298,290 kilometers per second.  The problem has been that every time I want to use that number I have to recalculate it using an on-line time dilation calculator.  So, I'm putting the number (or a more precise number) in a spread sheet that I will retain.   Now I just have to remember where the spreadsheet is located. :-)

During the process of looking for key numbers (how fast the Sun goes around the Milky Way Galaxy, etc.), I found an article titled "How fast are YOU spinning on Earth’s axis right now? Infographic reveals the precise speed your country is moving at as the planet rotates."  The article contains this interesting graphic:



Under the graphic it says, "Using this map, you can search for where your line of latitude crosses the black curve to determine the speed you're spinning in the cosmos." 

That becomes important when you talk about Time Dilation, because Einstein wrote this in his 1905 paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies:

Thence we conclude that a balance-clock at the equator must go more slowly, by a very small amount, than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles under otherwise identical conditions.

So, if you know Milwaukee is at 43 degrees north latitude, the map shows you that latitude almost exactly matches to the "Tangential Speed" of 750 mph.  If you are at the equator, your speed around the earth's axis will be 1,040 mph.  If you are at the poles it will be zero.  Everywhere in between it will be somewhere between zero and 1,040 mph, and Time will tick at a different rate at every different latitude.  Cool!  I wish I'd found that map long ago.

January 30, 2018 - Yesterday, I took my camera with me to the gym, and, between about 3 and 3:15 p.m., I took two dozen pictures of their 12 TVs from different angles.  Prior to going to the gym, I had set my DVR (Digital Video Recorder) at home to record Fox News from 3 to 4 p.m.  That would and did allow me to compare pictures of the TVs at the gym to pictures of the exact same Fox News show on my TV at home.  Here's one result:


The backgrounds in the pictures are a bit darker than I would have preferred, but you can clearly see the black band on the screen at the top of the image in the upper photo, particularly where the yellow light is being reflected off the glass.  There's another black band at the bottom of the screen.  All 12 of their TVs have those black bands.  I've been trying to convince them that those black bands aren't supposed to be there.

The picture I took of my TV at home shows no black bands.  That is clearest when looking at the upper left corner where light reflects off the frame and the glass, and there is definitely no gap between the TV image and the frame.

I printed out black and white versions of these images and gave them to the manager of the gym.  I also pointed out that the trees on the right side of the images on the screens are the same distance from the frame in both shots.  That means both pictures are the same width.  And both are 16x9 screens.  Therefore, the upper picture must be compressed (or "squished") vertically to make room for the black bands.

I think I convinced him.  We'll see what happens next.  I've done all I can do to show them that their 12 TVs are all showing "squished" images and have been doing so since November 3.


 
Above is a shot I took of 11 of the 12 TVs at my gym.  Seven TVs are mounted on the far wall and 5 are hanging from the ceiling.  I couldn't find a position where I could get all 12 in the same shot.  The 12th TV showing Fox News is mounted on the wall off of the right side of the picture.  Four of the screens are dark, because someone turned off the cable connection.  I put white numbers on them.  1 = ESPN, 2 = CNN, 3 = NBC and 4 = CNN. 

If the manager can persuade their "Tech guy" to fix the size of the images on the screens, the "Tech guy" will hopefully and presumably turn on those 4 TVs at the same time.  Then I'll wait to see if someone turns them off again.  If they do, then I'll bring that "mystery" to their attention.  Who keeps turning off CNN (and NBC) and why?  Whoever is doing it has done it three times since October.  I think I know why it was done (Trump hates CNN and so do his supporters), but I have no idea who did it.  

January 29, 2018 (C) - While I was at the gym this afternoon, someone posted a very interesting comment on my interactive blog.  It contained a link to a video titled "10 Times Michio Kaku Arguments Blew Our Minds":

1. University Physics with Modern Physics by Young, Freedman & Lewis Ford

2. Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics by Douglas C. Giancoli

3. Fundamentals of Physics by David Halliday, Robert Resnick and Jearl Walker

4. Physics for Scientists and Engineers: A Strategic Approach by Randall D. Knight

5. The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman

Suppose we are riding in a car that is going at a speed u, and light from the rear is going past the car with speed c. ... according to the Galilean transformation the apparent speed of the passing light, as we measure it in the car, should not be c but should be c - u. For instance, if the car is going 100,000 mi/sec, and the light is going 186,000 mi/sec, then apparently the light going past the car should go 86,000 mi/sec. In any case, by measuring the speed of the light going past the car (if the Galilean transformation is correct for light), one could determine the speed of the car. A number of experiments based on this general idea were performed to determine the velocity of the earth, but they all failed—they gave no velocity at all. We shall discuss one of these experiments in detail, to show exactly what was done and what was the matter; something was the matter, of course, something was wrong with the equations of physics. What could it be?

Time is particle spin. Sub-atomic particles are like little clocks that tick at a specific rate when stationary in open space. When the particles are made to move, like when part of a space ship, the spin slows down, and time slows down. Clocks on the space ship slow down, you age slower, metal rusts slower, everything that is on the space ship goes slower.

It's called "time dilation." The slowing of time is also caused by putting the particles closer to a large gravitational mass. Time ticks slower at the bottom of a mountain than it does at the top of a mountain.

It's a fascinating subject. 

Your posts are really interesting! Which makes me think time is determined by motions of the spheres. But I wonder what happens to time if all of these motions were to stop?? Or is it impossible for all of motions to stop???

Time doesn't stop when motion stops. Time runs at its FASTEST speed when motion stops. Sub-atomic particles spin fastest when the particle is stationary in space.

Time stops when your motion reaches the speed of light and when gravity reaches the intensity found in Black Holes.

Ed Lake is the speeding up and slowing down of time, as you describe, large enough to affect differences in ageing within humans. I mean if I spend my life constantly on the go vs someone very sedentary, will I be visibly or measurably younger than them after 80 odd years??  

No the speeding up of time is only really noticeable when you are going over 90% of the speed of light, and no one so far has gone even 1% of the speed of light.

There's a Time Dilation calculator at this link: http://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1224059993

It says that if you travel at 298290 kilometers per second (99.5% of the speed of light), you will age 10 times slower than people on Earth. For every day you age, people on Earth will age TEN days.

If you travel at 28160 kilometers per hour, which is how fast the people on the International Space Station travel, for every second you age, people down on earth will age one second plus 1 billionth of a second.

Scott Kelly's twin brother Mark was on Earth while Scott spent nearly a year on the ISS. During that year, Mark aged 5 thousandths of a second more than Scott Did. Here's a story about it: https://www.space.com/33411-astronaut-scott-kelly-relativity-twin-brother-ages.html

May one ask how your investigation related to the fact that we are moving in more than 8 directions at the same HC Time at high velocities.Did you calculate a Resultant and base your conclusions on this or what?

All the movements of the earth spinning on its axis, of the earth orbiting around the sun, of the sun orbiting around the Milky Way galaxy do not add up to a significant fraction of the speed of light. And since it is extremely difficult to use all those numbers in routine calculations, it's better to just use a stationary point instead of a moving spot on earth. That is what the calculator does. And that is what I did. The answers are not significantly different from what you'd get if you used all the various motions. If you want to argue the differences, that's up to you. Generalities are better for explanations on Facebook pages.

Stationary Point?Where would that point be located?All is moving All is changing in our universe to the best of our knowledge.

That "stationary point" would be where the Big Bang occurred. From that "stationary point," everything exploded (moved) outward. And at that point, all matter should be evenly distributed in all directions, thus gravity would be the same in all directions.

Unfortunately, the HYPOTHETICAL point where the Big Bang occurred is outside of our VISIBLE universe, because there was no light during the first moments after the Big Bang, and also no time because there were no particles.

May we agree that a probable process was 1The Slngular 2 QF 3 BB / RE.At the commencement of which HC time t equal zero.This indicates that in HC terms t may equal a minus quantity before BB / RE commenced. May one also indicate that whereas light generally travels in a straight line the motions that our bodies experience are not straight lined.Therefore we may not discount them in our investigations.Prehaps one may take up other points later.

Well I must say, your comment on time is more interesting than mine.

It's an EXTREMELY interesting subject for me.

I bet it gets you lots of significant others...huh?

It gets me into a LOT of arguments with people who think time is an "illusion" or who think that time cannot change speeds, even though many many experiments show that time does change speeds. And, of course, Einstein's 1905 paper on Special Relativity says that time runs slower at the equator than at the North Pole, which means time runs slower in Miami than it does in Atlanta (because the spin of the earth is faster when you are nearer the equator).

Einstein worked in patent offices stealing technologies for the benefit of the Corporation of the Inner City of London. His oddball theories helped safeguard the monopolies of the Corporation. Information is a strategic political monopoly and the Corporation keeps a profile on every person on Earth.

I don't comment on personal attacks. I only comment on whether the science is correct or not.

What is perceived as attack in fact goes to "motive". If you discount motive you can't understand the "why".

Motives are generally a matter of opinion, unless the person explains his motive. Opinion versus opinion arguments are a waste of time.

Your mental "orientation" reminds me of the Rotary Club motto (the Freemasons have tried to get me to join Rotary for decades). Rotary motto goes something like this..."before you say anything, consider these things...1) is it the truth, 2) will it promote good will among all concerned, 3) will it hurt anyone's feelings, 4) in summary, if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything". Keeping science secret is a nice thing...to the Corporation. If you can be loyal to this motto you can function as a Freemason...making it look like all is well in the world run by the secret society. Most of all...keep the mysteries of science secret. That just isn't my way, Ed. Now, I have had my free speech for the past two years about science and now I will retire to my other hobbies, creating music and, of course other entertainment.

World events most of which are ‘engineered’ leave a trail that leads to the architects. We next discover that there are 3 cities on earth that come under no national authority, they have separate laws, they pay no taxes, they have their own police force and even possess their own flag of ‘independence’. These 3 cities control the economy, military onslaughts and the spiritual beings of those in powers. The 3 cities are actually corporations and they are the City of London, District of Columbia and the Vatican. Together they control politicians, the courts, educational institutions, food supply, natural resources, foreign policies, economies, media, and the money flow of most nations as well as 80% of the world’s entire wealth. Their ultimate aim is to build a totalitarian rule on a global scale where people will be divided into rulers and the ruled after they have depopulated the world to numbers they wish to rule over. What we need to understand is that the world does not work according to what we have been led to believe. We are drowning in misinformation.

Then I found the cartoon below, which seems to show having multiple remote controls to be an easily met challenge.


My feeling is that I am too busy trying to understand the universe, and I don't really have the time to try to understand a universal remote control.  A universal remote control solves a problem that I don't have.

Right now, I have a much bigger problem in trying to figure out why so many people misunderstand the First and Second postulates in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.  How can I convince them they are wrong if they cannot discuss the subject except in mathematical terms?  I cannot convince them using mathematics.  The problem doesn't have to do with mathematics, it has to do with LOGIC.  Their misunderstanding is NOT LOGICAL.  Neither is their argument that mathematics IS logic.

Back when I was working on this problem in order to write my paper about Einstein's Second Postulate, I collected dozens and dozens of papers and books on the subject.  I tried to organize them in a file in web page format that I never put on the Internet.  Since then, I've collected dozens and dozens of additional papers and books that aren't included in the web page.  Looking through some of them, I see all sorts of misunderstandings.  For example, on page 15 of Wolfgang Rindler's Essential Relativity: Special, General and Cosmological, it says this:

So the only function of the second postulate is to fix the invariant velocity.

We have seen how Einstein’s second postulate (the invariance of the speed of light) seems to violate common sense and certainly violates Newtonian kinematics.

We will raise this conjecture (the purport of which will hereafter be called the “Principle of Relativity”) to the status of a postulate, and also introduce another postulate, which is only apparently irreconcilable with the former, namely, that light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body.

Those black bars should NOT be there for normal stuff on CNN, NBC, ABC, etc.  The TV screens at the gym are 16x9 screens just like the one I have at home, and I don't have the black bars on my screen at home when I view CNN or the other networks.
 
I hadn't mentioned it to the gym management because I didn't want to make a pest of myself.  I had previously complained about them turning off CNN and NBC, and they had to call Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable) to come in to turn CNN back on.  (They never did turn NBC back on.)  And they seemed to claim that they had to call Spectrum for all problems with the TVs. 

Then on Friday of last week, as I sat down on the Exercycle in front of the TV showing CNN, I noticed that 4 of the 7 TVs on the wall were dark.  None of the TV screens had been dark 20 minutes earlier when I was on the treadmill.  The one showing CNN wasn't dark, so it was not a problem for me, and I didn't tell anyone.  Then, about ten minutes into my 20 minutes on the Exercycle, the young woman who was tending the reception desk by the door came into the room carrying a remote control, and she turned on each of the 4 TVs that had been off.

BOING!  They had a remote control for the TVs!!  They did not have to call Spectrum.  Of course!!  I then realized that they probably only had to call Spectrum to change channels.  The controls for the channels provided by Spectrum were inside the wall somewhere, but the remote control for the TVs was available to the gym personnel.  I have two remote controls for my TV at home, too.  I have the remote control for the cable box, and I have a remote control for the TV.  The remote control for the cable box changes channels, the remote control for the TV turns the TV on and off, it adjusts the sound - and it also adjusts the picture shape and size. 

Since the young woman was right in front of me, I waved her over and pointed to the TVs to tell her that the screen size was wrong on all the TVs.  She just smiled pleasantly and told me that that was something they'd have to call Spectrum about.  I didn't want to argue with her, so I just let her go about her business.

When I was finished on the Exercycle, I wondered about the TVs hanging from the ceiling behind me.  I walked back to look at them, and sure enough, three of those TVs were still off.  Simple LOGIC had made me think that if most of the TVs on the wall had somehow been turned off, then some of the TVs hanging from the ceiling had also probably been turned off.  Or was it "common sense"? 

Then, when I'd finished my workout, showered, dressed and was on my way out the door, I stopped by the front desk and asked if I could look at the remote control for the TVs.  The young woman obediently handed it to me.  It was very different from the TV remote I have at home.  The one I have at home has a "WIDE" button that adjusts the screen size.  The one at the gym had no such button, but it did have a big button labeled "MODE" that isn't on my remote control.  Would that be the button to adjust the screen size?  I didn't know, and I didn't want to ask if I could experiment with it.  At that moment, one of the men from the gym came to the desk to get something from a drawer, and the young woman told the man that I thought that the screen images were all the wrong size.  The guy smiled condescendingly and said that they'd call Spectrum about it.  And he left.  So, did I.  But, before I did, I informed the young woman that three of TVs hanging from the ceiling were still off.  Her jaw dropped open, probably because she hadn't thought to check them.

It was a lesson in "common sense" as the term was used by Carl Sagan.  Their "common sense" was telling them that no one else was complaining about the screen size, so I must be mistaken.  Their "common sense" was telling them that the screen size was some technical matter that was handled by Spectrum, and Spectrum certainly must know what they are doing, so I must be mistaken.  My "common sense" (i.e., LOGIC) was telling me that CNN and the other networks do not transmit two different sized images.  I knew that I was using the right size image on my TV at home, the gym had the same shaped TV screens, so the gym must be using the wrong size image.

When I got home, I tried to find the instruction manual for their TV remote control on the Internet, but I couldn't find any that has a big "MODE" button.  So, I need to identify the model of the TV and/or the model of remote control they use at the gym to research it further.  Meanwhile, I'll just keep my mouth shut.

And that brings us to the other lesson in "common sense" that I learned on my interactive blog.

The guy I'm arguing with on my blog (he uses the "Anonymous" option for identification), thinks it is "common sense" that if dozens of college textbooks claim that all observers will measure light to be arriving at the same speed, regardless of their own motion, then that must be true.  And, if I disagree, I have to be wrong.  And my paper on the subject must also be wrong, regardless of all the experiments I list which show that I am correct.  It is just "common sense" that all those physics books cannot be wrong.

Plus, "Anonymous" believes that if Einstein disagreed with the mathematicians about their "all observers theory," Einstein's biographers would certainly have mentioned it.   That's just common sense. 

I have a hardcover copy of "Einstein: The Life and Times" by Ronald W. Clark on a bookshelf against the far wall behind my computer right now.  It has no mention of the Second Postulate problem, and it doesn't even have the word "postulate" in the index.  I explained to "Anonymous" that a biographer writes about what he has researched, and the "all observers" argument was probably something he didn't want to put into a popular biography, even if he was aware of it or understood it.  And I provided references to Einstein's lectures and letters where Einstein mentioned his problems with mathematicians.

The problem, as I am now beginning to understand it, is that I'm battling against "common sense."  And using logic to show that "common sense" is wrong on the subject of "the mathematicians' all observers theory" just makes no sense to those who use "common sense" to determine what is right and what is wrong.  And it doesn't matter how many experiments I provide which undeniably confirm that the "mathematicians' all observers theory" is wrong.  If it is one person against many others who are obviously intelligent, "common sense" says the many others who are obviously intelligent are right.  So, the only thing that will change the minds of people who are using "common sense" is to provide a lot of information showing that many other people agree with me.  Showing that I agree with what Einstein himself has written isn't enough.  Other people have to have found the same thing.  "Common sense" says that if one group of intelligent people disagrees with another group of intelligent people, then something can and should be done to resolve the conflict, because both groups cannot be right.  
         
I'm going to have to identify others who agree with me.  I've found a few documents which support Einstein's interpretation of his own Second Postulate against the mathematicians' interpretation.  I've even exchanged emails with some of them, but they seem reluctant to battle "the establishment" which these days seems to be controlled by the editors who run arXiv.org.  That means I have to find papers and books that got published without first going through arXiv.org.

And I'm going to find some way to locate the instruction book for the remote control used for the TVs at my gym.  I just found this on the Internet:



The middle column is for the TV's I and my gym have.  It is for today's 16:9 TVs.  The column on the right is for old 4:3 TVs.  The column on the left is for newer widescreen 21:9 TVs.  The TVs at the gym must be set for 21:9 images used on new 21:9 TVs, so the images look like the center image on the top row. 

And this reminds me of the last time I visited my sister and her husband.  They had problems getting rid of the dark lines and couldn't understand why there should be ANY dark lines on their TV.  So, when they got dark lines on the sides like the center column bottom row because it was an old TV show, they tried to adjust the TV to get rid of them.  The same with CinemaScope movies, which have dark lines at the top and bottom, but are NOT squeezed as is the case with the TVs at my gym.

I never before realized how complicated this is.  I wonder how many people voted for Trump because they figured "Make America Great Again" meant going back to when all TVs were the same size, and things weren't so complicated.

Tell me, Mister Lake, what does your research tell you about what Einstein was saying from 1905 to the year of his death in 1955 (He was a Prof. in Zurich, Prague, Berlin and then Princeton)? Did he say that ALL the other academic professors of physics over that half century had misinterpreted his ideas and were teaching their students, undergrads and grads, "nonsense"? If not, why not?

In a recent note Kenneth Schaffner has argued that Einstein shifts from one form of the second postulate (or 'light postulate') to another in the course of his 1905 paper.  The second postulate formulated by Einstein in his introductory section (hereafter "the second postulate-1"), Schaffner takes to be the "I.L.V. hypothesis", according to which the velocity of light is independent of motion of the light source.  That which Einstein gives as his second postulate in his second section (hereafter "the second postulate-2"), Schaffner claims is the stronger "C.L.V. hypothesis", which asserts that the speed of light is a constant which is independent not only of the motion of the light source, but also of the state of motion of the observer's frame of reference.  In an earlier article to which Schaffner refers, Adolf Gründbaum has similarly interpreted the second postulate to be the C.L.V. hypothesis.

I believe this exegisis [i.e., "interpetation'] of the second postulate-2 to be mistaken for the following reasons.

No physicist started out impatient with commonsense notions, eager to replace them with some mathematical abstraction that could be understood only by rarefied theoretical physics. Instead, they began, as we all do, with comfortable, standard, commonsense notions. The trouble is that Nature does not comply. If we no longer insist on our notions of how Nature ought to behave, but instead stand before Nature with an open and receptive mind, we find that common sense often doesn’t work. Why not? Because our notions, both hereditary and learned, of how Nature works were forged in the millions of years our ancestors were hunters and gatherers. In this case common sense is a faithless guide because no hunter-gatherer’s life ever depended on understanding time-variable electric and magnetic fields. There were no evolutionary penalties for ignorance of Maxwell’s equations. In our time it’s different.

At the start, with the police car at a standstill at the side of the road, the speeding car zips away at 150 kilometres per hour. As the police car reaches 30 kilometres per hour, the speeding car travels only 120 kilometres per hour faster. As they accelerate, the relative speed of the fugitive drops down further and further, and finally dwindles to zero as the police catch up and race alongside flashing their lights. This is common sense. If the speeding car goes at 150 kilometres per hour and the police are chasing at 130 kilometres per hour, then their relative speed is 20 kilometres per hour.

But light is not commonsensical. Light races away from any standing or moving body at the same speed. The speed of light relative to any moving body is a constant.

Although each postulate seems quite reasonable, many of the implications of the two together are surprising and seem to contradict common sense. One important implication of these postulates is that every observer measures the same value for the speed of light independent of the relative motion of the source and observer.

Einstein says nothing about what others may observe or measure for the speed of light, since their movements do not actually affect the speed of the light they observe. However, an observer approaching the source of light will measure the light to arrive at c + v, where v is his velocity, and if the observer is moving away from the source of the light, he will measure the light to arrive at c – v. That is totally in tune with common sense. How could an observer affect the speed of light he didn’t create? That would make no sense.

Logic is used to reach a conclusion using the most accurate route available to us mankind. Common sense however is not always accurate and can sometimes be based on assumptions, social acceptance and no facts. logical thinking is a process which should involve no facts based on emotion.

Pseudoscience differs from erroneous science. Science thrives on errors, cutting them away one by one. False conclusions are drawn all the time, but they are drawn tentatively. Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved. A succession of alternative hypotheses is confronted by experiment and observation. Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding. Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise.

Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Skeptical scrutiny is opposed. When the pseudoscientific hypothesis fails to catch fire with scientists, conspiracies to suppress it are deduced.

In 1993, the supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, issued an edict, or fatwa, declaring that the world is flat. Anyone of the round persuasion does not believe in God and should be punished.

Only 9 percent of Americans accept the central finding of modern biology that human beings (and all the other species) have slowly evolved by natural processes from a succession of more ancient beings with no divine intervention needed along the way.

It is a fact of life on our beleaguered little planet that widespread torture, famine, and governmental criminal irresponsibility are much more likely to be found in tyrannical than in democratic governments. Why? Because the rulers of the former are much less likely to be thrown out of office for their misdeeds than the rulers of the latter. This is error-correcting machinery in politics. The methods of science—with all its imperfections—can be used to improve social, political, and economic systems, and this is, I think, true no matter what criterion of improvement is adopted. How is this possible if science is based on experiment? Humans are not electrons or laboratory rats. But every act of Congress, every Supreme Court decision, every Presidential National Security Directive, every change in the Prime Rate is an experiment. Every shift in economic policy, every increase or decrease in funding for Head Start, every toughening of criminal sentences is an experiment.

Citizens Revealing Ethicless & Apathetic Media (PAC) is a political organization formed for the purpose of addressing the social, civic, legal, political and constitutional consequences of the media that provides for the citizens of the United States. Our focus is to evaluate reporting that we feel is ethicless and apathetic. Five general initiatives are utilized to accomplish this goal: 1) Identification, 2) Reporting, 3) Education, 4) Issue Advocacy and 5) Representation.

Our lawyers require that we advise you that this book is almost blank and contains precisely 5294 words.    

Some use genius to describe a very smart person—someone with a high IQ—but that is overly narrow, and misleading. Plenty of people with extremely high IQs have accomplished little, and conversely, plenty of people of “average” intelligence have done great things. No, I am speaking of genius in the creative sense—as the highest form of creativity.

Francis Galton may have gotten much wrong, but his definition of genius, though typically sexist, points to something important: “A genius is a man to whom the world deliberately acknowledges itself largely indebted.” Admittance to the club of genius is not up to the genius but to his peers, and society. It is a public verdict, not a private assertion. One theory of genius—let’s call it the Fashionista Theory of Genius—states this unequivocally. Admission to the club of genius depends entirely on the whims, the fashion, of the day. “Creativity cannot be separated from its recognition,” says psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the main advocate of this theory. Put more bluntly, someone is only a genius if we say so.

Bannon, with mounting ferocity and pubic venom, could abide them less and less every day.

Bannon was making his first official pubic appearance of the Trump presidency

In early August, less than a month after Ailes had been ousted from Fox News, Trump asked his old friend to take over the management of his calamitous campaign. Ailes, knowing Trump’s disinclination to take advice, or even listen to it, turned him down. This was the job Bannon a week later.

the government of Malaysia ... will pay up to $70 million if the company [doing the searching] can find the wreckage of the plane or its two flight recorders within 3 months.

Payment is based on a sliding scale, starting at $20 million if the items are found earlier within a 2,000-square-mile section of the main search area.

U.S.-based Ocean Infinity announced Wednesday that the Malaysian government had accepted its “no-find, no-fee” contract, with a reward of up to $70 million if wreckage from MH370 is located within 90 days.

If the mission is successful within three months, payment will be made based on the size of the area searched. [Transport Minister] Liow said the government will pay Ocean Infinity $20 million for 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square mile) of a successful search, $30 million for 15,000 square kilometers (5,790 sq. miles), $50 million for 25,000 square kilometers (9653 sq. miles) and $70 million if the plane or recorders are found beyond the identified area.

Ocean Infinity Chief Executive Oliver Plunkett said the search vessel Seabed Constructor, which left the South African port of Durban last week, is expected to reach the southern Indian Ocean by Jan. 17 to begin the hunt.

He said eight autonomous underwater vehicles, which are drones fitted with high-tech cameras, sonars and sensors, will be dispatched to map the seabed at a faster pace. Plunkett said the underwater drones can cover 1,200 square kilometers (463 sq. miles) a day and complete the 25,000 square kilometers within a month.

None of the chain’s 632 stores across the country had the red-hot book when they opened their doors Friday morning — a situation the company blamed on the weather and the publisher, Henry Holt & Co., which moved up the publication date to Friday from Jan. 9.

The retailer, whose shares had already stumbled out of the gate on Friday, falling 15 percent on disappointing holiday sales results, had no choice but to turn away disappointed customers.

From their separate corners each man pursued his own strategy. Bannon did all he could to roll over Priebus and Kushner in an effort to prosecute the war for Trumpism/Bannonism as quickly as possible. Priebus, already complaining about “political neophytes and the boss’s relatives," subcontracted his agenda out to Ryan and the Hill. And Kushner, on one of the steepest learning curves in the history of politics (not that everyone in the White House wasn’t on a steep curve, but Kushner’s was perhaps the steepest), and often exhibiting a painful naïveté as he aspired to be one of the world’s savviest players, was advocating doing nothing fast and everything in moderation. Each had coteries opposed to the other:  Bannonites pursued their goal of breaking everything fast, Priebus’s RNC faction focused on the opportunities for the Republican agenda, Kushner and his wife did their best to make their unpredictable relative look temperate and rational.

And in the middle was Trump.

Although many saw him [Pence] as a vice president who might well assume the presidency someday, he was also perceived as the weakest vice president in decades and, in organizational terms, an empty suit who was useless in the daily effort to help restrain the president and stabilize the West Wing.

The unique problem here was partly how to get information to someone who did not (or could not or would not) read, and who at best listened only selectively. But the other part of the problem was how best to qualify the information that he liked to get. Hope Hicks, after more than a year at this side, had honed her instincts for the kind of information - the clips - that would please him. Bannon, in his intense and confiding voice, could insinuate himself into the president’s mind. Kellyanne Conway brought him the latest outrages against him. There were his after-dinner call - the billionaire chorus. And then cable, itself programmed to reach him -to court him or enrage him.

The information he did not get was formal information. The data. The details. The options. The analysis. He didn’t do PowerPoint. For anything that smacked of a classroom or of being lectured to - “professor“ was one of his bad words, and he was proud of never going to class, never buying a textbook, never taking a note - he got up and left the room.

Mainstream media's self-righteousness and contempt for Trump helped provide a tsunami of clicks for right-wing media.  But an often raging, self-pitying, tormented President had not gotten this memo, or had failed to comprehend it.  He was looking for media love everywhere.  In this, Trump quie profoundly seemed unable to distinguish between his political advantage and his personal needs - he thought emotionally, not strategically.

The president continued to stew about The Devil's Bargain, the book by Joshua Green that gave Bannon credit for the election.

But overriding the management of the harrowing West Wing dysfunction, [General] Kelly’s success - or even relevance, as he was informed by almost anyone who was in a position to offer him an opinion - depended on his rising to the central challenge of his job, which was how to manage Trump. Or, actually, how to live with not managing him. His desires, needs, and impulses had to exist - necessarily had to exist - outside the organizational structure. Trump was the one variable that, in management terms, simply could not be controlled. He was like a recalcitrant two-year-old. If you tried to control him it would only have the opposite effect. In this, then, the manager had to most firmly manage his own expectations.

The dinner was called for the bar at the Hay-Adams hotel, but Arthur Schwartz, a Bannonite PR man, got into an altercation with the Hay-Adams bartender about switching the television from CNN to FOX, where his client, Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman of one of the president's business councils, was shortly to appear.

Schwartz, in high dudgeon, announced that he was checking out of the Hay-Adams and moving to the Trump Hotel.  He also insisted that the dinner be moved two blocks away to Joe's, an outpost of Miami's Joe's Stone Crab.

Trump didn't read.  He didn't even skim.  If it was in print, it might as well not exist.  Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.  (There was some argument about this, because he could read headlines and articles about himself, or at least headlines on articles about himself, and the gossip squibs on the New York Post's Page Six.)  Some thought him dyslexic; certainly his comprehension was limited.  Others concluded that he didn't read because he didn't have to, and that in fact was one of his key attributes as a populist.  He was post-literate -- total television.

But not only didn't he read, he didn't listen.  He preferred to be the person talking.  And he trusted his own expertise - no matter how paltry or irrelevant - more than anyone else's.  What's more, he had an extremely short attention span, even when he thought you were worthy of attention.

This morning, after eating breakfast, I paused in my reading of "Fire and Fury" on my big laptop.  I was on page 104 as I took the laptop into my office to begin my Sunday morning on-line routine, which includes the writing of this "Sunday comment."

When I checked my emails, I found that another book I had "On Hold" at my local library system was available to download.  It was the audio version of "You Can't Spell America Without Me," by Alec Baldwin.  So, I downloaded the 5 MP3 files, which I'll use to burn 5 CDs when I get some free time.  At the moment, I have only two books on loan from the library.



For some reason, even though I have borrowed "Fire and Fury," my library still shows that I am also waiting to borrow a copy.  It says I am #1 in line to borrow one of the 53 copies they purchased.  Here's part of my  "On Hold" list:  



I'm hoping it isn't just a glitch and that I'm in line to borrow a Kindle copy.  Reading the .epub version on my big laptop is a pain.  Highlighting passages doesn't always work smoothly, and you cannot copy and paste from the .epub version I have.  So, if I want to comment on and quote something I read in the book, I have to retype the passage or go through some other tedious procedure.  (I've probably highlighted something on at least 90 of the 104 pages I've read so far.  That's more highlighting than I've never done to any other book I've ever read.)
 
For example, here's an interesting passage from page 89 (or so):

[Kellyanne] Conway thought that the president, in addition to being aware of the hostility in New York, was making a conscious effort to be “part of this great house.” (But, acknowledging the difficulties inherent in his change of circumstances and of adapting to presidential lifestyle, she added, “How often will he go to Camp David?“ the Spartan, woodsy presidential retreat in Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland. "How ’bout never”)

At the White House, he retreated to his own bedroom - the first time since the Kennedy White House that a presidential couple had maintained separate rooms (although Melania was spending scant time so far in the White House).  In the first days he ordered two television screens in addition to the one already there, and a lock on the door, precipitating a brief standoff with the Secret Service, who insisted they have access to the room. He reprimanded the housekeeping staff for picking up his shirt from the floor: “If my shirt is on the floor, it’s because I want it on the floor." Then he imposed a set of new rules: nobody touch anything, especially not his toothbrush. (He had a longtime fear of being poisoned, one reason why he liked to eat at McDonald’s - nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely premade.) Also, he would let housekeeping know when he wanted his sheets done, and he would strip his own bed.

Bannon, who became chief executive of Trump’s team in mid-August, called it “the broke-dick campaign.” Almost immediately, he saw that it was hampered by an even deeper structural flaw: The candidate who billed himself as a billionaire — ten times over — refused to invest his own money in it. Bannon told Kushner that, after the first debate in September, they would need another $50 million to cover them until Election Day.

“No way we’ll get 50 million unless we can guarantee him victory,” said a clear-eyed Kushner.

“Twenty-five million?” prodded Bannon.

“If we can say victory is more than likely.”

In the end, the best Trump would do is to loan the campaign $10 million, provided he got it back as soon as they could raise other money.

The private party, held at an undisclosed location, will cost attendees $2,700 a ticket and an extra $35,000 to take a photo with Trump.

The truth is that Gravitation, Attraction, Cohesion are only scientific names invented to cover men's ignorance of God's works in nature, pretending to explain facts, when, in reality, they explain nothing at all.

Gravitation is only a subterfuge, employed by Newton in his attempt to prove that the Earth revolves round the Sun, and the quicker it is relegated to the tomb of all the Capulets, the better will it be for all classes of society.

I remember being taught when a boy, that the Earth was a great ball, revolving at a very rapid rate around the Sun, and, when I expressed to my teacher my fears that the waters of the oceans would tumble off, I was told that they were prevented from doing so by Newton's great law of Gravitation, which kept everything in its proper place.  I presume that my countenance must have shown some signs of incredulity, for my teacher immediately added—I can show you a direct proof of this; a man can whirl around his head a pail filled with water without its being spilt, and so, in like manner, can the oceans be carried round the Sun without losing a drop.  As this illustration was evidently intended to settle the matter, I then said no more upon the subject.

Had such been proposed to me afterwards as a man, I would have answered somewhat as follows — Sir, I beg to say that the illustration you have given of a man whirling a pail of water round his head, and the oceans revolving round the Sun, does not in any degree confirm your argument, because the water in the two cases is placed under entirely different circumstances, but, to be of any value, the conditions in each case must be the same, which here they are not. The pail is a hollow vessel which holds the water inside it, whereas, according to your teaching, the Earth is a ball, with a continuous curvature outside, which, in agreement with the laws of nature, could not retain any water; besides, as the Scriptures plainly tell us — 2 Pet. Hi. 5, the water is not contained in the Earth, but the Earth in the water. 

   

94.177.249.69         Elephant & Castle, England
94.177.250.144        Elephant & Castle, England
94.177.252.206        Elephant & Castle, England
94.177.254.86         Elephant & Castle, England

111.20.46.85         Xi’an, China
111.20.46.87         Xi’an, China
111.20.46.112        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.115        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.116        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.119        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.120        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.125        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.129        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.130        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.135        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.136        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.143        Xi’an, China
111.20.46.152        Xi’an, China

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cameras work using the available light. in sunlight there is so much light that to prevent overexposure the time of exposure is short and the aperture will be small. however to get stars in the background, because they are small and dim you need a longer exposure and a wider aperture setting. the cameras are not set up to capture the light of the stars. so you will either get foreground shots of the station and people or you will get stars. it is due to the exposure. now if you knew anything about taking photographs of stars you might know that. also if it were going to be faked as you are implying they would have put the stars in.

I concur with [the moderator]. It's the way cameras work. There are no stars in the photo because you need a longer exposure to see the stars, and a longer exposure would mean either that the earth and the astronaut would be overexposed, or that they would be blurred due to movement while the lens was open.

Conspiracy theorists argue the same thing about photos taken by astronauts on the moon. The stars cannot be seen because you would need a longer exposure to see them. And the rest of the photo would be overexposed.

It takes a lot of photons for a very tiny, dim object to be seen. You can collect more photons with a bigger the lens or a longer exposure.

If you could see stars in the photo, that would indicate that the picture is faked.