We're having a...cat?

I promise everyone that this post will, eventually, be about our impending bundle of joy. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, on to the good stuff.



Yes, that's right ladies and gentlemen, we're having a cat. No, we aren't getting a pet (still not allowed thanks to the rules of our living situation) but we are having a cat, Schrodinger's cat. For those of you that are unfamiliar with this little thought experiment, allow me to elaborate.

The Schodinger's cat thought experiment straddles a curious line between philosophy and theoretical physics which, for me, makes it about one of the coolest theories around. It is a reductio ad absurdum argument (eat your heart out CNU professor emeritus John Hoaglund!) that pokes fun at the prevailing theories of the time on quantum mechanics. The whole thing goes a little something like this (simplified down and stripped of a lot of physics jargon that I only just barely understand):

Let's say we take a cat and put it in a sealed box that you cannot see into. Let's further assume that this box has adequate ventilation so that the cat does not asphyxiate from lack of oxygen, maybe it's a really big box...really, not the point, just go with it. Also in the box we've placed a timer (the original has radiation and a Geiger counter but that is so 1930's Manhattan Project, I've simplified it for our purposes here) attached to a hammer (and suitable actuators and such) which when triggered will shatter a glass vial filled with a poisonous gas which will, most assuredly, kill the cat good and dead. The timer is set randomly, the parts are protected from interference from the cat, and the whole thing is sealed away from our view. So, at any given time, is the cat dead or alive?

The answer, according to Schrodinger and the leading theory of quantum physics for the time, is yes - the cat exists in a state of flux (not to be confused with the flux capacitor) whereby it is both alive and dead. It is only by observing the cat's state (and, ironically, potentially exposing ourselves to the poisonous gas) that the state of flux collapses and the cat is known in one state - either alive or dead. Pretty neat, huh?

Now that we've taken this little trip down my thought process, we can circle back around to the real point of the blog in the first place - our baby.

Many of you know that we are keeping the sex (or is it gender? or is it both? More philosophical debates abound!) of the baby a secret. So, for all intents and purposes, there's a little Schrodinger's cat growing inside the Mrs. For all of you who do not know the sex (for the record, that is everyone but the Mrs. and me), BB exists in a state of both male and female or, if you prefer, neither male nor female.

This is all well and good for each of you out there who know no different. For the my baby mama and me, BB exists as either male or female at this stage. It is often a distinct challenge to switch our brains back to thinking of BB as neither when speaking about the child with everyone else. Like the stages of childhood development we can't unlearn what we know at this point.

For the record,  we wouldn't have it any other way.