I'd rather design bridges than speculate about what a UFO might be. I view science as a tool to help us make things work in the real world. I'm in a lonely minority. I think it's a curse for not getting a Ph.D. Real scientists want to exchange differential equations, non-scientists want to talk about the last big wow from the tele, and I'm somewhere in-between; sympathetic with the scientific method but inept at wielding the mighty maths.

My personal motive in working at ESJ was to find a more satisfactory explanation for the Michelson-Morley experiment; the corporate mission was to explore alternatives to jet propulsion. My job was not to invent forces and beings to explain things but to find reasons consistent with basic physics. I think I said this before, but while I was there, I was often proven a fool for disbelieving a lot of (HVES) things that we eventually did recreate in the lab. It was always fun to be proven wrong; I have a different reaction to being silenced because somebody with a louder mouth shouts unconvincing rhetoric.

Borrowing from popular psychology, one might say I had a bad experience with the UFO crowd. Some were genuine, but a lot were delusional and beyond reach. Due to my underdeveloped emotional capacity, I don't see the point in conversing with somebody who does not respect fact and logic. It's why I locked myself in the physics storage room Friday nights at college. After five minutes of my drunk roommates talking nonsense and kissing me, I was late for the door.

I try not to criticize people for their spiritual experiences; but I am uncomfortable playing along. What we were doing was a one-way ticket to the funny farm and still might be if I were to share it with a man in a white coat. We explored the fringes of science and tried to make sense of them. Today, as with global warming, one does not gather data, one repeats the platform of his political party. Call the cops, but I still have not convinced myself the equations presented to "derive" relativity theory are satisfactory. Every four-year-old will tell you relativity is true because Einstein said so. That is not science. I read the Einstein/Lorentz/Minkowski essays twice, and I still don't get it. A sane person would say, "You have a bigger brain than me, so if you say 2 + 4 = 5, I will repeat." I don't want to be that kind of sane.

That said, because people who worked with us questioned assumptions, we have wireless today and serious government money is now going into what were then called fusors. Another collaborator went dark to go into business developing a concept that later appeared in reports about giving cops the ability to remotely stop vehicles. I was never on the leading edge of any of this, just an office jerk who had to read and write more than I got to spend time in the lab.

A shrink once said one's mind can be so open their brain falls out. When I repeated what she had said to my boss at the time, he said that was totally ignorant and devoid of meaning. Taking her advice metaphorically, how are we supposed to solve problems if anything goes? I think that is a problem with society nowadays. In local government, people want to build big on the assumption the revenue will come.

Well, ESJ came to a sad end because I was too stupid to play corporate games. I went from living a sheltered life where fact was true and eagerly waking up to a world of discovery where I prayed I would have a breakthrough on this or that, to a confusing world of might makes right. Then, I went into a big depression, and here I sit.

You lead a rich life. I'd love to take so many courses on so many subjects; but I obviously prefer to chase Justin across the countryside. No regrets.

(I keep getting interrupted. This probably makes no sense. Oh, well.)

I know you don't practice with friends, but perhaps you could answer a generic question: Why do I always want to go on the defensive on this board?

lunazure said

Your latest UFO link

http://www.foxnews.com/science.....regon.html

I think I've said before here I am not a fast reader. I have to pick and choose what I read, and often it is nothing, because I waste all my me-time on this board. There are all kinds of UFO claims, and I don't have the budget to research them anymore; and if I did, I'd spend it modeling EM.

lunazure said
Critical thinking: YES it's gotta happen... but let me put it this way. I'm doing genealogy in this wonderful on line program ancestry.com, and sometimes I do have to "guess" or use my imagination. Often the "guess" sits there and does nothing (like I'm stuck in Germany with one branch of the family). Other times, I get a leaf and can link it to other stuff that "makes sense"........ and on a REALLY good day..... I get a DNA link to what I "guessed"...... which confirms the guess. DNA is hard to fake, it's pretty complex. So I chase Reality three different ways, and they all coordinate when the data is good.

It would chagrin my alma mater to see they had bestowed upon me a B.S. had I never heard of hypotheses, testing hypotheses, interpolation, extrapolation, statistical analysis, or mathematical modeling. I do happen to know science proves nothing; it only disproves. Off the cuff, I'm assuming one needs to acknowledge working hypotheses, otherwise they'd be too uncertain to even know if they should stay paralyzed in bed.

To clarify what we were doing at ESJ. A common situation would be somebody would write us saying he had invented an overunity machine. Our esteemed friend in Canada and another contributor in Texas who I never met had the operation down to a checklist. First, we would assume our inventor had made the most common error: multiplying total voltage and total current instead of integrating the functions. If he was doing his maths properly, we'd assume he may be using his instruments in ranges for which they were not intended. You check out his instrumentation, and if he is reading it properly, you make another hypothesis, that his instruments are malfunctioning. So, you test his machine with other, reliable, calibrated instruments. If you still get his readings, you conjecture he has not sufficiently insulated his wires, so you run his machine in a heavily-insulated room eliminating options for internal feedback loops. If that doesn't work, you have to think harder. All along, one speculates, devises a critical experiment, runs it, makes a conclusion, and repeats.

As a caveat, I also know one does not stop as soon as one gets a corroborating answer. I caught a student in lab once repeating experiments until he thought his data was good enough, and then using that trial's data for the lab report. My high school physics teacher held me after class for about an hour one time after the lab group I was in did an experiment with 0% error. He finally let me go after we got tired of trying to find where my logic had been circular.

There is a difference between trying to fill in blanks with reasonable, incremental speculation and subjecting the speculation to a critical experiment, and saying, "I saw a light in the sky. It must be a spaceship from the Pleiades driven by little green men with big foreheads."

I must thank you for your meticulous work in genealogy. Back in our day, such things would go without saying, but we had/have two relatives who will find a common name and jump to conclusions. I cannot recall details, but the would fill in blanks online like: John Rose lived in Nebraska from 1891-1948. Oh, look. There's a Molly Rose. She must be his wife! - even though Molly was born in 1963. I ran into a less drastic, albeit anachronistic pairing on a former employer's family tree. He was effulgently gracious, as the correction helped him find a whole lot more relatives.

Back on the subject of ways at arriving at truth, I used to tell my students there is the scientific method, which is reductionist and asymptotic; and religious truth, which is straight from heaven and witnessed by der heilige Geist. Going off on another tangent, I recall a colleague telling me there were two kinds of mathematicians: those who in their gut know the right answer and can't prove it, and those who know how to set up the proofs but keep getting the wrong answer.

lunazure said
Oddly I have no problem with you questioning Einstein. I picked through it (General and Special Relativity, they are on my bookshelf), and thought much of it was probable-sounding imagination about how different fields relate to one another, and they were interesting to read. I think that is why I flunked calculus, I was too literal minded to understand functions. Now I sorta get it, but lack the interest and need for it, so I don't bother to polish my understanding.

I apologize. You're way over my head. I never read so much relativity as to derive it in terms of field relations, and I never even considered what a figurative function would look like.

lunazure said
One should always be ready to question dogma IMHO.

Agreed. Truth will stand.

lunazure said
The mind IS a rich and wonderful realm. I listen to even crazy (I mean babbling to themselves and falling over crazy) because there is a sort of logic inside all minds, based on some premise. It may or may not be a good premise. But the more you study it, the more it makes a weird sort of sense. Science is a matter of recognizing patterns, and applying them to something useful. IMHO.

I could nitnoid you, but I won't.

lunazure said
There's think tanks out there who do nothing but shoot rubber bands at each other. Never under estimate the power of utter silliness in doing research. It's the mind stirring around and making unexpected (yet valid) connections. There is a thin line between play and learning.

To me, pure science, that is nothing more than the scientific method, is sacred. The art is often perverted in many ways; q.v. any list of fallacies. I don't want to come across as supporting fallacy, but I'm a milquetoast prone to acquiescence.

lunazure said
I think people who go off on UFO stuff are looking for some sort of "god" figures swooping down from the sky. They can't stand knowing we are alone on this earth, and can't see themselves in a regular church. Me? I think the angels climbing Jacob's Ladder were loading a spaceship. I'm with those fighter pilots, we need to nail down the REALLY unexplained ones for national security IMHO.

As I said, a million responses to this are as valid as the next million. Thanks for the discussion.

I was blessed to have a mommy who sent me to Lyman Briggs College at MSU so I could learn pitfalls of science. Most people don't realize I spent four years doing that, so when they learn I practiced science, I normally get hit with a pitch to read Thomas Kuhn. "Oh, you scientists think you know everything!" People will look at my stupid face and assume I was happy to throw thousands of dollars of scholarship money down the drain and pay no attention in class.

Another pet peeve was when I wanted to take Calculus III and IV again. I called the local community college, and the lady at the registrar's office said I had to take Calculus I and II first. I had AP'd out of them about a decade prior, and that was not good enough for my transcript. She replied I still had to take them, "That is, if your algebra skills are strong enough." I was, at the time, teaching algebra at her school and Calculus I and II at a private college across town. She said that was not good enough. I had to take them. So, putting my plans for a refresher course on hold a year, I took Calculus I and II, along with another guy who was in the same boat. As it turned out, the lady was right, as I missed one problem in the Calc I and two in Calc II, with averages like 102% and 110%. I should probably go back and take the courses many times. Anyway, after Paul and I sat through a year of learning nothing, the school stopped offering Calculus III and IV.

I failed "Advanced" Calculus twice. It was the weeder-out course for math majors at MSU. The third time around, I ran into my teacher from the first two times in the hall and said, paraphrasing, "What gives, Ganser? I'm taking this course the third time, learning nothing, and acing all my tests." He replied my current prof was not as high-ranking as him, and so he was not as vested in protecting the department's reputation by making sure only high-quality students get the degree. He said girls were not good at math and so if I didn't want to major in a girly subject like social work or nursing, maybe I should be a technical writer. It wasn't until about twenty years ago that I even considered his remarks were .... Well, anyway, I ended up as a technical and girly writer, so there.

What were we talking about?

Oh, yes. So, after going to LBS at MSU and getting a solid training in the responsibility of scientists in social contexts, I was also blessed to get a job at ESJ. A cardinal rule was we were not to accept outside funding, as we knew money did strange things to science. We took no ad money and no grants. Charlie put his own money into the company, billing himself for consulting from his profit-generating company and renting buildings titled to ESJ to his big business. Well, he died, and the guy he wanted to be director opted out and left me in charge. A meeting was held to which I wasn't invited when I should have been, and about six months later I found out all ESJ's funding sources had been taken away. I was demoted to the purchasing department at the big company and forbidden to do anything related to ESJ on company time, I lost my flex time and had to work a straight 8-4 and scram off premises at 4 even if I was in the middle of a phone call. I tried to make bricks from straw for about two years after that, and the rest is probably best forgiven. Some people had it a lot worse.

52,700 with repetitions.

I had a cool dream last night, but I forgot it. I was trying to sleep in the chair because I didn't want any heat-seeking ticks to crawl off The EVO! and land in my hair, as they loved to do last year. I am not a very good chair sleeper. I was rested in the morning, and woke up with this strange urge to buy tickets and more tickets and more and more.

Search song below.
Find: Girl
Replace with: Justin
Replace all?
Yes.

I was just wondering if the Justin tour was going to be far enough north to see any northern lights.

Do you suppose John answered your post?

Back on topic, I had a weak dream last night. I haven't remembered any dreams of late. Last night, I dreamed I was in Australia, on a mission I can't remember. There was a canal I traveled more than once. I recalled thinking the vegetation was too lush for Australia. There were buildings on either side of the canal, and there were two lanes of travel, one of which arced around to join the other at the terminus, which was easily navigable considering the angle. My father was in the dream, as were Nigel Kennedy and Anataliana, a person, who with Auntie, will always have a special place in my heart. I told her when I had said we hoped to meet again some day, I had not supposed it would be so soon - or in Australia. In one of the buildings, a lady wanted to put false eyelashes on me. As I have never tried it and I thought it would be very fun, but I kept getting distracted. That's about all I can remember.

I had some odd dreams last night, involved a green LOX bottle (used on jets for Oxygen) then I turned up in the 2nd row, and the encore ended with Ian Anderson giving me his yellow garter!

Very odd.... I'll have to look that one up. Might have been Justin too, but I was reading a blurb about Ian last night, so probably him.

I dream a lot about flying across the Pacific to Diego Garcia (made that trip twice in reality) sometimes we make a stop over in Japan. Yes lots of tropical landscapes.

Hey, doodoo. Our essay writers can tell you one ought not quote more than three consecutive words without quotation marks and attribution. They might also tell you about the appropriateness of quoting in context. I like the idea of more love making things right, but the song misses my intention on at least two points: lies and dependence, neither of which can be redeemed with a free eBay gift card generator. I thought the band did not like eBay, so why are you advertising it here?

I dreamed last night I had a new job. I don't know what I was doing, but I was enjoying it. Then, I heard the HR lady had to meet with me. She came down and let me know everybody was laughing because I had lied on my resume and said I had worked for Tony Visconti and Ivy Stewart. She said they could let the humorous problems with the resume go, but there was a more pernicious matter about which we needed to talk.

When I woke up, I was wondering what part of me was being dishonest, but now I'm thinking maybe I was just internalizing the latest palace intrigue from the White House.

I dreamed I was driving around England (yes on the wrong side of the road) got into a construction site, and was trying to get directions to Heathrow. Odd I have no plans to go back to England either.