November 29, 2020 - Hmm.  The news this morning reported that the mysterious "monolith" that was found in a remote canyon in Utah has disappeared.  Here's a picture of what it looked like:



It's about 12 feet tall and 23 inches across.  Unlike the slab monolith in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," this one has three sides, it's made of stainless steel and it is riveted together by man-made rivets.  It was found a couple weeks ago by a sheep counting team from the Utah Department of Public Security (DPS), who wouldn't publicly say exactly where they found it.  Then local people went looking for it and found it.  And now it has mysteriously disappeared, apparently sometime on the night of November 27th.  The DPS says they didn't take it.  Satellite photos show it had been there since at least October of 2016.

I enjoy a good mystery, and this one is a good one.  Unfortunately, it may take some time to solve, since it doesn't fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI or Utah State Police, it will probably have to be solved by amateur sleuths.  It will probably be considered a "prank," until shown to be otherwise.

Meanwhile, I've been really busy for the past couple days, mostly arguing with people on the sci.physics.relativity UseNet forum.  I check that forum every day, just to see if anything interesting is going on, and Thursday morning I noticed that a mathematician using the name "kenseto" had posted to a thread I had started back on October 19.  The original thread discussion lasted only a few days, until October 24, and then it ended.  But, "kenseto" inexplicably decided to restart it by posting a couple comments that I had to assume were meant for me.

The title of the thread is "Relativity and Radar Guns," and I started the thread to advise everyone about the paper I had written with that title.  There were only 21 posts to the thread when it ended.  Then, one month and two days after the thread ended, "kenseto" suddenly posted this: 

c’=c[(frequency at the truck wall)/(frequency at the gun)]
Speed of the truck= v = (c-c’)

A simple question: If I am inside a moving semi-truck and I shine a light at the front wall, does the wall (and the truck) suddenly stop when I turn on the light, or does the wall continue to move while the photons travel to the wall?

Answer: The wall continues to move, therefore the photons from the light hit the wall at c-v because the wall is moving away from the oncoming photons.

How can anyone disagree with that?

Relative to what?

The wall is moving relative to the photons emitted by the gun. The photons are traveling at c, and the wall is moving away from the photons at v.

"Stationary" and "moving", AS YOU USE THEM, are not appropriate words in physics -- they are really comparisons, and EVERY usage of them must include the coordinate system relative to which they apply. Yes, ancient writers did not always do that, before it was fully understood how important that is -- in part because it confuses idiots like you, and in part because some ancient theories included an aether that implicitly defined them.  

I've been saving every comment in the thread.  They are very thought-provoking, and while the mathematicians just seem to use the same arguments over and over and over and over, I try to explain things in a different way if they cannot grasp my first explanation. 

This morning I awoke thinking that I should probably explain the moving truck radar gun experiment in terms of waves, in addition to using photons.
 
I'll have to write it all down first, probably in the form of "Version 3" of my "Radar Guns and Relativity" paper.  When I think of it in terms of waves, I might also come up with some new way to do the experiment.  I hope so.   

STUPID_Ed_lake_still_does_not_realize_that_particle_
spin_OCCURS_IN_TIME_so_particle_spin_can_not_be_
TIME_ITSELF

STUPID_Ed_lake_still_does_not_realize_that_--spin_speeds_up___IN_TIME--and_--spin_slows_down___IN_TIME--so_spin_can_not_
be_TIME_ITSELF

STUPID_Ed_lake_does_not_realize_that_SPEED_is_
relative_to_Space&Time---hence_the_kilometers_per_hour

Through most of history, people could not see the future that way. Religions had no particular thought for the future; they looked toward rebirth, or eternity—a new life after death, an existence outside of time. Then, finally, humanity crossed a threshold of awareness. People began to sense that there was something new under the sun. Asimov explains: Before we can have futurism, we must first recognize the existence of the future in a state that is significantly different from the present and the past. It may seem to us that the potential existence of such a future is self-evident, but that was most definitely not so until comparatively recent times. And when did that happen? It began in earnest with the Gutenberg printing press, saving our cultural memory in something visible, tangible, and shareable. It reached critical velocity with the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the machine—looms and mills and furnaces, coal and iron and steam—creating, along with so much else, a sudden nostalgia for the apparently vanishing agrarian way of life.  

Wells was not only disappointed in the present state of radio. His crystal ball showed him that the whole enterprise was doomed to fade away. “The future of broadcasting is like the future of crossword puzzles and Oxford trousers, a very trivial future indeed.” Why would anyone listen to music by radio when they could have gramophone records? Radio news vanishes like smoke: “Broadcasting shouts out its information once and cannot be recalled.” For serious thought, he said, nothing can replace books.

American astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth in March 2016 after nearly a year of high-speed orbit, he was reckoned to be 8.6 milliseconds younger, relative to his groundling twin brother, Mark. (Then again, Mark had lived through only 340 days while Scott experienced 10,944 sunrises and sunsets.)

We know now that the speed of light in empty space is constant, 299,792,458 meters per second. No rocket ship can overtake a flash of light or reduce that number in the slightest. Einstein struggled (“psychic tension”; “all sorts of nervous conflicts”) to make sense of that: to discard the luminiferous ether, to accept the speed of light as absolute. Something else had to give. On a fine bright day in Bern (as he told the story later), he talked it over with his friend Michele Besso. “Next day I came back to him again and said to him, without even saying hello, ‘Thank you. I’ve completely solved the problem.’ An analysis of the concept of time was my solution.” If light speed is absolute, then time itself cannot be. We must abandon our faith in perfect simultaneity: the assumption that two events can be said to happen at the same time. Multiple observers experience their own present moments. “Time cannot be absolutely defined,” said Einstein—it can be defined, but not absolutely—“and there is an inseparable relation between time and signal velocity.”

 

202.190.37.232 - - [21/Nov/2020:09:57:02 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 737952 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; it; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729)"

202.190.37.232 - - [21/Nov/2020:09:57:23 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 737952 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:6.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/5.0"

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

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

202.190.37.232 - - [21/Nov/2020:09:58:20 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 737952 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; zh-CN; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.8"

202.190.37.232 - - [21/Nov/2020:09:58:37 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 737952 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20120421 Gecko Firefox/11.0"

202.190.37.232 - - [21/Nov/2020:09:58:55 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 737952 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:27.3) Gecko/20130101 Firefox/27.3"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

Later in the day, Trump made this statement:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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