Diving Pictures

            It was another good year for diving. As always, I was sure to keep my camera handy for any photogenic fishes. I found a couple, and a couple that weren’t fishes too.

            Working in North Dakota over the summer, I didn’t make it to the lake as much as I would like. I went out a few times, and took a few pictures:

A bass by some rocks

  

A catfish

            Much more exciting that any lake in South Dakota was my trip to St. John in the Virgin Islands. I spent a whole week snorkeling in the Caribbean, and it was stupendous. There were white sand beaches with coral and all sorts of exciting stuff just off shore. Plenty of good picture material:

This was one of the first things I saw

  

All the fish and coral!

Black fish

Blue fish

  

One fish

Two fish

Bold fish

Shy Fish

Fish with small fins

Fish with big fins

Lots of little of fish

One little fish

And these guys was probably my favorite

            All those were just the common stuff. There were some less common fish that I was able to spot too. These are the pictures I’m proudest of:

This one lived in a hole and was really good at swimming backwards

Most of the stuff that I had a hard time finding was nocturnal, so they would do stuff like hide in the rocks

This one could change color!

He looks mean, but he wasn’t very big

A sinister cephalopod

And the elusive Porcupinefish

            There were also a few things I found away from the coral. Things that weren't bony fish:

  

Rays were pretty common, but this was the biggest one I saw

A Cuttlefish and some Conchs

I really had to zoom for this one to catch it out of its shell

Another crab

And I can’t forget these dudes

            My only complaint about going to the Caribbean was that fresh water diving really doesn’t compare. Still totally worth it. I also have some pictures I took above the water, but this post was already long enough. Next time.

Infinity, Alternate Universes, and Hermaphrodites

                Infinity is an interesting concept. A seven year old will tell you that infinity is the biggest number that there is, but that isn’t really correct. Infinity is a lack of boundaries or limits. Since a number needs to have a value, infinity is something else. It is something abstract, like the idea of forever, which can never really be pinned down. Infinity is a lot more useful than forever though. For one, it is a good way to tell when math, especially physics, breaks. Infinity is the solution to dividing by zero, and it often makes an appearance if you try to theorize a massive object travelling at the speed of light. Infinite series and asymptotes are also cool.

                Infinite divisibility is probably my favorite aspect of infinity. Basically, it is the idea that you can continuously divide something up into smaller pieces, forever, without getting pieces of zero size. Then understand that this same process can be done with every piece. It is what the Dewey Decimal System is based on. Now, there are a couple ways to infinitely divide something. You could create and infinite different values that exist between one and two, and when summed, these values would create infinity. You could also divide one by half an infinite number of times, and these values would sum to two. Understanding the difference between these cases is the key to realizing that Zeno’s Paradox is nonsense (also, trying to separate time from space is like trying to remove the direction left, friggin’ crappy paradoxes).

                More mind blowing that any lame Greek paradox is the concept of infinite alternate universes. This is the idea that every single event that has ever occurred could have happened differently, and a universe exists for each of those possibilities. Even more mind blowing, due to the crazy coolness of infinite divisibility, an infinite number of universes exist for each possibility. This means that every universe that you could imagine would exist. Assuming that this idea is true; there is a universe where you wore a green shirt today, a universe where you were born as the opposite gender, one where you and I having sex right now, one where we are having sex and will live forever, and one we are doing it / living forever / being true hermaphrodites capable of self-fertilization who start the new super race of Homo Superior (because if you can impregnate, get pregnant, or get yourself pregnant, you are basically the Ubermensch). Guess what, there is an infinite number of universes where that happens.