The Frustrating World of Games

I just came across this video at Break.com, it sums up perfectly the utter frustration I felt at many games as a child, many was the time I would be reduced to a quivering, screaming, swearing ball of fury at my inability to jump onto some moving block in one of the Mario Bros games. The commentary is brilliant, and vastly more polite than I would have been. Enjoy.

Super Mario Brothers Is Frustrating pt2

Ashingtonese - Part 3

Time I think for another examination of the linguistic niceties of my home town, Ashington, I'm sure Ibadairon will appreciate this. To those who have never seen this before below are a list phonetic pronunciations of words used in Ashington with their meaning in English and a brief example of how they may be used in Ashington. The hard work has been done by my brother who enjoys this kind of thing. To those of you having difficulty understanding, I apologise, it becomes difficult to work out what any one sentence means until you have picked up a usable vocabulary. For hints on how the accent sounds think along the lines of geordie (i.e. Jimmy Nail, Gazza, Mark Knopfler etc.).

"Bought" in English is to acquire something with money, but in Ashington it was a Sesame Street character. "Bought disnt like Oarnie nay mare"

"All" - means everything whereas in Ashington it is a title similar to a duke. "The all of Lancaster is a posh prick"

"Herb" in English is something used to enhance the flavour of food, whereas in Ashington it is part of a cooker. "The cooking herbs ahaad."

"Snare" is something used to trap an animal, in Ashington it is frozen precipitation that usually falls in winter. "Ya bugger the snare's starting to torn t' slush"

"Add" means to combine two or more things to get a total, in Ashington it a term used to describe someone in their dotage "Berb started t' gan a bit funny when he got add"

"Term" is an academic time period, in Ashington it is the name of a gentleman. "Term backed fowa winnaz at Cambois dergs yistiduh"

"Torn" in English means to rip something i.e paper in Ashington it means to move or cause to move in a circular direction wholly or partially around an axis or point. "Dennis waasn't able t' torn eez wife owa in bed, she waaz owa muchuva heffa nooa days"

"Born" is the English word meaning to begin living, but in Ashington it means to damage or injure by heat or fire. "Edith had to take *his* leek pudding oot the cooka afore it started to born"

"Claire" is a girls name in English but in Ashington it is the animal equivalent of a finger nail. "That bord owa, yah bugga shiz got sharp claire's"

New Crank On The Block

While perusing the Badastronomy discussion board I can across a particularly brilliant drive by poster, claiming that the Earth is stationary at the centre of the Universe for the following "reasons":

1. Copernicus never proved otherwise.

2. You are only parrotting this view because, as children you were intimidated and ridiculed to accept that view.

3. You are now adults, you can examine this view.

4. The Earth is NOT rotating because, there is no centrifugal force! You would weigh twice as much in Vancouver, Canada, like on Equator. You could bring diamonds from Peru, and sell it for twice as much in Canada, because they would weigh twice as much.

5. The planets are moving away from the Earth in ALL directions. Proving the Earth was at the center of the start of expansion. Thus, at the center of the universe.

6. Satellites are proving, that they rotate around the Earth without any engine because, the whole space around the Earth rotates. Including the Moon.

7. The constellations are the same for thousands of years since Babylonians came up with that that idea. That's because universe is not chaotic. As watched from the Earth everything rotates in the same way for thousands of years.

8. If the Earth rotated, the resulting winds would be worse than the hurricanes. Since the Earth's density is hundreds of times higher that of the surrounding atmosphere, the atmosphere would NOT rotate with the Earth fast enough to prevent the winds. the Earth is stationary, so is its atmosphere. This can be observed from the space.

9. I'm tired of writing. I just had to speak the truth. It will defend itself over time, no matter how many idiotic, pseudo-scientific, media-supported "arguments" you will post.

10. Live with that.

Wow its difficult to know where to begin, its just all so, wrong. I especially like the claim that if the Earth is spinning (which it is), then people would weigh twice as much in Canada as on the equator, it took all of a few hours before someone posted some maths that show that in fact you weigh approximately 0.2% more in Canada than at the equator. The best bit is that this guy (Pawel Kolasa) has a website, its full of all the crazy kind of stuff you would expect. Its got to be a parody, no one could be that mad/egotistical really, I hope, regardless, enjoy.

NeWiki.org

Speaking of cranks, it appears that my favourite bunch of cranks has finally got sick of real scientists correcting their wikipedia page. Their response? To set their own wiki up, newiki.org, your one stop shop for crank science, enjoy.

Honestly I don't know how DdH manages it, at my last count he was running at least 5 websites and a yahoo discussion group, no wonder they never get updated and that he never has time to see just how wrong he is.

Real Science vs Crank Science

I've now returned from NAM (the national astronomy meeting), refreshed and reinvigorated with scientific zeal. I'm planning to post about a topic or two that was discussed at NAM later, for now I'll try to keep this post brief. (Note: It didn't really work out that way, sorry)

After a few drinks this evening at the excellent Market Tavern with my fellow travellers in the world of astronomy, JEG and CMB, the conversation turned (as it is often does), to the topic of cranks. In between the complaints about how little cranks really know about the difficulties of real science and the gall they have to complain that they have it tough I think something profound was hit upon about the difference between real scientists and cranks.

I think it boils down to this: real scientists (a bracket we presumptuously include ourselves in) are never really sure about our conclusions, speaking for myself I always have the nagging fear that I have made some error somewhere. Perhaps I have missed some correction factor, or that I have applied it incorrectly, that I'm extrapolating some models beyond their applicable range, or that I am concluding something at odds with other data. Despite having excellent guidance and the safety net of peer review, perhaps somewhere I just screwed up. After speaking with others in the field it appears that this feeling is not unique, it appears that many if not most scientists are constantly worried about the accuracy of their work. This of course is a hallmark of a good scientist, ensuring that people don't just go about making baseless claims, to make a big mistake can affect your career very negatively.

It seems from my investigations of crank science that this never really afflicts the people that promote crank science, they are always right, they are always sure that they are correct. I'm not sure if this is some form of narcissism or simply because they are bald faced liars that know they are wrong but still want to make a fast buck or two, perhaps it can be either. For those that genuinely believe their theory to be correct it must be nice, to be certain that you are correct, to never fear that your mistakes will be electronically stored, printed, and forever available in the pages of a journal for everyone to see what a fool you were. Cranks can make their claims, safe in the knowledge that no amount of facts will get in the way of their stories.

Real scientists accept that they may be wrong, even accept that when they are acknowledged to be right it is but momentary glory, one day a new better theory will supplant theirs, cranks, in general never see this grand scheme, only that they are right and everyone else is wrong. So which really is the more difficult, to live in the viciously Darwinian world of real science, or the fantasy land of crank science, where to be utterly wrong is no big deal?

NAM

As you have probably noticed, the blogging has droppped off recently, that's just because I'm at the National Astronomy Meeting at the University of Central Lancashire for the week. Normal service will be resumed next week, hopefully with a few posts about the meeting.

Science At The Bleeding Edge

Two new and very interesting press releases to do with Physics have just been released, both of which I'm sure will end up on the ADiots anti-science webpage.

The first is explained much better than I ever could over at the Cosmic Variance blog, the gist of the story is that the MiniBooNE experiment has found some interesting results to do with Neutrinos, they are possibly weirder than we thought, don't look to me for an explanation though.

The second is the first results from the Gravity Probe B, this orbiting satellite is designed to test for the effects of General Relativity as it streaks round the Earth. The results so far are a stunning verification of General Relativity to much higher accuracy than has been possible with this type of experiment before.


To anyone keeping score, that a 0 for 2 for the Autodynamics crowd.

Corporate Greed

A rather depressing story from the world of business. An electrical goods chain (Circuit City) in the US is firing 3400 of its staff, simply so that it can hire new staff for a lower wage. Wow that place must really encourage success in its staff, stay there for more than a few years, work hard and get a little higher up the ladder and bam you're gone. If I lived over there you can be sure they would never get any of my custom, in fact it would call for a lot of picketing and an attempt to get people to boycott the place.

This op-ed in the Washington Post has more details plus some very interesting, and if your American, very depressing statistics like:

the bottom 90% (in terms of earnings) of Americans made less money in 2005 than 2004. All while the economy was growing steadily.

total reported income went up 9% in 2005, but all of that went to the richest 10%, everyone else lost 0.6%.

From 1947 through 1973, productivity in the U.S. rose by 104 percent, and median family income rose by an identical 104 percent.

Since then the rich have gotten considerably richer, whilst everyone else has been left behind, or even gotten worse off.

It amazes me that in light of this people like Rudy Giuliani can with a straight face support a flat tax rate, the only purpose of which is so the rich pay even less tax, and the already poor have to pay more, all in the name of "fairness".

I'm often confounded by the way things are in the states, people are genuinely being screwed by their employers and the system, with only a future of even less benefits and security to look forward to, all so that the already fabulously rich can afford another yacht or two. You would think that people might try to use their democratic rights to even things out, after all there are a lot more poor people than rich and all their votes are worth the same, yet every election there are millions that would rather vote on nebulous "moral values" issues than on issues that may provide them and their children a better future. Right rant over.

They're Back - 9 - The One In Which DdH Jumps To More Conclusions

Dave's latest diatribe is quite funny:

Mark has edited himself into the convoluted wikipedia article on
Autodynamics as a "critic".

Mark my man, you have guts! You are setting yourself up for a big
fall and you seem to be totally oblivious to the fact. Why you are
doing this to yourself must be deeply rooted in your emotional side.

Why people set themselves up for disaster is tough to understand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics

The biggest lie besides the misinterpretation and representation of
the velocity sum in this article is Mark's moniker as a "contributor"
to the AD.

You are DEFINITELY not that. I am banning you today given that you
show no ability to understand AD or the basics of physics even though
you write reams on the subject.

Goodbye and good luck and hope that your new name or existing name
hides you well in this group. You will have to now change the wikipedia article
to say you were banned.

Any article that even alleges Carezani's PHD degree is more
of a vendetta from frustrated people than the reporting of the truth
- something there is little of in the wikipedia article on Autodynamics.

But don't worry everyone, we will be revealing our answer to wikipedia
this year. Stay tuned! The real article on Autodynamics will be very different
and Mark and no one else will be able to do anything about it. We will be
giving a paper on the subject at the NPA meeting.

And thanks to all the AD bashers out there! Without you, we would have
less traffic to our site. Your sacrifice of truth, common sense, ability to
listen, study and learn - ALL in front of the entire world to see - is quite
curious and kamikaze-like.

We thank you all - specially the ones that are creating entire new categories
for AD. Props to my favorite kamikazes Ron and Mark!

-David

I especially like the fact that he assumes that I edited the wikipedia link. A quick check of the change history reveals the real culprit, a jg1981, I wonder who that could possibly be? Not Mr (soon Dr) J Geach perhaps? To be found on my links at room311? Thanks Jim, I wondered why I was getting a hit or two a day from wikipedia, now we all know. I agree with Dave though, I've contributed nothing to the AD people except to point out the obvious flaws in their theory, I'm not too happy with the way its worded and have therefore just changed it.

As for setting myself up for a fall what does he actually mean? Is it some sort of threat? Even if the impossible happens and AD was to be proven correct, would that affect me in any way? No, not really, science is all about being wrong, I'm quite happy to change my mind when things turn out to not to be true. Would it affect my career? Again No, everyone else in science would be wrong so its hardly likely that I would suffer any special punishment. So I really am at a loss about what he thinks could happen to me.

It sounds to me like Dave is planning his own wacked out physics wikipedia, a la Conservapedia, can't wait for that. By the way, does anyone know what the NPA is? a Google search doesn't actually turn up anything physics related, could it be something to do with Nuclear Physics A? Or more likely for DdH's crew it could be the National Pigeon Association.

Another post hererants about a question someone has put to them about doing an experiment to show that their velocity sum is correct. He thinks that is me as well. Dave please listen very carefully, I shall say this again, if I am going to talk to you I do it without hiding behind false names or anonymously. I can't talk for others that you may associate with me, but I have no time for those games, I tell what I believe to be the truth, to your face (well as close as you can get online).

I can understand why DdH finds this idea of me being honest and open difficult, back in the day he was quite the terror of the discussion board world, dozens of different names and accounts, always pretending to be a newbie with a question about a theory they just stumbled across (Autodynamics), basically he was just trolling for recruits. So when he looks at me I believe he is simply seeing his own methods and dishonesty reflected.

Oh and Dave, you or any of your band are still more than welcome to discuss things over here, I won't silence a critic, especially on false premises. As long as you keep things polite mind you, so I guess that means asking Lucy to calm down a little.

If Wishes Were Horses

The Washington Post has returned to form today, with an actual op-ed that doesn't make my eyes bleed, this one is well reasoned and rational. Check it out here (free subscription required).

The piece written by a Tim Watkin deals with that ridiculous self help book "The Secret". This is another one of those books that is so obviously rubbish but somehow still manages to sell millions of copies. Its basic premise is that if you wish hard enough for something it will just turn up. Despite being patent nonsense it has sold millions of copies, in part due to an endorsement by Oprah Winfrey. It amazes me that an obviously clever successful business woman like Oprah would waste oxygen talking about this crap, but then I guess she probably knows her demographic.

The question is where do we start with what is wrong with the main idea of this book? The fact that it basically encourages people to avoid hard work in favour of wishing for a fantasy life that will just fall into their lap? That it doesn't make any allowance for pure dumb luck? Or as the op-ed correctly points out the logical conclusion of its premise is that people that have bad luck, deserve it, because they must have been secretly wishing to sabotage themselves. The book even states:

The only reason why people do not have what they want is because they are thinking more about what they don't want than what they do want.

And

Imperfect thoughts are the cause of humanity's ills

So anyone who has ever been ill has no one to blame but themselves, those people killed in the twin towers on September 11th, it was all their own fault, they should have spent more time wishing for lottery wins and less time worrying about terrorists apparently. In case you don't think I'm serious that they claim this kind of thing, take a look at this quote from the op-ed:

Bob Proctor, author of "You Were Born Rich" and one of the "gurus" Byrne (author of "The Secret") quotes most often, being asked on "Nightline" whether the starving children of Darfur had "manifested" -- that is, visualized -- their own misery. In utter seriousness, he replied, "I think the country probably has."

Italics added by me. It just shows you the kind of madness that people can believe in, actively blaming the less fortunate for their ills, simply because they have turned off their ability for rational thought. I find the whole idea of blaming the unfortunate for their ill luck disgusting, especially when its done simply to line the pockets of snake oil salesmen. The whole idea begs the question does everyone have the same strength wishes? Can everyone combine them, if enough of us combine our wishes can we wish for say bankruptcy for the author? Or are they some sort of super powered wisher, that we couldn't over power? Whatever, tonight I'm going to wish selflessly, wishing that this kind of crap disappears without a trace as soon as possible, before more people throw away $17 needlessly.

They're Back - 8 - The One In Which Mark Totals Up The Scores So Far

The "debate" with the followers of Autodynamics has been going on for a while now, so I thought it would be time to reflect on the successes of the two contending theories, Relativity and Autodynamics. I think that the best way to do that is to simply list those phenomena that each theory can adequately describe. I'm not going to get into arguments about causative effects here, so gravity counts as a success for GR because GR can more than adequately describe the behaviour of gravity, even if it does not have an explanation for what causes it (i.e. what causes mass to bend space/time). So onto the lists, lets start with the accepted theory first.

Relativity
Maxwell's Equations - through these the behaviour of all electromagnetic phenomena, including everything happening in the computer you're reading this on is explained. I could write pages and pages about what this ability means, but I don't have the patience or the time, needless to say everything in the modern world depends on our understanding of electromagnetism and electromagnetism is a fully relativistic phenomena.

Gravity - General Relativity accurately predicts how mass will influence motion due to gravity to incredible levels of precision. From the motions of the planets to the behaviour of pulsars.

Motion Of Objects - Often overlooked relativity also deals with how moving objects behave, such as the observed appearance of mass increase in moving objects. An important point being that relativity describes correctly the behaviour of objects at low velocities as well as high, its just that this behaviour is exactly the same as predicted by Newtonian mechanics at low velocities.

Particle Physics - Almost anything to do with particle physics requires a deep understanding of relativity, the fact that objects moving near to the speed of light appear to increase in mass means that particle accelerators are set up differently than they would be if this didn't occur.

Nuclear Physics - The fact that the Sun shines, that atomic weapons and fission reactors work can all be traced back to the very relativistic equation of E=mc^2, an equation that drops out naturally any number of ways from special relativity.

There are many others, however most of them would tend to fall within the larger topics above so I'll leave them out, if anyone thinks that I have missed anything out feel free to let me know. Needless to say regardless of DdH's claims to the contrary relativity is essential to basically any piece of technology used in the world, save perhaps the windmill.

Autodynamics
(Think of tumbleweed bouncing down a desert road, with the slight sound of a breeze in your ears.)
No really there must be something it can be used for. Wait for it, wait for it, got it:

Time Dilation - Autodynamics has caused this student to lose a large amount of time over the previous several months.

And...Well that's it actually, there is nothing from the list of things that relativity adequately explains that AD can, and as far as I can tell nothing AD can describe that relativity cannot, save perhaps where all my time went, sigh.

They're Back - 7 - The One In Which DdH Fires Off A Few Ad Hominems

Check out DdH's latest post over at crank central. The most interesting bit is probably this:

What happens is that a person seems interested, polite, and really
concerned yet when you start arguing logic with them about their
inability to understand the basics of Carezani's work, you quickly
find that they are neither interested, polite, or concerned about
physics truth. This has happened over and over during the last 15
years and it will continue to happen.

It is usually by students of physics preparing themselves to enter the
mainstream. As someone in this fight from Seattle told me, most
people who go into physics are autistic. It is true. They get their
strenght by sitting isolated with themselves or their autistic friends
who consider themselves to be very very smart yet socially, they are
misfits. They find what they think are the weakest kid on the block,
sit at their computer far removed, and pick on this person from an
often anonymous, long-distance. It is very corwardess.

I wonder to whom he may be referring? I think its a bit unfair to claim most physicists are autistic, certainly many may seem to be, especially the more blue-sky researchers, speaking for my own sub field though I find Astronomers to be amongst the most well rounded of scientists. This may well be because I am a socially awkward autistic misfit. I am very very smart though, so maybe it balances out. I could go on for a while pointing out what a well rounded person I am but I think the most interesting question is if I am autistic, what is Dave? Someone that spends all their spare time pushing an obviously flawed theory? The two options I have come up with are; extremely arrogant and self deluding, or, a lying snake oil salesman only interested in selling books or videos.

As for his other claims, well I'm not anonymous, my name is right of the top of the page (to the right if your having trouble locating it Dave), as to the fact that I live on the other side of the world, what am I to do about that? If Americans can't deal with their own nuts (and looking at all the Intelligent Design crowd, they can't) someone will have to speak up for real science. Does it make any difference to the validity of my points that I live on the other side of the world? Last time I checked the same laws of Physics apply in the UK as in California. I'm not picking on any kid, I'm presenting scientific arguments which disprove his theory, if he can't respond in a scientific manner, he shouldn't bother at all. His response so far has been to totally ignore every point put to him, preferring to respond by claiming that we don't understand what he is saying. It is almost impossible to comprehend something fully when it is plain wrong.

His choice of language reveals his lack of interest in debating the soundness of his theory, he is attempting to paint those of us that do argue for real science in a bad light, and himself as a plucky underdog so that he may play the victim and appeal to peoples less rational thinking. He is simply attempting to play to peoples predjudices about what a scientist is like, anyone that knows any professional scientist will tell you he is dead wrong. All this posturing, and that is all it is, is a meaningless distraction, to hide the fact that he has absolutely no evidence to back up what he is claiming. Come on Dave, if your theory is real, then publish some results, in a real peer reviewed journal.

As DdH has decided to get personal I think I can feel free to point out that a linguist such as himself really has no excuse for such appalling spelling, I mean honestly Dave a spell checker can't be beyond your capability can it? Honestly what the hell is "corwardess"? Sigh, even if you spelt it correctly the sentence doesn't make sense. Fool.

As a final thought, near the end he states:

Science is based on observation first, theory second.

I really wish he would take his own advice. We have pointed out many ways that AD just doesn't fit simple experiments, does that alter his thinking? Not one jot. His theoretical approach must be right, despite all the evidence to the contrary, see an upcoming post for more details on that.

They're Back - 6 - The One In Which DdH Links To More Obvious Errors In AD

Over at ADherent central a positive flurry of messages have been bouncing around, a mini thread has recently developed about the speed of electrons in electronics and related to that Maxwell's equations. For those not au fait with Physics, Maxwell's equations (click here for the wikipedia explanation) are a set of equations that describe the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields and currents. They are essential to our understanding of the behaviour of any electronic systems, or any electromagnetic (such as light) phenomena.

Dave de Hilster was asked in a post if AD could derive Maxwell's equations, the obvious answer is no, Maxwell's equations are clearly relativistic equations, it was problems understanding them that led Lorentz to come up with his transforms that Einstein subsequently used to postulate relativity in the first place. Dave however chose to link to this page on the Autodynamics site. Why is this interesting? Well because of two sets of equations and the legend at the bottom of the page which states:

These two equations (the SR and AD forms of a particular Maxwell equation) are conceptually equal with the exception that in the SR equation, the coefficient Z divides the equation and in AD, the coefficient multiplies the equation!

The italics added by me by way of explanation. What he is stating is crazy. He is saying that in one equation (the SR one) the terms are divided by the factor Z and in the other (the AD one) they are multiplied by it. He adds the explanation mark as an attempt to make you think this is great news, that the two equations are actually equivalent, which of course they cannot be for any value of Z other than 1 (Erratum: it originally said "or 0" as well here, but that's rubbish, the product of writing posts in the dead of night. Thanks Marc.). What this actually boils down to is that AD cannot describe the Maxwell's equations as we know and use them, so AD is entirely incapable of describing any electromagnetic phenomena. Chalk up another great success for AD!

They're Back - 5

DdH has posted a reply to the email I sent earlier, you can see my original post here. Here is his response in full, my comments which take the form of an open letter to DdH are at the end.

Mark:

I would take your statement of feeling better serious if you showed
that you can take the time to understand AD. But your civility is a
war tactic, not sincerity. Do you think for one minute I believe you
are here to learn about AD? That amazes me more than your
non-willingness to take the time you need to understand what Carezani
is saying. That is expected. But you can't fool anyone by saying you
are glad I'm better because we know you are not. So I will not accept
your false kindness. That is a simple tactic used over and over here for people
who say we don't listen and are not civil and use that as "proof" we are
inconvincible.

You call us ADiots and you care about my health???

Here is just a small part of what you don't understand:

The velocity sum problem as described by AD forces you to understand
that movement is not for free in the universe. Newton gave us
equations for movement but did not say where movement came from.
Einstein says inertial frames exist and they don't and therefore SR is
moot and what he says about movement and acceleration are therefore moot.

Mass increase is not treated as real by particle accelerator
scientists and yet you and others say SR is correct.

Space-time is vacuous as stated by Feynman himself yet we call
Einstein's theory of gravity a theory of gravity. It is not.

You and the establishment make one fatal mistake: you ignore the
crumbling and failings and flailing of theoretical physics and you
don't STUDY DEEPLY Carezani's work and try to find some simple
Hollywood movie ending where you can defeat a superior enemy as Will
Smith did by imagining one bullet in the right place will kill the enemy.

The truth is just the opposite. Many people around the world have
shown E=mc^2 to only work for very specific cases. Two people in the
world how have gotten the raw data for the atomic clock have shown it
wrong. Where is the proof?

One of the sponsors for my film is one of the brave GPS guys to have
the balls to say that relativity is not used in GPS. Where is the proof?

The experimental physicist in my film at SLAC says mass increase is not treated
as real. Where is the proof?

You, scientists, textbooks, and journalist, repeat statements over and
over and over again that "relativity is one of the most tested
theories in science".

WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE??? Search the internet. Where are the
practical applications? GPS and particle accelerators are not examples.

You try and fool everyone with the details of something you don't
understand trying to be the Will Smith of your physics fantasy world.
You are dragon slayer 23 in a long line of people who for some reason
or other feel superior by picking on tiny David (not me, but the
biblical one). That makes you Goliath. He loses in the end.

If Einstein is right, why have ALL the physicists we've talked to
declined to talk with us? What are the afraid of? They really just want to keep
status quo. They are intersted in their job security first, truth second.

As for publishing in reviewed magazines, that is a circular argument.
If you understand philosophy 101, you would understand that you can't assume
what you are trying to set out to prove. In order
to get published in peer-reviewed publications, you have to be
accepted by the establishment. To be accepted by the establishment,
you have been accepted in peer-reviewed publications. That is a circular
argument.

In conclusion, we will only answer questions from those who are
interested in learning about AD because trying to show where you are
wrong is a circular problem also: you have to understand AD before
you would "supposedly" be able to "bring it down".

You have shown, like the establishment, to not study AD deeply.

What can I say? You either take the time, or pretend to be the
Hollywood hero in a fantasy world and be reliaged to the masses in
history who swallow whole what is told to them.

-David

First off David, my civility is not feigned or a tactic, Science should not be an arena of personal grudges and arguments, I genuinely do not wish you any harm, I don't know you and have no reason to dislike you, you have always seemed genuinely polite. As I have pointed out before I do not hate you, pity is the best word to describe my feelings towards you. There are many people in Astronomy I disagree with in a professional sense but have no personal animosity with. I would have to admit that I do actively dislike Lucy, she is rude, offensive and attempts to belittle those that disagree with here, she is most definitely an ADiot, I would hazard to guess that any PhD she may have is not in any science, as her attitude would not get her very far.

The velocity sum equation for AD does not force me to accept that motion is not "free", if you are admitting that AD cannot describe the motion of macroscopic objects in a way that we all can observe in our everyday lives, then you are admitting that AD is wrong. Like much of AD the claim that mass decreases as a particle moves is contradictory, the change in the mass clearly depends on the observer, because it depends on the relative velocity between the two, so how is this change any different from the change in mass predicted by relativity, except of course for the different sign of the change?

This of course is related to your misunderstanding of what people tell you about mass increase in special relativity. I'm not sure if you deliberately misunderstand or if you simply are incapable of seeing the subtleties, regardless lets see if we can try one more time. Yes SR says that moving objects appear to increase in mass, now is this increase real? No of course not, because the amount of mass increase depends on the relative motion of the observers, so different people will measure different masses for the same object if they have different relative motions. This is just another manifestation of the different observables appearing different in different reference frames, its exactly the same in AD as I have pointed out except you have got it the wrong way around, you then desperately try to explain it as the energy being used to move the object, if that is the case why do I have to impart energy to move a ball? So in SR while an object may not physically increase in mass it behaves exactly as if it has, so to make things simpler physicists treat it as a mass increase. Despite your claims particle physicists use this every day when calculating parameters for interactions, if you have a "particle physicist" who claims otherwise he is either no such thing or not involved in anything to do with actual experiments. Sorry to disabuse you of this but that just the way it is, even the electrons in a CRT have a measurable different mass to ones at rest.

Einsteins theory of gravity is not a theory of causation it is a phenomenological description, one that happens to work incredibly well in every circumstance it has ever been tested. GR is undoubtedly a excellent description and any full theory of gravity, such as quantum gravity must reproduce the predictions of GR. Your theory of gravity which is actually an ad hoc attachment to AD, which has no real connection to the main theory was disproven on thermodynamic (as well as many other) grounds more than a century ago.

I have absolutely no misconceptions that I can convince you that you are incorrect. I really don't care if I do, as long as people like you are around, there will be people like me explaining what the real science is. So no I will not give up, these pages will be here as long as possible, at the rate they are climbing up the Google searches they will soon be on the first page just below your site, ensuring that everyone gets to have a balanced read.

I am not aware of any evidence that E equals anything other than mc^2, and has already been pointed out, from a dimensional analysis point of view, it must. For you to claim that it can be anything other than that for the energy of motion shows just how ignorant of physics you really are.

I don't know who your GPS guy is, but I do know that GPS and the Galileo system have corrections for relativity built in. I have seen many explanations of what effects are included, here is one. There are plenty of people that seem to claim that GPS doesn't include relativistic effects, always people that would have no connection with the actual programming of the corrections.

I don't doubt physicists would want nothing to do with you, asking them to appear in a documentary that is clearly cranky, with no editorial control over how their words are used. It's a recipe for humiliation. Does it really surprise you that they want nothing to do with your project? Especially when a simple Google search brings up so many examples of you and your behaviour, I'm particularly thinking about your discussion board days. Add that to the fact that it is up to you to prove that your theory is correct not the other way round, and to date you have nothing to back up your claims. Physicists are generally very busy people, they don't have time to spend potentially ruining their credibility with any loon with a camera.

Your comment about peer reviewed shows that you don't know anything about the process. Your hate figure, Einstein, published his first papers without any qualifications other than a standard degree and without a position at an academic institution. You can submit papers to any journal you like, they will be treated fairly by an expert in the relevant field. If your theory has any potential the reviewer will be more than willing to help out, if you think you are being treated unfairly you can ask for another reviewer. You won't get any sympathy from professional scientists with your whining about not getting published, we all have to work through the same problems. We use the scientific method for a reason, because it works, if everyone that had an idea started their own mini cult with websites, documentaries and books we wouldn't progress at all.

Oh and as a response to your post here, I am doing a PhD, there are no majors, hell there aren't even majors in undergraduate degrees in the UK you spend all of your time studying the subject you signed up for, which in my case meant 4 years of Physics. My PhD is research based and I like what I do, so I think I'll stick with it.

They're Back - 4 Grandma Luce Strikes Back!

So Lucy Haye has decided to reply to my previous comments, here it is in its brilliant unedited glory. Watch out for razor sharp observations and stunning scientific insight, or not.

Dear Mark:

You confirm that you are really very ignorant, when you talk about the balls. From where the energy come from?

In AD it expend more energy when the velocity is bigger (20 m/sec) but with the same GIVEN energy the ball will travel at 14.14 m/sec. Tell NASA how to do your brilliant idea given by Newton and Einstein!!! to get energy from nothing.
(Of course I know that you don't understand the problem. Is needed to be a no fanatic ignorant to understand it. You don’t understood the problem in the referenced PAGE)

You NEVER will understand AD because you are an ignorant believer of Einstein mistakes and living in the ancient caves.

As always thanks for your commercial. The smart people will see the difference, THANKS

Regards.
Lucy Haye.

Lucy is confused, but lets see if the rest of us can learn something today.

Lets set the scene, we have a man on a train, the train travels at 10m/s in some direction, the man then throws a ball in the direction of motion of the train, the ball travels at 10m/s relative to the man. The question is at what speed does a stationary observer by the tracks see the ball move at?

The answer is simple, the ball appears to the stationary observer to be moving at 20m/s, simply the sum of the two velocities, now, however much Lucy bleats and whines this is a simple fact of nature, observed whenever objects move in relative motion at speeds a lot less than light speed, the fact that AD says this is not the case simply proves that AD is a crock.

Now why is Lucy whining about energy? You see AD has the strange idea that when an object moves it becomes less massive, this is in direct contradiction to both the predictions of Special Relativity and all experimental observations. ADherents claim that this loss in mass is used to push the object along. So when she asks "From where the energy come from?", she is confused about where the energy moving the ball comes from. Of course those of us in the sanity based world are not confused, the ball received kinetic energy from the train, and then even more from the man throwing it, of course the amount of kinetic energy depends on who is measuring it, the man on the train measures the ball having less kinetic energy than the man by the track. This is simply to say that the kinetic energy is not an invariant quantity, how much KE you measure an object to have depends on the relative motion between yourself and the object, it is surely easy to accept that this is the case, think of it this way, what does more damage a crash where one car is stationary and the other hits it at 30mph, or one where both cars drive at each other at 30mph?

This simple and obvious fact about the Universe, is a big problem for ADherents, they have so confused themselves about the nature of frames of reference that they have concocted a theory where kinetic energy has become so confused that it cannot be used in the real world. Hence the problem that they are unable to account for even the simplest relative motion experiments.

So what is the standard response to any criticism that points out ADs manifest failings? Either stony silence or a barrage of Ad-Hominems and claims of scientific bias. I really don't care personally whether Einsteins Relativity is correct, it doesn't really impact much on the work I do, I thoroughly believe that at some point a new theory will supplant it, its just that AD clearly isn't that theory. Any theory that wishes to replace relativity, must first be able to explain all the observations that relativity so successfully has, AD can't do that, it can't even reproduce the observations of the low energy regime that Galileo and Newton managed.

I'll repeat my challenge, to Dave, Ricardo or Lucy, if AD is a scientific theory, then publish something in a real peer reviewed journal, if you would like a list of reputable ones feel free to email me and I'll try to let you know which would be most appropriate. Now if you don't mind I'm off to do some real science.

Note: To those not familiar with the topic, AD has been published in a journal once, it was a paper, co-written with the creator of AD Ricardo Carezani, which described the results of an experiment carried out at the Stanford Linear Accelerator which completely disproved the theory, finding that all the results were perfectly in line with the predictions of Special Relativity. You can find the paper here if you like.

They're Back - 3

So its all kicked off over at the SAA. DdH started with this post:

Well put.

Here is an example of those you speak of. We have found that the ones
who attack AD and it's proponents know very little about basic physics
and almost nothing about AD. Most of them are full of themselves
opinion and are positioning themselves for jobs in the acedemic world
where truth is less and less important than simply finding am a place
to eek out a living in the university system.

http://theobservershunch.blogspot.com/2007/04/theyre-back.html

It is truly amazing how they cannot and do not understand the basics
and like children, shout back that we don't understand the basics.
It's truly sad.

Amazing. And we're in the 21st century. I'm not sure if we can say
physics is though. Physics in my opinion is over 100 years behind and
stopped at and made a u-turn at the turn of the 20th century.

-David

Which elicited a response that chills the blood of anyone that values real education.

As a homeschooler, David, how can I teach my children the real "basics"? Is
there a "basics" textbook that parents can use with confidence for teaching
real physics to their children when they aren't scientists themselves?

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Aderet

I honestly feel terribly sorry for the poor child that is educated by someone that thinks the SAA is a reliable source of scientific knowledge, to be honest if I understand the home schooling done in the states its fairly likely this kid is being told the Earth is 6000 years old or that Evolutionary theory says Humans evolved from monkeys. Sigh.

DdHs response is to be found here, its very long so I won't post it. Its full of the usual rubbish, but some claims do bear reprinting.

It's funny that the high school teacher of advanced physics at the school where I filmed did not teach relativity. He said he didn't teach it because it simply didn't motivate or interest students. To me, that shows that it is a dead end. After 100 years, there is nothing that has come of it.

That's funny a high school teacher doesn't teach relativity, what a surprise, to appreciate relativity fully you have to understand maths at a higher level than is taught in school. I wonder what other scientific theories aren't taught in school? You know I never really was taught quantum mechanics in school, that must be a dead end too. Or nuclear physics, the lessons we had were very cursory, probably nothing to be gained from understanding how atoms work, or how to generate power from fission. Or what about genetics, we learned that there are 4 base pairs and that they can be arranged to form the DNA code, but not really that much else, I guess genetics is a dead end beyond that.

DdHs next post was aimed squarely at me, enjoy, I know I did.

The effort this guy goes through is quite amazing. Too bad he like
most others stop in the middle before they really understand AD and
pretend to slay the dragon.

http://theobservershunch.blogspot.com/search/label/Autodynamics

A lot of stuff! Misguided, but C+ for the effort!

One example of how these people run right over the truth at the speed of light
and skip the most important point:

"It was observed that the energy contained in the observed decay
products (electron and proton) did not add up to the amount of energy
contained in the neutron, so Pauli postulated that an unobserved
particle (the neutrino) must be carrying away some of the energy."

Problem here is, the energy DID add up without the neutrino. It is exactly as
predicted without the neutrino. Pauli
applied the relativistic KE equation to the eletron and that created the extra
energy. Looks like our basher skipped that important part. First mistake is
that you can't apply KE to decay.
Second, there isn't missing energy if you don't apply relativistic
equations to decay. in the first place.

Two mistakes skipped over by future PHD in the UK and then he goes off into more
and more stuff with just as many conceptual errors.

There is case after case of this guy getting things wrong. One thing we have
learned through the years: it is useless to point out their mistakes to them.
They are incapable of learning because they are convinced AD is wrong no matter
what you say. The only time we spend time to explain where these sad-sacks go
wrong is for those who truly are interested in learning about AD and it serves
as an example for others to see where the shallow logic AD bashers use goes
wrong.

Just think if this guy actually shut up and studied AD more, he might just get
it!

;-)

-David

Only a C+?, for all this work?, damn he is tight marker. I thought at least a B. Needless to say its all posturing bullshit. It wouldn't matter how long I studied AD, I couldn't get it because its a pile of contradictory nonsense. I posted a reply to their board but I don't doubt it won't get posted, so here it is in all its unedited glory.

Hi David

Glad to hear you're feeling better. It's nice to see that you have taken the time to read my post at last. I wonder however what your response to the most problematic points I raised are, namely that there is absolutely no way that E can equalmc^3, and that this shows the lack of scholarship involved in your entire theory. People in glass houses should not throw stones especially when you make a mistake no competent high school student would.

The other being that the Autodynamics equations do not form a group and therefore cannot be used as transforms as you so happily do throughout. This I'll be more forgiving with, a slightly competent first year University physicist would probably pick this one up.

I'll ignore the bit about you being unable to reproduce anything sensible without having to fudge results.

As I don't doubt that this message will get blocked I'll ensure it appears on my blog, thanks to your linking to my blog on your message board at least other members of theSAA will get to see it now.

You keep feigning confusion as to the motives of people like myself, well your last few posts adequately show why people like myself take the time to point out your mistakes. To think that someone schooling their child would think that you are a reputable source of scientific information is beyond me. Then I realise I'm fortunate, I work surrounded by people that use relativity every single day in their work, something I'm sure your deluded parent doesn't have the benefit of, so no wonder it seems odd to them. I know its a fact, I see the results of it everyday, the version you peddle is a cartoon version of relativity, in the same way that creationists caricature evolution and bears little relation to the real theory.

I am here because when scientists don't share their knowledge to people, charlatans and cranks like yourselves start peddling nonsense like AD, or intelligent design or the healing power of crystals, to the benefit of no one but themselves.

If AD is really a scientific theory then publish some papers, in a real peer reviewed paper (and don't try to count Physics Essays, peer reviewed means checked for factual accuracy, not spelled checked). If as you claim your maths is right it must be incontrovertible (that's the way maths is), the fact that you have never published anything that has been properly been reviewed shows the vacuity of the theory. I don't doubt you will claim scientific bias here, but the fact is if your maths is right, it can't be argued with, the fact that even I can show where it goes wrong doesn't really bode well.

Thanks

Mark

Serenity

After the silliness of the last few posts I think its about time to turn to weightier matters. In this case which Serenity character I am most like. This post is fairly well timed as it turns out that Serenity was voted the most popular Sci-Fi film in a poll by SFX magazine. I have to say the film is great, though I wouldn't go as far as saying it was the best Sci-Fi film ever.

If you want to have a go yourself try this link.

My results which I'm pretty happy about (except the 10% Reaver bit, unless it means 10% Border Reiver which could be true) are in the figure below.

They're Back - 2

More from the lovely Grandma Luce:

Dear Mark:

You are very very ignorant.

The equation that I sent to you is exactly the same as PAGE reference. What really happen, is that you don't know Elemental Algebra, neither the order on how the operations are made.

Ignorant like you cannot study Physics. Change your career. You are making the ridiculous-man

As always, thanks for your Propaganda

Regards.

Lucy Haye.

Ah Grandma Luce, it appears that it is your goodself that is somewhat lacking in mathematical technique, shall we have a look why?

You say that the Autodynamics Velocity sum equation is:

Bn = (1 - ( (1- B1^2) ...... (1- (Bn-1)^2)))^1/2

Which indeed it is, as the page I linked to clearly demonstrates, however in my large post I was asking the question what happens to the AD velocity sum equation at low velocities, where C >> V? (In this case as long as v is less than about 10% of C this approximation holds very well)

Well what happens is that your equation above reduces to:

(I believe from a technical standpoint that you use a Taylor expansion to get to this from the AD equation.)

Exactly as I had stated. For fun, and because I do this kind of thing everyday I decided using IDL to check that this is the case (hey nothing better to do), If I use the equation given by Grandma Luce and values of v1=10000., v2=20000. and v3=30000. we get a velocity total of 374165.67, if we use the equation above we get 374165.74. Proving again that it is an excellent low velocity limit for the equation given by Grandma Luce.

Oh and also that AD is a crock. Its nice to see one of the ADiots admit that the velocity sum does apply in cases of relative motion though, and hence the world can now see that it is clearly contradicted by the real world, I mean if you throw a ball in the direction of motion at 10m/s from a train travelling at 10m/s, what does someone stationary on the ground see? The ball travelling at 20m/s (as in the real world) or 14.14m/s as in the AD fantasy land? You decide.

On a final note to Grandma Luce, if you don't mind would you enlighten us as to what your PhD is in? Oh and thanks for playing! Try again soon!

They're Back!

That's right every ones favourite crank science troupe the ADiots/ADherents have returned. See IbaDaiRons posts here and here for more details. I think something he said must have stirred them into action because I received the following email from Grandma Luce, regarding my long post on why Autodynamics is bogus (see here, its also a good place for people not familiar with Autodynamics to start).

Dear Mark:

Thanks you very much for you commercial on AD, event though it is absolutely false all what you said about AD. You didn't understand a word about it.

Your AD Sun Velocity Equation is absolutely wrong:
The AD's equation is:

Bn = (1 - ( (1- B1^2) ...... (1- (Bn-1)^2)))^1/2

Regarding the Kinetic Energy is needed to be very ignorant or a big liar to say that AD say that the energy is invariant.

Regarding System in Relative motion you didn't understand a word on what AD say and never you will understand it because you are not a scientist: You are a person poisoned by poison and hate.
It is your problem, no the AD's problem.

It is painful to see an English Gentleman plying so bad role.

My best regards, and thanks again for your propaganda.

Lucy Haye Ph. D.
SAA's member
Books's Manager.

I'm not sure why she didn't just post the reply to comments section of my post, my guess is that she didn't want anyone else to see it. Oops. As you can see she has not bothered to try to make any comments that actually refute my points, apart form claiming that I have got the wrong velocity sum equation, all I can say to that is that I put up the equation from the AD website, the AD website has a page with questions on where the velocity sum equation is given in the form I provide, the answer agrees that this is the correct form of the velocity sum equation. So which is it? right or wrong? To be honest it doesn't really matter the equation Luce gives doesn't reduce to the Galilean one anyway so its still wrong.

To say I'm disappointed is an understatement, I had expected better from them, they claim that their theory is an improvement on GR and after over a month this is the best they can come up with to refute my objections? I at least thought they might try to explain away the fact that they claim Energy might be equal to mass times the speed of light cubed, which isn't even dimensionally allowed!

Come on ADiots, you really have to make a better show for yourselves. This is frankly just embarrassing.

Scientific Rivals

Over at cosmicvariance they have a post about a topic we have discussed in the group before, scientific enemies/nemesis, those people that work in your sub-field and for whatever reason you don't get on.

The cosmic variance article gives some handy hints on how to choose your own personal scientific nemesis, I myself already have one, it only took one chance meeting for me to decide on them, I'm sure that in all probability they are a decent person, just something about them rubbed me up the wrong way. I'm looking forward to many years of run-ins at conferences to come, in all probability without them ever realising I dislike them.

Does anyone else have any professional enemies?