Comments for Sunday, April 7, 2019,
thru Saturday, April 13, 2019:
April
11, 2019 - Hmm. The
number of unique readers of my paper on "Photons
and Polarization" on vixra.org
increased by 2 overnight, jumping from 15 to 17.
However, the number of readers of the academia.edu
copy increased from 4
to 48. I don't quite understand
that, since I only mentioned the vixra.org link in my
discussions on the sci.physics.relativity
Usenet forum. I think academia.edu must be
promoting the paper somehow, probably in hopes of
getting me to join their "Premium" version where you
pay a monthly fee and get certain benefits.
As I was typing this comment, they sent me an email
with a graph:
Meanwhile, the discussions on the
sci.physics.relativity forum are the standard stuff,
i.e., attacks from mathematicians and rambling
comments from people who have a hard time expressing
themselves in English.
Also, I put together a crude animated gif of the
oscillating fields of a photon, viewing the electric
field from the side and and the magnetic field edge
on. Here's what it looks like:
I
was thinking of creating a "top view," a "front view"
and a "traveling view," all in the same gif (but a lot
smaller than the one above). However, that looks
like a lot of work, and I'm feeling like I
want to move on to other things.
April 10, 2019(B) - While running errands this
afternoon, I finished listening to CD #14 in the 14-CD
audio book set for "Elon
Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic
Future."
It was a very interesting book. I never paid
that much attention to billionaire Elon Musk before,
even though I would see his name mentioned in the news
when his company Space-X tested rockets and became the
first private company to deliver supplies to the
International Space Station (ISS). It's quite
possible that Space-X may soon start transporting
astronauts to the ISS. Musk was also an investor
and big force behind Paypal and Tesla motors.
His vision of getting rid of gas-burning cars and
replacing them with electric cars makes a lot of
sense, but he'll have other billionaires fighting
against him, billionaires who make their billions off
of oil and gasoline.
The contrasts between billionaire Elon Musk and
billionaire Donald Trump are also interesting.
Musk believes Global Warming is a big danger, he cares
for his employees and for the environment, and he
voted for Obama. Trump would probably love
bringing back coal-powered cars, he does not believe
that Global Warming is real, he'll fire any employee
who he feels is not sufficiently loyal and a supporter
of Trump's agenda and beliefs, and he absolutely hates
Obama.
The Tesla automobile seems like a millionaire's status
symbol right now, but the book suggests that there are
so many benefits to having an electric car versus a
gas-guzzler, and electric cars are much much simpler
than cars with internal combustion engines, so the
price of electric cars will almost certainly go down
and down. The biggest obstacle right now seems
to be the recharging-stations, which are few and far
apart. Musk has visions of cars pulling into a
charging station where robots replace battery packs in
a matter of a few minutes, and your car then has what
it needs to keep it running for another 500
miles. And, of course, the batteries would be
recharged using solar panels and wind turbines, the
technologies that Donald Trump just hates.
Musk's biggest dream seems to be to colonize
Mars. While that seems a long way off, Musk is
working on it right now. He sees it as the only
way to keep the human race going after life on Earth
becomes no longer viable.
There are probably a lot more interesting things in
the book that I'm failing to mention, but there's just
no easy way to make notes when you listen to an audio
book while driving. So, I'm just working from
memory in this comment.
April 10, 2019(A) - This morning, the vixra.org
statistics for my new paper "Photons
and Polarization" show that 13
people read the paper in the past 24 hours, raising
the grand total for two days to 15. The number
of new readers on academia.edu
increased by just 1 in the same time period, for a
grand total of 4. While the numbers aren't
astonishing, 13 reads in one day for a single paper of
mine is better than average, but less than the record
of 23 which I hit twice for the same paper with "Simplifying
Einstein's Thought Experiments" in
May, 2018, when I had 23 reads on the 16th, 21 on the
17th and 23 again on the 18th.
This morning I mentioned my "Photons and
Polarization" paper in a new post to the sci.physics.relativity
Usenet forum. I think it's the first time
I've posted there since September of last year, yet
when I posted the message this morning, there was
another message by me right next to it. Someone
had responded to a message I posted in May 2017,
putting his post at the top of the list after my new
post. I can't believe that it is just a
coincidence, so I'm going to assume that it was
someone who saw my new paper on vixra.or or
academia.edu, researched me, and found that I had
posted messages to the sci.physics.relativity forum in
the past. The person writing the post wants to
collaborate with me. I would think that if
someone wants to collaborate with me, they'd send me
an email. Unfortunately, I'm not interested in
collaborating with anyone on anything. I'm just
writing for my own edification.
It could be interesting, however, to see what the
reaction to my new paper is on the
sci.physics.relativity forum. That message
I posted in May 2017 had 389 responses and 1,139
views.
April 9, 2019 - Yesterday, I finished reading a
book on my Kindle. It was "Team
of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump
White House" by Cliff Sims.
I've got 33 pages of notes, i.e., passages I
highlighted while reading. I wouldn't say it was
an enjoyable read, but it was definitely
interesting. Cliff Sims is a Trump supporter, so
it's a look at how a Trump supporter thinks.
Sims is also a religious man, so it's a look at how a
religious man can support someone like Trump who
happily breaks nearly all the Commandments.
Here's how Sims justifies working for Trump:
I joined the campaign with no
illusions about who Trump was—a deeply flawed man.
But the balance of the Supreme Court was on the
line, which mattered to me and so many others. In my
view, this really was the Flight 93 Election:
“charge the cockpit or you die.”
The
term "Flight 93 Election" comes up a few times early
in the book. It is a reference to United
Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001.
When Muslim terrorists took over Fight 93 with the
apparent plan to crash it into the White House, some
of the passengers attempted to take the plane
back from the terrorists. They knew they were
going to die if they didn't, so they had to give it a
try. In the end, they all died in a farm field
in Pennsylvania. Sims saw the 2016 election as
being similar. If the Religious Right didn't
take the White House, their religious beliefs would
not be made the law of the land and they would be
doomed to live under non-believers.
Here's a passage about Sims' background:
At the time, my faith was one of the
reasons I struggled with Trump’s unexpected rise.
The playboy past, the casinos, the profanity, a
seeming lack of common decency—all of it was tough
to swallow for a Southern boy with Baptist ministers
for a father and grandfather.
Here's
a quote about working conditions in the White House
from early in the book:
The inner circle of Trump World was
not always a pretty picture. Too often it was a
portrait of venality, stubbornness, and selfishness.
We leaked. We schemed. We backstabbed. Some of us
told ourselves it was all done in the service of a
higher calling—to protect the President, to deliver
for the people. But usually it was for ourselves.
Most of us came to Washington convinced of the
justice of our cause and the righteousness of our
principles, certain that our moral compasses were
true. But proximity to power changes that. Donald
Trump changes that.
Backstabbing
is the way things are done in the Trump White
House. Cliff Sims eventually got booted out by
jealous backstabbers who didn't like the fact that
Sims had a closer relationship with Trump than they
did. Here's how Sims describes the results of a
personality test he took:
My test results revealed that while
I was by disposition a polite person, I was not by
nature a kind one. I was quick to seek revenge and
slow to offer forgiveness. I had a warrior spirit,
but lacked a servant heart. I was too quick to pass
judgment on the motives of my “enemies,” while
granting myself moral superiority in the process.
That
appears to be the general type of person Trump had
around him. They considered themselves to be
"killers" out to get rid of their enemies.
Another quote:
Killer. This was the single highest
compliment that Donald Trump—not the President, but
the man—could pay another human being, and it had
been for decades.
and
another:
In 1980, a half decade before I was
even born, Trump sat down with entertainment
reporter Rona Barrett for his first-ever network
television interview. “I think that the world is
made up of people with either killer instincts or
without killer instincts,” Trump told her. “The
people that seem to emerge all the time—it doesn’t
mean they’re the best … are the people that are
competitive and driven and with a certain instinct
to win.” In short, killers. And this was a mind-set
that had been instilled in Trump since childhood.
And
lastly, here's a quote from near the end of the book:
I do know that I am proud to have
worked in the White House, to have served my
country. I’m proud to have worked for the President
of the United States. And in spite of the
frustrations and misgivings laid out in this book,
I’m proud that the president I served was Donald
Trump. In a sense, my time in the White House could
serve as a cautionary tale of the corrosive effects
of power. I do believe that power can corrupt, that
our moral compass becomes less trustworthy the
closer it gets to the magnetic pole of absolute
power. But the further removed I am from the West
Wing, the more convinced I become that what power
really does, more than corrupt, is reveal—it exposes
our true colors, uncovers or magnifies the flaws
that already existed.
So,
while it certainly wasn't an enjoyable book to read,
since it was written by someone who thinks he is
morally superior to others who do not share his faith,
and who was happy to work for a total hypocrite
because it served his own agenda, it was
interesting. The only problem is that it makes
you wonder how many others in America think like Cliff
Sims. Are they the majority? If they are,
then I shudder to think what the future will be like.
During breakfast this morning, I started reading a humor
book about writing and creating comedy shows for
television. I think I'm done with reading books
about Trump for awhile. The ten unread books I
have about him will just have to wait.
Meanwhile, the first day's vixra.org
statistics show I got a whopping 2
reads on my new paper "Photons
and Polarization." On Academia.edu
the paper got 3 reads. I hope no one
gets injured as they climb over one another to be
among the first to read my paper. ;-)
April 8, 2019 - My paper "Photons
and Polarization" is now on vixra.org at the
top of the list in the Classical Physics
category. The email notification that was
in my inbox this morning says that it was posted at
6:18 a.m., about 4 hours ago. So far, there have been
no readers (except me), but I think they only update
the "Unique-IP document downloads" information once
per day, and I think that happens sometime in the
afternoon.
I just mentioned the paper on my
Facebook page about Time and Time Dilation.
And I just added it to academia.edu.
I haven't been paying much attention to that site, and
I probably should check to see if there are other
papers I should post there. I just need to find
the time to focus on that task.
Meanwhile, yesterday I listened to a very interesting
podcast from the Geek's Guide to
The Galaxy. It's episode
#232 from December of 2016, and it is an
interview with Shawn Otto, the author of the
book "The
War on Science."
The War on Science explores ways
that citizens can fight back against a creeping tide
of anti-science nonsense promulgated by everyone
from postmodern academics to greedy oil companies to
nature-loving hippies. An important step is to make
journalists understand that science and opinion
should not be given equal weight.
With
all the science podcasts I have on my waiting list, I
hadn't thought about any "war on science." It
seems like lots of people are interested in
science. But, of course, that doesn't mean there
aren't also a lot of people who want to discredit
science because it conflicts with their beliefs or
their business goals.
Unfortunately, my local library doesn't have a copy of
"The War On Science," otherwise I'd put it on
my reading list. But, I think it may explore
some of the same topics as "Merchants
of Doubt," which is already in my Kindle
waiting for me to get to it.
April 7, 2019 - I
think I'm going to upload Version 1 of my paper "Photons
and Polarization" to Vixra.org
later today. The paper consists of just 13 pages
with 18 illustrations, sometimes 3 on a
page. The paper probably needs work to get rid of
some repetition of arguments, and the illustrations
definitely can be improved upon, but I've already spent so
much time on the paper that I don't have the will power to
make further improvements right now.
As soon as Vixra.org advises me that the paper has been
placed on their site and provides me with the link
address, I'll first provide that information on this web
site, and then I'll provide it on my Time
and Time Dilation Facebook page. Hopefully,
that would be tomorrow morning. Then I'll probably
wait a day to see what reaction I get before I inform the
belligerent and closed-minded scientists and trolls on the
sci.physics.relativity
newsgroup about it. They'll probably go
bonkers - or they might just totally ignore it.
In preparation for submitting the paper, I checked
Vixra.org and was reminded that I have to pick a category
for the paper. They list 13 different submission
categories, such as "High Energy Particle Physics,"
"Astrophysics," "Quantum Physics," "Quantum
Gravity and String Theory" and "Climate
Research." The proper category for my paper
appears to be "Classical
Physics."
I then perused some of papers that had been recently
submitted in that category and found one that seems to hit
on one of the subjects that my paper addresses. The
paper is titled "About
Energy of Photon," and it's by two
"independent researchers" with no details as to where they
are located, but their names suggest it's probably in the
Middle East or India. While there is bad English in
the title and in the paper, the point of the paper clearly
agrees with my paper 100%. Here's the abstract for
their paper:
There is a widespread view in
contemporary physics that the electric field of an
electromagnetic wave is in the phase with the magnetic
field. This statement is incorrect. The article
discloses in detail that the above statement leads to
violating the law of energy conservation. The right
statement is that electric and magnetic fields in the
photon are shifted mutually by 90 degrees. In this case
the electric field converts to the magnetic field and
vice versa. The energy of the photon over time remains
constant.
It would have been nice if the paper
explained why "there is a widespread view
in contemporary physics that the electric field of an
electromagnetic wave is in the phase with the
magnetic field." But it doesn't. It just says
it's wrong. In my paper I also say it is wrong, and
I explain that it is wrong because it is illogical.
And I explain why it is illogical.
The "Energy of Photon" paper consists mostly
of mathematical arguments. I cannot decipher the
mathematical reasoning used in the paper, but there's no
doubt that their conclusion agrees with my
paper - and so does most of their abstract. My paper
just covers a lot more territory and does a much better
job of explaining things.
Interestingly, the paper seems to argue that the
mathematics may work perfectly for the "widespread view,"
but it is still nonsense. And the authors provide
their own mathematics to justify their argument.
While it's kind of disheartening to discover that others
are saying the same things I am saying, on the positive
side, their paper tells me that there are at least two
other people in the world who agree with me about
something. Their paper also suggests that we may be
the only people in the world who agree about how photons
work. We just arrived at our conclusions from
different directions.
I also noticed that the same
authors have recently put a paper titled "About
Arrow of Time" on Vixra.org. It's also
mostly about math, but it definitely has nothing to do
with anything I've written.
Yesterday, my plan was to start work on a second paper
about photons sometime next week. It would be
titled something like "Refraction, Diffraction and
Photons," and would include material I had to
strip out of the first paper, things like how photons
work in Thomas
Young's Double Slit Experiment.
But this morning everything changed. My
subconscious had been very busy overnight and when I
woke up it informed me that it was time to self-publish
my two science fiction novels. I wrote them in
2013 and 2014, but I wasn't able to find an agent to
help sell them to publishers. (Check my
comments for April 24, 25 and 27, 2014).
It's kind of a surprise to me that it was so long
ago. I wrote the first one in late 2013.
(Check my
comment for December 22, 2013. ) I wrote the
sequel the next year. My thinking in mid-2014 was
that it would be easier to get an agent or a publisher
interested if I had a 3-novel series completed.
Series novels are the current rage - particularly in
science fiction. But I could never think up a good
idea for the 3rd novel.
The first step in the process of self-publishing will be
to re-read the first book to make sure it's still as
good as I thought it was back in 2013. Then I'll
have to refresh my memory about how self-publishing
works. The last time I did it was in 2012.
It's easier today than it was then, but what my
subconscious was so excited about was that it's also a
lot easier to promote a self-published book
these days. Social media and podcasts have changed
everything.
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