Ed Lake's web page

Comments for Sunday, October 18, 2020, thru Saturday, Oct. 24, 2020:

October 22, 2020 - Today was a drizzly and foggy day. Around 3:30 p.m. I wondered if the bad weather would affect the lines at city hall for early voting. I decided to check it out, just to see how long the line might be. City hall is only a few miles away.

When I got there, there was no line at all, and I found a parking spot within 20 feet of the door. No lines inside, either, except at one of the counters where there was a woman ahead of me, but only for about 20 seconds.

So, I voted. It's a secret ballot, so I can't say who I voted or, but I definitely enjoyed voting this time more than any other time, and I also enjoyed going in and coming out in less than 10 minutes. The parking lot had a lot more cars than when I arrived, and 4 or 5 voters passed me as I was walking to my car. So, I really picked the perfect time.

I had to stop off at the post office to mail a letter on the way home, but I got home a few minutes after 4. That was 35 minutes well spent.

Added Note: I neglected to mention that had received a letter which said I should go to iwillvote.com/WI to find where I can do early voting. That site informed me that early voting is done at city hall. On election day my voting place will be a nearby church where I voted many times before.

October 21, 2020 - Ah! Yesterday, 19 more people read my new paper on "Relativity and Radar Guns." That brings the total to 23. That's a good number, considering how few people know about it and how few people in our world are interested in Relativity or radar guns. Maybe some "word of mouth" will raise the number in the next few days. The 4 reads on the first day may have been due to when the paper was put on-line. According to the email I received from vixra.org, it was put on-line at 7:54 p.m. on the 18th. So the first 4 reads could have been between that time and midnight, or between that time and some time the next morning, when I began telling people it was on-line. Then the next 23 reads were during the following 24 hours. There doesn't seem to be any way to know for certain exactly what time frame is included in an update of the number.

Meanwhile, the troll who posts messages in my web site log file posted 5 more personal attack messages yesterday via a web site in Riga, Latvia. One of the messages makes it clear that he reads this web site. The message said,

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

In reality, of course, I not only read (mostly just during breakfast and lunch), I also listen to audio books. And around 7:30 yesterday evening I finished listening to another audio book I obtained from my local library. It was the 7-hour 20 minute unabridged version of "The Pursuit," another Fox & O'Hare novel by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg.

I read it because when I finished book #4 in the series on Sunday, it ended with a "cliffhanger," suggesting that con man Nick Fox may have been killed. While that seemed highly unlikely, since there are seven books in the Fox & O'Hare series, three more after that one, I didn't have anything better to do, so I listened to book #5 on Monday and Tuesday evening. Nick Fox was merely kidnapped, not killed. Fox was kidnapped by Dragan Kovic, an ex–Serbian military officer who is plotting to unleash an epidemic of smallpox on Los Angeles. Kovic thinks that Fox is a bad guy who can help in the plot. But Fox is a good guy who has FBI agent Kate O'Hare as a buddy and lover, and together Fox and O'Hare have to thwart the bad guy's plans.

It was an enjoyable book, but listening to novels being read to me is difficult to do when I have so many other things on my mind. I think I'm going to stick with non-fiction books for awhile. With non-fiction, you don't usually have to remember who all the characters are and who is a bad guy and who is a good guy. I'm also going to burn 9 CDs later today, making another non-fiction audio book available to listen to when I'm driving my car. There are only 2 CDs left in the 12-CD book I'm currently listening to.

October 20, 2020 - Wow! Yesterday, I got a whopping 4 reads for my new paper. And that is from a world with a mere 7.8 billion people! And the only comments I got on the sci.physics.relativity forum and the RDForum are incoherent rambling explanations about how motion is measured relative to objects, not to the speed of light. It makes all the time and effort I put into the paper totally worthwhile - or maybe I should wait to see if the pattern holds for today, tomorrow and the next day.

And, of course, I got an idea for a new paper. Basically, the new paper would just compare textbooks' and science books' explanations about Relativity. I've only been quoting textbooks which have incorrect versions of Einstein's Second Postulate. I know there are textbooks which have the correct version, but I don't know how many there are. If I can gather up the ambition, I may try to find out. It would probably mean going through about 500 books.

Meanwhile, during lunch yesterday, I finished reading another library book in my Kindle. The book was "We Have No Idea; A Guide to the Unknown Universe" by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson:

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

We Have No Idea - illustration

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?

The answer, of course, is "We Have No Idea." But we know that having a speed limit helps to make things make sense. Another quote from the book:

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.

And here's another quote that shows that what that troll put into my log file about "Relativity completely dispenses with Causality" is nonsense:

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.

Here's another interesting thought:

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.

And:

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.

And one more final quote from the book:

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.

Yes, and when you do, you will also make enemies of countless people who do not put the pieces together the same way you do.

October 19, 2020 - Yesterday afternoon I decided that my new science paper "Relativity and Radar Guns" was ready for release onto the Internet, so I submitted it to vixra.org. This morning I was notified that the paper is on-line at this address: https://vixra.org/pdf/2010.0141v1.pdf

I'm not sure exactly when the paper appeared on vixra.org, but it already has one rambling criticism from "Mikko," a troll who writes bad reviews for all of my papers. There doesn't seem any point to responding to his latest criticism, so I'm just ignoring it.

As soon as I saw it was available on vixra.org, I started a new thread about it on the sci.physics.relativity UseNet forum where I assume everyone will hate it and criticize it, or just ignore it. I also mentioned it on the RDForum, thanking everyone there for helping me with it. Their "help" may have been unintentional, but it was still extremely helpful.

And I keep thinking it may be my final paper. If I write anything further, it would be to put all my papers about Relativity into book form. But, tomorrow I may have an idea for another paper. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, last night I finished listening to another audio book I got from my local library. The book was "The Scam," another Fox & O'Hare novel by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg. It was just 6 hours and 55 minutes long.

There are seven books in the series, and "The Scam" is #4. The series features a con man named Nicolas Fox who is forced to work undercover with a top FBI agent Kate O'Hare to expose an criminal scheme of some kind. In "The Scam," they work together to bust up an international money laundering operation involving a casino in Las Vegas and another in Macao. I was very surprised that "The Scam" ends with a true "cliffhanger." The other books may also have ended with some kind of event that will cause you to want to read the next book in the series, but this one ends with Nick Fox appearing to have been killed. So, it looks like I'm going to start listening to "The Pursuit," #5 in the series. I already have it in my MP3 player.

It's difficult to write a review, other than to say that it is another Janet Evanovich novel, and she is a writer who puts a lot of humor into her well-written books. I've lost count of how many of her books I've read. Most of them feature Stephanie Plum, a bounty hunter.

My mind kept drifting into science arguments while I was listening to "The Scam," and I'm hoping that won't happen when I listen to "The Pursuit."

October 18, 2020 - The troll who has been putting messages in my web site log file posted three more messages on Friday, this time via a web site in Roubaix, France. Here are the three messages stripped of all the extra log file coding:

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.

wall hits 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, "mathematicians cannot comprehend measuring a speed against another speed. They can only measure speeds relative to some object."

And yet there can be no doubt that radar guns measure traffic speeds relative to the speed of light.

This morning I found three more messages in my log file:

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

Relativity completely dispenses with causality??? So, there is no such thing as "cause and effect"? And what does he mean by "Relativity only relates motion to observers"? And what is a "third frame"?

There are probably a lot of clues in those messages as to who the troll is, but the clues just seem to indicate that it probably isn't who I thought it was. I recall arguing with people on the sci.physics.relativity UseNet forum who did not believe in "cause and effect," but that was a long time ago, and I don't recall how they identified themselves.

I think I need to go back to the practice of not mentioning his insulting messages when I write comments on this web site. It could be some troll who simply read some of my papers and is putting comments on my web site log because he knows there is no way I can block or stop such messages. And how can anyone who does that kind of thing expect to be taken seriously? He's making it absolutely clear that he is an obnoxious troll and he clearly enjoys being one.

Meanwhile, I think I'm just about finished with the latest science paper I've been working on, a paper which describes in great detail how radar guns work and how they measure the speed of an object relative to the speed of light. The paper is currently titled "Relativity and Radar Guns," which seems a better title than the one I was using until yesterday, "The Physics of Radar Guns." In some ways, it is also like a new version of my paper "Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories" or my most recent paper "Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics Experiments." The new paper just explains things more clearly and more undeniably than those previous papers. It even proposes a new invention which I'd like to get a patent for, but it costs thousands of dollars in legal fees to get a patent, and it would probably be a good idea to build the device first to make certain it works. That is what I did with the only patent I ever filed. I'd have no way to do that with the device I describe in my new paper.

Hopefully, I will have the new paper on-line within the next few days, maybe even by tomorrow morning.

Comments for Sunday, October 11, 2020, thru Saturday, Oct. 17, 2020:

October 17, 2020 - Hmm. In a world that seems to be falling apart, I'm spending most of my time trying to figure how how the universe works, particularly light and time. I suppose it is better than sitting around and worrying about Covid-19, or worrying about whether Trump will refuse to leave office if he's defeated in the upcoming election, or, worst of all, worrying about what could happen if Trump is somehow re-elected to a second term.

And when I'm not trying to figure out how the universe works, I'm reading books on my Kindle, and listening to audio books. Yesterday evening, I finished another audio book. It was the 12-hour, 2-minute unabridged version of "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883" by Simon Winchester.

It's a history book, a travel book, and also somewhat of a science book. It was a very interesting read. Winchester writes very vividly and eloquently. The first part of the book is about the history of the region where Krakatoa is located, i.e., the area around Java, Sumatra, and Indonesia. Krakatoa volcano was located in the middle of the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, and it seems to have been erupting every so often throughout recorded history. Krakatoa blew itself apart in 1883, but a new volcano immediately began forming in the same location. It's called Anak Krakatoa, "the son of Krakatoa." Here's a picture from 2018:

The book is mainly about the eruption in August 1883, which was the loudest and biggest explosion in recorded history. The sound waves went around the world at least 5 times, and they were heard thousands of miles away. Debris was hurled 24 miles into the air. But most of the damage done was from the resulting tidal wave which was over a hundred feet high, killed tens of thousands of people, destroyed countless ships and traveled for thousands of miles.

The book then gets into how the explosion changed the history of the region. It was then known as the Dutch East Indies, and it was ruled from the Netherlands. But the Muslims in the area saw the 1883 explosion as a sign from God and started to revolt against the Dutch, eventually gaining independence in 1945.

The book ends with a travel story as the author visits Anak Krakatoa during a quiet period a few years ago, and he climbs to the rim of the current crater. It's not just a volcano, it's also a lush tropical island once again, with trees, grass, brush, birds, animals and insects. There a lot of speculation on where all the living things came from. Did seeds somehow survive the 1883 explosion? Did insects come via winds? Not much is known for certain. Every time someone tries to do an exhaustive study of the island, the volcano erupts again. Interesting stuff.

October 14, 2020 - The troll who has been putting messages in my web site log file posted four more messages on Monday. I know that mentioning them here just encourages him to post more, but the four he posted Monday are interesting. He posted them via a web site in Hassfurt, Germany. Here are the four messages stripped of all the extra log file coding:

Ed lake is still stupid because he does not understand that Time Dilation has been confirmed MATHEMATICALLY in a mathematical model called Relativity

Ed lake is still stupid because does not understand that Time Dialtion [sic] is a mathematical construct

Ed lake is still stupid because does not understand that Time is a mental construct and it does not exist in the Universe

Ed lake is still stupid because he does not understand that if Time Dilation has been confirmed so has Length Contraction been confirmed

So, the troll doesn't like what I've written about time dilation? I've never discussed time dilation on the RDForum, I can't even recall the last time I mentioned it on this web site, and I definitely haven't discussed it on the sci.physics.relativity forum in a long, long time. Back in September, however, I received an email from a psychology professor at a university in a Middle-East country who asked my opinion of a paper he had written on the subject of the Twin Paradox, which, of course, involves time dilation. In the paper he had developed his own Theory of Relativity that allowed the twins to age equally.

His theory is totally based upon mathematics, of course. He evidently also has a degree in economics. I read some of his paper and responded, telling him that I was the wrong person to ask about his paper, since my views directly conflict with his. He responded:

Dear Ed,
I agree with you. You are not the right person. You repeat what you have been told, which is nothing but a fairy tail.
Just look at my page in the [xxxxxx] and see what I was able to achieve with my wrong theory.

I xxxx'ed out the name of the pay-to-print journal where his papers appear on-line. Could he be the same person who is posting messages to my log file? The evidence definitely seems to point to him, even though he's a professor of psychology. What he is arguing in his messages in my log file is the same thing he argued in his paper. He's arguing the same fundamental misunderstanding of Relativity that countless other mathematicians argue:

the twin paradox is unsolvable within the framework of special relativity, unless we make the assumption of a preferred frame of reference, which stands in diametrical opposition to the mere principle of relativity.

What he doesn't understand is: There is a "preferred frame of reference" in Special Relativity. It is the speed of light. All motion in the universe can be measured relative to the maximum possible speed in the universe, the speed of light. That is why Einstein stated that it makes the aether "superfluous." The aether was a "preferred frame of reference" before experiments showed it didn't exist.

The problem is that Einstein didn't spell things out in simple terms. You have to follow the logic of his Postulates and how they seem to conflict, but do not really conflict if you understand his theory that time slows down for an object that is moving, and the faster that object moves, the slower time passes for that object. Against what do you measure those different speeds? Against the speed of light, of course.

I just looked up the "ether" on the Encyclopedia Britannica web site and it says this:

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.

So, I am definitely not the only person in the world who sees that the speed of light is a "universal constant" against which all other speeds can be measured.

But mathematicians cannot comprehend measuring a speed against another speed. They can only measure speeds relative to some object.

That is what the arguments on sci.physics.relativity and RDForum are mostly about. It seems to be the fundamental disagreement between Relativists and Quantum Mechanics mathematicians. And the disagreement has been raging for 115 years! But it is never argued that way. Instead the argument is mostly about gravity and General Relativity. It's like everyone is too busy arguing about big things to spend time resolving little things, even if those "little things" might have the key to resolving some of those BIG arguments.

October 12, 2020 - Last Friday I saw comedian Jerry Seinfeld on some TV talk show promoting his new book, "Is This Anything?" The book looked interesting, so I checked my local library to see if they had a copy. They didn't. But they had an audio book from 2017 titled "Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything" by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. It also looked interesting, so, even though I had about two dozen other interesting books waiting to be heard in my MP3 player, I borrowed it.

The audio book is 9 hours and 59 minutes long. I finished listening to it last night at about 10:40 p.m. I was a fan of the TV show "Seinfeld" from when it first aired in 1989 through its final season in 1998, and I have the entire series on DVDs.

Seinfeld on DVD

It was a very interesting, funny and enjoyable audio book. It definitely made me want to view the entire series again. Did the final episode end with Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer in jail? I don't remember that at all, probably because the last time I watched that episode from a DVD was in August 2008. According to the book, reviewers also considered it to be their worst episode. Nevertheless, I'm going to have to find the time to watch the entire series again.

Meanwhile, there were three more personal attacks on my web site log when I checked it this morning. The attacks make it pretty clear that I was wrong in believing the previous attack came from someone on the RDForum. Everything now indicates that they are from the same idiot who posted attacks to my web site logs in the past, some mathematician from the sci.physics.relativity UseNet forum. It's clear he's a mathematician because of what he posted yesterday. There were ten copies of three different messages in my log file. Here are the three messages:

51.75.64.23 - - [11/Oct/2020:10:12:39 -0500] "GET /Imbecile_Ed_
Lake_does_not_understand_that_if_Spacetime_is_a_mathematical_
construct..._so_is_Time_Dilation HTTP/1.1" 404 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0"

51.75.64.23 - - [11/Oct/2020:10:13:08 -0500] "GET /Idiot_Ed_lake_
does_not_understand_that_Time_Dialtion_is_to_Relativity_what_
Epicycles_are_to_Geocentrism_[mathematical_constructs] HTTP/1.1 404 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0"

51.75.64.23 - - [11/Oct/2020:10:13:51 -0500] "GET /Moron_Ed_Lake_does_not_understand_that_when_he_
advocates_Relativity_he_is_advocating_a_mathematical_
model..._yet_he_calls_mathematicians_idiots HTTP/1.1" 404
- "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0"

What this mathematician doesn't seem to understand is that even though Time Dilation was just a "mathematical construct" when Einstein first proposed it in 1905, it has since been confirmed by many experiments. That means Time Dilation is no longer just a "mathematical construct" like Spacetime, it is something many different experiments have shown to be real, even though mathematicians will endlessly argue that it is not.

Also, I don't think I've ever called all mathematicians idiots. I've only called the ones "idiots" who call me names and attack me when I challenge their beliefs, like the idiot who posted those 30 attacks. I can't just call him a "mathematician," since that would imply an attack on all mathematicians. There are mathematicians who know that their math is just a pattern they have created. It is not a "discovery." A mathematical explanation without experimentation is just an interesting pattern.

I made a mistake in writing about the guy's previous post in my Oct. 10 comment. That just encouraged him to post more personal attacks. So, I won't be writing about any more of them ... unless he posts something truly interesting.

October 11, 2020 - The arguments and discussions I've been having on the RDForum have been very productive and very interesting. Yesterday I actually got a mathematician/engineer to discuss something instead of just declaring his beliefs. It turned out we were saying the same thing, we just computed it in a different way. I produced a spreadsheet showing how I think radar guns measure target speeds. The spreadsheet looked like this:

calculating mph from the beat
frequency

And I explained it this way:

1. The gun has the Hertz frequency and the speed of light programmed into it.
2. It develops the beat frequency by comparing the transmitted Hertz frequency to the returned Hertz frequency.
3. It then develops a percentage by finding the percentage that beat frequency is of the transmitted Hertz frequency times 2.
4. It then uses that percentage against the speed of light to find the speed of the target.
5. It then somehow rounds off the speed of the target to the nearest whole number and displays it.

A radar engineer on the RDForum figured things a different way. He wrote:

1. The gun develops the beat frequency by comparing the transmitted Hertz frequency to the returned Hertz frequency.

2. It divides the beat frequency of the target return by the K factor [from the table below:]

@35.5 GHz 1 MPH = K of ~105.873 Hz
@34.7 GHz 1 MPH = K of ~103.487 Hz
@33.8 GHz 1 MPH = K of ~100.803 Hz
@24.15 GHz 1 MPH = K of ~72.023 Hz
@24.125 GHz 1 MPH = K of ~71.949 Hz
@10.525 GHz 1 MPH = K of ~31.389 Hz

3. It then somehow rounds off the speed of the target to the nearest whole number (actually nearest lower whole number) and displays it.

A radar gun is operating on a designed center frequency of 35.5 GHz and receives back target Doppler of 6000 Hz.

6000/105.873= ~56.67 MPH

Round down to 56 MPH and display.

What he produced was just another mathematical way of doing the same thing I had done. He developed the "K factor" by utilizing the Hertz frequency and the speed of light. So we confirmed what I'd quoted from a book I recently read:

"Mathematics is simply the catalogue of all possible patterns."

He used one pattern and I used another pattern to get the same answer. But, more importantly both of us used mathematical "patterns" which measure speeds relative to the speed of light. That confirmed what I had written to start the debate: Radar guns measure speeds relative to the speed of light, they do not measure speeds relative to some object.

So, we have a solid basis for our next discussion. Does he agree to what I highlighted in red above?

In another discussion on Friday, I suddenly realized there was a different way to argue about waves versus photons. Instead of arguing about radar guns, we could argue about telescopes. Do telescopes receive photons or waves? How would a telescope work if it received waves?

Photons vs waves in telescopes

The problem however, is that when you look at descriptions of how telescopes work, they don't discuss photons or waves. They generally discuss "light rays."

But maybe a discussion about telescopes will lead to another point of agreement. It's certainly worth a try.

Comments for Sunday, October 4, 2020, thru Saturday, Oct. 10, 2020:

October 10, 2020 - Hmm. Normally I just ignore the trolls who try to attack and insult me by causing messages to appear on my web site logs, but the message that appeared on yesterday's log is kind of interesting.

I check the logs every day to see who has been visiting this web site, and who has been attempting to hack into it. There's a line on the log for every attempt to read any image or file on the site or to post to the site. Yesterday, there was an attack from someone at IP address 51.81.84.168, which traces back to Warrenton, Virginia. That's not an address the troll on sci.physics.relativity ever used to attack me. And I hadn't posted to that forum in a long time, so why would the troll suddenly find a need to attack me?

The troll first accessed my very first archive file, which is for January of 2015. He may have done that just to verify that I wasn't blocking accesses from the web address he was about to use to attack me, but he may also have needed a good web site html address to modify to contain his personal attacks. Either way, that access was followed by 20 messages which looked like this in the log file:

51.81.84.168 - - [09/Oct/2020:12:59:52 -0500] "GET /All_your_
mentally_deficient_RAMBLINGS_will_be_lost_FOREVER___
the_day_you_die_and_payments_to_your_webhost_provider_
stop_and_your_domain_expires____THE_BIGGEST_LOSS_
OF_HUMANITY_[sarcasm HTTP/1.1" 404 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0
(Windows NT 10.0; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0"

In reality, my scientific papers are all on vixra.org and academia.edu and will probably remain there for many years after I shut down this web site. Plus, my writings on this web site are archived on web archives. The Wayback Machine archive saved copies of this web site three times this year, once in January and twice in August. And they've been saving copies since I bought the domain name ed-lake.com. Plus, other archive sites have been doing the same thing, including Google and Amazon. So, there's a good possibility that if someone wants to read my "RAMBLINGS" a hundred (or a thousand) years from now, there will be some way to do it.

After I completed my morning routine and finished with the log file, I checked to see what was happening on the RDForum. On that forum someone had posted this:

You need radar guns to be based on and measure c as part of their operations to support your paper here:
https://vixra.org/pdf/2009.0124v1.pdf

And your blog post here: My Thoughts on the Changing World.

So, he'd just been prowling my web sites. It seems to be about 95% certain that the person who put the attack on my web site blog was someone from the RDForum.

October 8, 2020 - Groan! There just aren't enough hours in a day! Yesterday morning I had my annual physical, which took nearly all morning. I left for the doctor's office at 8:30 a.m. and returned home at 11 a.m. Then I had to cram my normal day into the hours that were left. The physical went fine. No problems. I even managed to relax while waiting to see the doctor, so when the nurse took my blood pressure, it was 120 over 60, which is in the "ideal" range.

The discussions I had later on the RDForum where very interesting and helpful. It's all very different from the arguments on the sci.physics.relativity UseNet forum where everyone seems to have their own view of science and they're ready to defend it to the death, so there is no possibility for any "meeting of the minds." On the RDForum, where the members (except me) are people who own radar detectors and want to learn more about avoiding and fighting traffic tickets, there are very few mathematicians who can only discuss things in mathematical terms. But there are a few. You just have to learn how to avoid them.

Last night I listened to an audio book instead of watching TV and the Vice Presidential Debate. I recorded the debate, of course. I may watch some of it tonight. At around 10 p.m. last night I finished listening to the audio book version of "A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir" by Colin Jost, who I only know from his playing a newscaster on the TV comedy show Saturday Night Live.

It's a 7 hour, 43 minute audio book that I borrowed from my library 3 days ago, on October 5. I listened to half of it on Tuesday night and the last half last night. I was expected a funnier book. While there are lots of funny parts in the book, it is also very grim at times, and at other times it is also "gross." (If I occasionally crapped by pants as an adult, I'm not sure that I'd write details about it in a memoir.)

Jost grew up on Staten Island, where his father was a school teacher and his mother was a fire department doctor. There's an entire chapter in the book about how his mother was almost killed twice on 9-11 as she tended to victims while the first tower fell and then again when the second tower fell.

Jost is a Harvard graduate and he worked on the Harvard Lampoon while there. After graduating, he worked at Merrill Lynch for awhile, then for a small newspaper. Then he became a stand-up comic, and before long he worked as a head writer on Saturday Night Live, a.k.a "SNL". Then he became a regular as part of SNL's fake news show "Weekend Update" with Colin Jost and Michael Che. He's been working at SNL for over 15 years, but the book ends with him saying he's about to quit and settle down with his wife-to-be, movie star Scarlett Johansson and just write. Johansson is only mentioned a few times in the book, mostly about the time when she and Jost were wandering around Paris and they were pelted with tomatoes thrown by some teenagers.

It's a weird book, so it's difficult to recommend. But if you are a fan of Jost on SNL's "Weekend Update," then I can definitely recommend the book to learn more about him and his life. He's only 38, but he's definitely been places and done things.

October 6, 2020 - It used to annoy the hell out of me that Trump would always hold his Corona virus updates at the same time as the evening news shows were on. So, instead of watching the world news, everyone would end up watching Trump rambling and blathering for an hour or more. After a couple minutes, I usually just switched to watching something else.

The networks finally caught onto Trump's game, and they would cut away from his ramblings after about ten minutes and go back to presenting the world news. Soon after, Trump stopped doing daily briefings.

Does anyone think it is just a coincidence that Trump went to the hospital while the evening new shows were on? Or that he left the hospital while the evening news shows were on?

The only question is: Does he do that to mess with what he considers to be "fake news" shows, or does he do it because he knows that is when he'll get the best TV coverage? Either way, he is just demonstrating his creepy narcissism.

Last night I finally watched some of the Trump-Biden debate. I decided that I'd never be able to sit through it in its entirety, so I burned it onto a DVD. When watching it from my DVR I had the ability to fast-forward past boring stuff, of course, but when it's on a DVD you can instantly jump forward by 10 minutes, watch a sample, and if it's unbearable, you can instantly jump forward another 10 minutes. I did that and watched maybe a half hour of Trump's rants and ravings. If I can stomach it, I can do more of it sometime in the future. And I erased it from my DVR so that it isn't always there as a reminder when I look to see what I've got waiting to watch on my DVR. (The only thing I watch while it is being broadcast is the evening news.)

Meanwhile, I'm once again feeling a little overwhelmed. I'm working on a paper about the physics of radar guns, while at the same time my library seems to be buying more books and providing them to me faster. Books that were said to have a 6-month wait when I first reserved them turn out to be available in just a few weeks. I borrowed two books yesterday that I thought I'd have to wait another 5 months or more for, one audio book and one Kindle book. I started on the audio book right away, but the Kindle book will have to wait.

And, for some reason, the people on the RDForum suddenly restarted arguments with me. They are interesting arguments, since explaining things to people causes me to think about those things in different ways, plus the topics are the same topics I'm covering in my new paper. Also, when you are arguing with someone who refuses to understand, you end up explaining the same things in a dozen different ways, while the other person just argues the same things over and over. It can be very interesting, but it can also get tedious very fast. One benefit is that the others on the forum seem to be catching on. They don't usually join in the arguments. No one wants to argue with someone who refuses to understand. But when they write something new you can see they are trying to understand something new.

October 4, 2020 - Yes, we are definitely living in interesting times. Watching the news about President Trump contracting Covid-19 and having to go to the hospital, and others around him also being tested positive, like Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway, Chris Christie, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, and my idiot Senator Ron Johnson, plus two other Republican senators, it's like watching some comedy show where the idiots all finally get their comeuppance. I wanted to create a cartoon about it, but the best I could come up with is the one below.

Better safe or sorry?

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

I wanted to create a cartoon where people wearing masks are carrying signs like the one on the left, but I couldn't think of what the people who refuse to wear masks would be doing while carrying signs with a slogan like the one on the right.

Making matters worse, the news broke on a Friday and my two favorite talk show hosts, Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah don't do shows on Friday nights. My third favorite, Jimmy Kimmel does do Friday night shows, and he only talked briefly about Trump contracting Covid-19. Maybe he didn't think it was very funny, either. It's more pathetic than funny when someone who has been ridiculing people for wearing masks contacts Covid-19 because he wasn't wearing a mask as often as he should have.

Will he lose some of his supporters because of this? Maybe, but I think most will just say, "That's just Trump being Trump. It doesn't mean anything. I still support him. It's better than having a politician in the White House."

Comments for Thursday, October 1, 2020, thru Saturday, Oct. 3, 2020:

October 2, 2020 - Hmm. The news this morning is all about how President Trump and his wife Melania have contracted the Covid-19 virus. And his senior aide, Hope Hicks, has been infected, too. The only question seems to be, given how careless Trump has been, why did it take so long for him to get it?

What worries me most about Trump getting Covid-19 is that if he gets really sick, Mike Pence will have to take over some or all of the President's duties. And that situation was confronted a couple years ago when there was a risk of Trump being removed from office by being impeached. That's when I created this banner:
Pence vs Trump

And what happens if Trump gets so sick he cannot continue his campaign for a second term? Does Pence automatically become the Republican candidate - maybe with Rush Limbaugh or Steve Bannon as Vice President?

I hope you get better soon, Mr. President!

October 1, 2020 - On Tuesday evening I really wanted to watch the Presidential Debate. I set my DVR to record it, and also I sat down to watch it. But as soon as Donald Trump started ranting I felt like I was watching a movie I didn't like and I was watching it for the hundredth time. I figured I'd wait until Wednesday evening and watch it from the DVR, allowing me to skip over things if it got too annoying and depressing. So, I turned it off and listened to an audio book instead. It was supposed to be a 90 minute debate, and at 9:30 I turned it on again to see what the news commentators had to say, but Trump was still talking, so I turned it off again and listened to more from the audio book.

Then after supper on Wednesday evening, I sat down to watch it on my DVR, but I just couldn't get myself to turn it on. I had watched what the evening news shows had to say about it, including all the clips, and from my DVR I watched what talk show hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert had to say about it, including all their clips, but I just couldn't watch the actual debate. So, I spent the whole evening listening to more from the audio book. At about 10:20 p.m., I finished listening to "A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906" by Simon Winchester.

It's a history book, of course, but it's also a travel book. It isn't just about the San Francisco earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906, it is also about a lot of other earthquakes the preceded it and followed it. And it's about Simon Winchester's travels to visit the locations of some of these events. I found it interesting that it was already a time when everyone owned a camera, so there are countless pictures of the San Francisco destruction on the web.

San Francisco earthquake of
1906

The picture above was almost certainly taken before the fires really started doing damage. All the buildings that are still standing in the photo probably ended up in ashes as fires raged through the city, doing far more damage than the quake.

San Francisco earthquake and
fire aftermath

The 1811 earthquake at New Madrid, Missouri, has always fascinated me, maybe because it wasn't just "an earthquake," it was a lot more than that. Winchester also writes briefly about that quake in the book. Here's a snippet:

Jared Brooks, of Louisville, Kentucky, counted no fewer than 1,874 separate earth-shaking episodes in and around New Madrid over the next few weeks. Shocks like the first enormous one of 16 December occurred two more times – once on 23 January and again on 7 February, this last being the mightiest of all. And then the world fell quiet again.

He also writes about the Alaska quake of 1964. That's one I remember, because I was in Japan at the time, and while quakes were common there, they didn't get anything like the Alaska quake while I was there. I recall staring out at the Pacific while waiting for news of an approaching tsunami, but it never came.

Alaska earthquake of 1964

Winchester's book was an interesting read. I enjoyed it, maybe just because it kept my mind off of the disaster that is known as the Donald Trump Presidency and the fact that there are tens of millions of Americans who are cheering the disaster and are ready to vote for four more years of it.

Comments for Sunday, September 27, 2020, thru Wed., Sept. 30, 2020:

September 29, 2020 - While eating lunch yesterday, I finished reading another library book on my Kindle. The book was "Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society," edited by Bill Bryson.

I'm a fan of Bill Bryson, and when I borrowed the book I probably just assumed it was written by Bryson. In reality, it is a collection of 21 separate articles by 21 different authors, only one of which was written by Bryson, the Introduction. Here's a quote from page 3 of the Introduction:

The Royal Society (it became royal with the granting of a charter by Charles II in 1662) invented scientific publishing and peer review. It made English the primary language of scientific discourse, in place of Latin. It systematised experimentation. It promoted – indeed, insisted upon – clarity of expression in place of high-flown rhetoric. It brought together the best thinking from all over the world. It created modern science.

Looking through my notes, I was somewhat surprised how many of the quotes from the book relate to mathematics. For example, here's a quote from page 69, which is part of an article by Margaret Wertheim:

In the fifth century BCE Pythagoras posited that the structure of the world was determined by mathematics: ‘All is number’, he famously declared.

and from that same page,

A small band of medieval thinkers took Pythagorean precepts and transformed them into a Christian context, giving rise to the then-novel idea that God had created the material world according to mathematical rules. Among God’s primary tools was Euclidean geometry and in 1267 the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon argued in a treatise to Pope Clement IV that artists ought to follow their Creator and construct images accordingly with geometric relationships. Bacon called the new style ‘geometric figuring’ and he proposed that the Church encourage painters to adopt it as a matter of principle.

I probably copied those quotes because they highlight that mathematics seems to have become a religion preached by a lot of today's physicists.

I have 21 pages of quotes from the book, and at least half of them are about mathematics and mathematicians. Here's another from page 95, which is part of an article by Neal Stephenson:

Even the hardest of hard sciences is replete with assumptions that may fairly be classified as metaphysical. Almost all mathematicians, for example, presume that they are discovering, rather than creating, mathematical truths.

I think he's saying that mathematicians presume that their math is gospel, but in reality it is just something they have computed that they believe is gospel. Some unknown factor could turn it into total nonsense.

Another quote from an article by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein:

A priori mathematics, according to Galileo, does not entirely obviate the need for observation (only the most extreme of rationalists, Spinoza and Leibniz, were to argue the expendability, at least in principle, of all empirical knowledge, claiming that all could be a priori deduced from first principles); but mathematics does allow us to deduce unobservable properties and thus to penetrate into the structure of nature.

Here's another quote from that same article:

Unlike Galileo or Descartes, Newton distinguishes between mathematical truth and physical truth (echoing the intuition in Boyle’s complaint against the rationalists). That the resistance of bodies is in the ratio of the velocity, ‘is more a mathematical hypothesis than a physical one’, he says in Principia II, 9, and makes similar statements in connection with his discussion of fluids (Principia, II, 62). A mathematical truth that has not been made manifest in experience has not advanced to a physical truth. And experience must be experimentally manipulated in order for the mathematical truth to be made manifest in it.

Another:

To paraphrase Immanuel Kant (who was three years old when Newton died in 1727): Experimentation without mathematical explanation is blind; mathematical explanation without experimentation is empty.

Those quotes basically agree with how I view math. Without experimentation the math cannot be accepted as gospel.

Here's another quote from an article by John D. Barrow:

This reflection on the symmetries behind the laws of Nature also tells us why mathematics is so useful in practice. Mathematics is simply the catalogue of all possible patterns. Some of those patterns are especially attractive and are studied or used for decoration, others are patterns in time or in chains of logic. Some are described solely in abstract terms, while others can be drawn on paper or carved in stone. Viewed in this way, it is inevitable that the world is described by mathematics. We could not exist in a universe in which there was neither pattern nor order.

In other words, math is essential to science and physics because experience tells us that the universe works according to mathematical rules. The problem is: You can't just perform computations and assume the result is gospel. It may be that your computations leave out some as yet undiscovered factor which changes everything. It is by experiment that we find the unknown factor, and it is by math that the unknown factor is clarified.

It was a worthwhile book, even if all it did was confirm things I already knew.

September 28, 2020 - I just submitted a new version of my paper "Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics Experiments" to vixra.org. Version #2 is now available at this link: https://vixra.org/pdf/2009.0124v2.pdf It only contains one major change. In the second paragraph I now provide a definition for "Identical." It says, "(“Identical” in this context means that the two radar gun must transmit at frequencies that are the same or that have no more than a 500 Hertz difference.)"

Of course, it contains a typo. I typed "gun" when I meant to type "guns." But I'm not going to create a version #3 to correct that minor error.

As a result of the arguments I've been involved in for the past week, I have a kazillion other things I wanted to put into the paper, but I think I'll just put them into a new paper which I have tentatively titled "The Physics of Radar Guns." I'm going to take my time writing it, and it will include a LOT of illustrations, so I probably won't be finished with it until weeks from now - maybe months, since it is going to be a very long paper.

Meanwhile, as of this moment, there have been only 58 unique views of my latest paper. I thought it would knock everyone's socks off, but evidently they just don't agree with it, so they mostly just ignore it and do not tell others about it. Without "word of mouth," it will just be seen by people who happen to stumble upon it for one reason or another. I've "advertised" it by talking about it on a couple forums, but that is why I got the 58 views. Otherwise it would probably be just 3 or 4.

I keep a spreadsheet of the number of views for my various papers. The most popular is definitely "Simplifying Einstein's Thought Experiments," which has had 1,087 views in the past 2 years and 3 months. It had 2 views yesterday, while my latest paper had none. Maybe I should have titled my latest paper "Simplifying Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics." And maybe my next paper should be "Simplifying the Physics of Radar Guns." Hmm. That's an idea.

Plus, of course, people have lots of other things to think about these days. I keep wanting to write something about Trump, about Covid-19 or about the upcoming election, but what could I say that hasn't been said by countless others? Is this country so screwed up that its people would elect Trump for another term? The polls say no, but the polls also say that Trump is leading in states like Florida and North Carolina. Groan. How can that be?

September 27, 2020 - I've been doing a lot of research, and yesterday I looked at the HowStuffWorks web site to see if they explain how radar guns work. They have a section on How Radar Works. It was very disappointing because it begins by explaining how sound waves work when they produce echoes. Then it implies that radar waves work the same way - with waves. At the very bottom of the page there is this information about police radars:

When a police radar shoots out a pulse, it echoes off of all sorts of objects -- fences, bridges, mountains, buildings. The easiest way to remove all of this sort of clutter is to filter it out by recognizing that it is not Doppler-shifted. A police radar looks only for Doppler-shifted signals, and because the radar beam is tightly focused it hits only one car.

The first two sentences are basically true for a stationary gun, but they are wrong when the radar gun is moving. The last sentence is false, since even at 100 feet the beam of the radar is going to be much larger than any car, so it is going to hit all sorts of things. Their page on Radar Detectors has a better description, but it still uses waves and not photons.

Meanwhile, the discussions I've been having on vixra.org have been very productive. Explaining things to other people and answering their questions helps me to understand things better. Now I understand what the college professors were probably talking about when they argued that no two radar guns transmit at the same frequency.

If the manual says that a hand-held radar gun transmits at 35 Gigahertz (GHz), that means the photons it emits oscillate at 35 billion times per second, or at 35,000,000,000 Hertz (Hz). For those who believe that radar guns emit waves, that means the gun emits 35 billion waves per second, and it gets back even more than that. Yet, this is how those waves are visualized on one college web site:

Beat Frequency at 70 mph

Does it look to anyone like the radar transmitter in the police patrol car is emitting 35,000,000,000 waves per second?

If photons oscillating 35 million times per second hit a car that is approaching at 70 mph, according to that college web site those photons hit the car is if they were oscillating at 35,000,007,291.6666 times per second. (It's like a motor boat heading into waves and hitting the waves faster than the waves are actually traveling.) Rounding off the reflected frequency, atoms in the car then emit NEW photons that oscillate 35,000,007,292 times per second. The radar gun receives those returning photons and compares their oscillation speed to the photons it emitted, and gets a "beat frequency" of 7,292 Hz. That oscillation speed converts to 70 mph.

The question then is: Are two identical radar guns so precise that they do not even vary by a few Hertz? The fact that they will both show the same speed if pointed at the same tuning fork doesn't necessarily mean "Yes," because if Gun-A transmits at 35,000,240,000 Hz, the photons that return from the 70 mph target fork will oscillate at 35,000,247,292 Hz, and the gun will still measure the difference as 7,292 Hz and 70 mph as the speed for the target tuning fork.

Of course, it doesn't help matters that two mathematicians cannot even seem to get the same answers. A different web shows this for the "Doppler Shift" as opposed to the "Beat Frequency":

So, is the Doppler Shift/Beat Frequency 7,307 Hz or 7,292 Hz? Two different mathematicians probably rounded off numbers in different ways to get their different answers.

Either way, the problem that causes for my proposed experiment is that if you point a gun that transmits at 35,000,240,000 Hz at a gun that transmits at 35,000,000,000 Hz, the receiver gun will measure a speed of 2,369 mph. And typical radar guns do not show any speeds greater than 200 mph (or lower than 10 mph). I think that may be what the college professor was trying to tell me, but he explained it in terms of waves and phases, which meant nothing to me.

Groan! It looks like I'm going to have to create a version #2 of my paper "Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics Experiments" to show the experiment as purely hypothetical, unless you have two truly identical radar guns that emit photons that oscillate at the same exact frequency, or a frequency which is virtually the same but varies by only a few Hertz. The current paper says the radar guns must be "identical," and I even underlined the word, but that could be interpreted to merely mean the same make and model.

I was preparing to buy two Bushnell Velocity radar guns from Walmart for $109 apiece, plus $5.90 tax. Now that seems like a bad idea. If the guns are pointed at each other in a truck and give no reading, there is no way to know why that happened. It almost certainly happened because the two guns transmitted at very different frequencies, but everyone will claim it is because the experiment is invalid. To verify what I had deduced for myself, I asked the people on the RDForum, and I was told:

No radar guns are that exactly tuned, nor are they that stable in frequency. Even if you aligned two guns yourself so they were exactly on the same frequencies, the next time you pulled the triggers they would be off frequency from each other. For a K band gun a speed of 200 MPH is only a Doppler shift of 14.4 kHz. My K band guns all drift much more than that in just a few seconds of operation.

So, I need to modify my paper to clarify things.

The experiment in my paper is still valid as an hypothesis. It may just require someone with the ability to fine tune emission frequencies to perform the test. After all, when Einstein proposed his Theory of Special Relativity in 1905, there was no way to test for time dilation. That had to wait for the invention of atomic clocks. It seems what is needed to perform my proposed experiment are two radar guns that are just as precise as atomic clocks. That's all. :-(

Comments for Sunday, September 20, 2020, thru Sat., Sept. 26, 2020:

September 24, 2020 - The debate on vixra.org is still very interesting to me. The debate shows me how mathematicians think, and that enables me to develop new and better ways to argue with them. I see now that I probably should have used illustrations like the two shown below in my new paper about Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics Experiments.

Radar gun experiment frames

The illustrations show two different "reference frames," an inside and an outside reference frame. According to mathematicians, the two people in Figure 1 are stationary - even though the truck is moving at 30 mph. They are in a "reference frame" where no point moves relative to any other point. Therefore, everything is stationary, and it is not possible to detect any motion, even though the two people undoubtedly know they are moving. To mathematicians, if you cannot detect motion relative to some object, there is no motion, and it evidently doesn't matter what you happen to "know" to be "real."

That, of course, is ridiculous. According to Einstein, you should measure motion relative to the speed of light, which is what a radar gun does, and then you can detect the motion of the truck. You can understand reality and Special Relativity.

Figure 2 shows the operator of Gun-B standing on the ground as the truck passes by at 30 mph. In Figure 1, the photons emitted by Gun-A travel at the speed of light, c, and hit Gun-B at c-v because Gun-B is moving away from the oncoming photons, and thus v is measured as the speed of the truck. In Figure 2, the photons emitted by Gun-A travel at c and hit Gun-B at c because Gun-B is not moving relative to the local speed of light. However, Gun-B will measure the speed of the truck as 30 mph because other photons it emitted will hit the outside of the truck at c+v where v is the speed of the outside of the truck. Evidently, according to mathematicians, that should be impossible because it means the inside of the truck is stationary and the outside is moving.

Unfortunately, what the arguments are showing is that no logic or common sense is going to cause a mathematician to change his mind about what his math shows.

September 23, 2020 - Hmm. I had expected to create a discussion on the sci.physics.relativity discussion forum about my latest paper, but as of this morning there are still just the two comments I mentioned in my Monday comment. I'm not sure if they are just ignoring me or if most of the "regulars" with whom I had previous discussions have moved elsewhere.

And it seems the moderator on the Physics and Astrophysics Facebook group didn't think my post was worth allowing on that group.

So, instead of having discussions in the "normal" places, the key discussion seems to be on vixra.org. Someone named Miguel Rios joined the discussion that was previously only between "Mikko" and me. And as of this moment, there have been 49 comments posted there, some of them fairly interesting.

What I like most about such discussions is that answering questions causes me to think about things in different ways. And the more I think about the experiment in my latest paper, Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics Experiments, the more I think I might be able to do a two-radar-gun experiment myself for less than $300. It might be worth spending $300 just to find out.

Discussions I had with that college professor last week made me concerned that if the two radar guns were too close together when pointed at each other, they might damage some sensitive internal component. But yesterday I watched a YouTube video where a Bushnell Velocity radar gun is pointed at the tiny speaker on the side of a laptop computer while music is being played. The title of the video is "Can Speed Radar Measure Music?"

The gun is so close to the speaker that it should be almost the same as if the gun was pointed directly at another radar gun just an inch away. Virtually all of the emitted photons will be returning to the radar gun's receiver. Of course, when one gun is pointed at another, you get at least twice that amount, but it still seems that the gun will handle it. Plus, I was also reminded yesterday that the intensity of the beam is adjustable on police radar guns. When you measure the speed of the tines on a tuning fork, the gun is typically put in "test" mode. But, it appears from what is said at the 2 minute mark in another video, that "test mode" is just "maximum intensity," which means that the gun is emitting more photons than it does at lower "intensities." It means it also gives the gun longer range. The more photons you emit, the more likely some will find their way back to the gun.

I should also mention that yesterday I created a new discussion thread on my blog. The thread is titled "Experiments to resolve the conflict between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics." There were no posts to it overnight, probably because no one is aware that it exists. My mentioning it here will inform readers of this web site where they can anonymously comment on what I've written without sending me emails. I just hope they give themselves a name. It gets very confusing when you are arguing with 15 different people who all call themselves "Anonymous."

Hmm. I just noticed that Miguel Rios just posted two more messages on vixra.org. So, this is the end of today's comment.

September 21, 2020 - Ah. So, today I can start asking questions about my paper "Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics Experiments" without people wondering about the date on the paper. It's dated today.

The first thing I did today was argue some more with "Mikko" on vixra.org but it was just more of the same. He has beliefs about how radar guns work, and he argues those beliefs. That's an opinion versus opinion argument, which is just a waste of time. If my paper is wrong, I need someone to explain in detail where it is wrong. It isn't wrong simply because it disagrees with some college textbook or because it disagrees with Quantum Mechanics. It states that it disagrees with textbooks and with Quantum Mechanics. It agrees with Special Relativity. The experiments described in the paper show that Special Relativity works and Quantum Mechanics does NOT work in radar guns.

The next thing I did was send emails to Professor Brian Cox, whose views on physics mostly agree with mine, and who might be interested in an experiment which matches Relativity against Quantum Mechanics. I don't know if there will be any response, but I had to give it a try. I've got a bunch of his books, and I've listened to nearly every episode of his podcast.

The next thing I did was post a comment to the sci.physics.relativity discussion forum. I just explained the paper and gave the link. As of this moment, there have been only two replies. One is from some anti-vaxer, ranting about how vaccines are destroying our whole species. The second was from "Odd Bodkin" who just wrote that I didn't know what I was talking about and that a comment about Relativity versus Quantum Mechanics is "off topic" because its about Quantum Mechanics, not Relativity. That's also an example of his logic. He's on my "Do Not Reply" list, but I might suspend the list while this topic is being discussed. Most people who post to that forum read it in the evenings, so tomorrow morning there should be more comments.

The next thing I did was post a comment to the Physics and Astrophysics Facebook group. The group is moderated, so I'll have to wait to see if it gets past the moderator.

Tomorrow we'll see what happens, and I'll try contacting some others. I just hope that someone cares about this topic. It's been argued for over a hundred years, and people may just not care anymore.

September 20, 2020 - The day after I put my new paper "Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics Experiments" on Vixra.org, someone who calls himself "Mikko" posted a comment on that site about the paper. He posts comments after all of my papers, criticizing every one of them because they disagree with his beliefs. One part of his new comment was:

In the introduction an experiment with two radar guns is proposed. Although the experiment is in principle doable, it cannot be done as proposed. The accuracy and stability of the frequency of any real radar gun is insufficient to produce any speed value when one radar gun receives the signal from the other -- the difference would be outside of the range of measurable speeds.

That's the same thing a college professor recently told me. But it's just a statement without any explanation or reasoning to support it. It makes no sense.

Before using his radar gun, a police officer is required to test it to make certain it is working properly and is transmitting at the correct frequency. He does that test with a tuning fork that comes with the radar gun when it is purchased. Identical tuning forks are supplied with the same police radar gun model, and if you lose the tuning fork, you can buy a new one. If identical radar guns do not transmit at the same frequency, how can the tuning fork test work? Plus, when you do the tuning fork test, you first put the radar gun in "test mode." It appears that in test mode, the gun only tests for one specific frequency. For my TS-3 it is the frequency associated with a speed of 45 mph.

Another part of "Mikko's" comment was:

The article claims that all radar guns perform two measurements but that is not true. First radar guns performed only one measurement. Moving mode was possible only after an invention of a method to perform two measurements at the same time (U.S. patent 3,118,139). Still many radar guns work as the old models as the design is simpler and less expensive and sufficient for many users. Even those that can perform two measurements have a stationary mode where they work as the old models. The reason is that the measurement method used in typical radar guns does not work on low speeds so in the moving mode no measurement is possible unless the radar gun really is moving sufficiently fast.

Did "old models" of radar guns like the one shown in the illustration below perform only one measurement?

Traffic radar in 1947

It might seem so to a mathematician who believes zero is something a machine can understand, but when you ask a former computer programmer like myself, the first question he'll ask is "How can you measure a speed if you have nothing to measure the speed against?"

The radar system in the image above shows a old fashioned radar transmitter measuring the speed of the oncoming car. But what is that speed relative to? What is the car's speed measured against? Obviously, it must be measured relative to the ground. When there is no oncoming car in the beam of the radar, the gun still gets back lots and lots of photons from the ground and those trees, and possibly the telephone pole, and the meter on the fender of the patrol car shows zero as the speed of those objects. So, the gun must perform two measurements, it measures the speed of the ground as zero and it measures the speed of the oncoming car relative to that zero measurement.

U.S. patent 3,118,139 wasn't about doing two measurements, it was about doing a measurement of one moving vehicle from another moving vehicle. If the radar in the illustration above was put atop a patrol car that was moving at 40 mph, it would measure the ground as traveling at 40 mph just as my TS-3 radar gun does when I point it at the ground through my windshield. And if an approaching car traveling at 50 mph comes into view, the old radar and my TS-3 will both show a speed of 90 mph. Both guns are "stationary only" models and they are assuming that "stationary" means 40 mph - or whatever the speed of the radar across the ground is measured to be. It is only zero when the gun is stationary. When the gun is stationary relative to the ground, the photons it emits toward the ground will be measured to be identical to the photons that return from the ground. The difference (or "beat frequency") is measured to be zero.

Meanwhile, someone recently asked me if I could recommend a book about time dilation. I tried to find one, but I couldn't. All I could recommend was my web page about time dilation experiments and the scientific papers those experiments produced. This morning I did a Google search for books about time dilation, and it provided me with a web page that lists 8 science fiction books involving time dilation.

It seems that if someone were to write a non-fiction book about time dilation, a million mathematicians would write reviews arguing that the book is nonsense.

I just hope my new paper persuades someone to do the truck experiment described in the paper. Numerous time dilation experiments have had absolutely no effect on mathematicians, but a lot of experiments which show that radar guns can measure the velocity of a moving truck from inside the truck will be more difficult to ignore or explain away. Mathematicians will argue that a malfunctioning clock gave incorrect readings that fostered the illusion that time dilation is real, and they will argue that no one actually measured the difference in how time passes while it was passing. It is all measured after the test. The radar gun experiment is different. With the radar gun experiment you can increase and decrease the speed of the truck, and the guns will show the changes in speed as they happen.

Then you can do radar gun experiments with tuning forks. Mathematicians claim that radar guns cannot measure the speed at which a tuning fork vibrates. They claim that the gun somehow listens to the tone the tuning fork emits and measures that. How does a gun that measures electromagnetic energy switch to listening to sound waves? When I ask them, they just repeat their claims. They cannot explain anything. And when they do explain, it is in math and physics jargon that I cannot decipher. How can it be that complex? Why can't they explain anything in plain English? The page at the link also says,

Also, 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 maximum speed of the arms of such a tuning fork is less than 0.1 mph, orders of magnitude less than the speed that corresponds to the induced simulated beat frequency.

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, since it is saying that the "arm" is swinging at a given speed. In reality, the arm is fixed to the base and the tip of a tine is swinging vastly faster than at the base. The radar gun only shows the FASTEST speed for what it is measuring.

In the video below, a lawyer explains how radar gun tuning forks work, and starting at around the 5-minute mark, he hits the two forks together to get them to begin vibrating. And he sometimes holds both forks edge-on in front of the radar gun. I can see how that would get a speed measurement if the gun was emitting photons at the tines, but how can it work if it is receiving sound vibrations from the tines? How do you measure the frequency of waves when you are receiving waves from two different sources at the same time?

I'm open to explanations, but dumping a load of complex mathematics on me won't change my mind. Nor will claims that I'm just too stupid to understand. Nor will arguments that I need to take more physics courses, since it as the nonsense taught in a physics course that got me into investigating the hundred-year-old conflict between Quantum Mechanics and Einstein's Relativity in the first place.

Comments for Sunday, September 13, 2020, thru Sat., Sept. 19, 2020:

September 18, 2020 - Since I'm not doing much of anything right now except waiting for Monday, when I plan to start notifying people about my new paper "Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics Experiments," and because it has been sunny for the past couple days, I've been doing a lot of reading. Yesterday afternoon, I finished reading "Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump" by Michael Cohen.

Michael Cohen just finished writing the book last month, and I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a library copy for my Kindle on the day it was released, ten days ago on September 8. It's really a very well-written book. It reads like a crime novel, with Cohen telling his story in first person - I did this, then I did that. Here's a passage from early in the book:

For more than a decade, I was Trump’s first call every morning and his last call every night. I was in and out of Trump’s office on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower as many as fifty times a day, tending to his every demand. Our cell phones had the same address books, our contacts so entwined, overlapping, and intimate that part of my job was to deal with the endless queries and requests, however large or small, from Trump’s countless rich and famous acquaintances. I called any and all of the people he spoke to, most often on his behalf as his attorney and emissary, and everyone knew that when I spoke to them, it was as good as if they were talking directly to Trump. Apart from his wife and children, I knew Trump better than anyone else did. In some ways, I knew him better than even his family did, because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.

The book is currently #1 on The New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller List.

Michael Cohen was a multimillionaire New York lawyer when Trump hired him, but Cohen had made most of his money by buying and selling New York City taxi medallions, which were selling for as much as a million dollars apiece before Uber ride-share taxis entered the picture. Trump hired Cohen to shut down one of Trump's companies and to get rid the person who was running it. It was done unannounced and by force, with tough guys walking the president of the company to the door, then confiscating all documents and firing all employees. Here's how Cohen describes his job:

I was beginning to understand what Trump wanted from me. He didn’t want me to be like his other lawyers, measuring the merits of a situation and providing advice based on sound legal reasoning. He had lawyers who could provide that kind of guidance. He didn’t need me to be a lawyer when he was in the right. He needed a lawyer for when he was in the wrong: when he was trying to go around the law, or offer a twisted or tortured interpretation to an agreement that could be used to screw the other side.

and

He wanted a lawyer who would fight when the cause was clearly racist and illegal.

It's a fascinating book about a sleazy con-man (Trump) who surrounds himself with sleazy henchmen and proceeds to do as he wants, and if you don't like it, he'll sue you into bankruptcy. It includes details of one situation after another, from Trump's false conspiracy theory that President Obama wasn't an American citizen to paying off porn star Stormy Daniels, from the total scam known as "Trump University" to faking popularity polls. The book depicts Trump as a total vicious creep, with Cohen willfully participating in everything because it made him feel superior to be associated with Trump - particularly when Trump started running for President. No one, least of all Trump, expected that Trump would actually win the election. It was just a game to become more famous and to make more money.

I could go on and on, but I'll jump to the end of the book when suddenly out of nowhere, on April 9, 2018, the FBI raided Cohen's home and hauled him off to jail. According to Cohen,

It turned out that the businessman managing my taxi medallions, Evgeny “Gene” Freidman, had defrauded hundreds of medallion owners, as well as the city of New York, for more than $20 million. He was facing serious prison time, but he didn’t do a day behind bars because he’d talked to the FBI and testified against me.

And, of course, from then on Trump practically denied ever knowing Cohen. There's probably more to it that Cohen doesn't mention, but it's also clear that Trump and his henchman Bill Barr wanted to intimidate Cohen and to stop him from writing his book. So, Cohen wrote his book in jail.

It's a fascinating story and well told. I highly recommend the book.

And I also think Cohen's final warning is worth paying attention to:

Please remember what I testified to Congress, the second time: There is a serious danger that Donald Trump will not leave office easily, and there is a real chance of not having a peaceful transition. When he jokes about running again in 2024 and gets a crowd of thousands to chant “Trump 2024,” he’s not joking. Trump never jokes. You now have all the information you need to decide for yourself in November.

September 17, 2020 - For the past few days I have been working on a new paper titled "Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics Experiments." It is similar to version 9 of my paper "Radar Gun and Einstein's Theories," except that it addresses the same issue from a very different angle, and it is just 5 pages long, instead of 17, and one of those five pages is mostly references. In other words, it is a lot easier to read and understand.

Based upon the discussion I had with some college physics professors on September 14 and 15, the paper goes straight to the issue of how those professors (and countless others) believe radar guns work according to Quantum Mechanics, and how I hypothesize that radar guns work according to Special Relativity. And how NASA agrees with me.

I planned to submit the paper to vixra.org this coming Monday. But the paper looked so mind-blowing that I decided to submit it yesterday afternoon. This morning it became available at this link: https://vixra.org/pdf/2009.0124v1.pdf

And, of course, I awoke this morning realizing the paper contained an error. I had forgotten to change the date on the paper. It still shows Monday's date, September 21, the date I had planned to make it available. Then I had to decide whether to change the date to September 17 on the version I submitted to academia.edu this morning. I decided against it, since it might be assumed that the academia.edu version is an earlier version of what is on vixra.org.

Instead, what I'll do is just sit tight until Monday to see what happens. Then on Monday, if no one has sent me undeniable proof that I am wrong (and if I haven't see any "error of my ways"), I'll start contacting people to suggest they perform the experiment. I'll probably start with the people on the sci.physics.relativity forum and the RDForum. Then I'll start contacting everyone else I can think of who might have an interest in determining whether an experiment comparing Quantum Mechanics to Special Relativity would work as described or not.

The paper is titled "Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics Experiments" because it suggests that there might be simpler ways to do the experiment. Instead of using a 53-foot trailer truck, there might be some way to put two radar guns inside a box that is just 6 feet long or so. You can record what the radar guns show on a smart phone, or you can build things so that the back ends of the radar guns protrude outside of the box. Of course, you still need a vehicle that can transport a box that is 6 feet long, and you probably need a driver and some witnesses.

Then there is the idea of building a totally new device that is based upon the principles in the experiment. The device might be the size of a lunch box. And if the range of measurement is increased, you might even be able to take it to the International Space Station and measure the speed the ISS is traveling. But, that wouldn't be an "experiment," so I didn't mention it in the paper. Before doing that, all the truck experiments would have to prove the hypothesis is correct, and then the "lunch box speedometer" would be a "tool," not an "experiment."

The college physics professors claimed that my experiment probably wouldn't work because no two supposedly "identical" radar guns actually transmit at the same frequency. Then they described how "phases" are inherently unstable. But that is a Quantum Mechanics wave-theory belief. As I see it, even if there is a slight difference in photon oscillation frequencies that a tuning fork test cannot measure, that just means that the difference will appear as a speed that is added to or subtracted from the speed the radar guns measure for the truck. So instead of measuring 30 mph, the gun might measure 31 mph or 29 mph.

And, as I stated in my September 14, comment, if anyone sees an error in the paper, I'm hoping they will explain the error in plain English. Calling me names, demanding that I read more college text books, and simply declaring an opinion that I am wrong won't do anything but cause me to yawn.

September 15, 2020 - Yesterday, I sent an email to the four college physics professors I've been communicating with on the topic of radar guns. I told them about the truck experiment described in version 9 of my paper "Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories." The response later that afternoon from the leader of the group was pure Quantum Mechanics. He didn't even address my version based upon Special Relativity, he just described how Quantum Mechanics works with radar guns. It looked like it might just be a response to what I wrote him, and he didn't actually look at my paper. (I provided a link, but lots of people are afraid of clicking on links.)

So, this morning I wrote them another email, this time explaining in detail how radar guns work with Relativity, and how the experiment should work just fine, even though Quantum Mechanics says it would not work.

Writing that email made it clear that I need to write another paper, a paper that specifically addresses the difference between how radar guns are imagined to work with Quantum Mechanics and how radar guns actually work with Special Relativity. I've begun work on that paper and hope to have it on-line by next Monday. Here's the abstract:

The conflict between Quantum Mechanics and Relativity has raged for about a hundred years and is interpreted in at least a hundred different ways. It appears, however, that a simple experiment involving radar guns can demonstrate which theory is valid in our visible universe and which theory is best relegated to the invisible universe of subatomic particles.

I'm anxiously awaiting the next email from those physics professors. I suppose it is possible that they might convincingly explain how my experiment will not work - even according to Special Relativity - but I'll believe that when I see it.

September 14, 2020 - Okay, version 9 of my paper "Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories" is now on-line at this link: https://vixra.org/pdf/1806.0027v9.pdf

It contains a totally new way of measuring the speed of a truck from inside the truck. All you need is two identical radar guns, instead of just one gun of some special kind as previous versions of the paper said. One of the two guns is positioned at the rear of the truck with the gun pointed at the other gun, and the other gun is at the front of the truck pointed at the first gun. Here's the illustration I used in the paper:
Radar gun
experiment inside a
truck

What this should do is cause each gun to show a "patrol speed" of zero for the far wall, but the gun should also show a "target speed" that is the speed of the truck. The photons emitted by Gun-B in the illustration travel through the truck at the speed of light, c, and will hit Gun-A at c+v where v is the speed of the truck (and Gun-A) toward the oncoming photons. That gives a "target speed."

Meanwhile, photons from Gun-A that hit the receding front wall will hit at c-v. New photons emitted by the front wall will return to Gun-A and hit the receiver at c+v. This means the gun computes c+v-v=c, which converts to no measured patrol speed. (Moving mode guns assume that the slower speed is the speed of the ground, i.e., the patrol speed.)

A "stationary only" gun like my TS-3 would show 40 mph if that is the speed of the truck. It only shows one number, adding together the "patrol speed" and the "target speed." 0+40=40.

A radar gun with "moving mode" would show 0 in the "patrol speed" display and
40 in the "target speed" display.

Of course, as soon as I submitted the paper to vixra.org I noticed an error in the paper. On page 16, I quote Einstein's First Postulate and use a reference number of 20. I should have used reference #1. But it's not a serious enough problem to fix and create another new version of the paper.

This morning, I put another copy of the paper on Academia.edu at this link: https://www.academia.edu/44085471/Radar_Guns_and_Einsteins_Theories

It has the correct reference number.

After doing that, I composed and sent an email to four physics professors who seemed interested in my views about radar guns. I asked their opinion of the paper. I'm hoping at least one of them will reply. They may not want to get involved with anything "controversial," and a science paper that describes an experiment that will show most college physics textbooks to be wrong is definitely something "controversial."

And, of course, if anyone sees an error in the paper, I'm hoping they will explain the error in plain English. Calling me names, demanding that I read more college text books, and simply declaring an opinion that I am wrong won't do anything but cause me to yawn.

September 13, 2020 - My plan is still to upload the revised version of my paper "Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories" to vixra.org later today, so that it will be on-line as version #9 tomorrow morning. However, this morning I awoke with the realization that I need to make some more changes. While writing the paper and designing the experiment that would show that a radar gun can measure the speed of a truck from inside the truck, I was just thinking about "stationary only" radar guns like my TS-3 and the Bushnell Velocity. I awoke this morning realizing that "moving mode" radar guns should be able to do things more clearly and undeniably. I'll find out for sure as I modify the paper and go step by step through exactly what would happen and exactly what a "moving mode" radar gun would measure.

At 17 pages, the paper is currently 3 pages longer than version #8, even though it seemed like I was deleting more material than I was adding. I suspect the additional changes will add another page.

I have been exchanging emails with some scientists who I will ask to check my logic after I finish the revised paper and put it on-line. I'm hoping they will also attempt to perform the experiments described in my paper, since they almost certainly have the means to do it. The folks on the RDForum might also have the ability to perform the "moving mode" radar experiment.

There's no point in deleting old versions of the paper. The purpose of the paper was to explain how radar guns demonstrate Einstein's theories, particularly his Second Postulate in his Theory of Special Relativity. I uploaded the first version of the paper on June 4, 2018, more than two years ago. It had the same error that version #8 has, it assumes that a moving radar gun will both transmit and receive photons at the speed of light. It can't.

Here's the abstract from that first version:

Abstract: Radar guns provide an excellent and inexpensive means of explaining and demonstrating some of Einstein’s theories in a very simple and undeniable way. Specifically, radar guns demonstrate how the speed of the emitter cannot add to the speed of the light being emitted, but the speed of light can be combined with the speed of the receiver. In practice, this appears to conflict with a basic tenet of mathematicians who believe that motion is reciprocal, and therefore radar guns must show that motion is reciprocal. A step by step analysis of how radar guns work shatters that basic tenet.

A moving gun does transmit photons at c regardless of the speed of the gun, and those photons will be received by an oncoming target at c+v, where v is the speed of the target, but I failed to realize that the returning photons will also be received at c+v where v is the speed of the moving radar gun toward the target.

Of course, all the people who disagreed with me were also wrong. As the abstract (and the paper) says, mostly they believe that "all motion is reciprocal." Therefore light is always transmitted and received at c, regardless of any motion by the emitter or receiver. That is generally what they argued, if they bothered to explain their beliefs at all. Mostly they just stated their opinion that I was wrong without any attempt to explain where I was wrong.

No doubt they will also argue that the latest version of the paper is also wrong. And they won't explain where it is wrong, except when they explain that all motion is reciprocal, so light is always received at c regardless of any motion by the receiver or emitter. Mostly they'll just argue that I need to take some college physics courses to understand how the universe and radar guns really work.

The problem, of course, is that I took a college physics course about six years ago, and it was clear to me that the professor didn't understand Einstein's Second Postulate. That is what got me started on writing science papers.

And six years of doing research has just confirmed that original observation.

I'm hoping that the college physics professors who have been exchanging emails with me agree. We agree on lots of things, but I won't bring up the experiment described in the new version of my Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories paper until after I finish it and put it on vixra.org. If I wait for their approval, the paper may never get uploaded.

And now it's time to finish this comment and get to work on that latest revision.