Quantum Hoops

i-b870bd5ffdc0c1fa0f767b86f1bdd6fc-frontposter.jpg Last night I got a chance to go see Quantum Hoops which is playing at the Landmark Metro in Seattle for a limited time. For those who haven't heard of this movie, "Quantum Hoops" is a documentary about the Caltech basketball team, which currently owns the longest losing streak without a conference win in NCAA basketball (22 years.) The movie is narrated by David Duchovny, and, with the exception of an opening "old time cinema" introduction to Caltech, is actually quite enjoyable. Of course I'm biased. Not only did I go to Caltech as an undergrad (and returned as a postdoc) and thus knew some of the people in the film ("Gillllbeaaar!"), but my grandfather went to Caltech, graduating in 1934, where he played on championship football teams while at Caltech.

My grandfather was immensely proud of three things at Caltech. One was that he was on those championship football teams (and played beside Bob Sharpe who would go on to become a very famous geologist. He along with Sharpe and another fellow were one of three who played varsity football as underclassmen.) The other was that he survived Caltech (these were the days before a high dropout rate was considered bad for a university!) And the final was that he met Einstein while he was at Caltech. Apparently Einstein was outside sunning himself and just enjoying life and so my grandfather went up and started talking to him. Caltech can probably blame my grandfather for Einstein moving to Princeton :)

Back to the movie. The story chronicles a season of Caltech basketball with a team that, instead of losing by an average of sixty points a game, was actually losing by twenty or ten points. It looks like another losing season for Caltech, until the very last game of the season... The movie is full of lots of images of basketball teams past (like the amazing sports teams at Caltech during World War II, whose players went on to great fame in life, besides having a football season where they were undefeated and unscored upon. Can you believe there were days when Caltech beat UCLA?) For Techers this movie will be greatly amusing, but the story really is gripping, with an amazing amount of drama for a story about geeks playing hoops, and thus I suspect even a wider audience will find much to love about this story of struggle in the face of very long odds.

Tags

More like this

I haven't written much about basketball this year, for the simple reason that I haven't watched much basketball this year-- between SteelyKid, the book, and my day job, I just haven't had time. This weekend, though, I watched a whole bunch of hoops, mostly involving my two teams, Syracuse and…
Malcolm Gladwell has a number of public responses to the sort of thing I ranted about the other day-- not to me specifically, mind, but to the same general points-- on his own blog and on ESPN's Page 2. It's pretty much the same argument others made in the comments to my post. Taking a fairly…
Light blogging today, because yesterday was a Hoops Day here in Chateau Steelypips. A goog hoops day, too, with victories in all three games that mattered: Syracuse edged St. John's, Maryland beat the hated Dukies, and the intramural team I'm playing on won a tough game last night to more or less…
So, remember a month or two back when everybody was whining about how Michigan got screwed out of a shot at the Mythical National Championship? They lost to USC last night. USC, you'll recall, demonstrated their inferiority to Michigan by losing to UCLA, which is how they ended up in the Rose Bowl…

It is an astonishing movie, which I've told many people about since I saw it at its Caltech premiere. It does everything possible with a low budget and a topic that most distributors would assume is orthogonal to the mainstream audience.

I'm just a big fan of Writer/Director Rick Greenwald's work, which started in such a minor key with "That 70s Show" interstitials and that series's Episode #100 as well.

I eagerly await Quantum Hoops Squared.

E=mc²/2
2009 is the end of Einstein's space-jail of time and Fraud symbol E=mc²
Joenahhas1958@yahoo.com
Time is not a structure like space to allow space-to time-back to space jumping claimed by Physicists regardless of what physicists have to say about it because Physics is a business and not necessarily science or scientific and like every business it comes with fraud and fraud is Einstein's space-time (x, y, z, it) continuum that led to fraud symbol E=mc² and yes I am saying that 109 years of Nobel prize winners physics and physicists are all wrong and space-time physics is based on scientific fraud. When "results" expected and "No" discovery, Physicists rigged Physics for grant money since the start of the industrial revolution. Physics today is at least 51 % fraud!
r ------------------>>Exp (ì w t) ---------->> S=r Exp (ì wt) Nahhas' Equation
Orbit-------->> Orbit light sensing------>> Visual Orbit; Exp = Exponential
Particle ---->> light sensing of moving objects------------ >> Wave
Newton--------->>light sensing---------->> Quantum
Quantum = Newton x Visual Effects
Quantum - Newton = Relativistic = Optical Illusions
E (Energy by definition) = mv²/2 = mc²/2; if v = c
m = mass; v= speed; c= light speed; w= angular velocity; t= time
S = r Exp (ì w t) = r [cos (wt) + ì sin (wt)] Visual effects
P = visual velocity = change of visual location
P = d S/d t = v Exp (ì w t) + ì w r Exp (ì w t)
= (v + ì w r) Exp (ì w t) = v (1 + ì) Exp (ì w t) = visual speed; v = wr
E (visual energy= what you see in lab) = m p²/2; replace v by p in E = mv²/2
= m p²/2 = m v²/2 (1 + ì) ² Exp (2ì wt)
= mv²/2 (2ì) [cosine (2wt) + ì sine (2wt)]
=ì mv² [1 - 2 sine² (wt) + 2 ì sine (wt) cosine (wt)];v = speed; c = light speed
wt = Ï/2
E (visual) = ìmv² (1 - 2 + 0)
E (visual) = -ì mc² ⡠mc² (absolute value;-ì = negative complex unit) If v = c
w t = Ï/4
E (visual) = imv² [1-1 +á»] =-mc²; v = c
wt =-Ï/4+á»ln2/2; 2á» wt=-á»Ï/2 - ln2
Exp (2i wt) = Exp [-á»Ï/2] Exp [l n (1/2)] = [-á» (1/2)]
E (visual) = imv² (-á»/2) =1/2mc² v = c
Conclusion: E = mc² is the visual Illusion of E = mc²/2 joenahhas1958@yahoo.com. All rights reserved.
PS: In case of E=mc² claims to be rest energy claims then
E=1/2m (m v + m' r) ² = (1/2m) (m' r) ²; v = 0
E = (1/2m) (mc) ²; m' r =mc
E=mc²/2

By joe nahhas (not verified) on 28 Jan 2009 #permalink

Subtitle:

"How well do I think after my head's been slam-dunked?"

On the original thread:

I deny the rumors that H. Ooguri (Berkeley & Caltech), J. Schwarz (Caltech), E. Witten (IAS Princeton & Caltech), K. Becker (Caltech), M. Becker (Caltech), and P. Horava (Caltech) were on the starting 11-dimensional yo-yo team profiled in the 3rd film of the trilogy: Quantum Strings.