that's one mighty election
I haven’t written a great deal about the US elections thus far as I didn’t want to unduly influence the outcome. But now it appears to be over, I can loosen my belt, squint my face and let rip....
The muslim guy was at a distinct disadvantage from the off, being up against the Republican senator for Arizona. That should have been a sign, but then more recently when no less a luminary than Arnold himself suggested that Barack needed to work on his “skinny” legs more did I begin to sense some sort of cosmic alignment. Fold into this mixture McCain’s fondness for reach-arounds up the aisle and he appeared to be unassailable. Its true that, to my untrained eye, McCain’s policies seemed insane and divisive and, for a man who spent years in jail for killing Vietnamese people, he hadn’t seem to have learned his lesson very much, instead choosing to glorify getting captured. Although, to be fair, so did Rambo.
The McCain - Obama confrontation was of course eerily reminiscent of the Arnold - Frank “the chemist” Zane posedown* at Mr Olympia 1980. Its true that Zane had the cuts, the striations, the symmetry and the astonishing vascularity but despite having the lowest body fat percentage of any Olympian finalist who has subsequently gone on to live, he was up against Arnold and Arnold’s size. In the end, righteousness shone through like a shimmering beacon of moose-meat, a good big ‘un trumping a little ‘un, bulk over aesthetic form, changing the face, and the pecs, of bodybuilding forever. Granted that McCain had the better upper body, but Obama had the greater height and reach and it need hardly be said that Palin would come a poor second in a benching contest with Biden.
Yet Arnold’s apparent endorsement of McCain seems puzzling, but I think its entirely feasible to look past the superficial plain meanings of the words he used to scratch beneath and find the true wisdom of what he meant. Since we know Arnold’s omniscience cannot be questioned, we have to ask ourselves why he would have chosen to endorse McCain knowing full well that it would be the other guy, that one, who would then go on to win. Had Arnold begun endorsing losers? Such a thing is unthinkable. So what, indeed, was the message he was trying to convey?
To understand this message, we need to understand the context of the message. And have some basic knowledge of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. The most popular interpretation amongst physicists nowadays is the Many Worlds Interpretation which loosely suggests that whenever a microscopic decision point is reached, say a particle has a 50% chance of going up or down, the Universe itself splits off into one universe where the particle goes up and another where the particle goes down. So at any point in time there are gazillions of very very similar universes branching out from this one. Surprisingly, although somewhat generous in its number of extraneous and undetectable universes, it does seem to be the most parsimonious explanation out there.
In terms of the macroscopic world then, every eventuality that is physically possible happens somewhere. And it is to this fact that Arnold, in his finely-chiselled glory, was most certainly appealing.
I saw it mentioned somewhere that just before the election Obama had something like a 95% chance of winning, as calculated by some nerdy guy with a computer. Assuming no ties, that leaves McCain with a 5% chance of winning. So that in 5% of universes that branched off from the morning of the election, John McCain is now Mr Potus. In these (countless) universes, Arnold is already being hailed internationally as the omniscient being that his followers over here already know him to be. And, who knows? Given fast track deification, he may now be protecting those universes from the ravages of the snake-lord Thulsa Doom. Already. Lucky bastards.
But what of the other 95%? Will they therefore reject Arnold’s teachings because he has be proven not to be omniscient? Claptrap. Arnold is forcing us to recognise MWI as his chosen interpretation of quantum mechanics. A remarkable gift to the world, seeing as it's been the subject of much controversy and leads some to the conclusion that, from a first person perspective, we are all immortal. In the sense that we’ll live until the end of the Universe - we can’t die, even if we want to. Arnold has used election time to share, albeit impishly, this knowledge, which happened to coincide with my own views, to us all. The gift of everlasting life.
All this from a campaign speech in Columbus, Ohio. Imagine if he’d gone to Virginia.
And since, as proven above, Arnold didn’t actually therefore care who won, irrespective of who he appeared to be endorsing, I’m glad Obama won, even if it does mean the snake-lord Thulsa Doom may have to wait a while. You did good, America, that’ll do.
* this posedown may not have actually happened.
The muslim guy was at a distinct disadvantage from the off, being up against the Republican senator for Arizona. That should have been a sign, but then more recently when no less a luminary than Arnold himself suggested that Barack needed to work on his “skinny” legs more did I begin to sense some sort of cosmic alignment. Fold into this mixture McCain’s fondness for reach-arounds up the aisle and he appeared to be unassailable. Its true that, to my untrained eye, McCain’s policies seemed insane and divisive and, for a man who spent years in jail for killing Vietnamese people, he hadn’t seem to have learned his lesson very much, instead choosing to glorify getting captured. Although, to be fair, so did Rambo.
The McCain - Obama confrontation was of course eerily reminiscent of the Arnold - Frank “the chemist” Zane posedown* at Mr Olympia 1980. Its true that Zane had the cuts, the striations, the symmetry and the astonishing vascularity but despite having the lowest body fat percentage of any Olympian finalist who has subsequently gone on to live, he was up against Arnold and Arnold’s size. In the end, righteousness shone through like a shimmering beacon of moose-meat, a good big ‘un trumping a little ‘un, bulk over aesthetic form, changing the face, and the pecs, of bodybuilding forever. Granted that McCain had the better upper body, but Obama had the greater height and reach and it need hardly be said that Palin would come a poor second in a benching contest with Biden.
Yet Arnold’s apparent endorsement of McCain seems puzzling, but I think its entirely feasible to look past the superficial plain meanings of the words he used to scratch beneath and find the true wisdom of what he meant. Since we know Arnold’s omniscience cannot be questioned, we have to ask ourselves why he would have chosen to endorse McCain knowing full well that it would be the other guy, that one, who would then go on to win. Had Arnold begun endorsing losers? Such a thing is unthinkable. So what, indeed, was the message he was trying to convey?
To understand this message, we need to understand the context of the message. And have some basic knowledge of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. The most popular interpretation amongst physicists nowadays is the Many Worlds Interpretation which loosely suggests that whenever a microscopic decision point is reached, say a particle has a 50% chance of going up or down, the Universe itself splits off into one universe where the particle goes up and another where the particle goes down. So at any point in time there are gazillions of very very similar universes branching out from this one. Surprisingly, although somewhat generous in its number of extraneous and undetectable universes, it does seem to be the most parsimonious explanation out there.
In terms of the macroscopic world then, every eventuality that is physically possible happens somewhere. And it is to this fact that Arnold, in his finely-chiselled glory, was most certainly appealing.
I saw it mentioned somewhere that just before the election Obama had something like a 95% chance of winning, as calculated by some nerdy guy with a computer. Assuming no ties, that leaves McCain with a 5% chance of winning. So that in 5% of universes that branched off from the morning of the election, John McCain is now Mr Potus. In these (countless) universes, Arnold is already being hailed internationally as the omniscient being that his followers over here already know him to be. And, who knows? Given fast track deification, he may now be protecting those universes from the ravages of the snake-lord Thulsa Doom. Already. Lucky bastards.
But what of the other 95%? Will they therefore reject Arnold’s teachings because he has be proven not to be omniscient? Claptrap. Arnold is forcing us to recognise MWI as his chosen interpretation of quantum mechanics. A remarkable gift to the world, seeing as it's been the subject of much controversy and leads some to the conclusion that, from a first person perspective, we are all immortal. In the sense that we’ll live until the end of the Universe - we can’t die, even if we want to. Arnold has used election time to share, albeit impishly, this knowledge, which happened to coincide with my own views, to us all. The gift of everlasting life.
All this from a campaign speech in Columbus, Ohio. Imagine if he’d gone to Virginia.
And since, as proven above, Arnold didn’t actually therefore care who won, irrespective of who he appeared to be endorsing, I’m glad Obama won, even if it does mean the snake-lord Thulsa Doom may have to wait a while. You did good, America, that’ll do.
* this posedown may not have actually happened.