.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 29 – tweeters keep tweeting me profile pics of people I follow saying they found a hilarious pic of me. I don’t get it.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 29.5 – am finding that tweeters are kind and gentle sorts who encourage my creativity right up to the very moment they block me.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 30 – have gained new respect for what it really means to have two or three hundred followers.
UPDATE: 18 December 2022: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 4 October 2022 awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to:
Alain Aspect Institut d’Optique Graduate School – Université Paris- Saclay and École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France
Alain Aspect, winner of 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics
John F. Clauser
J.F. Clauser & Assoc., Walnut Creek, CA, USA
Anton Zeilinger University of Vienna, Austria
“for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”
UPDATE: September 5, 2019: I stumbled across this research published in NATURE during December 2011, where scientists reported entanglement of vibrational patterns in separated diamond crystals large enough to be viewed without magnification. Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2011.9532
UPDATE: May 8, 2018: This video from PBS Digital Studios is the best yet. Click the PBS link to view the latest experimental results involving quantum mechanics, entanglement, and their non-intuitive mysteries. The video is a little advanced and fast paced; beginners might want to start with this link.
UPDATE: February 4, 2016: Here is a link to the August 2015 article in Nature, which makes the claim that the last testable loophole in Bell’s Theorem has been closed by experiments conducted by Dutch scientists. Conclusion: quantum entanglement is real.
UPDATE: Nov. 14, 2014: David Kaiser proposed an experiment to determine Is Quantum Entanglement Real? Click the link to redirect to the Sunday Review, New York Times article. It’s a non-technical explanation of some of the science related to Bell’s Theorem.
Someone nominated Irish physicist, John Stewart Bell, (1928-1990) for a Nobel Prize during the year he died from a sudden brain hemorrhage. Nobel rules prevent the awarding of prizes to people who have died. Bell never learned of his nomination.
John Stewart Bell‘s Theorem of 1964 followed naturally from the proof of an inequality he fashioned (now named after him), which showed that quantum particle behavior violated logic.
It is the most profound discovery in all science, ever, according to Henry Stapp—retired from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and former associate of Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg. Other physicists like Richard Feynman said Bell simply stated the obvious.
Here is an analogy I hope gives some idea of what is observed in quantum experiments that violate Bell’s Inequality: Imagine two black tennis balls—let them represent atomic particles like electrons or photons or molecules as big as buckyballs.
The tennis balls are created in such a way that they become entangled—they share properties and destinies. They share identical color and shape. [Entangled particles called fermions display opposite properties, as required by the Pauli exclusion principle.]
Imagine that whatever one tennis ball does, so does the other; whatever happens to one tennis ball happens to the other, instantly it turns out. The two tennis balls (the quantum particles) are entangled.
[For now, don’t worry about how particles get entangled in nature or how scientists produce them. Entanglement is pervasive in nature and easily performed in labs.]
According to optical and quantum experimentalist Mark John Fernee of Queensland, Australia, ”Entanglement is ubiquitous. In fact, it’s the primary problem with quantum computers. The natural tendency of a qubit in a quantum computer is to entangle with the environment. Unwanted entanglement represents information loss, or decoherence. Everything naturally becomes entangled. The goal of various quantum technologies is to isolate entangled states and control their evolution, rather than let them do their own thing.”
In nature, all atoms that have electron shells with more than one electron have entangled electrons. Entangled atomic particles are now thought to play important roles in many previously not understood biological processes like photosynthesis, cell enzyme metabolism, animal migration, metamorphosis, and olfactory sensing. There are several ways to entangle more than a half-dozen atomic particles in experiments.
Imagine particles shot like tennis balls from cannons in opposite directions. Any measurement (or disturbance) made on a ball going left will have the same effect on an entangled ball traveling to the right.
So, if a test on a left-side ball allows it to pass through a color-detector, then its entangled twin can be thought to have passed through a color-detector on the right with the same result. If a ball on the left goes through the color-detector, then so will the entangled ball on the right, whether or not the color test is performed on it. If the ball on the left doesn’t go through, then neither did the ball on the right. It’s what it means to be entangled.
Now imagine that cannons shoot thousands of pairs of entangled tennis balls in opposite directions, to the left and right. The black detector on the left is calibrated to pass half of the black balls. When looking for tennis balls coming through, observers always see black balls but only the half that get through.
Spin describes a particle property of quantum objects like electrons — in the same waycolor or roundness describe tennis balls. The property is confusing, because no one believes electrons (or any other quantum objects) actually spin. The math of spin is underpinned by the complex-mathematics of spinors, which transform spin arrows into multi-dimensional objects not easy to visualize or illustrate. Look for an explanation of how spin is observed in the laboratory later in the essay. Click links for more insight.
Now, imagine performing a test for roundness on the balls shot to the right. The test is performed after the black test on the left, but before any signal or light has time to travel to the balls on the right. The balls going right don’t (and can’t) learn what the detector on the left observed. The roundness-detector is set to allow three-fourths of all round tennis balls through.
When round balls on the right are counted, three-eighths of them are passing through the roundness-detector, not three-fourths. Folks might speculate that the roundness-detector is acting on only the half of the balls that passed through the color-detector on the left. And they would be right.
These balls share the same destinies, right? Apparently, the balls on the right learned instantly which of their entangled twins the color-detector on the left allowed to pass through, despite all efforts to prevent it.
So now do the math. One-half (the fraction of the black balls that passed through the left-side color-detector) multiplied by three-fourths (the fraction calibrated to pass through the right-side roundness-detector) equals three-eighths. That’s what is seen on the right — three-eighths of the round, black tennis balls pass through the right-side roundness-detector during this fictionalized and simplified experiment.
Polarization is a term used to describe a wave property of quantum objects like photons. Polarizing filters are rotated in experiments to determine some of the properties of atomic particles, like spin.
According to Bell’s Inequality, twice as many balls should pass through the right-side detector (three-fourths instead of three-eighths). Under the rules of classical physics (which includes relativity), communication between particles cannot exceed the speed of light.
There is no way the balls on the right can know if their entangled twins made it through the color detector on the left. The experiment is set up so that the right-side balls do not have time to receive a signal from the left-side. The same limitation applies to the detectors.
The question scientists have asked is: how can these balls (quantum particles) — separated by large distances — know and react instantaneously to what is happening to their entangled twins? What about the speed limit of light? Instantaneous exchange of information is not possible, according to Einstein.
The French quantum physicist, Alain Aspect, suggested his way of thinking about it in the science journal, Nature (March 19, 1999).
He wrote: The experimental violation of Bell’s inequalities confirms that a pair of entangled photons separated by hundreds of meters must be considered a single non-separable object — it is impossible to assign local physical reality to each photon.
Of course, the single non-separable object can’t have a length of hundreds of meters, either. It must have zero length for instantaneous communication between its endpoints. But it is well established by the distant separation of detectors in experiments done in labs around the world that the length of this non-separable quantum object can be arbitrarily long; it can span the universe.
When calculating experimental results, it’s as if a dimension (in this case, distance or length) has gone missing. It’s eerily similar to the holographic effect of a black hole where the three-dimensional information that lives inside the event-horizon is carried on its two-dimensional surface. (See the technical comment included at the end of the essay.)
Here is a drawing of an apparatus the French physicist, Alain Aspect, designed to quickly change the angle of polarity-measurements for emitted photons. In experiments, he used the logic of Bell’s Inequalities and the speed of his switches to show that it was not possible for photons to carry specific (or unique) polarity-angles until after they were measured by the polarization detectors. Once measured, Alain showed that the new, narrowly defined polarity states of his photons always propagated to their distant entangled twins, instantly.
Another way physicists have wrestled with the violations of Bell’s Inequality is by postulating the concept of superposition. Superposition is a concept that flows naturally from the linear algebra used to do the calculations, which suggests that quantum particles exist in all their possible states and locations at the same time until they are measured.
Measurement forces wave-particles to “collapse” into one particular state, like a definite position. But some physicists, like Roger Penrose, have asked: how do all the super-positioned particles and states that weren’t measured know instantaneously to disappear?
Superposition, a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics, has become yet another topic physicists puzzle over. They agree on the math of superposition and the wave-particle collapse during measurement but don’t agree on what a measurement is or the nature of the underlying reality. Many, like Richard Feynman, believe the underlying reality is probably unknowable.
Quantum behavior is non-intuitive and mysterious. It violates the traditional ideas of what makes sense. As soon as certainty is established for one measurement, other measurements, made earlier, become uncertain.
It’s like a game of whack-a-mole. The location of the mole whacked with a mallet becomes certain as soon as it is struck, but the other moles scurry away only to pop up and down in random holes so fast that no one is sure where or when they really are.
Physicists have yet to explain the many quantum phenomena encountered in their labs except to throw-up their hands to say — paraphrasing Feynman — it is the way it is, and the way it is, well, the experiments make it obvious.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) downplayed Bell’s Inequality because, he said, it simply pointed out what was already obvious from experiments.
But it’s not obvious, at least not to me and, apparently, many others more knowledgeable than myself. Violations of Bell’s Inequality confound people’s understanding of quantum mechanics and the world in which it lives. A consequence has been that at least a few scientists seem ready to believe that one, perhaps two, or maybe all four, of the following statements are false:
1) logic is reliable and enables clear thinking about all physical phenomenon;
4) a model can be imagined to explain quantum phenomenon.
I feel wonder whenever the idea sinks into my mind that at least one of these four seemingly self-evident and presumably true statements could be false — possibly all four — because repeated quantum experiments suggest they must be. Why isn’t more said about it on TV and radio?
Some scientists think non-physicists cannot grasp quantum mechanics. This little girl disagrees.
The reason could be that the terrain of quantum physics is unfamiliar territory for a lot of folks. Unless one is a graduate student in physics — well, many scientists don’t think non-physicists can even grasp the concepts. They might be right.
So, a lot is being said, all right, but it’s being said behind the closed doors of physics labs around the world. It is being written about in opaque professional journals with expensive subscription fees.
The subtleties of quantum theory don’t seem to suit the aesthetics of contemporary public media, so little information gets shared with ordinary people. Despite the efforts of enthusiastic scientists — like Brian Cox, Sean M. Carroll, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Greene — to serve up tasty, digestible, bite-size chunks of quantum mechanics to the public, viewer ratings sometimes fall flat.
When physicists say something strange is happening in quantum experiments that can’t be explained by traditional methods, doesn’t it deserve people’s attention? Doesn’t everyone want to try to understand what is going on and strive for insights? I’m not a physicist and never will be, but I want to know.
Even me — a mere science-hobbyist who designed machinery back in the day — wants to know. I want to understand. What is it that will make sense of the universe and the quantum realm in which it rests? It seems, sometimes, that a satisfying answer is always just outside my grasp.
Here is a concise statement of Bell’s Theorem from the article in Wikipedia — modified to make it easier to understand: No physical theory about the nature of quantum particles which ignores instantaneous action-at-a-distance can ever reproduce all the predictions about quantum behavior discovered in experiments.
Familiarity with concepts like wave polarization and particle-spin can help demystify some aspects of quantum mechanics. One aspect that can’t be demystified: in experiments quantum objects display the properties of both waves and particles.
To understand the experiments that led to the unsettling knowledge that quantum mechanics — as useful and predictive as it is — does indeed violate Bell’s proven Inequality, it is helpful not only to have a solid background in mathematics but also to understand ideas involving the polarization of light and — when applied to quantum objects like electrons and other sub-atomic particles — the idea of spin. Taken together, these concepts are somewhat analogous to the properties of color and roundness in the imaginary experiment described above.
This essay is probably not the best place to explain wave polarization and particle spin, because the explanation takes up space, and I don’t understand the concepts all that well, anyway. (No one does.)
But, basically, it’s like this: if a beam of electrons, for example, is split into two and then recombined on a display screen, an interference pattern presents itself. If one of the beams was first passed through a polarizer, and if experimenters then rotate the polarizer a full turn (that is, 360°), the interference pattern on the screen will reverse itself. If the polarizer-filter is rotated another full turn, the interference pattern will reverse again to what it was at the start of the experiment.
So, it takes two spins of the polarizer-filter to get back the original interference pattern on the display screen — which means the electrons themselves must have an intrinsic “one-half” spin. All so-called matter particles like electrons, protons, and neutrons (called fermions)have one-half spin.
Yes, it’s weird. Anyway, people can read-up on the latest ideas by clicking this link. It’s fun. For people familiar with QM (quantum mechanics), a technical note is included in the comments section below.
Otherwise, my analogy is useful enough, probably. In actual experiments, physicists measure more than two properties, I’m told. Most common are angular momentum vectors, which are called spin orientations. Think of these properties as color, shape, and hardness to make them seem more familiar — as long as no one forgets that each quality is binary; color is white or black; shape is round or square; hardness is soft or hard.
Crystals can be used to “down-convert” photons into entangled pairs.
Spin orientations are binary too — the vectors point in one of two possible directions. It should be remembered that each entangled particle in a pair of fermions always has at least one property that measures opposite to that of its entangled partner.
The earlier analogy might be improved by imagining pairs of entangled tennis balls where one ball is black, the other white; one is round, the other square; add a third quality where one ball is hard, the other soft. Most important, the shape and color and hardness of the balls are imparted by the detectors themselves during measurement, not before.
Before measurement, concepts like color or shape (or spin or polarity) can have no meaning; the balls carry every possible color and shape (and hardness) but don’t take on and display any of these qualities until a measurement is made. Experimental verification of these realities keep some quantum physicists awake at night wondering, they say.
Anyway, my earlier, simpler analogy gets the main ideas across, hopefully. And a couple of the nuances of entanglement can be found within it. I’ve added an easy to understand description of Bell’s Inequality and what it means to the end of the essay.
This cardboard cut-out of a cat was imaged by entangled photons. Lower energy photons interacted with the cut-out while their higher energy entangled twins interacted with the camera to create the picture. Credit: Gabriela Barreto Lemos
In the meantime, scientists at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna recently demonstrated that entanglement can be used as a tool to photograph delicate objects that would otherwise be disturbed or damaged by high energy photons (light). They entangled photons of different energies (different colors).
They took photographs of objects using low energy photons but sent their higher energy entangled twins to the camera where their higher energies enabled them to be recorded. New technologies involving the strange behavior of quantum particles are in development and promise to transform the world in coming decades.
Perhaps entanglement will provide a path to faster-than-light communication, which is necessary to signal distant space-craft in real time. Most scientists say, no, it can’t be done, but ways to engineer around the difficulties are likely to be developed; technology may soon become available to create an illusion of instantaneous communication that is actually useful. Click on the link in this paragraph to learn more.
Non-scientists don’t have to know everything about the individual trees to know they are walking in a quantum forest. One reason for writing this essay is to encourage people to think and wonder about the forest and what it means to live in and experience it.
The truth is, the trees (particles at atomic scales) in the quantum forest seem to violate some of the rules of the forest (classical physics). They have a spooky quality, as Einstein famously put it.
The quantum forest is a spooky place, Einstein said.
Trees that aren’t there when no one is looking suddenly appear when someone is looking. Trees growing in one place seem to be growing in other places no one expected. A tree blows one way in the wind, and someone notices a tree at the other end of the forest — where there is no wind — blowing in the opposite direction. As of right now, no one has offered an explanation that doesn’t seem to lead to paradoxes and contradictions when examined by specialists.
John Stewart Bell proved that the trees in the quantum forest violate the laws of nature and logic. It makes me wonder whether anyone will ever know anything at all that they can fully trust about the fundamental, underlying essence of reality.
Some scientists, like Henry Stapp (now retired), have proposed that brains enable processes like choice and experiences like consciousness through the mechanism of quantum interactions. Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose have proposed a quantum mechanism for consciousness they call Orch Or.
Others, like Wolfgang Pauli and C. G. Jung, have gone further — asking, when they were alive, if the non-causal coordination of some process resembling what is today called entanglement might provide an explanation for the seeming synchronicity of some psychic processes — an arena of inquiry a few governments are rumored to have already incorporated (to great effect) into their intelligence gathering tool kits.
In a future essay I hope to speculate about how quantum processes like entanglement might or might not influence human thought, intuition, and consciousness.
Billy Lee
P.S. A simplified version of Bell’s Inequality might say that for things described by traits A, B, and C, it is always true that A, not B; plus B, not C; is greater than or equal to: A, not C.
When applied to a room full of people, the inequality might read as follows: tall, not male; plus male, not blonde; is greater than or equal to: tall, not blonde.
Said more simply: tall females and dark haired men will always number more than or equal to the number of tall people with dark hair.
People have tried every collection of traits and quantities imaginable. The inequality is always true, never false; except for quantum objects.
Schrödinger’s Wave Equation describes how the quantum state of a physical system changes with time. It can be used to calculate quantized properties and probability distributions of quantum objects.
One way to think about it: all the ”not” quantities are, in some sense, uncertain in quantum experiments, which wrecks the inequality. That is to say, as soon as ”A” is measured (for example) ,”not B” becomes uncertain. When ”not B” is measured, ”A” becomes uncertain.
The introduction of uncertainties into quantities that were — before measurement — seemingly fixed and certain doesn’t occur in non-quantum collections where individual objects are big enough to make uncertainties not noticeable. The inability to measure both the position and velocity of small things with high precision is called the uncertainty principle and is fundamental to physics. No advancement in the technology of measurement will ever overcome it.
Uncertainty is believed to be an underlying reality of nature. It runs counter to the desire humans have for complete and certain knowledge; it is a thirst that can never be quenched.
But what’s really strange: when working with entangled particles, certainty about one particle implies certainty about its entangled twin; predicted experimental results are precise and never fail.
Stranger still, once entangled quantum particles are measured, the results, though certain, change from those expected by classical theory to those predicted by quantum mechanics. They violate Bell’s Inequality and the common sense of humans about how things should work.
Worse: Bell’s Theorem seems to imply that no one will ever be able to construct a physical model of quantum mechanics to explain the results of quantum experiments. No ”hidden variables” exist which, if anyone knew them, would explain everything.
Another way to say it is this: the underlying reality of quantum mechanics is unknowable. [A technical comment about the mystery of QM is included in the comments section.]
I know almost nothing about the man, William (Will) Shakespeare. Over the centuries, scholars have questioned many of the details of his life including his birth, circumstances of his death, his sexuality, and his authorship of various works. It seems it might not be possible for any modern person to know anything they can fully trust about the man himself.
In this article are collected — from Shakespeare’s Sonnets — over one-hundred and fifty of his brightest jewels and most dazzling gemstones. I don’t much care about the size or carat of a crystal — or its clarity. Color and cut are what fascinate me. If the excerpt doesn’t sparkle, it isn’t on my list. 
