Friday, April 22, 2022

At the Appointed Hour

A friend posted pictures of her daughter at the prom, resplendent in a lovely red gown and dancing with her handsome date.

One of the pictures keyed the memory of what I always considered the best time of any dance, especially one where you had to start out in a jacket and tie. Maybe an hour or so in, maybe a little more, when the jacket is somewhere draped over a chair that you might remember, you've perspired your way through the starch in the shirt so it's noticeably more flexible than when you started, your sleeves are up at least a turn and your tie is at half mast. Girls have traded heels and pumps for Chucks or running shoes or maybe just bare feet. The frequency of slow dances has increased but some top 40 jive still remains and you'll have a few more chances to rip it up.

I didn't know dances worked that way anymore -- seems like lots of prom pics show girls in dresses they can't really walk in, let alone dance, and guys eschewing ties or even tuxes for blazers and jeans. It's nice to get an inkling that the important things are still the same.

Thursday, April 14, 2022

An Overlooked but Essential Point

Many online pundits and commenters today have kicked around what it might mean were billionaire Elon Musk to purchase Twitter outright, as he has made an offer to do. Musk says he will take the company private and make many changes.

On the one hand, this is a fun fracas to watch. Musk's commitment to free speech bothers folks who are less happy with it, and their reactions have ranged from disapproval to angry denunciation to weapons-grade tantrums. These are amusing because the number of people who use Twitter regularly is still a small percentage of the world's population and there's a certain glee in watching people get bent out of shape over something you don't care about. Folks appreciative of irony can note that among those shapes most bent out are persons who claim the title of journalist -- people whose right to work and say what they think is protected by the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech and a free press.

On the other hand, even if Musk does buy the company and spends a glorious several weeks making a bunch of its employees get jobs, the end product will still suck. Because the end product of a drive to make a better Twitter is, unfortunately, still Twitter.

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

General Relativity Works...Change My Mind

A popular meme has comedian Steven Crowder sitting behind a table with some statement on a piece of poster board in front of him. Underneath the statement is the phrase "Change my mind." It comes from a segment Crowder does on his Louder with Crowder program. The meme offers users the chance to insert their own opinion phrase and some clever folks will Photoshop new faces onto Crowder's body or just an entirely new person behind the table.

In a recent Back ReAction blog entry, physics professor Sabine Hossenfelder notes that Albert Einstein's what seem to be absolutely correct formulations of special and general relativity have been proven correct with many experiments -- dating back to just after he published the papers containing them through today. But, Dr. Hossenfelder notes, many physicists spend a great deal of time and energy trying to prove both theories wrong. Why?

Well, she notes, both theories deal with what is called classical or Newtonian physics. Such a study rests on Isaac Newton's famous laws of motion which describe the behavior of moving and stationary objects we might encounter in daily life. But when the objects of study are incredibly small or incredibly fast, Newtonian physics do not apply and researchers turn to the fields of quantum physics and quantum mechanics. Not unexpectedly, theories based on Newtonian physics also do not work well when applied to quantum studies, and that includes both theories of relativity.

Hossenfelder sums up several different areas of inquiry that have proving Einstein wrong as their ultimate goal. The problem is that he was indeed brilliant and his theories have a way of showing true during experiment after experiment -- we lack the ability to make the kind of observations and measurements of quantum phenomena that would show where he erred.

It is as though Einstein himself responds to the efforts to show him wrong with a frequently repeated, "I may not be right, but I'm still closer to it than you are."

This kind of thing interests me because it shows that self-examination is always a part of science and the idea of "settled science" is not a particularly serious one. And it highlights a very important aspect of my day job as a clergy person. Questions designed to investigate and uncover the truth ought never be unwelcome, especially when one claims to be following a God who claims to be in all things exactly that: True.

Monday, April 4, 2022

Ain't A-Gonna Pay No Toll

From the days when our country still had enough of a common culture that a single novelty song could send a mid-level fad into a national craze. Even my aunt bought a CB radio. Let them truckers roll, C.W.