10/25/2021 7:00 PM -0400

And in the morning, I’d wake up and make myself a cup of coffee, and then I’d drift over to the desk and sit at it, and, almost immediately, the solution to the problem I’d been wrestling with the previous evening…became quite obvious to me! So obvious that I couldn’t really understand why I hadn’t spotted it the night before. But I hadn’t.

This is how I began to discover that, if I put the work in before going to bed, I often had a little creative idea overnight, which fixed whatever problem it was that I was trying to deal with. It was like a gift, a reward for all my wrestling with the puzzle. I began to think to myself, “It can only be that while I’m asleep, my mind goes on working at the problem so that it can give me the answer in the morning.”

So I began to realise that my unconscious was working on stuff all the time, without my being consciously aware of it.

But perhaps the biggest interruption coming from your inside is caused by your worrying about making a mistake. This can paralyse you.

“Oh,” you say to yourself, “I mustn’t think that because it might be WRONG.”

Let me reassure you. When you’re being creative there is no such thing as a mistake.

The reason is very simple: you can’t possibly know if you are going down a wrong avenue until you’ve gone down it. So, if you have an idea, you must follow your line of thought to the end to see whether it’s likely to be useful or not.

You must explore, without necessarily knowing where you’re going. As Einstein once pointed out, if we know what we’re doing when we’re investigating something, then it’s not research!

Did you know there are NO alleys in New York City?  (Some people claim there are three somewhere.)  The cost of land is just too great.

There certainly are.  Even got plenty in Manhattan.
The exact number would depend on the definition
of "alley", of course.

Yes, it definitely depends upon your definition of "alley."  And my comment really should have been about Manhattan Island, not New York City.  The passage in the book was about how Manhattan Island was designed to have no alleys.  This morning I researched the subject and took a Google tour of some of Manhattan's "alleys" and found there is at least one.  Here are four snapshots I took on my virtual tour (you can click on the image to see a larger version):



Courtlandt Alley has a street sign identifying it as an "alley."  The sign is in the image on the upper left.  The north entrance to Cortlandt Alley is the image on the upper right.  It runs for three blocks.  It is definitely the most famous "alley" in Manhattan, since various cop shows on TV have filmed many scenes in that "alley."

From the south end of Cortlandt Alley you can see the entrance to Benson Place, the image on the lower right.  It definitely looks like a similar "alley."  However, both "alleys" have sidewalks, and that would disqualify them as being "alleys" for most people.  The Benson Place picture also shows how people pile trash on the street in Manhattan.  In my tour I could have taken a hundred pictures of trash piled on the street.

The one true alley I was able to find was Freeman's Alley, which is in the Bowery, near Chinatown, next to Freeman's Sporting Club.  That's the lower left image.   No sidewalks, and it's a dead end, running only to the middle of the block.  But I suppose someone could argue that it is just a "driveway."

The golden age of porches glowed its brightest between 1870 and 1920. In an era when the backyard often contained features of drudgery—vegetable gardens, trash pits, outhouses, perhaps clucking chickens or a goat—the front porch offered an oasis of calm.

     Ole wakes up one morning, looks over at Lena, and realizes something is terribly wrong. He dials 911.
     “Operator, you gotta help me. My wife is unconscious. I need an ambulance right away.”
     The dispatcher asks, “Where do you live, Ole?”
     “On the corner of Rhododendron and Eucalyptus,” he responds.
     "Could you please spell those for me?” the dispatcher asks.
     After a long silence, Ole replies, “How about I just drag her over to First and Oak and you pick her up there?”

In terms of ownership, and patronage, organized crime played a central role in the nighttime world of cabaret entertainment in the 1940s and ’50s. Inevitably, Dean and I came to know, usually on quite friendly terms, every major figure in the Mob, from Bugsy Siegel in Vegas to the Fischetti brothers, Tony Accardo, and Sam Giancana of Chicago, to Frank Costello and Lucky Luciano in New York. And while it may not be politically correct to say so, I found the great majority of these guys to be men of their word, far less hypocritical about their business than most of the politicians of the day.

Three years later, September of ’51, we were doing five shows a day at the Roxy Theater in New York and two shows a night at Ben Marden’s Riviera, in Fort Lee, New Jersey. We were taking vitamin C and B12 shots to try to enlist some energy from our exhausted bodies.... Believe it or not, we didn’t look at a girl for the entire two weeks! We called those two gigs our Bataan Death March. The first four shows, at the Roxy, were at ten A.M., noon, 3:45 P.M., and eight P.M. The eight-o’clock show was a problem. We went on at 8:05 and finished at 9:15—then jumped into a car with a police escort to drive across the George Washington Bridge to the Riviera. We’d get there around 9:40, then go on for the dinner show, from 9:50 to 10:50—then drive back to the Roxy for the 11:20 show! Then, when we finished that show, at 12:40 A.M., we drove back to the Riviera for the 1:15 show, which went until around 2:30 in the morning. And over again the next day. And the next day. . . . For two weeks of fun and hell. For this ordeal, the Roxy was paying us $100,000 a week, plus a percentage of the receipts—which brought our end up to around a quarter-million dollars. The Riviera was paying us a flat fee of $125,000 a week. So for almost four hundred grand a week, we did the best we could, groaning all the way to the bank.

You have to remember: Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue—nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us, but what we really were, in an age of Freudian self-realization, was the explosion of the show-business id.

Like Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, and Hope and Crosby, we were vaudevillians, stage performers who worked with an audience. But the difference between us and all the others is significant. They worked with a script. We exploded without one, the same way wiseguy kids do on a playground, or jazz musicians do when they’re let loose. And the minute we started out in nightclubs, audiences went nuts for us.

Right now I feel like I'm on the verge of a major scientific discovery.  A few years ago, I bought an expensive pillow-top mattress.  For a year or so it was terrific.  Now I HATE it!  It's a "pillow" that cannot be fluffed up.  This morning I did some research and found I'm not alone.  Click HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE for web pages about how people HATE their pillow-top mattresses. 

HERE I sit in order to write, at the age of 67, something like my own obituary. I am doing this not merely because Dr. Schilpp has persuaded me to do it; but because I do, in fact, believe that it is a good thing to show those who are striving alongside of us, how one's own striving and searching appears to one in retrospect.

Before I enter upon a critique of mechanics as the foundation of physics, something of a broadly general nature will first have to be said concerning the points of view according to which it is possible to criticize physical theories at all. The first point of view is obvious: the theory must not contradict empirical  facts. However evident this demand may in the first place appear, its application turns out to be quite delicate.  For it is often, perhaps even always, possible to adhere to a general theoretical foundation by securing the adaptation of the theory to the facts by means of artificial additional assumptions.

The equations of mechanics (for example this is already true of the law of inertia) claim validity only when referred to a specific class of such systems, i.e., the “Inertial systems.”

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different  kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of  applicability.

If I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should observe such a beam of light as a spatially oscillatory electromagnetic field at rest.

One sees that in this paradox the germ of the special relativity theory is already contained. Today everyone knows, of course, that all attempts to clarify this paradox satisfactorily were condemned to failure as long as the axiom of the absolute character of time, viz., of simultaneity, unrecognizedly was anchored in the unconscious.

Remark. The speed of light c is one of the quantities which occurs as "universal constant" in physical equations. If, however, one introduces as unit of time instead of the second the time in which light travels 1 cm, c no longer occurs in the equations. In this sense one could say that the constant c is only an apparently universal constant.

light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body.

Most of Trump’s failings can be explained by a simple truth: He cared more about himself than the country. Whether managing the coronavirus or addressing racial unrest or reacting to his election defeat, Trump prioritized what he thought to be his political and personal interests over the common good.

“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” Trump said of the rioters. “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before. There’s tremendous proof. There’s tremendous proof. Statistically, it wasn’t even possible that [Biden] won. Things such as, if you win Florida and Ohio and Iowa, there’s never been a loss.” He was referring to conventional wisdom that historically the winner of the presidential election has carried that same trio of states that Trump won. This was one of the traits that had led Trump to the White House on full display: his extraordinary capacity to say things that were not true. He always seemed to have complete conviction in whatever product he was selling or argument he was making. He had an uncanny ability to say with a straight face, things are not as you’ve been told or even as you’ve seen with your own eyes. He could commit to a lie in the frame of his body and in the timbre of his voice so fully, despite all statistical and even video evidence to the contrary.

Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site.

We can’t connect to the server at www.facebook.com.

If that address is correct, here are three other things you can try:

    Try again later.
    Check your network connection.
    If you are connected but behind a firewall, check that Firefox has permission to access the Web.

Facebook is down, along with Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus VR

Just as Facebook’s Antigone Davis was live on CNBC defending the company’s policies and its handling of research data suggesting Instagram is harmful to teens, its network of services suddenly went offline. On Twitter, Facebook communications exec Andy Stone says, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

A peek at Down Detector (or your Twitter feed) reveals the problems are widespread.

Wouldn't it be interesting if the owner of Facebook just decided "The Hell with it" and shut it all down?  I can certainly live without it, but it appears that a lot of people depend on Facebook.

Facebook and the others were back after about 6 hours.  Facebook blamed the problem on "configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers."  Ah!  Okay.

October 3, 2021 -  Groan!  It's Sunday, and I've written a comment for this web site every Sunday since January 4, 2015. So, I have to write a comment for today.  But what about???  About the posts I've done on the Science Fiction Facebook group?  Why would anyone who reads this web site care about that?  Here's the latest image I created for that forum:



45 minutes after I posted it, it had 5 "likes," 3 "hahas" and 2 "Loves."  It's like an "inside joke" that you need have seen another movie to enjoy.

And what about the book I'm thinking about writing?  How many times have I already written about that?

I plan to get to work on the book, but before I can do that I need to do more research into Einstein's comments about his endless battles with mathematicians.  And before I can do that I have to finish rearranging and reorganizing my bookshelves. 

In the past two weeks I hauled about 45 plastic bags full of books to Goodwill.  I took 8 bags there on Wednesday and 10 on Thursday. That's it for now.  I've opened up all the space I need for my DVD collection.  The six shelves of TV shows on DVDS and Blu-Ray shown in the image blow used to be five shelves of books, with more books stuck behind the ones you could see. 


  
The shelves are all about twice the depth needed for DVDs, so I turned the fourth shelf into two shelves by building a cardboard step to put behind the outer row.  Then I put the inner row of DVDs atop the step.

And then came the chore of moving the DVDs from one shelf to another and inserting all the DVDs that I previously didn't have room for into their proper place alphabetically.  I've finished with the TV shows, and now I have to do the movies - about 2,640 of them.  I also have to work backwards through the alphabet.  Unfortunately, it seems to be the A's B's and C's that are really stacked atop filled shelves.  It may be weeks before I'm done, or months.

But I won't write any more about it here.  I'll try to continue to write a comment every Sunday, but there's no point in spending hours to write comments about things no one else cares about.     

October 1, 2021 -  I finally found the exact source of this Einstein quote, including the number of the page it is on:

Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.

Born in a small Swabian Jewish community, Einstein attended the Humanistische Gynmasium in Munich, where his father was temporarily a businessman. After graduation he first went with his family to Italy and then studied at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Strangely enough no personal contacts resulted between his teacher of mathematics, Hermann Minkowski, and Einstein. When, later on, Minkowski built up the special theory of relativity into his "world-geometry," Einstein said on one occasion: "Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself any more."  

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.

Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.

This is an email from Dr. Stephen Hatfill to Peter Navarro dated May of last year, so right before Memorial Day. He writes, quote: I`ve been working on tracking down some Israeli data indicating that this coronavirus thing may have now essentially run its eight-week course in most of the United States. Genetic bottlenecking of the virus may be underway now.

Again, that`s May 2020, Dr. Hatfill advising the White House COVID response, even though nobody knows that he is, telling his White House supervisor, ah, this whole thing is almost over looks like we`re about to be done.

In another email that same month, Dr. Hatfill forwards Peter Navarro at the White House headlines from a yet to be released study on hydroxychloroquine, a study that had not come out yet, a study Dr. Hatfill said would prove once and for all that hydroxychloroquine will greatly improve survival for COVID patients.

Look how he ends his e-mail, quote, if Fauci and Steven Hahn, head of the FDA, had done their jobs, 30,000 less people would have died. They have blood on their hands. What he means there is 30,000 Americans died because Dr. Fauci and Dr. Hahn didn`t support the widespread of hydroxychloroquine, which is the solution to COVID crisis in America.

hydroxychloroquine if it was available.  Fortunately, we'll probably never know.

Meanwhile, I received a response to an email I sent to the only used-book store within 30 miles of where I live.  (I remember when there was a used-book store just down the street to the east of where I live, and another to the north.)  I sent them an email about wanting to sell over 500 books from my library, including a set of 37 Time-Life books about WWII.  I included 3 pictures of books on my bookshelves.  Here's the Time-Life pic:



Their response was:

I have most of those books and a few sets of the T-L WWII. So i think I will pass.

Groan.  It appears that the supply of used books far exceeds the demand.  So, I'm going to give most of my collection to Goodwill, and I may give some of it to my local public library - the Time-Life WWII series being one example.  I also have an 8½ pound copy of The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War that I'll give to the library.  And maybe my copy of the 1922 Montgomery Ward catalogue.  And The Times Atlas of China.   

I've started putting books into plastic bags to take to Goodwill, maybe 10 or 12 books per bag.  I began with my books about writing, particularly screenwriting.  Then I discovered that there were more books behind some of the books that you can see on the shelves.  Some of them were screenplays in book form, including the screenplay for the 1952 movie Macao, a movie I've probably seen a dozen times. Here are the back and front covers: 



I set that one aside.  I'm not ready to get rid of it just yet.

Yesterday afternoon, I took 6 bags of books to Goodwill.  I wonder what they'll think when the open the bags and find that nearly every book is about writing and screenwriting.

A new question:  I also have to remove the pieces of paper I used as bookmarks.  One book had an IBM card as a bookmark.  Is that a "collectors item?"  And how about a book of coupons from the Super-8 motel in Dubuque, Iowa?  There are no expiration dates on the coupons.  I think I stayed in that motel in September of 1992 when I visited a few riverboat casinos on the Mississippi.
     

 

September 20, 2021 -  As I stated in previous comments, I need to promote my sci-fi novel Time Work if I want people to buy it. One way of doing that is to mention it on the Science Fiction Facebook group, which has 70,910 members.  But before they'll let you promote your own book on that forum, you first must start either 25 or 50 threads about other topics.  (I can't find the message which informed me of that, so I'm not sure what the exact number is.)

Anyway, yesterday I started a thread about the Canadian TV series from 1996 titled "Lexx," stating that I thought it was the worst TV series I ever paid good money to watch on DVD.  To my surprise, the thread really took off, getting about 120 posts in the first three hours, plus lots of "likes" and "hahas."  As of this moment, the thread contains 253 comments and 258 "likes" and "hahas."  (I think a "haha" might be the opposite of a "like," since there is no available emoji for "dislike," and the "angry" and "sad" emojis don't really imply "dislike.")  The comments are mostly from people who either agree with me or disagree.  About 15% are from people who never heard of the series.

This morning I tried starting another thread.  I used this image:

 

I'm still waiting to see if it gets approved.  The post about Lexx got approved in less than a minute.  It's been over an hour since I tried the new one.  

In a day or two I'll start another thread about the sci-fi novel FlashForward, which I wrote about here on July 30.  I hope I only have to do 25.  I don't know if I can do 50.  I need to find that message which informed me of the limit.  But I'm not sure how to do that, since it was probably via Facebook in some way.  Sigh.

September 19, 2021 -  The arguments on

  At the moment, I do not foresee any further arguments on that forum.  I don't have any more science papers in the works, and I'm not sure whether or not I can gather enough will-power together to convert my existing papers into a book.

I had been thinking about writing a paper where I convert Einstein's 1905 Special Relativity paper into plain English, but it would definitely be a lot of work, and I'm not sure it's worth the effort.  The same with a paper about using a pulsar to as a clock to measure time dilation.  I think that is a terrific idea, but when I discussed it on the sci.physics.relativity forum they just endlessly argued about how you cannot move at a right angle to a pulsar because there can be no such right angle, since the movement would either be a tiny part of a circle around the pulsar or a straight line away from that circle.  I did write a paper about it back in 2015, but it's now buried under revisions that turned into different papers.

So, if I'm not going to write a paper or a book, what should I do next - other than reading books and listening to podcasts?  I don't have any other major mysteries to analyze and solve.

I should probably try to promote my sci-fi novel Time Work.  But I have to do that without spending any money, otherwise I'd probably spend more than I'd earn in sales.  I can mention it on the Science Fiction Facebook group, but only after I start 25 (or is it 50?) discussion threads about other topics.  I think I've started only a half dozen or so in the past 7 months.  I've been too busy with my science papers.  But, a couple days ago I did start a new thread using this image: 



A lot of people knew the answer, and a lot of people "liked" my post.  I can probably come up with a couple dozen more "discussion starters" like that if I put my mind to it.  Then I'd be able to discuss and promote my book.

I also need to get on Amazon and change the description for Time Work.  For some forgotten reason I just provided two sentences:

Time travel may not let you change the past, but it can be a handy tool if you want to change the future.

Time Work is a science-fiction novel about a unique form of time travel.