Month: December 2024

I Can’t Wait to Get Started!

photog Humor, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Science , ,

I was reading a chapter in a mathematical survey that I bought a long time ago (Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning by A. D. Aleksandrov, A. N. Kolmogorov, M. A. Lavrent’ev).  It was a section in the non-Euclidean Geometry chapter called something like “Real Space.”

The author was trying to make the point that since gravity bends light and light rays were the closest thing to perfect straight lines that you could claim that parallel lines can intersect and triangles can have more or less than 180 degrees in real space.  And to get away from the idea of straight lines in empty space (no matter present) he said that the concept of space only exists in the context of it containing matter.

And I stopped to think whether that seemed to follow.  I never usually question the meaning of empty.  My basic visualization of reality is that the universe is the void of the Bible augmented by really small golf balls bouncing around in it.  Empty space to me is wherever there aren’t any golf balls at that moment.  Now granted, I’ve heard that particles are always appearing into and disappearing out of existence in the “quantum vacuum.”  And I know that many physicists characterize the universe as just a bunch of “fields” of the various elementary particles; the electron field and the Higgs field, etc.  But I don’t understand why we can’t imagine empty space.  I mean I know that at any time a quark or a gluon or some other ephemeral exotic particle can show up anywhere but why is it so hard to say. “Right now, right here is empty space because nothing is there.”

I guess I’ll have to read more deeply.  After all, if the empty space between galaxies (and everything else) is always and ever more rapidly expanding as the universe itself inflates at an accelerating rate, it seems logical to me that there’s more and more “empty space” everywhere.

And so, I propose the following thought experiment:

I posit that using the James Webb Space Telescope, we find a spot in the sky where there aren’t even any really, really old galaxies hanging out.  There’s nothing along that line of sight.  I then take two flashlights (or “lasers” if anyone insists) and using a protractor and some really straight two by fours I line them up parallel to each other in the direction of that cosmic empty spot and turn them on.  Why wouldn’t those two beams continue on to the end of the universe exactly the same distance apart?  Now, sure, a few photons here and there might be deflected by a some randomly situated gas molecules or by the odd quantum vacuum quark that appeared for a femtosecond along the line of sight but for the most part the laser beams should continue on forever and ever, amen.

So, if that is the case.  What’s the problem with imagining empty space (mostly) with my two flashlight (or laser) beams going out and out and out forever?  And forever parallel.  After all there’s nothing close enough to really bend those light beams.  Now to prove this result there will need to be someone on the other end of the universe to do the measurement.  This presents something of a problem.  However, there may be a solution (well, a thought solution anyway).  It’s a well-known part of the Big Bang Theory that there should be equal amounts of matter and anti-matter in the universe.  But here we are with basically none to be found.  I theorize that at the end of the universe is the anti-matter we’ve been looking for (just like those ‘droids).  Granting this, then there should be an anti-matter me at the end of the universe.  Let’s call him anti-photog.  Now assuming he’s extremely long-lived (which anti-matter life forms always are) and that he thinks precisely as I do, he’ll be waiting for those two beams of light and he will measure the angle between the beams and find them to be parallel and thereby prove the Euclidean (or in his case anti-Euclidean nature of empty space.  Then he can send a return beam back in our direction (somehow) and we will have the answer.  Of course, the sun and probably the Milky Way Galaxy will have long ago been absorbed by the local super massive black hole and cosmic lichens will possibly be the only form of life remaining but that’s how science works sometimes.  You have to take the good with the bad.

So, Lobachevsky, Gauss, Riemann and all you other “non-Euclidean” geometricians (I’m looking at you A. D. Aleksandrov, A. N. Kolmogorov and M. A. Lavrent’ev!) shouldn’t put too much stock in all this curved space hand-waving.  Until the results of this wonderful research of mine are available, they should sit tight.  Estimates for the return trip signal are still being calculated but I’m sure it won’t be too bad.  I’ll be starting my crowdfunding page to buy the lasers and the two by fours very soon.  I’ve still got my third-grade protractor somewhere around here so I don’t need that.  I can’t wait to get started!

Update:

I asked an AI image generator to reproduce my thought experiment rig

It came up with this!

This may take a while.

Ho, Ho, Ho

photog Current Events, Trump , ,

I was trying to think what could be the most fortunate unexpected outcome from the Trump victory.  Well, we may have already seen some hints of what could be a larger reaction.  Comcast is laying off employees, reducing salaries and otherwise preparing MSNBC for its upcoming ejection from the corporation.  Rachel Maddow had her annual salary slashed by $5 million and there are several other senior staff who will either be let go or given a haircut.  And I have to imagine that Morning Schmoe’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago with Lycra Spandexy in tow had to be motivated by fear of the network deep-sixing them in the new environment of a dominant Trump presidency.  And think about it.  What are the chances that MSNBC (or whatever they’re going to call it) can survive on its own with its decimated viewership and falling advertising dollars?  Oh, think of the howling if it shuts its doors!

Rumblings at CNN’s parent company are also ominous and plenty of multimillion dollar salaries are most probably hanging in the balance as ratings have cratered and executives are at a loss as to how they can justify paying that much money to talking heads who are only talking to themselves.

And the same thing is going on at the network news front offices.  George Stephanopoulos just cost ABC (Disney) $16 million for calling Donald Trump a rapist.  I can’t imagine that’s endeared him to the bean counters who have to pay his huge salary.  And several other entities are currently wrestling with libel lawsuits from the incoming president.

So, with all this as the backdrop I had a wonderful holiday dream.  Imagine if during the New Year, or even in late December, all of these media conglomerates simultaneously dumped all of these partisan hacks on the unemployment line.  What a wonderful present it would be to the whole right-wing world.  Couldn’t you just see Anderson Cooper, Joe Scarborough, George Stephanopoulos, Chris Hayes and Jake Tapper meeting in the waiting room of NPR headquarters as they all interview for some rinky-dink position on public television?  They’d be glaring at each other and checking their makeup in the mirror of their man-purses.

But why stop there?  How about all the newspapers and on-line publications?  I’m sure the Bulwark must be running a little low on billionaire funding right about now and I know the LA Times is looking to balance out their staff with more conservatives so since they’re not making any money over there it would make perfect sense to lighten the ship a bit.  And the same goes for the Washington Post, Vox, Slate, Politico and a host of others.  Thinking of all those Never-Trumpers in knife fights with the other flavors of commies in order to get a spot at the fryolator in Mickey Dee’s just does my heart good.

Now you may think I’m out of line here.  Okay, maybe all of this won’t happen by New Year’s.  But all of the indications are that left-wing journalism is already going through an enormous contraction.  YouTube, TikTok and X are dominating the market for news and entertainment and after their horrendous performance handicapping the 2024 presidential election even the devotees of the lefty news sources feel like they’ve been had.  There is a real sense that they were lied to about the credibility of Kamala Harris’s chances of winning.  Even late into election night they made pathetic attempts at describing the race as “close.”  And as soon as the last glimmers of hope had been extinguished, the intrepid reporters immediately switched over to their flipside; “She ran a flawless campaign and lost because of racism and misogyny.”  Okay, everyone but the most hopeless losers could see that women and black men voting for Trump couldn’t be construed as misogyny and racism.  Saying it over and over just makes you sound nuts.

So, I’m pretty hopeful that over the next few months we’ll be saying goodbye to a lot of old friends from tv and print news.  And just like when we lost Fredo and Don Lemon it will bring back memories of exactly why we detest them so much.  Well, anyway that’s the present I want Santa to leave me under the tree.  Ho, ho, ho!

Let’s Pray for Their Success

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What to write about tonight?  Well, how about thinking about, “How did we get here?”

I know all about the deep dives where everything traces back to the Enlightenment and the loss of faith.  Or there’s the Abolitionists and the Civil War enshrining social justice in our government.  But I don’t want to go back that far.  I’ll settle for Woodrow Wilson and FDR as the source of the runaway bureaucracy that Washington DC has become.  Sure, in between, there were others but I think Wilson set the stage with the WW I expansion and FDR metastasized the problem with the New Deal and the WW II expansions.

Now, I’m not denying that by creating the Leviathan FDR assured the defeat of Hitler and Japan.  He did.  And by funding the Manhattan Project he created the American Empire and eventually destroyed the Soviet Union.  But at what cost?  As one of his successors (Eisenhower) warned, the melding of the US war machine with corporate interests fueled by almost limitless investment from the Federal Reserve has swallowed up our democracy.  And with it, has enveloped us in a police state that dictates to us in a way that is in line with what the Stasi did in East Germany and what China does with its people today.

The final nail in the coffin was 9/11/2001.  The reaction to that attack assured that the Patriot Act and the FISA Courts could treat American citizens like Stalin’s victims that we read about in the Gulag Archipelago.  You can be arrested, convicted, sentenced and buried in the gulag for annoying the bureaucrats or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Freedom of speech, unreasonable search and seizure and the right to an open and fair trial are all stripped away with the wave of a magic wand when the FISA Court and the Patriot Act declare that national security is threatened.  And all kinds of other atrocities are possible when the intelligence agencies can convince banks, airlines and social media companies that you are a dangerous person because you don’t agree with the bureaucracy’s priorities.

And all of this is because a bunch of rag tag Islamic extremists hijacked four airliners.  Well, as I’ve confessed innumerable times, I was one of the fools who agreed to this nonsense back in 2001.  I allowed myself to be swayed by anger to allow George W Bush and his geniuses to put in place the very laws that would plague Americans ever since.  All of us who agreed with these measures put on our chains voluntarily.  More the fool me.

Well now it’s time to start undoing all of this.  And I mean all of it.  First to go must be the FISA Courts and the Patriot Act.  Ending the ability of the CIA and FBI to target American citizens and sweep away their constitutional rights is the primary goal.  That must go.

But after that, the military industrial complex must be examined and the practices that allow it to bribe elected officials and collude with contractors to bleed the American taxpayers must be changed.  Sure, we need up to date weapons to assure the security of this country.  But we’re not even getting that anymore.  We have bloated weapons programs that produce expensive but unimpressive results.  Our state-of-the-art Abrams tanks are being decimated on the battlefields of Ukraine by $500 drones.  Our next-up super-fighter jet is a vaporware project that is so poorly defined that despite a price tag rumored to be close to a trillion dollars we don’t know why we should build it, other than it will enrich the contractors beyond their wildest dreams.

Getting this done will be a battle royale.  Both Democrats and Republicans will defend the military industrial complex with every fiber of their beings.  People like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell have amassed huge fortunes and incredible influence by serving the interests of the defense contractors in everything they do in the Congress.  It’s not too much to say that Donald Trump and his cabinet appointees in the Department of Defense will be risking their lives when they defy the vested interests there.  There is probably no limit to what they might do to prevent reform of the present situation.

Let’s pray for their success.  Nothing less than the freedom and prosperity of our children hangs in the balance over the next few years.