Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

I'm probably a bit more sane than the people around me

10 (8.9%)

I'm pretty much normal but I like to indulge in crazy things/activities

33 (29.5%)

I'm on the fringe, I have wacky ideas and most people don't get it

52 (46.4%)

I'm off my rocker, I have trouble acting 'normal' in public

13 (11.6%)

I'm so alone I cut myself at night

4 (3.6%)

Total Members Voted: 82

[Tom]

I am me, but who am I?

[MadassAlex]

Probably a few different people!

[mooface]

It causes me to wonder, if you could control conditions absolutely, could you "recreate" a person exactly?

i wonder about this all the time.  i wish it were somehow possible to figure this out, but i don't think it ever will be.

[Jimmy the Squid]

Actually it probably would be possible, just really difficult. Also I'm pretty sure no ethics commitee would let you go through with it.

According to one of my lectures last year on Abnormal Behaviour, normal pretty much encompasses 95% of the world population. To be considered "abnormal" you have to be way out on the fringes and I'm sorry but getting piercings and tattoos and even the more "extreme" body mods like tongue splitting doesn't really take you out to that other 5%. Maybe if you thought that everything was made of knives you could be abnormal...

[Nodaisho]

Knife eye attack wasn't nearly as badass as I thought it would be.

I wouldn't agree that people could be recreated, but that is just me, I think that there is nature as well as nurture, either that, or someone was giving me really strong subliminal messages to make me different than my mother taught me to be, and I don't think myself important enough to actually have a conspiracy based around me.

[calenlass]

OFF-TOPIC

I don't believe in time.  No, seriously.

Pardon me, but what the hell do you mean?

Certainly the earth continues to turn with out us having a way to mark it.  The sun rises every day and I am getting older.  It's not that I refuse to admit that, it's just our system of dividing it is arbitrary and I feel like the people around me don't understand that.

The thing is, all of this would be ok, if people still treated it like a useful tool, but people run their lives around it.  Now we all have precise clocks and we all use them to gauge our lives.

I liken it to someone believing that there is a God, because that can be a useful way to try and make sense of the big abstract concepts in the world.  But then compare that with someone who lets their religion rule their life (which some would argue is what a religion should do).  It seems silly to someone on the outside that people don't eat meat and milk in the same meal, or won't eat pork, or wouldn't get married on a certain day because it is not an auspicious day according to the charts or would torture and kill people for not following the same arbitrary rules. 

I'm sorry, but this is just stupid. Likening the existence of Time to God is not really suitable. Time exists and it is considered a 'fundamental quantity'. God is a belief, an act of faith in believing in something that can not be proven.

What you are referring to is not time itself, but the metric quanitifcation of time being arbitary and 'meaningless'. In which case, the comparison to belief in God is slightly more appropriate. But when one person says they do not believe in God, it is assumed they do not believe in a higher 'spiritual' being. By admitting that you actually do think the measurement of time exists, you can not say you don't believe in it.

Well spoken. Or written. Whatever.

Furthermore, Slick's assertion is completely accurate, every form of measurement and communication is arbitary. Just because you don't like the effect of exact measurement of time, doesn't mean you can say it ceases to exist in your reality.

Actually, his statement is not completely accurate. He likened it to language, but as a linguist and an etymologist I can tell you that it is not the same thing at all. Language may begin this way, but as soon as the specific vocabulary or grammar rules begin to be assumed by other people it becomes a whole other animal. Languages as we know them now are not arbitrary communication but the cumulative statement of particular peoples' cultures filtered through thousands of years. A language is a a window into the cultural unconscious of the people who speak it. It evolves into an amoebic thing, always changing and adapting to new shapes and ideas. Yes, you are right in that it can be arbitrary; you can make all sorts of sounds and noises that you have made up yourself and hope your point gets across. However, you will probably not have much success unless you use sounds and noises that other people are already making and understand.

I would like to say that unless I am really missing something here, I don't see how you can really compare time or its measurement or people's problem with it to language. Time and/or its measurement does not itself communicate anything, nor is it a tool of communication. The only relation I can conceive is that the measurement of time is the product of language and the need to communicate thoughts and concepts about the passage of time, and this is completely irrelevant to any of this discussion at all.


I would also like to say that I have to agree with whoever-it-was's statements about how people center their lives around hours and minutes and seconds and milliseconds. It is useful for things like making flights or meeting for class or whatever, but does it really have to dictate everything we do every day down to the smallest task? I find this obsession with minutiae draining and annoying and I have been working for years to work out some sort of happy medium for myself (so far to no avail).

tl;dr: I also have a lot of problems with the way people deal with, react to, and think about time.

[fatty]

Katie: Point taken. My bad!

TIME DOES NOT HEAL DARK ANGEL FUCK YEAH

I think the idea here is that time is an abstract concept, in that it has no physical existence. We just named and put a system to the measurement of a sequence of events. So time, really literally, doesn't exist even though it does. I think it's kind of a pointless thing to argue because things will happen regardless of our conclusions about time.

This is equivalent to saying 'mass is an abstract concept'. Basically time is one of the few fundamental quantities, like mass, which is used to define other quantities.

[McTaggart]

I would agree with this, but while we're all made up of the same stuff and are similar up to a point, it seems like the most miniscule differences in conditions can produce profoundly different results such that our apparent similarities are largely irrelevant in any case. I don't know if that makes any sense. It causes me to wonder, if you could control conditions absolutely, could you "recreate" a person exactly?

In general I think it's too vastly complicated and chaotic for it to have any kind of general predictive power. Mostly the model is there just because I like to have models for things and I like the process of making models. Models are things that I can put my faith in, I just function much better with them to fall back on. It's also neat to explain the things that are easy to fit in to it. I think that if you could control conditions absolutely you would be able to recreate a person. However, as Jimmy said even if you could develop an experiment to test this there is no ethics committee in the world that would let you do it.

(Incidently, my bedtime reading right now is on dynamical systems and the chaotic properties thereof, maybe this shows.)

[MadassAlex]

This is equivalent to saying 'mass is an abstract concept'. Basically time is one of the few fundamental quantities, like mass, which is used to define other quantities.

Consider the possibility of there being no living entities in the universe. If there is no living thing to define the past, present and future then only the current instant of time exists. The previous instant influenced the current one, but without a memory to recall the previous instant the concept of time is lost and there is only now.
The past and future don't exist, in any case. Whether objects, beings or conditions continue from instant to instant is irrelevant because they just flavour the present with memories of the past.


P.S. I am kind of playing devil's advocate here. I don't really care whether I'm right or wrong, but if you can explain to me why I'm right/wrong then that would be super.

[est]

That argument is fallacious.  Objects within the universe would still show the effects of time, whether there was anyone there to see them or not.

And anyway, that universe doesn't exist.  While it's great "fun" to come up with bullshit what-ifs we live in a universe where life exists, therefore there are witnesses to time passing.

[MadassAlex]

That argument is fallacious.  Objects within the universe would still show the effects of time, whether there was anyone there to see them or not.

Time would be meaningless without an observer or measurement, however. It wouldn't be the concept of time, just altered states of existence in sequence.

And anyway, that universe doesn't exist.  While it's great "fun" to come up with bullshit what-ifs we live in a universe where life exists, therefore there are witnesses to time passing.

The "what-if" was just to set up the concept. The past no longer exists and the future doesn't exist. The only period of time that really exists is, well, Right Now, really.

Which is exactly why time does exist. The passage of time itself, I feel, is less relevant than the fact that we exist right now. Since Right Now is a part of our definition of time, time exists even if the past and future are unreality.

Devil's advocate = over.

[McTaggart]

Time would be meaningless without an observer or measurement, however. It wouldn't be the concept of time, just altered states of existence in sequence.

This really just isn't how time works. It's not really something that you can separate from space at all. It doesn't really happen strictly in a sequence, sort of.

The whole anything being meaningless without an observer isn't an argument that can lead to anything terribly constructive.

[est]

Time would be meaningless without an observer or measurement, however. It wouldn't be the concept of time, just altered states of existence in sequence.

I disagree.  An apple grows on a tree.  It becomes ripe and falls off the tree.  I don't know what happens to it, maybe it decomposes, maybe it falls into a creek.  Point is that no-one's there to observe it or measure its juicy deliciousness by biting into it.  Was it any less an apple for not being seen or eaten?

Take it one step further.  Humanity is wiped out somehow.  Maybe we all go crazy and shoot each other after one too many armchair philosophy debates or something, who knows.  Point is we're all dead and gone.  A hundred years later an apple grows on a tree.  Is it any less an apple due to no-one being around to call it such?

The underlying thing is completely separate to our interpretation/naming of it.  A square does not stop having 4 equal sides because there is no-one around to observe it and name it thus.

[jhocking]

I was about to contribute another thought to this time debate but then it occurred to me, y'know this is waaaay off-topic.

[dennis]

Time would be meaningless without an observer or measurement, however. It wouldn't be the concept of time, just altered states of existence in sequence.

Time's Arrow. Entropy.

Aside from that, the physics of the universe do not hold together without the dimension of time. Time is woven into everything.

I suppose it is possible that there is another universe that has no time, but it would not resemble this one in any way.

[KharBevNor]

On a scale of



to



 I am

[KvP]

I was about to contribute another thought to this time debate but then it occurred to me, y'know this is waaaay off-topic.

fatty doesn't seem to mind! I think this is one of those threads that just goes where it goes.

Anywho, getting slightly back on the original topic, there's been a lot of antipathy towards the term "normal", and while that's merited in a larger sense (in that people too often use "abnormal" in a pejorative sense, implying that difference is a vice) it has some meaning to us. "Abnormal" simply ought to mean "not terribly common". For example, it seems like most people (I use "seems" because you never really know) do not suffer from any sort of clinical depression. They'll get sad or grieve, and that in general happens to all of us. But someone, myself for example, who will periodically experience a very strong, debilitating and seemingly causeless sadness can be considered "abnormal" because that's not something that a majority of people experience. Many do, however, so perhaps that is not as good of an example as I could've used.

In many ways I don't think I'm normal. I certainly perceive things differently than others that I meet. Some things I have trouble perceiving at all. But honestly, I don't think that should matter. Again, "abnormal" is often used as a pejorative when it shouldn't be. The thing is when people talk about what's "normal" they mean it in a normative way (fuck, the words even have the same root), meaning that something that is "normal" is the way it ought to be, and you can see how even speaking of normality in terms of people is problematic. When I see someone talk about how "normal" people are I think it speaks to their simple-mindedness, or their inability to handle diversity. Establishing a "normal" in regards to people is an implicit wish for people to adhere to that standard and a denial that people are as complicated as they are. But I don't think anybody's not guilty of this. (which makes it "normal") most people are put on edge when they see a group of youngsters in similar dress out in the street. We like things to be simple and easy to understand. A person who dresses like a gangbanger probably shouldn't be trusted to hold your purse. A person who acts like a dick on the internet is, in fact, a dick. A person who says stupid things on occasion is, in fact, an idiot. It's never really that simple, people are complicated and can't be easily categorized, but it makes us feel safer to assume that we have all the relevant information to make judgment calls on others. Standards are meaningless outside of our use for them in snap judgments. The sin of it isn't in making assumptions about others but holding too closely to those assumptions and not having the will to change the way you think about someone.

If anything, people ought to be evaluated in terms of their functionality. We'd have less problems with eccentrics and more problems with alcoholics and liars, even though alcoholics and liars are decidedly more common than eccentrics.

As for how well-adjusted I am, not very. I don't think I've ever really felt comfortable in my skin. And as for how I compare to my friends, birds of a feather of all that. Being not terribly socially inclined I tend to gravitate towards those who have similar mannerisms and interests to myself. Only recently has this not been the case.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

none of us are all that special because somewhere out there in the universe there are infinite copies of us all, both identical and in infinite variations.

IT'S SCIENCE.

[axerton]

So your concept of time is kinda like how math only works because we assume we're using the correct system of numbers?

actually no, if the human race had been born with six fingers on each hand instead of five, therefor likely having a 12 base number system (ie, 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,X,Y, - repeating rather than just zero to nine repeating) the math would still work the same it's just we'd have different names for numbers, but 10 x 10 would still equal 100, it's just that there version of 100 would translate to our 144.

Also I'm going to add to the "I don't believe in time thing."  I when it was explained I remembered that I used to have a very similar theory though I titled it 'there is no such thing as the correct time' which stemmed from very similar thinking - this  was when I was about 12, then I realised that yes, yes there is a correct time down to the second, because humanity created time measurement and you can't get too much more correct than if you invented it in the first place. Saying you don't believe in time measurement is similarly flawed, that's like saying you don't believe in tv or indie rock, humanity created them so on some level they exist.

Moving away from semantics onto not liking the world being ruled by the division of time, there's a reason for this, we are a social species and if we didn't have this way of dividing up and putting a name on exact moments then we would spend a whole lot of time waiting or causing people to wait, we would be far less productive.

Yes, maybe our thinking is affected by the way we view time, but the way we think is even more heavily affected by the language we speak and it's only  the truly abnormal (hey almost dragging this thing toward the actual point of the original discussion) who don't think in a language, so they can think of things that most of us can't because our mind is limited by the walls set up by our language, people like this are often considered true geniuses - I believe Einstein was one example.

if you can follow my train of thought in this post - well done, cos to be honest, I've forgotten the question.

[ViolentDove]

Time is the thing that stops everything from happening all at once. Clearly, things aren't happening all at once, and I kind of like it. So I'm pretty ok with time.

Also, not all measurements of time are arbitrary as someone said. Most living things have an inbuilt time measurement system consisting of various well-regulated biological processes (called circadian rhythms). 

[clockworkjames]

It's all relative though isn't it?
I am the one who always takes humour to a new low or crosses the line then keeps on running but my friends sometimes do it too and we always have a laugh.

In society however we would most likely have a few restraining orders each if we acted the same as how we do around each other in public.

[dennis]

Most people are pretty normative relative to the company they keep. That is just how we evolved. Outliers are usually just monomaniacal.

[RedLion]

Normality in human personalities is a misnomer. I donīt say this because I donīt like the term normal, only because thereīs really no such thing as a ĻnormalĻ person, only the idea of a normal social personality that people put on for others. Everyone has thoughts and feelings, often frequently, that they wonīt share with other people because they were brought up being taught that certain things are normal and certain things are not, and that if they did those people would view them as odd for breaking with the percieved normality that most people strive to achieve. That being said, there is deviant behavior, things that are so far removed from the regular activities or thoughts of a person that they can be easily considered to be outside the norm, like killing another person in cold blood.

[StreetSpirit]

This thread should be renamed what is normal and why is it not applicable to humans since we are all a bunch of odd balls. I am definitely off my rocker and enjoy every bit of social terrorism I contribute to, because it is a spectacle and quite entertaining. GO!

[jhocking]

Is it normal to have a fear of fire hydrants? Just asking, I'm not talking about me here. I mean, I'm not afraid of fire hydrants anymore.

[clockworkjames]

I would like to revise my statement - I am just batshit insane.

Or totally normal.

Or somewhere in between, you will all see each other at different levels of normality, now if you will excuse me it is almost 5AM so I must go capture and shave all the bunny rabbits over in the rugby field nearest my house.

[himynameisjulien]

What is normal? Is it how well adapted you are to your current situation? How much you are similar to people around you? In that case, from whose point of view do you go by, yours or another's? Whose definition? Maybe I'm completely and utterly normal and everyone around me is completely and utterly "weird", or vice-versa?
OK, I'm done with my questioning of terms.
I'm not really "normal". I do a lot more thinking about metaphysics, philosophy, the origin of the universe, and music than most people I know; with the exception of a one of my teachers. I can't avoid that last one, however, because I can't seem to stop thinking about whichever song I listened to last, which brings up something else: would I be "smarter" if I didn't? Who knows. Maybe I could get a lobotomy and see.
To the "time, real or no" question. If you have read Slaughter-house 5, the theory in that book is similar to what I imagine Mr. "I don't believe in time" is thinking: that all moments exist in parallel, but we cannot see them as such, possibly due to our imposed measurement of time, or that we lack the physical capability to do so. The creatures, in the book, that can perceive time in that manner do not fear death, for they are alive in a myriad other moments, and never cease to exist.
People with ADD and ADHD sometimes perceive time as moving faster or slower if they are absorbed in thought, and, as a result, things that have happened by the time they "come to their senses" appear to have passed impossibly fast; it's a pretty odd feeling.
To les: Is the cat in the box alive or dead? How do you know if no one is observing it? An old, and debatably unanswerable question.
Maybe the square changes to a circle from time to time.
I happen to agree with you, les, but am just presenting another side of the argument.
Has anyone here read the whole Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series? Maybe not all of them, I think this is in the second book. Maybe the first.
The man who rules this galaxy, and maybe others, possibly the entire universe, only believes in what he can see. When he locks Zarniwoop out of his house, and hears his knocking, he thinks that it could be just a product of his imagination, the same view he has of the past. He also says that when the 6 men in ships come to visit him, and thinks they are asking him questions, they could actually be singing to the cat, and he just thinks they are asking him questions. When a few characters I don't care to name arrive in a large white ship, he ponders that it could be the 6 black ships the 6 men arrive in, and that 6 small black ships could look like one large white one under certain circumstances.
The point is, how do you know something exists if you are not perceiving it? Even if you are, maybe your mind is fooling itself.
I happen to think that, for all intents and purposes, this is bogus. The universe acts the way it does, consistently, under our observation, and if it acts differently whilst "alone", it makes no difference to humans.

[himynameisjulien]

Ironically, most people picked "not normal" and therefore are normal. The normal ones are now abnormal.

[blankfile]

I don't believe in time.  No, seriously.

Pardon me, but what the hell do you mean?

-Cropped for readability

You might be interested in the fact there actually exist a logical way to represent time. It's called "Planck's Time". Quoted from wikipedia: "It is the time it would take a photon traveling at the speed of light in a vacuum to cross a distance equal to the Planck length."

As far as science is concerned as of today, this is the most relevant unit of time that exist. Unlike seconds, hours, months, years and such, this unit stays valid throughout all of cosmos. It is also quite valid without any observer, and even valid in a hypothetical high-gravity zone in which time is dilated. Sadly, this unit does not (an actually, nothing that i know of does) give any insight on the quantum phases of reality (IE: Schroedinger's cat).

But i have to agree on how the units we use on Earth to depict time are extremely outdated and should be reviewed.  Then again, there are still people who refuse to use the metric system (Here, insert some facepalm.jpg or any other source of abyssal dismay), so it's not gonna happen in my lifetime.

Now on to the topic at hand, i think that the above paragraphs are a sad depiction of my "normality". For reference's sake, i use the behavioral definition of "normal", stolen directly from wikipedia:

In behavior, normal refers to a lack of significant deviation from the average.

By this definition, i believe i can achieve a > 90% ratio of abnormality:

-I don't even HAVE a TV, i don't have a car. Not because i can't afford them, but because i do not wish to have either.
-I dislike most social events with the exception of music shows.
-I don't follow the magic trend of having to find a reproduction partner as soon as possible to trigger some hormonal release. Been there, done that, got bored.
-I consider most sports as barbarism.
-I listen to wacky music, and i love it.
-I'm not racist, sexist, homophobic nor show any kind of discriminatory behavior towards other . And say whatever you want, the average joes are.
-I'm actually very interested in science, in fact, i'm more interested in science than pretty much anything else.

But, this being said, i do conform to some norms, mainly on clothing, as a concession to satiate my lust for science. Hence the ~90%

So yeah, i am not "normal". And i am totally proud of it.

[himynameisjulien]

Does any unit of measurement of anything relate to the quantum phases of reality?
That would be kind of impossible.
I believe a second is valid throughout the entire cosmos as well. I believe it's 9,192,631,770 (may or may not be the right number, wikipedia) cycles (waves of the radiation given off) of caesium at rest temperature, with 0 magnetic or other interference. That is how atomic clocks work.
I got about half of that from wikipedia, and am wondering if radiation is even given off at rest temperature. Doesn't all motion cease?

[StreetSpirit]

But seriously, don't try and define normal, because almost everyone else that has responded has either negated the definition of normalcy in relation to humans or created an individual definition of normality/abnormality, so I think this thread should take another direction and that direction is one of everyone expressing how they are just a true odd ball, freak, rebel, nerd, geek, dork, abnormal, obscure, off the wall, or any other wonder adjective that describes those individuals with TRUE personalities. Don't try and slander how NORMAL is not what you are or how it is limiting, embrace your inner FREAK and preach about it!! So what if you love June of 44, Rodan, Shellac, and all other lovely post-punk-noise-rock, you are lovely - EXPRESS IT and share it.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

i hate Ranch Dressing.

around here, that makes me some kind of weirdo, for some reason.

also, i hate ham. many people refuse to believe this when they hear it.

[Johnny C]

So what if you love Shellac, you are lovely

[Tom]

Doesn't all motion cease?

It'd be funny if did

[jhocking]

i hate Ranch Dressing.

around here, that makes me some kind of weirdo, for some reason.

also, i hate ham. many people refuse to believe this when they hear it.

Hating ham is kind of weird, but hating ranch dressing makes perfect sense to me. I mean, I like it, but I can see why someone might not.

Me, I'm weird because I don't like icing (as in cake frosting) and I don't like ketchup. I also don't like steak even though I love beef prepared in other ways, but that only strikes people as weird in certain areas.

But seriously, hating ham is kind of weird. Even if you're a vegetarian, but then if you're a vegetarian you're already weird.

rest temperature. Doesn't all motion cease?

rest temperature != absolute zero

[StreetSpirit]

Embrace the chaos that is individuality and praise the fact that you aren't too far off your rocker to gain appreciation from your peers in ridiculousness.

"I never saw a purple cow;
I never hope to see one;
but I can tell you anyhow;
I'd rather see than be one!"

[pwhodges]

[mooface]

But seriously, hating ham is kind of weird. Even if you're a vegetarian, but then if you're a vegetarian you're already weird.

i hated ham even when i ate meat.  it is just gross!

[RedLion]

Shut up, applewood smoked ham with glaze is delicious. If you donīt think so, you have something wrong with your taste buds. Or your neurons.

[clockworkjames]

I hate when people use cloves in hams, why anyone would put cloves in any foods is beyond me.

You eat one and it ruins your entire meal.

[Slick]

I have only read the most recent post in this thread but thought it worth mentioning that I just put a dash of ground cloves in a blackberry pie. It was good.

[Slick]

Actually, his statement is not completely accurate.

I was just trying to illustrate how it connects to the apparently arbitrary nature of sounds as well as allowing us to share information. I get what you mean about the analogy not carrying that far, but I think it holds in a cruder sense since it is useful to have some arbitrary point of reference (unghh nurrrggg gruuuuuh hoooommmmmmmnaaan, seconds days years), and that the standardization of time allows me to efficiently communicate things relating to time.

You might be interested in the fact there actually exist a logical way to represent time. It's called "Planck's Time". Quoted from wikipedia: "It is the time it would take a photon traveling at the speed of light in a vacuum to cross a distance equal to the Planck length."

I do not think that addresses her issues in the least. She mentioned how the second is based on the decay of an isotope and then said how that would be fine if people didn't use the seemingly arbitrary numbers of time to rule their lives.
And while basing a metric on Planck and light sounds nice to physicists, that unit is fairly useless most of the time.

[est]

So goddamned awesome.

[Nodaisho]

How does it work?

[pwhodges]

Click

Be quick

If you need to ask more, you fail - sorry.

[himynameisjulien]

I knew that, I was just making a point. If all motion ceases, then there can be no radioactivity; particles cannot be given off if hey can't move.
But there has to be some way, or else scientists and the like wouldn't have made this definition for a second.

[KharBevNor]

I may be misunderstanding you, but no one has ever cooled anything down to absolute zero.

[himynameisjulien]

I may be misunderstanding you, but no one has ever cooled anything down to absolute zero.

You're right; it would be impossible, I think, to cool something to absolute zero.
The definition of a second, that I got from the almighty internet, was the one I posted; I assume that the difference in temperature (between the one they use and 0) is accounted for by a computer? Who knows. Unless the information I got is wrong, which it very well could be. Before I looked it up I thought it was something along the lines of x half-lives of y isotope of z element (einsteinium? most unstable element, could be).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second
Under "International Second".
I'm no nuclear physicist, so I could be misunderstanding this.

[jhocking]

I knew that, I was just making a point.

Not sure what you're responding to, since you didn't bother to quote and the previous message had nothing to do with this, but I'm gonna go ahead and assume you're responding to my post, since I'm the last one who addressed you. In which case, I was simply correcting your wording. It doesn't matter if you knew that saying "rest temperature" is not the same as saying "absolute zero," the point is you said it and I was correcting your mistake.

Anyway, as far as your supposition that things cannot give off radiation at absolute zero, you are incorrect. You are correct that at absolute zero there is no radiation in the sense that the environment currently does not have any radiation, and it wouldn't be absolute zero anymore after the caesium atom gave off some radiation, but that has nothing to do with whether or not any radiation can be given off. And as you surmise the difference between the theoretical situation and reality is accounted for when making the calculation:
reference to correcting for ambient radiation of environment

[himynameisjulien]

jhocking:
Oh, I think I misunderstood you the first time then. Thanks for correcting.

How can radiation be given off? At absolute 0, there is no energy, so the atom cannot emit radiation because it has no energy to spare.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy05/phy05142.htm
Sorry if that's not a clickable link, I have no clue how to do those unless the forum has a system that does it for me.