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Sunday, 01 November 2009

Doctor Variable's Halloween After Action Report

I don't feel so good.

Something like that.

On the other hand I scored some 50% off Halloween Candy at the stores around here. Factoring in the original holiday markup that means I got to buy candy at almost regular price. Wow.

Hope your Halloween avoided death by as large a margin as mine did!

Saturday, 31 October 2009

BOO.

Have a fun, insomnia inducing Halloween, everybody!

And if you manage to avoid falling into a diabetic coma from all the candy, check back here tomorrow for Doctor Variable's Halloween After Action Report.

Thursday, 17 September 2009

I Fought the Law of Gravity And The Law Won

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.
-Albert Einstein

As a scientist, however mad, I find myself thinking a lot about the known laws of physics compared to the laws of man. On the surface, the laws of physics are immutable and the laws of man are mutable. Dig deeper and you find that this is not quite true; physical laws go through revisions about as often as civil laws go through reform. The physical laws are revised to include new data, and the civil laws are reformed to adapt to new social pressures.

The companion to this ongoing operation is an ongoing question, usually along the lines of "What were they thinking back then?" Sometimes it's less belligerent, sometimes much more so, but the question always comes about when comparing what we know in the present and what our predecessors thought they knew in the past. And the answers come in a variety of flavors, but the most popular excuse the ignorance of the past by claiming imprecise measuring tools, inaccurate or deliberately corrupted data, models of the world that people grew up with and didn't want to have to change. That's all applicable to both the civil laws and the physical ones.

At some point, then, you have to look at our current models, our data, our instruments, and start to wonder. It's the nature of the present to look back on the past with scorn and ridicule, but the present time is the past of the future. What popular ideas will be laughed at in classrooms 50 years from now? You can argue about who's going to get that end of the stick as much as you want, but there's no way to be sure except by waiting 50 years.

Another common element between the civil and physical laws is that regardless of how they are constructed or organized, they don't last long if they are impractical. Religious edicts that endanger the lives or health of a congregation are either ignored under a veneer of lip service, or obeyed wholly (there's a pun there) until the survivors hitch a ride to the church in the next town and hope the gods aren't actually that crazy. Scientific models that don't explain or actively preclude the operation of technology that is required for the very existence of the economy, never mind its stability, are ultimately ignored by working class tradesmen regardless of the support of the scientific community, and probably get bluffed through in school just like those book reports where you watched the movie instead. Civil laws that impair the survivability of their populations are either civil disobedience'd into reform, evaded, or followed, running the municipality, state, or nation that enforced it into the ground.

My point being that what are often considered immutable physical laws are frequently societal constructs, based not on an objective analysis of data, but expectations of what reality should be. It's impossible to actually get away from raw data, experimental or otherwise, but it is very easy to twist specific points of information on a graph into a conclusion that is actual opposite what the data themselves would indicate, and in a busy world of house payments, economic uncertainty, bad bosses and all the travails of modern civilization, scant few have the time to go dig the original lab records up to see if they match the press release's conclusions. (Fewer still have the inclination.) Actually, I'd wager that 99.9% of all scientific misdirection isn't even malicious, but the product of scientists having to oversimplify for publication outside of the circulation of dedicated journals and papers. The average member of the public can't understand the theory in its most precise form, not because of a lack of intelligence or education but what I said above, a lack of time to work it out and double check the professionals' work.

What brought this in particular to mind was a cursory look at my three main sources for my composite Theory Of Stuff. All three are more or less fringe authors with various degrees of maverick-ness, various points of contention with the mainstream, but always a certain amount of resentment and usually a bit of conspiracy theory involved. At some point I realized that Bill Lyne, whose books are one third maverick science and two thirds conspiracy theories, assigns blame for suppression of new science information and technology to a conspiracy of socialistic bureaucracy bridging the gap between socialism and fascism, and probably satanism too. Lyne himself is an unapologetic individualist, atheist, and objectivist; socialism is the bugaboo of the objectivist while bureaucracy is the nemesis of the individualist, and fascism is a two for one special. The satanism is itself a form of religion just as antagonistic to the hard atheists position as the various flavors of evangelical and/or fundamentalist Christianity; at the risk of drastically oversimplifying, it just trades the titles of Good Guy and Bad Guy.

Joseph H. Cater, on the other hand, while pointing fingers as the bureaucracy and assorted big companies, and the occasional malevolent alien influence or spirit, reserves most of his blame for orthodox scientists as a whole. He goes on at length on how they screw up or adopt certain solutions. Interestingly enough, his main point of contention is that they did not come up with the same answers that he did, i.e., the correctness of his own models and ideas are taken as axiomatic au priori assumptions, which is neither very scientific nor helps smooth things over with the mainstream or other mavericks.

T.B. Pawlicki, as a nice change in pace, ascribes the fault of scientific inaccuracy to the populace for not questioning their scientific leaders to make sure they are Doing It Right. You can argue the point from two different perspectives, the first being that scientists are supposed to do that so normal people won't, and that scientists are the best suited to understand scientific truth. The easiest refutation for the first argument is as follows: Butchers and slaughterhouse workers are also supposed to handle the messy process of turning cattle into ground chuck so others don't, but you still need to boycott them if they're not washing their hands after going to the restroom or letting rats run around nibbling on the burgers-to-be. The easiest refutation for the second is that science exists to explain things, and the quality of science can be measured by how much of the world it explains and how well it explains it, so if a scientist tells you something that doesn't make any sense to you, either he needs to back up and try again or he's just making shit up and looking for NSFW pics when he says he's running cloud chamber tests.

The common theme is that maverick scientists assign blame to the people on the opposite ends of the spectrum and side of the field, just like politicians and everybody else. In Pawlicki's case, I think this is an acknowledgment that sometimes people in large groups are their own worst enemies.

When you look at a person who doesn't wear their heart or allegiance or affiliation on their sleeve, you can sometimes extrapolate it by taking the opposite of whoever they attack the most often. This is especially useful for finding discrepancies between visible affiliation and true allegiances, but it can also backfire, especially when you apply it to yourself and discover you don't quite stand for what you thought you did. It's not foolproof, of course; hypocrisy completely upsets the dynamic. But that's a whole other problem.

So in the interests of honest self analysis, I've considered looking at my own views, and if necessary, looking at my antagonistic relationships and figuring out what they mean for what I am really for and against. No scientist should be afraid of simple truth, and no man should be afraid of finding out who he is.

Well, in theory.

So here is my defining dislike, certain to inspire hate and rage and flames. So it goes.

Religion.

As a responsible citizen, I try not to let my personal views on it affect anything I do, at all, with varying amounts of success. As a mad scientist, I've run into some very elegant proofs and models uniting science and spirituality into a common field. As me, personally, I can't stand the stuff. Every time I see a church or a religious icon of any sort I just want to punch something, or somebody. Near as I can tell this is the aftereffect of my parents dragging me to church when I was younger when all I wanted to do is sleep in, and tell me to listen to the sermon when I wanted to read to pass the time. The harder they pushed, the harder I pushed back. Simple physics, Newton's Third Law. Action, followed by opposing reaction... although in my case I will admit the reaction is far out of proportion to the original action; this is by choice and I'm not changing it. I know my parents meant well; it is entirely my choice to consider their efforts as a personal attack and insult.

Going hand in hand with this is an intrinsic hostility towards anything that has religion as being a key motivation, support, or argument. This includes the abortion debate, evolution versus intelligent design, all sorts of political and social perspectives... and the thing that the people involved in these debates seem to not understand is that to me, it doesn't matter which side of that debate you are on. If you use religious motivations, or support something purely out of equivalence to religious principles, and so does your opponent, I don't care about the differences because they are trivial compared to the similarities. You both are trying to force people, including myself, to live according to your own religious principles, and that really burns my toast. If you can make your argument without saying or even implying "I'm right because God sez so" then I will at least listen and not insult your character or intelligence if I disagree. If you can't make your argument without dragging your God into it, then as far as I'm concerned, you don't have a case, no matter how eloquently you express yourself.

The dislike is hardly scientific, especially in light of the mad science proofs that eliminate the incompatibilities. I see that as an advantage. My pre-existing condition of antipathy immunizes me from emotional manipulation from those vectors, and my reactive anger empowers me to act against those who would use their religion as justification for force. Speaking of justifying violence with personal perspectives, I like to think that I'm above that. Maybe I am. My studies into forbidden, suppressed, or unexplored fields of knowledge give me the theoretical knowledge to construct all manner of devices, from weather control to murderous robots, but it's not a justification.

As a human being, endowed with free will (whatever that is), I do things because I want to, or because I care, or because I don't care, or because I'm a nice guy, or because I'm just a jerk. When I carve STFU onto the face of the moon, it'll be because of my own, mad will to do so. You'll know exactly who to blame and, if you're feeling lucky and vengeful, exactly who to come after: Me. I'm not going to pass the buck to an overarching theory the way fundies pass the buck to their God. The buck stops here.

As a madman, however scientific, I also hate Carrot Top. He ruined prop comedy for everyone. He will pay.

Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Year In Review
It was around this time a year ago that I first showed up on Xanga. I opted for this particular social networking site because a friend of mine already had an account here and recommended it. Most of my posts have had to do with technical ideas, or failing that book reviews, but almost everything I typed up had to do with Mad Science.

And it's worked so well, I don't see any reason to change it. Been wanting to review this particular book for a while now, and the time is right.

Title: The Ultimate Reality Volumes 1 & 2
Author: Joseph H. Cater
Publisher: Health Research
Categories: Everything Except Time

Abstract: This is something that showed up on the Health Research website, among other things. I never really had any reason to purchase it besides trying to fill in the blanks in the author's earlier book, The Awesome Life Force.

Details: It's basically a cleaner, more organized version of The Awesome Life Force. There's enough extra stuff added to the original material to make the book simply too large to fit in one cover, hence Volumes 1 & 2. Some details are changed, some things in the previous book are missing, but the overall book has the same information, like the attacks on orthodoxy and Einstein.

Something new, or at least more pronounced, is the attacks on other fringe researchers and mavericks; in Awesome Life Force, Cater is at least conciliatory towards Nikola Tesla's work, though he berates the man along with everyone else for not reaching the same conclusions that Cater did. In The Ultimate Reality, this turns into full blown Tesla bashing. If you put Joe Cater and Bill Lyne in the same room, somebody is gonna die. He also gives fringe electrodynamics researcher Tom Bearden the literature version of the one finger salute, I think mostly because Bearden is more of a revisionist, and Cater is more of a violent revolutionary.

And tying into that revolutionary theme is an increased undertone of attacking detractors on a personal and professional level. When discussing the part of his model that dealt with unworthy souls being annihilated, I couldn't help but get the impression that Cater was wearing a twisted grin when he wrote it, and there's only so much misanthropy in the fringe that can be explained by persecution from the mainstream. He also points out several cases where his own book is rejected and mocks, either openly or indirectly, those who disagree; he did this in the last book too, but this time he points out specific examples. He mentions offhand that his "Brunler number" is in the four digits, while almost everyone else on earth is confined to low three digit numbers, but coyly does not reveal his specific number. I'm not going to say he has a messiah complex, but the book includes an anecdote where Cater gave somebody a copy of Awesome Life Force to read, and the guy flat out said that Cater was wrong, and he (the disagreeing guy) was the new messiah. If I believed in that kind of messianic destiny, my money would be on that guy that told Cater off, instead of Cater himself.

At the risk of repeating myself here, Cater also mentions that aliens have sometimes given contactees explanations for their technology that are not the same as the models Cater has made. The man then draws the conclusion that he is smarter than the aliens. If we assume for purposes of this argument that aliens do exist and sometimes contact humans, one of the following is equally plausible:
1. Soft Particle Physics is accurate, and the aliens used different linguistic terms to describe it than Cater did.
2. Soft Particle Physics is accurate, and the aliens knew it but gave the contactees some sort of smokescreen because they didn't want the human race to suddenly use the knowledge to build flying saucers and particle cannons and come mess them up.
3. Soft Particle Physics is accurate within its own limits, but the aliens have an even better one and told the contactees that one instead.
My money is on option three. I didn't include a "Soft Particle Physics is a figment of Cater's imagination" option because the model is self consistent for the most part and does offer explanations -- however incomplete -- for lots of accepted and fringe phenomena alike.

Final Analysis:

Style: 4/5. It's still verbose, but with the same attention to details. Several areas, like the mathematical problem section, have been built on.

Format: 5/5. The Table of Contents has been expanded to include sub chapter headings, making it easier to find different areas. References are more comprehensive than the last book.

Innovation: 4/5. Some areas dealing with technology have been improved, like the description of the multi-mirror death ray. On the other hand, he contradicts some of the data in his earlier book; Awesome Life Force has an appendix that describes some sort of orgone accumulator power plant that uses thirty to forty layers of alternating newspaper and metal foil, while in the Ultimate Reality the section on orgone accumulators says the layers should not exceed twenty. Apparently somebody did not do his research -- this appendix is no longer extant in the new book, though he did put it on the health research website, perhaps to save on paper and ink. Some sort of orgone layer system using gold foil on iron is included. Finally, in a section on invisibility and intangibility, in the first book a specific effect is described as being caused by exposure to frequencies in the ultraviolet range, while in the second book the same effect comes from exposure to an infrared band frequency. For some reason the author refuses to use words like "should" or "might" so it looks like he ends up putting stuff in his book based on theory or dowsing, without testing it with experiment. And if he did it before, he might have done it again. Even so, the possible utility of a particle beam cannon made of metallic mirrors or a multipurpose defensive weapon based on the Reich cloudbuster is such an interesting idea that it's worth trying to test them anyway.

Ego:

The author's tendency to attack those who disagree comes out in full force in this book. Anyone who doesn't accept his model without question is an idiot; anyone who disagrees on one or more points is either an idiot or a malefactor misusing the gift of free will to enslave the human race in ignorance and will have his or her soul annihilated after death. As much as I might like some of his scientific and technical ideas, I'm not sure I could talk to him for longer than ten minutes without trying to shove hot peppers up his nose if his face to face personality is anything like his written personality. For comparison, I don't always agree with some of Billy Lyne's cosmological models or political views, but he's in the fringe for all the right reasons, to give people information and technology. Even if I met the guy and didn't get along with the guy personally, I would still respect his intentions and encourage people to read his books. Cater's attitude does not command, inspire, promote, invoke, or otherwise deserve respect. 0/5.

Utility: 3/5. The cloud buster, gravity, and magnetic motor stuff remains unchanged, and the particle beam system is expanded with important details (the mirrors must be a certain minimum set of dimensions, preferably polished metal, and the incoming light must be past a certain threshold). There's a new water-based power unit that replaces some of the solid state electrical wiring things in the last book. Whether any of it was tested before hand and is known to work is suspect. You may have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get your prince, so to speak.

Overall: 3.2/5. Get it OR Awesome Life Force, but not both, especially not at full price.

Sources: Amazon.com, Health Research Books

And now for a general update
- Mad Science Book: Working on Aesthetics.
- Massive Research Project: Comparing assorted models of the atom for points of similarity.
- Fiction Projects: With apologies to Russell T. Davies and Stephen Moffat, will be including The Doctor in a fanfic set in the Space: 1889 RPG and wargame miniatures universe. Probably David Tennant. Tom Baker would also be good. I'll decide when I get to that chapter.
- Personal: Hungry. I think after I finish with this entry, I'll go into town and get an egg roll or something.
Mmmm. Egg rolls.

Sunday, 05 July 2009

Independence FOR SCIENCE!

I may have missed the deadline for this type of post by several hours, but I was too busy watching fireworks and wondering just how much awesome you could fit into a nuclear firework between the detonation and the onset of radiation sickness.

It may or may not be apparent from my subject matter, writing style, or spelling, but I was born and raised in the United States of America. I've always stayed out of the political arguments where I could; while there is such a thing as political science - a friend of mine is actually pursuing a career in the field - I find that in practice politics comes down to mudslinging, logical fallacies, and petty partisan rivalry.

I make no claim to having any sort of instant fix for any of the problems the nation faces, or those facing the various citizenry. There are so many factors and so many different ways you can connect them that nobody can really know where the ball is in the game right now. I'm not sure how bailing out a business that couldn't make it on its own would help the economy, but I never took economics in college either so I can't claim any sort of expertise. Except of course I'm not a part of the scientific establishment and still claim to have a better grasp on things than they do... I'll say that it irks me, that a company or industry is rewarded for failing, but you can't successfully base a large scale program on one person's opinions unless you're Bill Gates, and even then you have the Linux community.

But I digress.

America is, ostensibly, a nation based around assorted freedoms, with the ones everyone remembering most being freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of speech and the freedom to own certain varieties of firearms as a built in precaution against tyranny - there are other freedoms too. And even if America wasn't originally based around all that, it certainly turned into it in some form. In other words, all you idiots out there going "America was founded by Christians and is a Christian Nation" can suck my secular genitals.

As for the claims that freedoms of speech and press have been stepped on, I won't argue the point, but I will respond that America has always been like this; a gigantic, high stakes game of give and take. Some pencil pusher or bureaucrat with a tiny penis to compensate for will try to take something away using some justification or another, and when the man or women in the street hears about it, they rally together, saying "Give it back or we'll come in there and take it back, and do horrible things to you involving ostrich eggs and a clarinet."

I'm not the only one who says that, right? Right?

The flame war around the right to bear arms is one I stay out of. Being a Mad Scientist, energy weapons tend to be closer to my heart than anything that fires bullets or buckshot, but I confess I love the idea of having that kind of destructive power in the palm of my hand. Or both if it's some sort of plasma rifle.

Something else the above mentioned religious fundamentalists probably don't know, or don't care about, is that the basic principles behind a lot of monarchy involved a direct line to a higher power, hence the "Divine Right" of kings. This is also why Jesus of Nazareth was pitched as the King of Kings, a way of telling serfs way back when that he was your boss's Boss. Some time before the founding fathers got sick of how the colonies were managed and decided to go into business for themselves, this trend was already breaking down; ideas in Britain and France were suggested and in many cases implemented, ideas where Man governed Man through specific laws, rules, and processes that could be formalized for everybody, or at least everybody in each specific social class. (When you start something new, it's important to take it slow and get used to it.) The Magna Carta comes most readily to mind; there were other documents to the same effect.

Perhaps not quite contemporaneous, but certainly in the same time frame and direction, natural philosophers were testing old ideas and forming new ones, building models of reality that took the powers behind nature and the universe away from spirits and gods and put them in equations and reason. I'm not sure if there's a correlation between the advent of scientific determinism and the large scale application of self-determined government, but the fact that in both cases humanity used to be at the mercy of inscrutable forces allegedly beyond it, and then learned to control some of those forces for its own purposes, implies something.

For better or worse, the modern political process in America is at least semi-scientific; the election process, the divisions of powers, the checks and balances. In the same way that engineers built an engine to convert the expansion of steam into mechanical force, the governmental bodies are a machine that converts the ideas and ideals of the day into policies and laws. It's a very old machine that breaks down, leaks oil, makes a lot of noise and keeps wearing out parts, but it is working after a fashion. And if it breaks down catastrophically, it can still be rebuilt. Of course, it's easier and cheaper to do regular maintenance.

Or to put it another way...

I think Thomas Jefferson is a pretty cool guy. eh holds these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and doesn't afraid of anything.

This IS the internet, after all.