On Capital Punishment

[Dr. Siepmann],

        Did I read correctly that you are in favour of the death penalty [in reference to the footnote in Politically Correct Science?]?  If not, then I retract what I am about to say.....no I don't, I feel too strongly about it! If we kill homicidal maniacs, how will ever hope to protect the next generation of victims? Killing these criminals is the same thing as sentencing the next generation of victims to death. 
        I do not say these words lightly.  If anybody where to kill someone I loved, I would gladly pick them off with a snipers rifle as they do their exercises in the yards of their prison.  However, as I have fortunately not experienced this heart wrenching disaster directly, I can still see the relativistic implications of such actions.
       We can never hope to understand the minds of these people and how they develop, if we give in to "angry mob justice", and execute them without at least attempting to exhaustively investigate their mindset development......if you know what I mean!
        Killing them sentences the next generation of victims to death.  How can we possibly prevent these crimes if we do not attempt to investigate their origins?

Sincerely,
glen angus graham  redshift@senet.com.au 
relativity theorist

Dr. Siepmann Responds:

        Actually exhaustive studies have been done into the psyche of serial and mass murderers has been and is still being done from Jack the Ripper (who is now known to be sadistic painter who actually went on killing prostitutes in France after leaving London) to Jeffrey Dahmer and Timothy McVeigh (acts of passion, greed, etc. are not studied to any significant degree unless there is a twist because these are mostly obvious in their etiology) and little to no useful information has been found to prevent future atrocities other than the well known correlate between child abuse (sexual/physical) and becoming an abuser which we already knew from child abuse studies. There has been more than enough time to study these criminals if desired since it takes several years for even the most speedy death sentence to be carried out due to the criminal's appeals process. So the "study" argument has been a futile one and has been invalidated. 
        The arguments for the death penalty are many and valid, which include:
Protection of Society. They will not kill anyone again. This includes both inside prison (while serving a non-death penalty sentence) and outside prison (in the US, life-imprisonment which is the next best sentence is not really "life" and many murderers are back on the streets in as little as a few years). In fact, Charles Manson, is regularly up for parole and the only reason for his continued incarceration is that he is insane (or stupid, because all many horrific murderers need to tell parole boards is that they are sorry and they won't do it again; and these liberal parole boards let them out only to kill again). 
Victim Closure. Though nothing will bring back a murderer's victim, it gives the victims' families and loved ones closure. There is no fear of retribution or retaliation from the criminal against the victims' families or victims who survived. How would you feel if the person who murdered your child and other people's children after raping and abusing them, was out in society in 10 years?

        No one has been put to death in the US that was innocent. In the US, the system errs on the side of innocence. With appeals, DNA evidence, etc. no innocent has been put to death. Those who have been wrongly convicted have been found innocent through our appeals process. 
        Intellectually, there are no valid reasons for not having the death penalty. In fact, one could make a valid argument that it is used too sparingly in the US, since <1% of all convicted murderers are put to death.  Many convicted murderers for whom it is known that they will murder again when released are not only not put to death but are rather released after an all too short incarceration. It is only used here for when society is outraged by the horrorific of the crimes.
        Even if we had a full-proof "life means life" sentencing, it would not protect the guards and other inmates from harm/death at the hand of someone who has nothing to loose (if we didn't have capital punishment, what more can you do to a 'lifer') and it would not give closure to victims, relatives, and society. Every couple years when a prisoner comes up for parole, the victims' families are put through an emotional hell. Isn't the horrible death that their loved one suffered enough, without having to relive it every couple years?
        I appreciate that at least you gave a reason for why there should not be capital punishment since most on your side of the argument just say it is "wrong" without any valid reason or attempt at supporting their statement. But when the argument is looked at factually, there should actually be more capital punishment rather than its abolishment. And when you look at it from the emotional side, I would rather take the side of the victims' families rather than some liberal diatribe which can be distilled down to "Because I say it is wrong!"

Sincerely,
Dr. James P. Siepmann    archive@journaloftheoretics.com 

[Though we realize that Capital Punishment is a politically charged topic, the science behind the arguments are very appropriate for the Journal.  In fact, science could help us to find logical arguments for many of the political issues of our day.  Alas whether the public and the politicians heed them is another story.]

Time Out

       What time really is is a built-in sense in the human brain. The impetus for this phenomenon is the ongoing co-constructive comparative function of various types of memory in the human brain. It is a sense, like any other, that evolved over millions of years to ensure our survival. It is also tied in with emotion, our cognitive functions (unfortunately including the imagination), and to a large degree, instinct.
       Coincidentally, there were several articles published in this months' Scientific American, and the issue itself was devoted to the erroneous notion of time. I found one article particularly amusing- the final one "dealing" with an examination of where time is perceived in the human brain. Considering that every sense we have provides us with false but useful information, I found myself shaking my head at the inanity of the piece, which assumes that this so-called time-sense differs in some manner, that it allows us to experience time. It allows us to experience time, all right- by creating it!
       Consider; sound does not exist outside our heads.  Vibrating air does. Vibrating air is not the same thing as perceived sound. Colour does not exist outside our heads. Our brain assigns what we call colour to light wave frequencies so that we can tell these frequencies apart. The temperature we feel bears absolutely no resemblance to the excited or suppressed electron activity in atoms and molecules, which is what temperature really is. That the person who wrote the article on our time sense assumes that this sense actually perceives time, therefore, is laughable.

Enjoyed your site.

Cheers,
Greg S. Monks   gsmonks@sk.sympatico.ca

Hypothesis Testing & Paradigm Shifts

       GIVEN that science is about provisional hypothesis testing, and One can hardly find such things "expressly stated" then Caroline Thompson's attempt to restore science to logical thinking and armchair philosophy is outdated and Aristotelian [her website was at http://users.aber.ac.uk/cat/ -link no longer active].  Next Quantum Mechanics shifts enquiry back into holistic or top down approaches, rather than inductive. Since math, logic and knowledge are incomplete, ergo use such terms as "progress" and paradigm shifts, using an axiomatic approach which ideologies that it is complete in itself, and thereby solipsistics [where theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified and the theory or view that the self is the only reality] is not likely to beget us the complete overhaul science is in need of.

Example:

1. Gravity gathers up matter in clumps or groups to make mass which intimates there's more gravity than required.

2. The Big Bang implies a deficit of gravity or the universe would not expand.

Which is true or valid? Logic cannot make true or valid statements. It can only make logically correct inferences and the above cannot be solved unless one makes either:

1. an illogical choice of assumptions or beliefs

2. ingenues up a means of testing.

       AND by the way, it is IMPOSSIBLE to have any bias free knowledge. In making a choice or setting up and assumption or hypothesis one makes a choice and that's a bias. The interesting one is Jung's phrase that the opposite is also true.  Usually once we 'prove' a given hypothesis alternatives are seldom enquired into, and in an infinite, unbounded or unfinished Universe paradoxes and anomalies can occur.
       Oh dear, now I contradicted myself, bummer. Because #1 is Newton space bound thought and the BIG bang is as mapped in time and those two cannot be unitively correlated.  And just because Eddington wrote that the senses are no longer a reliable guide does not mean falling back on logic is going to work because we've been using that to get into the quantum quandary.

Adrian van der Meijden MA hons.  afme@ihug.co.nz 

B. Schreiber's Comments on the Last Issue

Dear Dr. Siepmann:

As to Vol.4-4, here are my unwanted comments.

Kanarev: - Angular Motion:
        He lists Kayasaka as a reference that falling gyroscopes show "antigravity" in support of one of his conclusions. Kayasaka's experiment was fatally flawed, in fact, it is a wonder anyone believed it to start with. I showed why and the paper was published in Space Energy Journal and Journal of New Energy.
        I just sent Dr. Bailey the editor of New Energy News (NEN) with the suggestion that he lists in his links (and in NEN) experiments that have been shown to be false so they are not listed in references. Also editors to notify the authors to remove them from their papers. Probably won't do any good. Proof of the Casimir Force is another not proven and can't ever be.
        Kanarev should have known better as my paper is on my web site (He has seen it.) and he ignored it or didn't read it which is worse. His second paper is likewise of not much use. Apparently he is not well versed on line spectra or on the shielding effect etc. The "generic" equations will not give accurate results in the first place. Require extensive modifications starting with Sommerfeld and on to Ritz etc. I wrote him on this long ago and he ignored it likewise. Current ionization tables are in error likewise.

Calvert: Gravitational Inertia -
        How did this slip by you in the first place? G is used to define (is intrinsic) the Planck values, so combining them will give G. This type of error happens all too often in papers.

Radovic: Cherenkov's -
        Particles (mass) cannot move faster than light. Their speed relative to the permitted speed of light in THE MEDIUM is faster. Cherenkov Radiation has already been explained in great detail. Nothing new there. The ends results are the impossibilities. Magnetron (synchrotron) radiation is from a different cause. I am the only one who knows what this cause is. Cannot be and can never be explained under current theory. See PS.

Cuny: Commentary
        I don't know how many times I have pointed this out. It is still ignored by one and all as it destroys the most cherished beliefs of the establishment and even the iconoclasts. So here it is once more.
        There can be NO PRESENT time under the current continuous "point" concept of time. The future INSTANTLY in ZERO TIME becomes the past as there is NO
PAUSE to CREATE a present. A present can ONLY EXIST where there is a quantum of time (remain in existence) for it to do so. Planck's Constant provides for this quantum of time and shows its existence and DURATION.
        THEREFORE, every theory based on continuous time is FALSE. Therefore, ALL past and current present theories are false. I have the true quantum theory so
that there is a quantum of mass, length, and time. Everything moves in jumps and there can be no fractional parts of a jump. The present then exists for the duration of the time jump.

And as usual, this message will be ignored.

Sincerely,
Bert Schreiber         

PS: Radiation is only given off when a mass decelerates. When it is being accelerated it stores energy. Lately, too many papers etc. say that radiation is given off from an accelerating mass. The end result is (and very easily proved): ALL ENERGY is radiation and there is only one energy. All the other words added before are human concepts or descriptive, i.e., heat, radio, electrical, potential, kinetic ad nauseam. Proof on my web site. This confusion has made the current Bremsstrahlung theory extremely confused and incorrect as I just found out the past month, i.e., the so called second order Doppler Effect is in reality the second "order" for radiation production. But the first for spectra. In fact, radiation production is in shambles and I have now straightened it all out, well, at least to what is actually known beyond any doubts.

• First Order: Continuous Radiation. (hot solid Mass) Source (probably nucleus) and cause unknown.

• Second Order: Charged particle jumping. Line spectra from ionized elements or compounds.

• Third Order: Deceleration of free Mass. Synchrotron, Gerenkov etc.

• Fourth Order: Electrons moving in/through medium (Refractive Index greater than 1). LRC circuits for radio frequencies specific cause unknown.

• Fifth Order: Elements or their compounds vibrations (oscillating). (in toto) Atomic Clocks, Masers etc.

• Sixth Order: Mass to Energy. Radioactivity, fusion, fission, and fragmentation.

Dr. Siepmann's Response:

Dear Mr. Schreiber,

        Shame on you for using the old tired out retort of saying that someone's argument is "philosophical" as though that invalidates it. This is what the stagnant academics often say about a theory that disagrees with their's, allowing them to then just dismiss out of hand. You fortunately did put forth an argument afterwards, so you're forgiven. 
        The problem is more than semantics and definitions though. In a perfect world, "things" would be classified as to whether they physically exist or if they are an effect of things that exist. For instance, length exists, mass exists, electrons exist, etc. but time, velocity, Planck's constant, etc. do not exist, rather they are but the indirect effect of something(s) that does(do) exist. For instance take a box of "m" mass and has the dimensions 6"x3"x3" and the Earth, we can describe the interaction of these 2 things with constructs such as time, acceleration, velocity, and so on, but all of these do not have any physical existence themselves. Planck's constant is also one of these descriptions of an interaction (effect) and to answer your question, it therefore does not exist.
        This may sound strange but we can begin to grasp the importance of this when we consider gravity. If one were to take a mainstream view that "gravity waves" exist (it would be quite unusual since all other waves are nothing but an effect on a medium) whereas I and some others would put forth the theory that gravity is an effect within the medium of Space (I would also put forth that light is an interaction between "things" of which the medium is Space but this is more complicated and is another story). When one considers gravity as being an effect on Space then it all begins to make sense and a unified theory is then possible.
        Your points about the Casimir experiments are good ones, but I have not had the time or access to information necessary to validate the experiments that have been done. Contrary to the impression given, I to do not believe that the Casimir force exists in the many iterations that have been described, but the information that I do have does not show factual evidence for its invalidation. When such information becomes available, then I will say that the theory is invalid, but for now I need to go on what information is currently available, but keeping a very open mind though.
        It is that open mindedness though that forces me to publish many articles that I do not agree with. Unless a theory can be validated with significant certainty or unequivocally invalidated, it will be allowed publication in the Journal of Theoretics as long as it presents the facts correctly and the argument put forth in the theory has the potential for validity.

Sincerely,
Dr. James P. Siepmann   archive@journaloftheoretics.com 

P.S. In my ongoing unified theory formation, inertia would also be one of those things that does not exist but is rather an effect of the interaction of mass and Space.

Mr. Schreiber responds:

Dear Dr. Siepmann:

        Thank you for taking your valuable time to respond. I will stick to the two items you replied to. 
        Your time is more philosophical than science. Whether time exists or not, then you still did not answer my questions. Continuous time results in inertia being both infinite and nonexistent. It can't be both simultaneously. Inertia, as it definitely exists, must be something in between these two extremes. Planck's Constant either exists or not. IF you accept its existence, then time must be quantum, i.e. jumps or jumping. If h does not, then one is back to inertia. Question: Then what is your concept that can eliminate these dialectical materialisms?
        Casimir Force: I am aware of the experiments used to claim its proof of existence. You missed my point as many other proofs of claims turned out to be false. I only listed Kayasaka as one example. See PS.
        In none of the experiments and their "verification" by others did anyone explain how the Casimir Force measured was detected (extracted) from the Van der Waals' force that is many factors larger between ANY TWO SURFACES. That force does not end at the surface but extends into space. They misdirected the attention away by saying that gravity etc. was taken into effect (did it work at very close mass separation) ad nauseam. Question: How was this "extraction" done? 
        The gravity part force effect/affect has never been shown to be otherwise in the macro or micro and obeys the inverse square law or rule. The Van der Waals' force distorts the macro result, but it can be subtracted to leave the gravitational force one alone. The micro was confirmed by the production of line spectra as to when the gravitational force causes the calculated lines to be of a longer wavelength; Einstein, Ritz etc.
        They were wrong on gravity anyway. To keep the effect of gravity below h, one or both of the two "elements" (mass) would have to be less than 2 x 10 to minus 12 grams at the closest separation used. They flat GOOFED.

Sincerely,
Bert Schreiber  charlesbert_99@yahoo.com 

PS: Experimental pitfalls are covered in great detail on my web site under SIDE PAPERS first two items. The Rat Maze discussed is a perfect example.

PSS: Inertia and gravity are the two faces of the same coin. I have the proofs and the effect to give the affect is limited to h. Below h, nothing happens or
can be measured.

[Like the Fox News Network: "We report, you decide."]

Minimalist Schreiber

Dear Dr. Siepmann:

       I have become convinced that INFORMATION almost exclusively goes into history, over time of the entire set of evolutionary existence.  This IS a substitute for the concept of the "so called inertia" in physics.  I have thought apparently very deeply in to the arguments of MINIMALIST Physicist (Charles) Bert Schreiber [website at http://web2.iadfw.net/nptbs/ ] and is the one who had actually constructed the internal combustion engine with the minimum number of side POLYGON in keeping with maximum efficiency in the Hamiltonian sense description, where a perfect cylinder has to be considered to be a maximum side polygon).  The motor functioned superbly... is the impression I got from his communication... 
       Bert obviously is a genius in physical sense and had written to me that to him nature (in the sense of George Hamilton) functions with strict limitations. He had no use for dimensions and at the maximum allowance would consider LENGTH to be the only dimension! Any way, I have begun to suspect that that Minimalist Bert like a practical Einstein is correct. Minimas also enter the evoluon theory build up of cosmic evolution in the Evoluon Theory which is based on the functional cosmic information systems... 

Manohar A. Tilak   matilak@usit.net