In an instant, Earth is carved up and reassembled like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist in a single timeline. Instead, the world becomes a patchwork of eras, from prehistory to 2037, each with its own indigenous inhabitants.

It’s hard for us to imagine today, but no spaces separated the words in early writing. In the books inked by scribes, words ran together without any break across every line on every page, in what’s now referred to as scriptura continua. The lack of word separation reflected language’s origins in speech. When we talk, we don’t insert pauses between each word—long stretches of syllables flow unbroken from our lips. It would never have crossed the minds of the first writers to put blank spaces between words. They were simply transcribing speech, writing what their ears told them to write.

Text messaging now represents one of the most common uses of computers, particularly for the young. By the beginning of 2009, the average American cell phone user was sending or receiving nearly 400 texts a month, more than a fourfold increase from 2006. The average American teen was sending or receiving a mind-boggling 2,272 texts a month. Worldwide, well over two trillion text messages zip between mobile phones every year, far outstripping the number of voice calls.   

On the web page http://vixra.org/abs/1806.0027 the author tell's how he is now trying to learn what he in was in this article trying to teach. See, e.g., the comment with the date "May 6, 2019".

The article quotes "A radar gun in a car traveling down the highway at 60 MPH will measure a tree to have a speed of 60 MPH." and claims that "that answer is in disagreement with fundamental physics". However, the quoted statement is true in the sense that anyone who has a radar gun (the abstract says they are inexpensive) can try and see that that indeed is what happens. If "fundamental physics" says otherwise then "fundamental physics" is wrong. 

I hope you can fax this book to us in your next transmission - we're all anxious to read it.

Radar and laser guns don’t work well through tinted glass, which is why officers typically use them outside the vehicle or with the windows down.

even the police car’s own heater or air conditioner fan can cause enough mechanical interference to cause a radar gun to register a stationary rock at 70 mph or a palm tree at 28 mph.

Mechanical Interference is any moving object, other than the target vehicle, that can produce a false or incorrect radar reading. The most common sources are vibrating or rotating signs near the roadway; fan blades moving inside or outside the patrol car (air conditioner, heater, defroster or engine fan); another moving vehicle that reflects radar waves better than the target vehicle; and multiple targets in the main radar beam causing multiple reflections of nearly equal strength and making the display read, high, low, or completely blank. 

Question: How does the Speedster work?

Answer: Once the trigger is engaged, the Speedster transmits radio frequency energy in the form of waves. The radar transmits 24 billion RF cycles of energy per second at the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second. The Speedster measures the difference between transmit and receive signals and relays this information to the DSP to quickly calculate +/- one MPH speed accuracy.  

Question: If in a moving vehicle, can the Bushnell Speedster pick up the speed of another moving object?

Answer:  No. However, if you would like to know the speed of the vehicle you are in, point the Speedster at a stationary object, such as the ground.

Question: What is unique about the Speedster compared to other radar guns?

Answer: The Speedster uses advanced Digital Signal Processing (DSP) software to filter out bad information, providing valid accurate information. In addition, the Speedster is capable of tracking baseball statistics.

Question: What technology does the Speedster consist of?

Answer: The Bushnell Speedster contains a K-Band microwave RF (Radio Frequency) transmitter whose signal gets reflected by the target object. The reflected signal will have a "Doppler Shift" proportional to the target speed. This Doppler frequency shift is detected in the receiver, amplified, filtered, and then digitized in an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC), and passed onto the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chip. Using complex algorithms, the DSP chip filters out false and low level return signals, to identify and display the speed of the desired target. The speed along with various statistics and averages are then displayed on the LCD display.

Question: Can the Bushnell Speedster track arrow speed?

Answer: No.

Question: Can the Bushnell Speedster track club head speed?

Answer: No.

 In "Small Town" a man creates a perfect scale model of his own town, as a means of escaping his unbearable reality. In "Human Is" the wife of a scientist notices that her husband has returned from a scientific expedition a changed man, but she's not complaining. In "Foster, You're Dead" a father's unwillingness to participate in his country's preparations for a war that never happens, leads to unexpected consequences for his family. In "The Hanging Stranger" a man is unable to convince his fellow townspeople that something terribly wrong is happening to them all. Finally, in "A World of Talent", society's reactions against those who have unusual talents have pushed the situation to the brink of interplanetary war.     

Incidentally, people sometimes mistakenly think that the tuning fork calibration works by putting the fork arms in motion at the calibration speed. It should be obvious that this is not correct, first because the arms of a tuning fork move at a range of speeds, positive and negative, on each cycle, second because the speed of motion differs along the length of the arms, and third because the maximum speed of the arms depends not just on the frequency but on the amplitude, which depends on how the tuning fork is struck. It would generate a specific maximum speed of arm movement only if struck with precisely the right force, and even then it would begin to dampen out immediately, so it would actually produce a continuously varying maximum speed, which would be different at different positions on the arm, and with different orientations. Hence the arms of a tuning fork obviously do not move at a consistent reference speed.

would generate a specific maximum speed of arm movement only if struck with precisely the right force, and even then it would begin to dampen out immediately, so it would actually produce a continuously varying maximum speed

It’s important to note that the tuning fork is not sending a signal of 30 GHz + 4480 Hz, as would be the case for a genuine speed detection for 50 mph. The arm of the tuning fork is never moving at 50 mph (not even close). The tuning fork is only modulating the incident signal (which merely serves as a carrier wave), and this modulation has a frequency of 4480 Hz, which is equal to the beat frequency that would result from a Doppler-shifted signal reflected off an object approaching at 50 mph. In effect, the tuning fork is tricking the radar gun into thinking there is an object approaching at 50 mph, when in fact the tuning fork is just inducing a fluctuation in the antenna and receiver at the frequency of the beat that would be produced by an object approaching at 50 mph.

Hence the arms of a tuning fork obviously do not move at a consistent reference speed. Moreover, to produce a maximum arm speed of 50 mph at the relevant frequency of (say) 4480 Hz would require the arm to swing a distance of 78 mm, whereas a typical tuning fork of this size has a maximum arm displacement of only about 0.02 mm. So, the speed of the arms of a tuning fork is orders of magnitude less than the speed of a moving automobile. For all these reasons, it is obvious that tuning forks do not (and could not) test radar guns by producing a moving surface at the calibration speed. 

The velocity of a wave is proportional to its frequency. Doppler effect shows that both the velocity and the frequency depend on the reference frame. The higher the detected frequency is, the faster the wave travels toward the detector. One example is the radar gun used by the traffic police. The reflected radio wave travels faster than the emitted radio wave. This results in frequency difference between two waves. This difference is used to calculate the velocity of a vehicle.

 

He survived riots, revolutions, civil wars, trigger-happy child soldiers, voodoo priests, jihadists, robbers, corrupt cops, and Cape buffalo. He traveled through every kind of earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, volcanic eruption, snowstorm, and sandstorm that nature threw at him. He ate everything from old camel meat and African field rats to dung beetles and the brain of a live monkey. And he overcame encounters with crocodiles, hippos, anacondas, giant leeches, flying crabs―and several beautiful women who insisted that he stop this nonsense and marry them.

"At 26 square miles, it is the third smallest nation, larger only than Monaco (0.7 square miles) and Vatican City (0.2 square miles). With fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, Nauru is ahead of only Vatican City (population 850), the smallest internationally recognized independent state by both area and inhabitants."      

Incidentally, people sometimes mistakenly think that the tuning fork calibration works by putting the fork arms in motion at the calibration speed. It should be obvious that this is not correct, because the speed of the arms of a tuning fork depends not just on the frequency but on the amplitude, which depends on how hard we strike it.  It would generate a specific speed of arm movement only if struck with precisely the right force, and even then it would begin to dampen out immediately, so it would actually produce a continuously varying maximum speed, making it not useful for calibration. Moreover, to produce an arm speed of 50 mph at the relevant frequency of (say) 4480 Hz would require the arm to swing a distance of 78 mm, whereas a typical tuning fork of this size has a maximum arm displacement of only about 0.02 mm. So, tuning forks do not test radar guns by producing a moving surface at the calibration speed.  Needless to say, they also do not work by means of acoustic sound waves, since the radar receiver isn’t affected by acoustic waves.  It just so happens that the Doppler shift for automobile speeds and radar waves is in the range of audible frequencies.

There are 2 basic qualities of sound:

• Pitch (high & low)
• Volume (loud & soft)

Pitch is related to frequency. Changing the number of vibrations per second changes the pitch. The pitch that a particular tuning fork generates depends on the length of its prongs. Each fork is stamped with the note it produces (e.g. A) and its frequency in Hertz (e.g. 440 Hz). Shorter prongs produce higher pitch (frequency) sounds than longer prongs. Long prongs will bend more readily and therefore tend to vibrate at a lower frequency when struck.

Volume, or loudness, is related to the strength, intensity, pressure, or power of the sound. Bigger/ amplified vibrations result in bigger/louder sounds.

Dijksterhuis’s work also shows that our unconscious thought processes don’t engage with a problem until we’ve clearly and consciously defined the problem. If we don’t have a particular intellectual goal in mind, Dijksterhuis writes, “unconscious thought does not occur.”

1. Can a radar gun send and receive signals at the same time?

2. Can a radar gun measure distances?

As opposed to pulsed radar systems, continuous wave (CW) radar systems emit electromagnetic radiation at all  times. Conventional CW radar cannot measure range [i.e., distance] because there is no basis for the measurement of the time delay. Recall that the basic radar system created pulses and used the time interval between transmission and reception to determine the target's range.  If the energy is transmitted continuously then this will not be possible. 

Lasers use light and we know the speed of light (roughly 186,000 miles per second). When we send a quick pulse of light out, it will travel from the lidar gun, to the target vehicle, and back. If we measure how much time it takes to get a reflection (time of flight), we can calculate how far the light had to travel. Because the laser beam had to make a round trip to the car and back, if we divide that number by two, we’ll get the distance between the lidar gun and the target vehicle. That’s step one.

Now one pulse will give us distance (not speed), but if we shoot a whole series of pulses, we can determine the change in distance over time which will tell us the vehicle’s speed. (Speed is simply a measure of distance divided by time, i.e., feet/second or miles/hour).

Laser guns typically take about 0.3 sec to get a lock on a vehicle and for an example laser gun that fires 200 pulses per second, this means it needs 60 return pulses to get a reading.

As a vehicle moves towards or away from the gun, the distances should all make sense… something like 1000 feet, 999, 998, 997, 996, and so on. It’s only with a smooth set of distances like this that the gun can ensure that it’s locked onto a single target, it has a clean lock, and so on.

There seems to be a widespread misconception (in some venues) that LIDAR speed guns do not use the Doppler effect to measure speed. This may be traced to a popular online source, which gives the following ‘explanation’ for how a LIDAR speed gun measures speed, contrasting it with how a radar gun measures speed:

A normal radar set sends out a radio pulse and waits for the reflection. Then it measures the Doppler shift in the signal and uses the shift to determine the speed.  Laser (or LIDAR, for light detection and ranging) speed guns use a more direct method that relies on the reflection time of light rather than Doppler shift.

This ‘explanation’ actually highlights two misconceptions.  First, it is obviously wrong to suggest that LIDAR speed guns don’t rely on the Doppler effect to determine speeds.

Apocryphally, the reference was first used on May 4, 1979, the day Margaret Thatcher took office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. An online news article from the Danish public broadcaster says her political party, the Conservatives, placed a congratulatory advertisement in The London Evening News, saying "May the Fourth Be with You, Maggie. Congratulations."

When I looked for an image to display with this comment, I found hundreds of them on the Internet.  I do not want to be out of step with the times, so ...



May 3, 2019 - As I was driving home from the gym yesterday, I heard this from the audio book I'm currently listening to on my car's CD player:

As most of us know from experience, if we concentrate too intensively on a tough problem, we can get stuck in a mental rut. Our thinking narrows, and we struggle vainly to come up with new ideas. But if we let the problem sit unattended for a time—if we “sleep on it”—we often return to it with a fresh perspective and a burst of creativity. Research by Ap Dijksterhuis, a Dutch psychologist who heads the Unconscious Lab at Radboud University in Nijmegen, indicates that such breaks in our attention give our unconscious mind time to grapple with a problem, bringing to bear information and cognitive processes unavailable to conscious deliberation. We usually make better decisions, his experiments reveal, if we shift our attention away from a difficult mental challenge for a time. But Dijksterhuis’s work also shows that our unconscious thought processes don’t engage with a problem until we’ve clearly and consciously defined the problem. If we don’t have a particular intellectual goal in mind, Dijksterhuis writes, “unconscious thought does not occur.”

The book is "The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains," and I'm currently on CD #7 in the 12-CD set.  The above quote says what I've said many times on this web site.  I go to bed thinking about a problem, while I'm asleep my "unconscious" (or "subconscious") continues to work on the problem, and when I wake up it sometimes presents a solution to me.

Unfortunately, right now I'm thinking about too many different problems, most of which would probably be of absolutely no interest to the people who read this web site.  For example, for the past two years, four of the seven TVs on the wall in front of the treadmills and Exercycles in the "Cardio Room" have been automatically turning off at about 1 a.m. and 1 p.m. to save power, apparently  because no one who works for the gym knows how to solve the problem.
 


In the image above, taken in January 2018, you  can see 6 of the wall TVs and that 3 of them are off.  There is one more that is off but out of view to the right.  The 6 TVs hanging from the ceiling use the same cable boxes, except for one, which I think uses an 8th cable box.

The TVs turn off at about 1 a.m. and 1 p.m. because the cable boxes for those four TVs have their "power saver" options turned to "ON."  That means that if the cable box has been turned on for 12 hours and no one has changed channels or anything else, the cable box assumes that everyone has gone to bed and it turns itself off in order to save power. 

I've tried explaining to them many times that all they need to do is set the "power saver" timer in the cable boxes for those four TVs to "off."  But it is like talking to a wall.  They just do not seem able to understand.  Or their brains are set to ignore suggestions from members. 

Early last week, before I went on my trip, the shift supervisor even told me that it is impossible to use the remote control on one cable box at a time.  He claimed tht, when they turn the TVs off and on, they must press the on-off buttons on the boxes, they do not use any remote control.  I can make no sense of that, since the remotes work with light, not radio signals.  And you can control where the light is pointed.  Plus, I've seen the channels changed on the TVs.  But I saw no point in arguing further.

Then, a couple days ago, on May 1, the four TVs again turned off at about 1:10 p.m.  But this time it was different.  When the gym staff tuned them back on, the four TVs all showed the same channel: It was Spectrum Channel 1, a local news channel set up by Spectrum.  I recalled that when I had turned on my TV at home that morning, it had also been on Spectrum Channel 1.  Evidently, Spectrum had changed things that morning so that when a cable box is turned on, it doesn't show the same channel that was being used when the box was turned off, it shows Spectrum Channel 1.

I explained the situation to the people at the gym.  It means that when they turn off all the TVs and cable boxes when they shut down the entire gym on Sunday nights from about 5 p.m. to 1 a..m. Monday morning, ALL of their TVs will show Channel 1 when turned back on.  The guy I talked with looked stunned, like it was an unsolvable problem for them.

When I got home it occurred to me that Spectrum must have a switch in their cable boxes to control what station you get when you turn the cable box on.  And, yes they do.  I don't know if it is new or if it has always been there, but I set the switch in my cable box to Channel 1351 (CNN Headline News) and, sure enough, when I turned my TV on the next morning, it was set to Channel 1351.

So, I prepared the instruction sheet below to show the people at the gym how to fix both problems:

I printed out 2 copies and took them with me to the gym yesterday afternoon.  After I had swiped my card and checked in at the reception desk, I went into the Cardio room to see if the 4 TVs were still set to Channel 1.  Two were, the other two were turned off. 

None of the bosses seemed to be there, so I gave a copy of the instruction sheet to the guy tending the reception desk.  No bosses showed up while I was doing my workout, and when I left I gave the second instruction sheet to the same guy.  He seemed very interested and rushed off somewhere with it.  I just left.

So, this afternoon I'll see if they just threw the instructions in the wastebasket, or if they still believe they cannot use their remote control on one cable box at a time, or if they are in the process of fixing the problems.

I guess the point in explaining all this is because it seems so much like the problems I have with mathematicians.  The people at the gym seem to have closed minds, and nothing I say can change their minds.  The same with the mathematicians.  The only difference is that the people at the gym now have a very serious problem that clearly needs to be fixed.  If they do not fix it, all seven TVs on the front wall and the 6 others hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the cardio room will all be set to Channel 1 forever.  I do not think they'll let that happen.  If they do not use my instruction sheet, they'll have to contact Spectrum or someone else to fix the problem.

I just wish there was such a crisis on the subject of how radar guns work.  That way we'd all see who is right and who is wrong.   

ADDED NOTE: When I got to the gym this afternoon, all the TVs were working fine and showed their normal TV channels.  None showed Channel 1.  However,
the only employee in the place seemed to be a young Asian woman behind the check-in counter, someone I've never talked with before.  So, I have no idea if they used my instructions to fix the problem, or if they just called in some expert from Spectrum or from their head office.  Did they fix the power-saver problem, too?  I dunno.  Time will tell.  If the fixer did his fixing at 9 a.m. this morning and turned the TVs off and on at that time, the power-saver option won't turn the TVs off until 9 p.m. this evening. 

May 1, 2019 - I'm still adapting to being home again after my trip.  When I awoke this morning I briefly thought I was still in Virginia.  The same thing happened last night while I was watching TV. 

While in Virginia, in one of the quiet moments while not rushing around, I mentioned listening to podcasts, and learned that my sister had basically never heard of them.  So, we listened to a few.  Then I learned about Sudoku puzzles from her.  They are something I had never heard of before (that I can recall).  Here's an example.

In 2001, young Japanese women began composing stories on their mobile phones, as strings of text messages, and uploading them to a Web site, Maho no i-rando, where other people read and commented on them. The stories expanded into serialized “cell phone novels,” and their popularity grew. Some of the novels found millions of readers online. Publishers took notice, and began to bring out the novels as printed books. By the end of the decade, cell phone novels had come to dominate the country’s best-seller lists. The three top-selling Japanese novels in 2007 were all originally written on mobile phones.

Maybe some day I'll find the time to research it and learn out how it is done.  But, before doing that I need to do a million other things, and researching radar guns is still at the top of the list.

Hmm.  I just received an email from someone who said that he can no longer access my web site.  When he tries, he gets this message:



Clearly, it is a problem at his end.  He appears to be using a computer connection that is public or semi-public and somehow their Sophos security software thinks my site has something to do with alcohol and tobacco.

Also, even though Google sent me an email two months ago which seemed to say they were going to shut down my two blogs, Debating the Anthrax Attacks and My Thoughts on the Changing World, on April 1, the blogs are still working fine. 

Life is just one endless series of puzzles.

Writing is not what you start. It’s not even what you finish. It’s what you start, finish, and put out there for the world to see. Sometimes we’re afraid to share our work because we know those twin jerks—criticism and rejection—are out there waiting to beat us up. Once the assault begins, there are three possible responses: (1) run away from the jerks; (2) defend yourself against the jerks; (3) assume the position and say, “Thank you, sir, may I have another.” The third choice hurts like hell, but the jerks often have useful feedback. 

Q: What was the smartest dinosaur?
A: Roget Thesaurus

Trump dropped all pretense that he was interested in participating in good-natured fun. He started punching below the belt. “Here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics,” Trump said, viciously. It wasn’t a joke. It was a deceitful attack. I will never understand why Cardinal Timothy Dolan didn’t stand up and say, “Hey, that’s not funny.” Humor can unite people of all faiths and political leanings, but Trump didn’t want to be part of that. Or maybe he was incapable. Comedy requires empathy. A joke works because it builds off a shared feeling or perspective. Since Trump can’t connect with the thoughts and emotions of anyone not named Donald J. Trump that limits what he can find funny. People have said that Trump has no sense of humor. I disagree. He clearly finds humor in the misfortune of others.

POSTULATE: an idea that is suggested or accepted as a basic principle before a further idea is formed or developed from it: (Astronomers postulate that the comet will reappear in 4000 years).

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/postulate

PRINCIPLE: a basic truth that explains or controls how something happens or works: (The machine works according to the principle of electromagnetic conduction).

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/principle

I once beat a speeding ticket this way by playing on the general lack of science of the police and judges.  The police officer started off how they check the calibration of radar every morning by using the tuning forks (they had two of different frequencies) and each tuning fork corresponded to a displayed speed.

...
Police: ...and when using this tuning fork the radar unit displays a speed of 37 miles per hour...

Me (cross examing) Regarding those tuning forks, how fast were they traveling when you calibrated the radar unit?

Cop: The tuning forks are designed to display a particular speed when....

Me (insisting) How fast were the tuning forks traveling at the time...

Cop: The tuning forks cause the radar to display a particular speed....

Me: How fast were the tuning forks moving????

Cop: (finally) I was holding it in my hand in front of the horn, so they were stationary...

Me: So the radar gun is displaying a false speed of 37 miles per hour while clocking a STATIONARY object?  And that's how it is CALIBRATED?? So how does anyone know if the speed you mentioned was meaningful if a STATIONARY object gets clocked at 37 miles per hour??

Cop: ummm.

Judge: Not guilty.

Any lawyer does the same daily.

The tines vibrate back and forth in a sinusoidal pattern, first increasing then decreasing then increasing negatively then decreasing, constantly changing speed. Stating it is moving at a fixed speed is nonsense, especially since its (instantaneous) speed is going to depend on the AMPLITUDE, that is how hard it was whacked!

the tips are constantly changing speed and direction, in a sinusoidal pattern, plus the speeds constantly decrease as the vibration dies down.

 

 

According to notes written by Hunt , when Sessions told the President that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked ."⁵⁰⁴ The President became angry and lambasted the Attorney General for his decision to recuse from the investigation , stating, "How could you let this happen, Jeff?" ⁵⁰⁵ The President said the position of Attorney General was his most important appointment and that Sessions had " let [him] down ," contrasting him to Eric Holder and Robert Kennedy. ⁵⁰⁶ Sessions recalled that the President said to him, "you were supposed to protect me," or words to that effect. ⁵⁰⁷ The President returned to the consequences of the appointment and said, "Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency . It takes years and years and I won 't be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me." ⁵⁰⁸

This is the podcast exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century. 

Light as particles alone can’t explain why:
     1.  its speed is c in air
     2. why its speed is less than c in glass
     3. why its speed is regained to c as it re-emerges from glass.

Speaking loosely: when the light ray is inside the medium, its myriad photons are constantly interacting with the myriad charged particles, and at each such interaction the "old" (incoming) photon is consumed and a "new" (outgoing) one is created.