Things that make the brain go "boom", part 1

For today, let us take a break from politics. Annoyingly enough, the impotence of UN has deleted this organisation from the international map of political power.
Today I will present you with the first installment of a series somewhat related to the paradox series that I wrote earlier, a series that refers to things that force the brain to the limit and sometimes have caused people to go mad.
In this episode one, we will deal with the concept of black holes and the information paradox. The information paradox is a pretty famous concept in physics. This paradox stems from the very first axiom of science: information cannot be destroyed. As you may (or may not), in physics information is well defined as the state of particles. Under the balance given by Eintein's generalized theory of relativity neither mass nor energy is spontaneously created in the universe, but transformed from one to another. Therefore particles of a quantum state can be subject to transformation (by means of energy or mass and therefore by quantum state - which by definition is a wavelength function that defines any state in which a particle can be) but not destruction (by destruction meaning its dissapearance from the universe).
What does this have to do with black holes? Well, let's see.
A black hole is a concentration of mass of such nature that it develops a gravitational field of an escape speed greater than the speed of light (again definition time, escape speed: the speed necessary to escape the gravitational pull of an object - eg, to escape Earth: 11655 km/s). A black hole is formed if a sufficiently big star (above 5 times the mass of the Sun) consumes all its fuel for nuclear reactions and suffers a collapse where all its mass would be compressed towards its center beyond the limits of known physics. This center point would be then known as a singlarity while the limit of no escape (going towards the singularity beyond that limit would make it impossible for you to escape being drawn towards the singularity) would be known as an 'event horizon'. A black hole becomes a distorsion in space-time as time would pass slower in its proximity. Actually that's debatable since time it's just a convention to measure the interval between sending and receiving information, but we'll go along and play nice and use this concept.
For example, let us take two people Jane and Jimmy. Jane is well outside the event horizon, while Jimmy moves towards it and eventually steps over the event horizon. What happens then?
One intersting aspect is that Jane will -never- see Jimmy dissapear. As he passes over the event horizon, the light that carries this information is also caught by the black hole and never reach Jane, all this while the light that departs near the event horizon takes an exponentially longer time to reach Jane as it is more and more difficult to escape the gravitational pull. As the distance between Jimmy and the event horizon, it takes longer and longer for the light to reach Jane while the light that departs sufficiently close, but still outside of the event horizon will take an infinite amount of time to reach Jane. An observation would be that, hypothetically, looking at a black hole would reveal images of all objects that have once been sucked in. (i've inquired a professor in physics from the Virginia Institute of Technology about this ... I'll update the blog with the reply .... if it will come).
Of course if Jimmy was already inside the black hole, Jane wouldn't see him at all.
What happens to Jimmy? Well, physics dictates that his body would be ripped apart then compressed into the black hole's structure and eventually spit out via Hawking radiation. What about the information carried on his body?

Playing THE GAME

Yesterday I intended to write about movies and some interesting aspects of some of the more recent movies I've seen. Unofrtunately I've eventually decided against that.
Today I'm going to write about a game. It's called 'the game of interests'. Actually the game resembles more of a subtle war that takes places at the border between words and actions. Actions show one image, words show another, but in the end actions are those that reveal the new state of things after a given event.
Usually there're great discrepancies between words and actions and there's nothing better to reveal this that the latest developments in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.
The essential element in the battle of words is that words should try to cover as much as possible for actions, when actions contradict words and similarly, to boast actions whenever actions go the same way as words. Knowing this makes it easy for an observer to ask the right questions when the current state of facts opposes the expressed intentions.
Let's begin with a very simple example: yesterday in Lebanon four UN observers were killed in an Israeli raid while they were taking cover in an underground bunker. Additional facts: said bunker belonged to UNAFIL, the UN mission in Lebanon and it was specifically marked to be indetified from both air and land. Additionally it was marked on regional maps and on extended country maps. Additionally, the entire camp was shelled 17 times by artillery. In this stituation, the commander called the Israeli troops to notify them of their proximity and the fact that the target was a UN camp. Logs show 10 calls made by UNAFIL, while the Israeli military liaison shows only 6. Additionally, reports identified that another UNAFIL rescue mission was shelled by artillery while trying to remove the bodies from the rubble and check for suvivors. The weapons used were american-made laser-guided precision bunkerbuster.
In this situation, the Secretary General Kofi Annan called the attack 'deliberate' and demanded explanation. The Israeli ambassador to UN, called Annan's conclusion 'premature' and that the raid was a 'regrettable mistake'.
Recap: was it deliberate or maybe the Israeli army simply couldn't read maps, was blind to markers, didn't hear the phone, finger slipped on the laser targetting system and the slipped again on the release button three times? Somehow I'm inclined to believe the Israeli ambassador and further suggest that the Israeli army should lay down weapons before it hurts itself

End of civilisation

The end of civilisation has come and it seems the world was too quick in forgetting the lessons of the two World Wars and disasasters such as the Panama.
By enacting the United Nations Organisation after the Second World War, there seemed to have been a consensus among the world's emerging powers that law and order was the only way towards peace and that a higher body was needed as a mediator between countries on international level, the exact role that the League of Nations had failed.
The exact failures of the League of Nations are now plagueing its relative, the UN. The same way the members of the League acted on interest rather than on the laws and regulations they had retified, now the UN members propagate. Its is no wonder that disasters such as the Rwanda massacre happen under the watchful eye of this organisation when countries such as US or France first take into consideration the profit from influence or weapons trade.
But probably the worst case that shows the failures of UN as an international mediation body is the creation of Israel. In 1948, when Israel was declared, nobody spoke out and after the first row of Israel - Arab wars, Israel received recognition as a state with borders drawn by UN in the Partition Act.
Taking advantage of sponsorships from Europe and US, Israel grew fast and soon began expanding, paying no attention to its neightbours or the UN who refrained from action, satisfied with enacting resolution after resolution, just like the League of Nations before it, less than potent in enforcing its decisions. What we have left from that time are over 700 of the General Assembly's resolutions asking Israel to stop the persecution of its arab population, renounce the service of terrorists group Irgun and Lehi, stop territorial expansion and return properties to expropriated arab inhabitants. Then there are over 400 of the Security Council's resolutions, again not enforced. Of course Israel ignored them and went on, blatantly ignoring international laws and the Geneva Convention. Any voice that dared to speak out against injustice was promptly dismissed with an accusation of antisemitism.
Today, the world reaps what's been sown 68 years ago. Two countries that seem to be above the law and the concept of human rights. Two countries that put dreams of conquest above values such as life or peace. These countries are, obviously, US and Israel.
The first gave us proof of this in 1991, the beginning of its war against Iraq. The destruction laid against a country whose only fault was that it chose to be paid in euros instead of dollars and that refused for a while to export oil to US in protest against US interference in arab politics. A country that never threatened the US or ever developed military capability against US. Yet that country burned and is still burning now with internal turmoil fueled by US' decision to break it apart piece by piece. The war was patched with the distruction of the Geneva Convention, massacres and rapes by US military, leaving millions of Iraqis dead and many others rotting in US prisons around the world, neither charged, not prosecuted. Just interrogated for years.

Israel in the meantime has went a long way in the same direction: breaking down the Middle East. After two uprisings from the arab population, Arial Sharon (yes, the guy responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres) finally saw the solution. Now Ghaza is the world's largest prison and even has a wall being built around it. All crossings are controlled by Israel, not to mention the airspace. Arab officials aren't allowed to travel outside, only those who have a pass issued by Israel. At the same time, Israel is allowed to kill as it pleases under various pretexts. The first is the famous 'buffer zone', a several kilometers area inside Ghaza that's constatly sweeped by Israel tanks and artillery, officially ment to prevent illegal border crossing. In practice, it's a land grab by Israel, despite the fact people own land there and there are even a few farms. Of course, those who dare go out and work in their garden, just die. Despite all the evidence and promises of inquiries, thousands of recorded cases of bombings, shootings and rape by Israel military against arabs never produced a single conviction.
Today we witness another act of the allmighty entity, the distruction of yet another arab state. The official pretext of recovering two Israeli soldiers is just ludicrous as Israel itself keeps hundreds of lebanese citizens in jails, some for the only guilt of having land near the border. But this seems enough for Israel to take power in their own hands and sistematically massacre the lebanese populace. For some this word might seem harsh but it's a fact that until this weekend no asset of Israel's arch-enemy Hizb'Allah was targeted, only civilians.

Of course, UN is as always reluctant to take any action. Perhaps Sharon was right claiming a few years ago (on radio) that Israel own too much of US to fear it. But even if it wasn't the case, Israel has nothing to fear. The only european powers that are in a position to do anything are France and Russia, but any action by Russia will be countered by US, who has a direct interest in the conflict to go on (as it might draw Iran into it and Israel combined with US will surely break the arab world) while France doesn't have the capability to go in alone. Given all this, we have ruled out any UN participant who could actually act in this crisis.
Other might include Spain, but Spain has lost the last train to being an international political presence. Italy has no interest in standing up to US and Israel or taming down the Middle East crisis, even more since much of its oil and natural gases come from Russia.
So we are left with China. China has yet to take a firm stance in the matter but it's doubtful it will ever take one since for China it would do better to trade Lebanon in order to protect North Korea and have the coreean arsenal as an ally in case the US/UK/Israel troika will continue to expand towards East.

Therefore, UN has failed. Utterly. Completely. And with it the last hope for civilisation. What we're left with is the troika that has become the new Inquisition, surround by a propaganda machine led by CNN that has mission to offer a single-sided view, that of the Inquisition.

So where are we heading, going like this? Is the world really incapable of multiculturalism? Why can't civilisations live together in peace? Why security for oneself means that the other has to vanish, has to suffer, has to give up? Will the world ever give up the militaristic way of thinking ?

Remember

I'm not sure if anyone of my readers remember what should've been commemorated last month. I wrote a post just the day after the even't date but somehow the blog refused to accept it (no conspiration though, just net problems) so I had to wait and posponed the posting ... until today.

The date is June the 4th. Year is 1989. By some twist of fate, reporters from most media networks are in Beijing to cover the visit of communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which took place the month before. Yet some of them feel that something big is going on.

What started as student protests in the month of April (protests regarding the resignation of Secretary General Hu Yaobang, who had been forced to write a shameful letter which was followed by his death following a heart attack same month) turned in May in a full scale riot in Beijing, rioting minimized by the regime in Beijing.

But in May the number of protestors that marched in Tiananmen Square was of over 100 thousands and their demands now included direct dialogue and a free media.
On the 20th of the same month martial law is declared, yet the army's marched is delayed by even more protestors, while the hunger strike continued. As the 38th Army stationed in Beijing joined the protests, the 27th and 28th armies began to enter the city, facing many blocades built by local residents.
The beginning of June saw the crackdown of the protests with the two armies affectively assaulting the square.
The day of the 4th hosted the events that were covered live by many television stations around the world and featured the famous video of the unknown rebel, one man who single-handed barred a column of tanks from entering the square and thus buying time for those fleeing the square to escape with their lives. Later, Times Magazine voted him one of the most influential people of the 20th century.
The finding ended but leaving a big question regarding the victims as before the battle ended, the chinese state managed to cut all satellite links of those broadcasting and supress cameras placed at vantage points around the square.
The State claimed 300 dead, while CIA sourced pushed the numbers up to 800 and the Chinese Red Cross which spent the following weeks with a body count claimed 2600 bodies before they were orderer away from the investigation.
The body count was later enlarged by a number of summary trials followed by execution.

While the main outcome of the riot was the image of the obtuse and vengeful communist system that the PRC has today, there's little else that changed. The supression of information regarding Tiananmen led to a generation gap where the new citizens of China grow without little to no information about this and thus the struggle for freedom of speech in China hangs with the few dissidents that still carry on.
Yet the memory of this grusome chapter in the fight for media freedom in China was delivered a monstruous blow by media giants Microsoft, Yahoo and Google who agreed to participate in the censorship imposed on the chinese people.
But the world doesn't forget.

Mystery time!

Yes, it's mystery time on the Moor of Faerun.
Today's I'll introduce you to some of the mystery movies around, where the ending means that the pieces of a puzzle fall into place with a logic that seemed impossible in the beginning.
The first one is the most shallow of all, the French Revolution story of the famous detective Vidocq. For those who don't know, Vidocq is Holmes' granddaddy and though he's usually found in books, in this movie he chases a criminal that uses a mirror mask, nicknamed 'The Alchemist'. For some reason The Alchemist has been hunting royalists but there's another connection. As Vidocq is thrown into the flames, it is up to a young writer and Vidocq's drunkard partner to hunt down the criminal in an effort to retrace the detective's steps.
In this visually astonishing movie, maked with some great acting from Gerard Depardieu and Guillaume Canet, it shouldn't be too hard to come to the conclusion before the movie leads you there. There aren't many clues planted along the way, but those who are, are also very obvious.

Second in line is the thrilling masterpiece of Christopher Nolan, "Memento". If you could watch it backwards it would make for the best mystery movie ever as the movies is constructie as a retrospective string of sequences with overlapping margins. The movie tells the story of a man suffering from short-term memory loss whose wife was killed and he starts a life's quest of finding the killer despite his handicap, as police dismissed the case. In the beginning we learn that our hero kills a man in cold blood and from there on we lean how he gathered the information, though it's up to the spectator to put them together as the movie doesn't explain everything along the way and every piece of the retrospective string is surprising and thrilling.
The movie features amazing acting from Guy Pearce and Joe Pantoliano.

Third in line is the 1957's masterpiece '12 Angry Men'. Although this isn't a mystery movie 'per se', it provides great insight into the strings of logic and critical thinking. As the movie begins, we learn about 12 men, 12 jurors, that enter a room to debate towards the outcome of a murder trial were a young man is accused of murdering his father. All evidence seems to point towards a quick and easy 'guily' verdict on which all jurors agree ... except for one, who argues that despite the clarity, the evidence still leaves room for 'reasonable doubt', the key of the american trial system. Everyone else still agrees and the dissenter is given less than one hour to convince the others, or the guilty verdict will be given. At the end of one hour, another juror dissents.
This movie's mainstay cast is the amazing Henry Fonda, in a movie in which the cast is all-male and more amazing, none of the characters has a name (save for Fonda's character, of which we learn his last name is Davies). This a great 'tour de force' that reveals the power of details and how life can hang on those apparently insignificant items of a conversation.

In the fourth place comes the awar-winning movie of 1997, Hanson's 'LA Confidential'. Here we deal with an intrigue nurtured after an LA crime boss is thrown into jail and his gang is quickly disposed of by someone who tries to move in. At every step of the story, new seemingly insignificant details are thrown in, but to those with an eye for details, these are nothing but clues towards unravelling the mystery that surrounds the identity of the new crims boss. This movie could've fared much better if the conclusion wouldn't have been drawn too early in the movie but the story is still fun to put together as each of the three detectives push forward with their investigation. The cast is simply astounding and there's no surprise this one made the Oscars, with the brillian Kevin Spacey holding the poster with Russel Crowe, Guy Peacer, Kim Basinger, David Strathairn, Danny deVito and James Cromwell falling in.

Number five is a mytery classic that stems from a master of detective stories: Agathat Christie, whose award-winning 'Death on the Nile' was ported to the big screen in an award-winning movie bearing the same name. As in the novel, a murder on a Nile steamer pushes famouse detective Hercule Poirot to stretch his gray cells and watch over a group of potential killers and drive them towards a surprsing unravel. The all-start crew (Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, George Kennedy, David Niven and Angela Lansbury) carries you through a story littered with clues that might take an inquisitive mind towards the logical conclusion.

In sixth position comes a serious challanger for what is considered to be the all-time mystery masterpiece (Hitchcock's brilliant investigative story 'Rear Window'). I'm talking of course about Bryan Singer's masterpiece: "The Usual Suspects". Alongside 'Rear Window', it is one of those stories that have carefully placed clues alongside the movie that can help a clear mind to trace the story (hint: carefully examine the guy pissing at the beginning of the movie, and his piss in particular). In New York, an explosion in the harbor litters the water with bodies. From the tragedy, only two people emerge. A handicaped, apparently unscarred and a hungarian mod man who struggles between life and death in hospital. On these information, a customs officer must unravel the mystery surrounding the incident, starting from a police line-up.
The movie is delicious at every step, the actors give an amazing performance while the script is amazing in its perfection. Every character has a distinctive personality and I'm sorry I can't get into that without spoiling some of the plot.
This is a must-see and it features a veritable tour de force from master actors as Kevin Spacey, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio del Toro, Chazz Palminteri, Peter Greene, Kevin Pollack and Gabriel Byrne and the world-famouse line: "give me the keys, you fucking cocksucker!".

And as this last feature is one of my favorite all-time movies, I'll insist on this with a trivia item. This movie is probably the movie with the most improvisation in it as many scenes were not in the original script. Few examples:
- the whole line-up scene was ment to be serious. As all actors failed at that, Singer decided to keep the funniest takes.
- the 'in english, please' demand of the cop at the line-up was improvised, just as was del Toro's response.
- the line 'I'll flip ya, flip ya for real'
- Redfoot's (Greene) flicking of a cigarette into McManus' (Baldwin) face was a moment's improvisation just as Baldwin's reaction to that was. Greene came up with the idea that this gesture was appropriate for his character, but the cigarette that was initially ment to hit Baldwin in the chest hit him in the nose and Singer liked that.
- in the opening, Hockney begins to tell a joke about a naked girl on a car's back seat. For those versed with languages, the ending of that joke can be heard spoken by two hungarian guards in the harbor near the end
- in the flashback takes of Keyser Soze, he is portrayed by a guy from the filming crew. He couldn't straighten his elbows, which can be seen in the way he walks. Keyser Soze was also portrayed by editor Ottman and director Singer himself. In addition, Soze was portrayed by two more actors along the movie, to a total of 5 different people portraying him.

Secrets

Today we'll take a trip back into politics, a trip triggered by the recent events of the Israeli army crossing back into the Ghaza strip.

The political backing of this move is obscure at best, probably ment to satisfy the bloodthirst of the messianic Gush Khatif movement. But one must wonder why a PM who has promissed unilateral disegagement and peace to his people would understake such a sharonian move.

The answer comes, surprisingly, from the Israel national radio station where one of its brighter commentators notices that in fact Israel has no interest in having peace. His explanation is that the danger of palestinian grenades is far less than the danger of the concessions that Israel would have to make in order to have peace. A peace process is very dangerous to Israel right now.

The withdrawal from Ghaza was a move that upset many people, but it was necessary to control palestinian violence. Now Ghaza has become a huge prison and there's even a wall being built around it. And to add to that, Olmert and Peretz are the proud owners of a Sharonian deception and opressive policy.
Does it serve israelian interests? No, not really. It does serve Gush Khatif interests however, whose extremist goals state that when Israel will own all the land between the Euphrates and the Nile, then the Messiah will return. But it hurts the common working man's desire for peace and stability.

Israel and Palestine each received a block of land to have a state in 1947. The partition act ensured that both countries have a place to leave in peace. Since then, the expansionist military actions backed back by western powers have brought it to be what it is today.

The danger is that the militaristic expansion heralds no pause, no break.
What is the reason behind this?
Is it simply that the israeli's still exploit the promises made to them by the western powers?
Is it that the West shares the Gush Khatif theory about Messia's return?

There are of course other theorys. My favorite, for example, is that without the Palestine conflict, the Israeli government (which, like I previously pointed out, is formed exclusively by former military) would have no reason to continue arms trade and military expenses.

Paradoxes disebowlement (take 2)

For today I've prepared part 2 of the attack on some apparent paradoxal situations.


Statement:
All horses are the same color. (The Horse Paradox, pseudo-paradox)
Proof: Take a set of 1 horse. Obviously the statement holds. Assume it to true for n horses, using induction. So let's prove this for n+1 horses. But it's easy. Take out another horse from the set, we're left with n horses. Which, by the hypothesis, have the same color. Therefore all horses have the same color.

So where's the problem? The problem stands with the implicit assumption that two subsets of the same set have identical properties. For n=1, this obviously stands but induction is rendered useless by common sense. Tommorow however we'll see another apparent paradox (Raven's Paradox) that although defies common sense, the reasoning and conclusion still stands.



Statement:
Your mission is to not accept the mission. Do you accept?

This one fails to be tricky enough. A simple 'no' leads to actually not accepting the mission but performing the task involved. A 'yes' leads to accepting it but unable to perform the task. Assuming this would take place in a military environment, situation b would entertain severe consequences (failing to perform the mission).
This attempt puts an equal sign between mission acceptance and mission task but in fact saying no doesn't mean you accept the mission, only that you perform it.



Statement:
Let the God Almighty create a stone, which he can not pick up!

This one goes in line with those who assume perfection. However the existance of perfection (the perfect gas, the almighty being, the impenetrable armor) can be invalidated by logical induction, and this sentence can in fact help us in this. Either way, the almight being implied is NOT almighty at all. If he can't create the stone, then there's something this being can't do, therefore not almighty. If he does in fact create it and can't pick it up then he's not almighty once more. Both condition disprove the initial assumption that the being in question is almighty. Through induction we conclude there no being can be almighty.


Statement:
What would you see looking around if you could move faster than the speed of light?

This doesn't pretend to be a paradox but it might be interesting to analyze it.
The theory of light and relativity is quite shaky even today and is surrounded by many assumptions, of which too few have been proven or disproven by experiment.
One inconsistency (for example) is that both the particle and wave natures of light have support both in theory and practice. Einstein stated that information can't move faster than light. Yet both particle and wave can serve as information carriers (by the way they stimulate receptors on the eye's retina). Still particles can be accelerated and there's no reason (theoretically at least) to believe light in their particle aspect can't be accelerated still and still carry the information they do.
Given this, let's take the sentence above and put it into practice. We are a being capable of warp speed and sit by a building. Suddenly we start moving away from the building and at some point we look back. What do we see?
Obviously we are traveling faster than light so we soon outrun the light that carries that building's image. One trap here is to state that because of this we would see nothing at all (since the same reasoning applies to all objects behind us). This is of course false as light has been moving countinously away from the building and at any given point we encounter light that has been countinously moving away, carrying the image of the building at various points in the past. Seeing nothing does apply however in certain particular cases, such as if we start moving towards an area of the universe where light hasn't reached yet. Because light moves slower than us, looking anywhere around would make us feel blind.
This image is however affected by gravity. It wouldn't take long for us to be unable to see the house at all, our field of view would expand eventually to the whole planet as we pass through the atmosphere, but again seeing images from the past as we look back. Due to the way light's path curves around high gravity bodies (stars for example, or black holes) our image may be distorted at times.
But how about looking forward? From directions where light moves towards us, we get this at a speed that is light speed + our own speed. This means we are bombarded with fast moving images, as the delay between an images 'timestamp' (the moment when it was created) becomes smaller and smaller. For example, we know that the images of the stars and galaxies we see on the sky are in fact coming from various ages of the universe. Some of those stars may not even exista right now but we see them as the light coming from them eventually reaches us. If we would move towards them faster than light, we would get information that is more actual as we close in on them.
Should we pass such a star, we of course will fall to the other case, where we outrun light and information becomes less actual.
Moving faster than light may (as such) allow us to see the past of some objects, but this would need some improbable precondition (such as light moving in a straight line, when in fact light is curved under the extended theory of gravity) and definately not the future (as some SF work implies). In fact this is the reason why scientists continuosuly analyze snapshots taken by Hubble of the distant universe. As light takes a long time to reach us, these images are invaluable snapshots of moments in the evolution of the universe.
The theory of warp travel also implies some interesting effects, such as the relativity of time as lifecycles create their own way of measuring time, which would not apply to an entory that travels at warp speed.

Paradoxes disebowlement

These days I seem to have a thing for paradoxes.
One thing I do hate though is people preseting a false idea as a paradox. The brainteaser wannabe at http://hlavolamy.szm.sk/brainteasers tries to present a few in such a manner. Let's take a look.

Statement:
A slim crocodile living in Nile took a child. Mother begged to give him back. The crocodile could not only talk, he was also a great sophist, and so he stated: "If you guess, what I will do with him, I will return him. However, if you don't guess his fate I'll eat him." What statement shall the mother make to save her child ?

Since the declared purpose for the mother is to get her child back, we can safely say there's nothing she can state to achieve this purpose. Possible actions are, 'eat him' or 'return him'. Another obvious thing is that she has no chance to guess either unless the crocodile had already made his mind which is unlikely since this would mean the crocodile would actually leave everything to chance.
However stating 'you will eat him', would render the actual action of eating him impossible because such would mean the mother has guessed. But this would also render his return impossible because the return would render the statement false and would compell the crocodile to return to eating him.
The result is a stalemate in which the crocodile keeps the child.
Given the actual problem however, this is not a paradox, it's rather an impossibility.

Statement:
What is better than eternal bliss? Nothing. But a slice of bread is better than nothing. So slice of bread is more than eternal bliss.

A twist of logic doesn't account for a paradox since the keyword 'nothing' doesn't mean that actually having 'nothing' is better than bliss rather it's closer to 'no concept or object in existance'. This also rules out the slice of bread and we are left with a false conclusion.


Statement:
Let's say (hypothetically) there is a bullet, which can shoot through any barrier. Let's say there is also an absolutely bullet-proof armour, and nothing gets through it. What will happen, if such bullet hits such armour?

Obviously we will learn that one of the armorers involved was too confident in his creation.
The two are mutually exclusive and assuming the existance of both doesn't hold to the principles of logic, which glamorously point out to the existance of a false assumption. (this doesn't do justice to commercials though where such is a thing is bound to happen).



Statement:
-question: Is it possible to give what we don't have?
-answer: "Yes. Greedy man gives his cash with sorrow. However, he doesn't have the cash with sorrow, so he gives what he doesn't have."

As a side joke, in practice it's possible. People sell things they never really had all the time, it's called fraud. But in this test of logic, we won't try to answer the question, only to show that the answer given is wrong. Sorrow is a feeling caused by the obligation to give the money. We will skip the point that sorrow isn't something that is in fact given (maybe induced in a way) and go on to point out that the fact sorrow wasn't there before the obligation appeared, it doesn't mean the greedy man never had it.
Sorrow appears just before the transfer of the cash so at that moment the greedy man in fact has sorrow with which he gives the money. Therefore he doesn't give something he doesn't have.
Another point in support of this is that giving implies that a party receives something the other party loses (after the giving the other party doesn't have it anymore). However the sorrow persists even after the giving, so it only accompanied the act but wasn't in fact transfered along.