Christine,
I sense some cool chat on the horizon.
As interested in the Kennnedys as you seem allow me to recommend yet another book to you--"The Kennedy Imprisonment" by Garry Wills. It is about the family character, more or less. Wills is an excellent political writer and his earlier book "Nixon Agonistes" is absolutely brilliant, IMO.
As far as the JFK assasination, I have been of two minds going back and forth over the years--conspiracy or strange but true events that are obscure. I tend to think that a conspiracy would have started to come unravelled by now. For example, I expect Gerald Ford will say his piece (whatever it may be) at some point in his life. The book "Case Closed" argues well that in spite of the botched handling of the case, Oswald remains the most likely sole suspect. But who knows--I have also viewed it very conspiratorially also.
On the subject of duality:
>>Just why would an atom make a sound as it tries to be two places at once, or is this a valid question?<< [emphasis added]
An extremely perceptive remark, Christine!
Much counterintuitive quantum behavior can be distilled into the question of how to deal with the behavior of a single paricle that can end up in one of two places (states). Richard Feynman popularized this approach with his "two-slit electron scattering" thought experiment. A little much to go into here and now--I'm trying to take my son swimming. But his conclusion is that the question is not valid unless one can arrange things so that the final outcome is determined. This really needs more discussion, which we can do later. Essentially, the states (wave functions) interfere when you try to calculate the probability of the various outcomes and do not interfere when the outcomes can be distinguished. This can give very different and strange behaviors.
For the vibrating atoms, I guess its some number of atoms that are physically jumping back and forth across the membrane making a vibration, maybe of the membrane itself.
This is one view (Feynman's) that I kind of like. There are others that lead to notions of parallel universes, we constantly create our own realities and so forth--although they are fun I personally don't take them too seriously.
Thanks for the name of the article--did it say what journal it's in?
BTW, I used to live in Noe Valley. Clipper between Diamond and Douglas.
Lyle.
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