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202.190.37.232 - - [21/Nov/2020:09:57:45 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 737952 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.7) Gecko/20100809 Fedora/3.6.7-1.fc14 Firefox/3.6.7"

202.190.37.232 - - [21/Nov/2020:09:58:02 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 737952 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Arch Linux i686; rv:2.0) Gecko/20110321 Firefox/4.0"

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202.190.37.232 - - [21/Nov/2020:09:59:28 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 737952 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; ru; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100526 Firefox/3.7a5pre"

Dimension is where motion takes place.
Without it how could there be motion?

There is motion relative to the speed of light. The speed of light is the maximum speed in the universe.  All other speeds are less than the speed of light, i.e., relative to the speed of light, or a percentage of the speed of light. That is what Special Relativity is all about.

People are now exposed to more information than ever before, provided both by technology and by increasing access to every level of education. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

As Tom Nichols shows in The Death of Expertise, this rejection of experts has occurred for many reasons, including the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement.

Nichols has deeper concerns than the current rejection of expertise and learning, noting that when ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy-or in the worst case, a combination of both. The Death of Expertise is not only an exploration of a dangerous phenomenon but also a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age.

That seems to be a description of what you see on TV when reporters talk with pro-Trump supporters.  They know nothing and they just repeat what their leader has told them.  Logic has no meaning to them.  Facts mean nothing.  They do not think logically.  Like Trump, they think emotionally.  If you disagree with them, that means you are attacking their intelligence.  You are saying you are better and smarter than they are.  So, any attempt to discuss facts is just a waste of time.  They already know all they feel they need to know.

This morning, I checked with my local library and found that they only have the audio book version of "The Death of Expertise."  I put a "hold" on it, but they say I'll probably have to wait at least 21 weeks before it will be available to borrow.  Meanwhile, I'm going to see if I can find a print copy somewhere else. 

November 17, 2020 - I'm not working on any scientific papers at the moment.  Nor am I working on writing any books.  My most recent paper, Relativity and Radar Guns hasn't attracted much notice, even though it proposes a relatively simple experiment that countless mathematician physicists would argue is totally impossible.

One problem is that I have no way to promote the paper and make people aware of it, except via this web site and a couple blogs.  So, in the full month that it has been on the Internet it has only been read by 50 people.  

Another problem is the times we are in.  With the Covid-19 pandemic getting worse and worse while everyone is also wondering what trouble Trump will cause during his final days in office, it's difficult to focus on anything else.

In hopes of stumbling across some idea that will get things moving again for me,  I've gone back to listening to science podcasts.  It's also another area where I needed to get organized.  I've listened to every one of the 145 episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage, which is definitely my favorite science podcast, and I'm currently listening to just about every episode of Big Picture Science, my second favorite podcast.  I just loaded 64 more episodes into my MP3 player.  Then there is Space Nuts, my third favorite, which has 228 episodes on-line, and Astronomy Cast, my fourth favorite, which currently consists of 584 episodes.  Listening to episodes of those four favorites doesn't leave much time for the twenty or thirty other podcasts I occasionally sample.  And there are probably some terrific podcasts I've never heard of.

Of course, because there are so many podcasts that I find both interesting and enjoyable, I keep wanting to organize and prioritize them.  I've been working on a new web page where I'm going to try to do that, and this morning I uploaded it.  It's currently called "Ed Lake's List of Interesting Podcasts," and the link to it will be under the picture of Humphrey Bogart, just above where "My Latest Comments" begin.

The page is "a work in progress," so it will be changing as I come across other podcasts that I think should be on the list, or podcasts which should replace ones I have listed as my top ten.  I currently have "Science Rules with Bill Nye" as #9 on the list, but I've only listened to one episode, and there are a bunch of podcasts I still haven't put on the list that I recall really enjoying.

November 15, 2020 - Last Monday, I was notified that someone had mentioned "Ed Lake" in a science paper that they had written and placed on Academia.edu.  That happens quite often, but it just means that there are quite a few people named "Ed Lake" who write scientific papers and put them on Academia.edu.  Besides, I always use "Edward G. Lake" when I write papers.  This time, however, the paper's title suggested it was disputing the Big Bang Theory, which made me curious, so I checked to see what the paper was all about.

It was crap.  But, it was also interesting crap.  It argued that Black Holes were gobbling up our galaxy and all the galaxies around us, and quasars elsewhere in the universe were spitting out what had been gobbled up. That's not an entirely new theory, but most times the theory is that what falls into a Black Hole comes out in another universe, not in some distant location in our universe.

What the article did for me was make me aware that I knew next to nothing about quasars.  So, I researched the subject.

I have devoted my adult life to defending the United States, our Constitution, our government, and all our citizens. I never would have imagined—I could not have imagined—that the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, would single me out with repeated attacks of treason, accusing me of plotting a coup against our government. Suggesting that I be executed. Labeling me “corrupt,” “incompetent,” a “sick Loser” and a “hating fraud.” And, of all things, questioning my patriotism while he stood in Helsinki next to Russian president Vladimir Putin, an adversary who has been actively attempting to subvert democracy in the U.S. and around the world.     

That Wednesday morning—the day after he fired Comey—Trump welcomed Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak into the Oval Office. I learned about the meeting at the same time that the American public did, and not from U.S. media. The White House had barred American reporters and other media from the meeting—in the U.S. president’s office—but allowed in Russian photographers. They released pictures of Trump in a red and silver repp tie, beaming at Kislyak, the president’s right hand clasping Lavrov’s arm. Tom Clancy or John le Carré could not have scripted fiction more alarming than what I was seeing.

From a counterintelligence perspective, the Oval Office meeting was like a five-alarm fire. In absolving the Russians of their election meddling, Trump also made clear that he was unlikely to hold them to account for similar activity in the future. Moreover, after telling the world that Comey had been fired because of his handling of the Clinton investigation, Trump had just told the Russians the truth: he had fired Comey to put a stop to the Crossfire [Russian interference] investigation. Standing in the White House with the Russians, Trump appeared to compromise himself yet again. Although the FBI didn’t learn about his remarks immediately, the Kremlin certainly did. Trump had tacitly blessed the Russians for their attack on our democracy while giving them a green light to continue.

Trump’s fury at me continued unabated. As of this writing, in less than two years he has launched more than 100 attacks on me in tweets, interviews, and other statements to the press. The president has variously labeled me “incompetent,” “corrupt,” “horrible,” “hate-filled,” “totally biased,” “low,” “terrible,” “disgusting,” “stupid,” “a disgrace,” “a total phony,” “minion,” “sick loser,” “hating fraud,” “fraud against our nation,” “clown,” “bad player,” “phony,” “dirty cop,” “dishonest,” “bad person,” “sick, sick” person, “lowlife,” “leaker,” “liar,” “psycho,” “scammer,” “con artist,” and an “evil person.” Trump has accused me of committing treason, claimed I had plotted a coup, and pronounced that I had “wanted to do a subversion.” And when he needs a distraction, as on the day the House Judiciary Committee voted on articles of his impeachment, he rolls me out, going to his well-worn conspiracy of the insurance policy.

Our investigations revealed Donald Trump’s willingness to further the malign interests of one of our most formidable adversaries, apparently for his own personal gain. They also showed his willingness to accept political assistance from an opponent like Russia—and, it follows, his willingness to subvert everything that America stands for. That’s not patriotic; it’s the opposite. The Founders gave us a remedy for a leader such as Trump, who elevates his personal interests above his public duties: impeachment and removal from office. Failing that, we must rely on the ballot to judge him. But if things continue as they have under our compromised 45th president, I fear the judgment will be on us for our failure to uphold America’s core values. And Russia will reap the rewards.

It was only 6 hours and 26 minutes long, so I was able to get through it in just two evenings.

The title is very misleading, since it has nothing to do with economics.  But, I knew that when I borrowed it.  It's an example of an expert in one field taking a hard look at things in another field and coming up with observations that have eluded those who work in the field being studied.  I'm not sure what "the other field" is, but the observations are about how drug gangs work, how real estate agents work, how the Ku Klux Klan operates, and much much more.  It's somewhat of a psychology book, since it is a study of incentives and "how people get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing."  The most controversial part of the book is about how legalizing abortions reduces the crime rate, a fact which is solidly confirmed by the data.  And who would have thought that the typical drug dealer lives with his mother?

At times, it is also a very funny book, but unfortunately it ends with an analysis of how children's names affect the children.  That part of the book just seemed to go on and on and on endlessly.  But there are also interesting parts, like the New York City man, Robert Lane, who inexplicably named his sons "Winner" and "Loser."  Loser, a.k.a. "Lou" became a sergeant in the New York Police Department, while "Winner" has had nearly three dozen arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, resisting arrest, and other mayhem. 

It's a very interesting book, but I'd recommend reading it in print form, since that way you can just scan through the lists of children's names, instead of listening to every one of them being read to you.

November 8, 2020 - At 7:22 a.m. this morning, as I was lying in bed waiting for it to be time to get up (7:25 a.m.), the phone rang.  I didn't recognize the phone number, so I let my answering machine take the call.  It was a recorded message from Publisher's Clearing House advising me that I had just won 1.35 million dollars.  Hmm.  Wow!  They have so many million dollar winners that they have to advise them all with a recorded message?  And, since I don't have any magazine subscriptions and I never entered their contest, that must mean they are also giving away 1.35 million dollars to just about everyone who answers the phone.  Plus, the voice seemed like it was synthesized, so they must have had to automate the process entirely because they had so many winners.

Or maybe it was just a scam.  Of course, I'm just looking at it logically.  If I was looking at it emotionally, would I be able to resist ignoring the possibility that I just won 1.35 million dollars?  Would I be so self confident that I could pick up the phone or call them to see if it was truly a scam or not?   What harm could it do --- other than putting me on a list of people to respond to scam phone calls?

Or maybe they'd do what they did to someone I know.  The scammers used his phone number to make dozens of automated crank phone calls, including calls to someone who called the police and gave the police his number. 

It's a complicated world, and there are lots of ways to make mistakes and get into trouble, particularly if you think emotionally instead of logically.

Do mathematicians think emotionally or logically?  The answer appears to be that they think emotionally.  There is logic to mathematics, but if you believe the answer cannot possibly be wrong, therefore it represents reality, then you are thinking emotionally, to be wrong would lower your self esteem.  Logically, a correct solution to an equation may have nothing to do with reality.  The problem is, when you try to explain that to a mathematician, they sometimes become very emotional and attack you in every way they can think of.  And they are supported by other mathematicians, which helps them believe they are right.  But all they are talking about is a pattern, and math can produce the same pattern in many different ways.  The fact that you have found one of them doesn't mean it is a "correct pattern."  As I've said many times before, mathematicians "proved" for thousands of years that the Sun moved around the Earth.  But, then new information showed they were wrong.

When I look at a map of the United States and which states voted for Trump, I wonder what the pattern means.



There is a clear pattern there.  But why are all the red states clustered in the middle of the country?  If Georgia finally goes for Biden, it will be the only state that has no border with another state that voted for Biden.  And, when you look at Georgia's counties, you see a similar pattern.  With few exceptions, the counties  that voted for Biden mostly clustered around big cities like Atlanta, Savannah and Columbus, and there is only one county which voted for Trump and is surrounded by counties which voted for Biden.

When I tell people where I live in Wisconsin, they wonder how I can vote for Biden when my county voted for Trump.  They seem to feel I did something wrong.  I wasn't part of the majority.  I'm opposed to the majority.  I may be with the majority for the entire country, but that doesn't seem to matter.  It's tribalism.  My "tribe" voted for Trump.  Or maybe my "tribe" is my town, not my county.  Or maybe it's my zone within my town.  Or is it my block?  Whatever it is, I voted logically, not emotionally, and I just do not discuss politics with the others in my zone, town, county or state.  Only on the Internet.      

Biden wins 2020 election. America has said, 'You're fired,' to Trump

Later in the day, Trump made this statement:

"We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don't want the truth to be exposed. The simple fact is this election is far from over. Joe Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any of the highly contested states headed for mandatory recounts, or states where our campaign has valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate victor. In Pennsylvania, for example, our legal observers were not permitted meaningful access to watch the counting process. Legal votes decide who is president, not the news media.

"Beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated. The American People are entitled to an honest election: that means counting all legal ballots, and not counting any illegal ballots. This is the only way to ensure the public has full confidence in our election. It remains shocking that the Biden campaign refuses to agree with this basic principle and wants ballots counted even if they are fraudulent, manufactured, or cast by ineligible or deceased voters. Only a party engaged in wrongdoing would unlawfully keep observers out of the count room – and then fight in court to block their access.

"So what is Biden hiding? I will not rest until the American People have the honest vote count they deserve and that Democracy demands."

President  Trump’s massive campaign rallies led to more than 30,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and likely caused the death of 700 Americans, a new study says.

The Stanford University paper released Friday took a close look at 18 Trump rallies between June and September and followed subjects “up to ten post-rally weeks for each event.”

“The communities in which Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death,” researchers concluded.

Rates of COVID-19 often rose notably in communities that hosted the events, compared with nearby towns where Trump stayed away, the study found.

So, does that qualify Trump as a "mass murderer"?  If so, how may of his supporters will just say, "Well that's just Trump being Trump.  At least he's not a politician.  We need to get politicians out of politics!!!  Drain the swamp!" 

Will the "swamp" be drained or flooded tomorrow?  Time will tell.

Meanwhile, my new cassette to MP3 converter arrived on Saturday afternoon, and I've been puttering around with it to see how it works.



In the picture above, the recorder is operating and putting the cassette content into a MP3 file on the flash drive I plugged into the side of the device.

For such a small device, it's really pretty complicated.  It has two basic "modes," "manual" and "auto."  In "manual" mode, it converts an entire cassette into two  MP3 files, one file for each side, unless you listen to it while converting and press a pause button twice between each song to separate the tape into individual songs and individual MP3 files.  And, if you do not stop the tape when it is done, it will just continue on converting first one side then the other forever (or until the batteries die), putting each side into a new MP3 file.  "Auto" mode is supposed to do things automatically, breaking a tape into individual songs and stopping when it has reached the end of the two sides.  But my attempts to use "auto" mode resulted in getting only some of the songs from the tape.  More than half the songs were just dropped for some unknown reason.  So, it's going to take some experimenting to find out exactly the best way to use it.          

November 1, 2020 - Yesterday, I checked the RDForum to see if they were still arguing.  They are.  However, "arguing" might not be the right word, since they are just talking to each other about how they weren't able to make me understand their beliefs.  One member, "Token," has been reading this web site, and he wrote a comment about what I wrote here in my October 25 comment.  In message #299 on the RDForum, "Token" wrote:

And he [me] boils the argument down to "All the debates boil down to one question: Do police radar guns measure speed relative to the ground or relative to the local speed of light?"

Was someone here saying that radar guns measure speed relative to the ground? I must have missed that. Moving mode guns may measure the speed of the ground to get patrol speed, but that is the closest I can come to anyone saying police radar measures speed relative to the ground.

He ends that posting with "If experiments show that I am wrong, then I am wrong. But the facts say I'm right, and someone claiming to have different "facts" doesn't change anything, particularly if they also claim the experiment is a waste of time and money because it cannot possibly work, since it disagrees with their facts."

At this point I am unsure which experiments he means, since he appears to agree that the two radar guns experiment cannot be done with radar gun hardware. If he were to suggest an experiment that could actually be done, maybe someone would do it.

He doesn’t need a second radar gun. His truck experiment just needs another object and the radar gun. The closed door of the box truck is sufficient. It’s frustrating and sad that the long-understood fundamental tenants of basic speed measuring radar are simply refuted out of hand, much less based on a foundation of unearned confidence in a series of partial misunderstandings.

By the way, ghosting isn’t the same as ending a discussion. He can satisfy himself, if he sees fit, by borrowing or buying a radar gun, renting a moving truck, and having a buddy drive it while get stares perplexed at a radar gun giving no reading (or zero) no matter how fast the truck drives.

PS I have yet to hear a single explanation of what the words “the local speed of light” even means.

Oh well, at least we all tried. I had hope that quoting Einstein and using his equations would actually get through, but....

The speed of light is always 186,282 miles per second, but time dilation says that the length of a second can be different almost everywhere. It changes with the altitude and the speed of an object. So, when talking about time dilation, the speed of light can be different everywhere yet still be 186,282 miles per second everywhere.

The "local speed of light" is the determined by the speed of the atoms in the gun that emit the photons.

Maybe some information about how the speed of light is measured will help. Here's a diagram of a standard device for measuring the TWO WAY speed of light:

The device will measure the speed of light regardless of any movement of the device. In the illustration, the device is moving from left to right as the earth spins on its axis. The emitter emits photons that travel to the mirror at c. The photons hit the mirror at c-v because the mirror is moving away from the emitter. New, lower energy photons are emitted by the mirror to a detector next to the emitter. The new photons travel at c. The new photons hit the detector at c+v, adding back the lost energy. The device computes c-v+v=c and displays the speed of light from the emitter to the mirror and back.

In this situation, the movement of the earth is v. But you can also use the device on an airplane or on the ISS. It will still give the local speed of light. It compensates for any movement of the device. And the atomic clock enables the device to measure very tiny differences.

If you are a life-long movie buff, as I am, the book is a fascinating look into Hollywood life styles.  Chateau Marmont was built in 1929 as an apartment house, but by the early 1950s it had turned into a hotel.  It was a place where movie stars stayed when they wanted to avoid the scrutiny and media attention paid at the more famous hotels, like the Roosevelt and the Beverly Hills.  The book is sprinkled with stories about famous Hollywood personalities, everyone from Jean Harlow and Clark Gable to Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, from Natalie Wood and Dennis Hopper to Scarlett Johansson and Benecio Del Toro. 



It's where John Belushi died of a drug overdose in 1982, after partying with Robin Williams and Robert Di Nero. It's where Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins began their love affair.  Director Nicholas Ray retreated to the Chateau Marmont after walking in on his wife, actress Gloria Grahame, having sex with his son from a previous marriage.

And on and on and on.  The place was recently renovated and you can rent one of the penthouses for $5,000 a night.  A suite costs $1,290 per night, and an ordinary room costs just under $500 a night.

Castle on Sunset was probably a good book to listen to on CDs during occasional 10-minute drives I took over the course of the past two months during the Covid-19 pandemic.  There was something interesting in every 10-minute segment, and there was no problem if I couldn't remember what happened in the previous 10-minute segment I listened to a couple days prior.  Hopefully, the next book on CDs that I started today will also not require paying close attention.

Ed:

Looks like none of these regressive mathematicians ever had to measure anything. Of course, the velocity of any wave in any medium is solely dependent on the properties of the medium.

Huh?  What paper was he talking about?  I sent an equally short response, thanking him, informing him that I didn't know what paper he was talking about, and explaining that I had 15 papers on line at  https://vixra.org/author/edward_g_lake

Then I proceeded to research him on the Internet.  He's definitely well-known on the Internet, or he knows how to use the Internet to promote himself.  In some ways, his ideas match mine, we both have problems with mathematicians, but in other ways we are in total disagreement.  He hasn't yet replied to my email, so I won't mention his name.  I read part of one of his books using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature.  His arguments against mathematicians are mostly philosophical.

I don't know if he'll ever reply to my reply, but his email caused me to think about a possible title for a book: "Logical vs Mathematical Relativity," which would put all of my papers about relativity into book form.

Meanwhile, this morning when I checked how my papers were doing, I found that yesterday I had 9 new readers of my latest paper, "Radar guns and Relativity," the largest one-day number since October 21, when I had 19 new reads in one day.  It seems to indicate that people are talking about the paper.  Is it just a coincidence, or does it have something to do with how that scientist/philosopher learned about my paper?  Who knows?  Maybe time will tell.

While all that was going on, I looked through my collection of LP records.  I've got a hundred and twenty of them tucked away in a cabinet. 



My record player stopped working about ten years ago or more, and I may not have listened to any of them for 20 years or more.  I was somewhat surprised by what I had.  I didn't recall that I had so many classical albums.  The stack on the right seems to be mostly classical stuff, but it also includes a copy of "Victory at Sea."  That album is currently selling for $25 on EBay.

 

  So, that discussion is ended.

Meanwhile, on the RDForum, I've run out of ways to explain how radar guns work, and so I just stopped posting.  But "Barry" and "Deacon" are still arguing and posting.  "Barry" posted message #296, and "Deacon" posted message #297, which might be some kind of record for that forum.  "Barry" posted a list of 12 changes he thinks I should make to the latest version of my "Relativity and Radar Guns" paper.  Most are just changes in wording, which means they are just personal preferences, but some are the same arguments he's been making since I began the thread back on September 26.  The post by "Deacon" is just a rant about how I still do not accept his belief that my proposed truck experiment won't work. 

If I respond, it will just cause them to say the same things over and over and over and over again.  So, I'm not going to respond.  I'm ending the discussion.

When I went for a brisk walk yesterday, after deciding I was going to end the RDForum discussion, all I could think about, for some reason, was my "music problem." 

Back in August of 2019, the stereo system in my office/library suddenly stopped working.  At the time, I was just beginning the arguments over radar guns, and I was contemplating spending $300 to buy a used radar gun that the manufacturer was saying would show the truck speed if I was in a car directly behind the truck with the gun pointed at the back of the truck.  That is basically the truck experiment mentioned in my latest paper, but done with only one radar gun.  I didn't buy the gun, and I eventually learned that there is no gun that works the way that manufacturer said his gun worked.

Anyway, my point is that I was too busy with other things, and I just couldn't focus on solving my "music problem."  So, instead of fixing the stereo system, I spent about $70 to buy a second MP3 player (the other one was being used for podcasts) and a BlueTooth speaker to work with it.  Then I proceeded to load music from my CD collection onto the new MP3 player.  That's what I've been listening to ever since, for more than a year, whenever I'm on my computer.

Yesterday, while out for a walk, I must have decided I was tired of listening to the music from my CD collection.  It was mostly modern stuff, with some Swing and Rock and Roll.  I wanted to listen to solid jazz.  That is what I have on my cassette collection and what I played on my stereo system.



In the image above, you can see some of my cassette collection on the shelf under the stereo system.  (The cassettes are all recordings I made from a local jazz station years ago, when there was such a thing as a jazz radio station.)  My MP3 player and BlueTooth speaker are atop the stereo receiver.  I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the 27" by 14" speakers for the stereo system, which are on the other side of the room, so I connected another set of smaller speakers I have to the cassette player.  I got them to work, but there was no way to adjust the sound level.  The cassette player is supposed to be connected to the stereo system which has the volume control and is connected to the big speakers.  Fortunately, the sound was just a little too soft instead of too loud, so the setup was workable.

I had also decided it was time to convert my cassettes to MP3 files.  It should take only about 400 or 500 hours.  Doing it with my computer is just too complicated, so I searched the Internet and found I could buy a $30 cassette player that does it, putting the resulting MP3 files on a flash drive.  I ordered the device from Amazon and should have it Monday.

Then, this morning, I took the time to carefully examine the large speakers for my stereo system and their connections.  I must have jiggled something, because the large speakers suddenly started working once again, and at this moment I'm listing to solid jazz on the big speakers once again.  When I get the cassette to MP3 converter I'll still going to convert the cassettes to MP3 files.  That way I can listen to jazz for as long as I want without having to change cassettes.  I'll just have to charge the battery in the MP3 player every night, and I'll have to charge the battery in the BlueTooth speaker once a week, which is what I've been doing for the past year.

And it seems I now need to start thinking about my "weather problem."  There was a hard frost yesterday morning, and snow flurries.  It is time to start winterizing my apartment.  I just need to focus and muster some will power.

sci.physics.relativity UseNet forum and the RDForum seem to have come to an end.  I had hoped there might be some inexpensive way to do the experiment described in my latest paper, but the RDForum discussions seem to rule that out. 

It occurred to me that even if radar guns cannot be fine-tuned enough to measure the exact speed of a truck from inside the truck, the experiment might still work even if there was a minor error of some kind.  If the guns were pointed at each other while stationary on the ground and showed some erroneous speed because they weren't identically tuned, that wouldn't prevent the experiment from working.  The experiment would be validated if the guns showed 15 mph while on the ground and then showed higher and higher speeds if the guns were inside a moving truck that was gaining speed, showing 55 mph mph when the truck was actually going only 40 mph.  The guys on the RDForum who have considerable experience with radar guns, however, insist that the errors might be well outside of the 10 to 200 mph range that guns display, plus they say that if the guns show 15 mph while stationary, the speed will change as you continue to hold the trigger, and they may not show 15 mph the next time to pull the trigger.

I'm not willing to spend $200 to find out by buying two of the least expensive radar guns at WalMart. So, everything is "on hold" until someone reads my paper and decides he knows how to make the experiment work.

Meanwhile, everything is settling down and the most important question in the world right now is clearly: Who will win the election next week?  In some ways it is difficult to think about anything else.  I spent a couple hours this morning looking for podcasts that I haven't yet heard.  I downloaded a couple dozen into my computer.  I'll transfer them to my MP3 player when I finish listening to the ones in the player I still haven't listened to.  It's work that doesn't require much thinking.  And now that I'm done (for now), I'll probably listen to an audio book instead of some podcasts.  Or maybe I'll just go for a walk.  There were some snow flurries outside my window this morning.  But there doesn't seem to be much wind, so a brisk walk is still worthwhile.  Maybe while walking I'll think of something to do instead of just sitting around and waiting for election day. 

October 25, 2020 - I think I spent time every day last week arguing on the sci.physics.relativity UseNet forum and the RDForum.  And the arguments are still raging on the RDForum.  They have been unusually productive arguments.  People on the RDForum pointed out to me four relatively minor errors in my latest paper, Relativity and Radar Guns, and I made the corrections, posting a new version which got uploaded at 8:05 p.m. on Friday evening.  

Most of the arguments were with mathematicians who cannot accept that radar guns measure speeds relative to the speed of light and not relative to the radar gun or the point on the ground where the radar gun is located.  In "normal" situations, the results are basically the same either way, but a radar gun definitely has the capability to measure speeds relative to the speed of light, and they definitely have no capability to measure speeds relative to the gun or to the ground.  That would require measuring distances, and police radar guns definitely do not measure distances.  Lidar guns measure distances - and so do normal radars used in aviation and weather forecasting.

During one argument late yesterday afternoon, someone named "Token" wrote: "For the record, I am a radar systems engineer, I have about 40 years professional experience in radar and radar related fields."  And he ranted about how radar guns measure speeds relative to the radar's location, even though his experience was entirely with military radars.  I used this illustration to respond to him:



The illustration shows how regular radars work, including military radars.  They measure distances and directions.  In the illustration, the radar beam is moving around the center and is currently at the 55 degree mark.  If 0 is north, then the beam is currently pointing northeast as it sweeps around the entire circle.

As you can see, there are four targets on the radar.  The scale for the circles on the screen is not known, but if they represent 5 miles, then the closest target is 15 miles away, and another is at about 18 miles, while the two others are at about 28 miles away.

"Token's" response to me would take about 3 pages in a book, but it began with this:

At this point you are making a pretty classic mistake. You have done a little research and think you understand a little how radars work, specifically the ones you have researched. You assume that you and you alone are correct and that others do not know how they work.

I rather doubt you have any idea how many different ways the Doppler shift of a target is used in radar beyond just to determine radial velocity in a police radar gun. Or how similar the processing techniques are for a variety of different radars and radar functions.

With the formulation of the special theory of relativity by Albert Einstein in 1905 and its acceptance by scientists generally, the ether hypothesis was abandoned as being unnecessary in terms of Einstein’s assumption that the speed of light, or any electromagnetic wave, is a universal constant.

A universal constant is what you can measure all speeds against. And that is what radar guns do, using the speed of light as a "universal constant" in full agreement with Einstein's 1905 paper.

The only thing that’s measured is the return frequency. That return frequency only changes if the target is moving relative to the radar gun, as far as the radar gun is concerned.

If you continue to refuse to acknowledge this simple and fundamental fact, there’s no point in pretending you’re actually seeking any understanding. 

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are.  If it doesn't agree with experiment, it is wrong.

Here's how my post appears on the RDForum where I post as "Investigator":



If you click on the image you can see it full size.  My post suggests a way to end the argument.  The response from "Deacon" is a bit garbled, but it says:

There’s no argument. There is extremely well established true TJ theofh thousands of experiments and millions of radar units produced, and then there’s your failure of understanding.

Stupid Ed lake sure reads a lot...but it dos not register in his mushy brain

 

It's a humorous book about physics, with lots of illustrations which mostly just turn problems into puns.



The cartoons weren't particularly "hilarious" or helpful, but the book was very thought provoking and worthwhile.   I've got 10 pages of notes from it.  Here's an example that fits right into what my most recent paper is about:

When Einstein introduced the idea that there is a maximum speed in the universe, it was not very intuitive. After all, why should there be a speed limit in the universe? Why shouldn’t you be able to hop on a rocket, blast off, press the accelerator pedal all the way down, and build up speed forever until you are zooming past galaxies left and right at ludicrous speed? If space is empty, what is actually preventing you from going as fast as you like?

How does it make sense for a particle to have zero mass? For example, the photon has exactly zero mass. If it has no mass, then it’s a particle of what? If you demand that mass is equal to stuff, then you have to conclude that a massless particle literally has nothing to it. Instead of thinking about a particle’s mass as how much stuff is crammed into a supertiny little ball, just think of it as a label that we apply to an infinitesimal quantum object.

Why does the universe respect cause and effect? We can’t expect that the universe was designed to be sensible to our particular minds. Why do we have this particular maximum speed and not another? The question of why the universe is causal is very difficult even to discuss, not to mention answer in a satisfactory way. Causality is built so deeply into our pattern of thinking that we can’t just step outside of it and consider a universe without it. We can’t use logic and reasoning to consider a universe without logic and where reasoning is impossible or inappropriate.

It’s possible that there are questions for which we will never find the answers, but there are also questions that have moved from philosophy to science. As we expand our ability to look far into the universe and deep within particles, we also expand the number of things we can test with science. This grows what we call the testable universe.

Similarly, the testable universe is the fraction of the universe that we can confirm and know about using science. It doesn’t include just the outward bounds of our vision (how far away into space we can see). It also includes the inward bounds (the smallest bits of space and matter that we can see). It includes the limits of how finely and how accurately we can discern things at the smallest and largest scales, and it includes the limits of our theories, mathematics, and capacity for understanding.

Look around you and you might be overwhelmed by the variety and complexity of our beautiful universe, but find the patterns and you can begin to make sense of it.

Ed Lake states that RELATIVE MOTION is a stupid idea

Ed Lake is very ignorant because he does not know that RELATIVE MOTION is a PRECEPT of Relativity [hence the name=Relativity]

Ed Lake is very stupid because he does not understand that he is completely dismissing RELATIVITY by claiming that one of it's fundamental precepts is stupid AND at the same time he states that he understands relativity

This time he's right.  I do think that "relative motion" is a "stupid idea" when talking about physics and objects. It implies that you cannot definitively say whether a speeding car hit a wall or whether a speeding wall hit the car.



Or, perhaps more absurdly, we cannot tell if we sent the Voyager 1 spacecraft off to explore beyond our solar system, or if Voyager 1 is still where it was at launch time when we somehow caused the solar system (and the entire universe) to move away from it.

The second and third comments are totally wrong, of course.  I merely claim that "relative motion" as defined in Einstein's theories is not between objects, it is the motion of an object relative to the speed of light, which is a "universal constant."  Unfortunately, as I stated in last Sunday's comment, "

Ed Lake is still a moron because he does not understand that Relativity only relates motion to 'observers'

Ed Lake is still a moron because he introduces a third frame [a tree-a planet-a star-a pulsar] and does not realize that he is contradicting the axioms of Relativity

Ed Lake is still a moron because he does not understand that Relativity completely dispenses with Causality