The Hammer & The Feather

Science > Physics > The Hammer & The Feather

LINK TO THIS PAGE

rating : 0 | 0

Page 1 of 1

Topic:	Science > Physics
User:	"Seymour Grass"
Date:	18 Jan 2005 03:23:29 AM
Object:	The Hammer & The Feather

From: "Seymour Grass" <daddio45@yahoo.com>
Subject: The Hammer & The Feather
Date: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 3:22 AM
I was watching the floor numbers flash in descending order when to my dismay
I felt a jab to the ribs. I turned to see Graszman there at my right beaming
an aggressive looking grin that caused me to take a step beyond range of any
more of that! "Tell me, McCoy," he said, again closing the distance between
us, "what do you think would happen if in a few seconds from now, the cable
on this thing were to snap?"
I braced against my body's downward momentum as the car had abruptly begun
slowing to a stop at the 12th floor. We stepped back to admit an elderly
woman; the spot on my ribs was yet throbbing from that unwelcome familiarity
of his and he was still at me, still talking:
"I'm talking about your feet?" He was pointing toward my shoes. "Would they
remain in contact with the floor as we went down, or not?"
I thought it rather an inopportune moment for such a discussion, considering
especially that we now had company, and I said so, but soon felt reason to
regret it as there appeared something in the stance he was taking, even so
slight as he was by comparison to my height of 6'1", and weight of 195; a
bearing he had that was oddly intimidating for someone who from the look of
it would hardly turn the scale past 150, nor stand any higher than 5'10" in
those high-heeled cowboy boots of his.
"I don't know," I said, lowering my voice for his ears alone. "My guess is
that we'd soon drift upward toward the ceiling and stay there until the car
came down on that spring at the bottom of the shaft." I shrugged at the
sardonical look he was now giving me: "Well, that's my guess--for what it's
worth."
At the 9th floor, two twenty-somethings of the female flavor had boarded;
their laughter not being entirely left echoing behind in the corridor as the
doors slid to a close. "Well, you ought to know better than that, McCoy," he
was saying. "I thought you were the science editor for this . . ." he raised
a hand to indicate the surroundings, ". . . glorified producer of bird cage
liner and fish wrap."
To the somewhat distraught expressions of insulted esteem on the other faces
about us, I managed a smile of apology for the character of my company. "Of
course I'm the science editor, Graszamn. What of it?"
"Then you ought to know that since our bodies inside this car would not be
falling, like the car itself, against any resistance of air, our rate of
acceleration would be the same as for the car."
Now that he was mentioning it, I did have a glimmer of recollection, having
to do with Galileo, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, some feathers and a
cannonball.
The elevator had gone past the Mezzanine and was slowing to a stop at "L"
for "Lobby". Just as the doors were opening, Graszman was still going on: "I
suppose you must recall that they proved it on the Moon."
We were going across toward the expanse of doors leading out of the
building. "I'm sorry," I said. "Proved what?"
"Holy Christly Night!" He stared in disgust, as he went out ahead of me
into the cold of what was in the proximity of five below zero. For a time,
after descending the stair, we strode along huffing our vapors in silence.
He bore on his head a tweed stingy-brim cap, and about the neck, a bright
red woolen bulky-knit muffler tucked into a Navy surplus "P-coat". As we
were nearing the Purple Angus, perhaps the nearest place with a cocktail
lounge where smoking was permitted, I suggested we cross at the coming
corner and get on over there.
At a table near the window looking out on Randolf Street, we sat in the
Mahogany Lounge of the Purple Angus over two steaming mugs of coffee,
waiting for the Reuben sandwich for him, a pastrami with Swiss cheese on rye
for me. As we talked for those first few minutes, I brought up the fact that
according to what I'd heard from Dr. Nielsen, he, Graszman was in no
position to talk when it came to scientific credentials, and so who was he
to sit there in judgment of me? I further suggested he keep in mind that
nobody in the Physics department over there had as yet set the dogs on me.
Well, that humbled him well enough and as he began to show some sign of
contrition, I reminded him that I was about his only chance to be heard. Of
course, he knew this to be true, and apologized for treating another guy
just as he hated to be treated himself. I was finally starting to like him a
little, so I took a chance: I swore him to secrecy and told him of the
extent of my own "science education".
Surprisingly, that seemed greatly to please him, he had a good laugh on the
thought of it and then surprised me to confess that he'd pulled a like scam
once when he got his first job teaching for an accredited music school in
Oak Park, explaining that when he'd first applied, he could barely read
music, which was a problem since five or six of his students were advanced
far beyond him; even so, he'd managed to keep them dazzled by showing them
lots of fancy ***** Dale and Chuck Berry riffs, while he took the time to
cram like crazy to catch up to their places in the books.
By the time our sandwiches had arrived, we were happy to raise a toast, my
pastrami and cheese to his Reuben, upon my pronouncement that there was no
hurdle a man could not surmount in this world if he had the acting skills to
pull it off, and a will to do the catch-up work to make it look good, as
ever it could.
A little later, after our cups had been refilled, the conversation had
turned once again to that scary business on the elevator and I was saying
that now as we were on the subject, I did recall how Apollo 15 had proved
Galileo's theory true, what with the whole thing on film, the feather and
the hammer falling together only to hit the dust at the same time.
Then he said an odd thing: "But, you see McCoy, scientists who can play only
by the book and not at all by ear, they just don't hear in the fall of that
feather and the hammer, what silent awesome melody is being played to the
mind."
I had to shake my head. "Could you try to be just a little more obscure,
arcane and full of metaphorically dangling conversation, there Seymour?"
He took a big bite from the Reuben, and some of the sauerkraut got out.
I was waiting: "Help me out a little, here."
After a slug of coffee, he said, "You could go to the Moon, you could build
yourself a Leaning Tower of Pisa up there, you could drop from the top of
it, at the same time, a grand piano and a hair from the head of--okay,
Veronica Lake, you should be so lucky as to find one of her hair-brushes on
Ebay?"
I don't know what I'm hearing but I say, "Alright."
"You drop that platinum blonde hair of the Hollywood starlet and the grand
piano, and they both hit bottom--at the same time? That needs to be telling
you something. There's a song in it, that science has a head too full of
jangling facts to hear."
I didn't know about that, and said so: "Well, as I recall, it's all pretty
well explained by Newton's laws, something about how the amount of weight in
the grand piano as opposed to what's in the hair of Veronica Lake, is like,
cancelled out . . . or, how's it go?"
"Yeah, they would explain that it's harder for the piano to get moving, to
get over its own inertia than it is for the hair with far less inertia."
I set down my cup: "There's more inertia in the grand piano."
"Yes and no. There's a problem in that thinking, which is part of the reason
we're here talking about all this."
I had to consider that over a bite of my sandwich, and when my mouth was
almost empty enough, I said, "I would ask what you mean."
--
John http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/520b8/
"Once when Sir Isaac Newton--a mere lad--got over into the man's apple
orchard--I don't know what he was doing there--I didn't come all the way
from Hartford to q-u-e-s-t-i-o-n Mr. Newton's honesty--but when he was
there--in the main orchard--he saw an apple fall and he was a-t-t-racted
toward it, and that led to the discovery--not of Mr. Newton (who got back
over the fence quick enough) but of the great law of attraction and
gravitation." --Mark Twain (if any bowdlerizing parenthesis may be pardoned
or ignored)
.

User: "Lewis Mammel"
Title: A lock of wool, a bit of lead, and thou beside me in the wilderness	19 Jan 2005 12:58:02 AM

Seymour Grass wrote:

I didn't know about that, and said so: "Well, as I recall, it's all pretty
well explained by Newton's laws, something about how the amount of weight in
the grand piano as opposed to what's in the hair of Veronica Lake, is like,
cancelled out . . . or, how's it go?"

SIMP. So far as I remember, Aristotle inveighs against the ancient view
that a vacuum is a necessary prerequisite for motion and that the latter
could not occur without the former. In opposition to this view Aristotle
shows that it is precisely the phenomenon of motion, as we shall see, which
renders untenable the idea of a vacuum. His method is to divide the argument
into two parts, He first supposes bodies of different weight to move in
the same medium; then supposes, one and the same body to move in different
media. In the first case, he supposes bodies of different weight to move
in one and the same medium with different speeds which stand to one another
in the same ratio as the weights; so that, for example, a body which is
ten times heavier as another will move ten times as rapidly as the other.
In the second case he assumes that the speeds of one and the same body
moving in different media are in inverse ratio to the densities of the media;
thus for instance, if the density of water were ten times that of air, the
speed in air would be ten times greater than in water. From this second
suppostion, he shows that, since the tenuity of a vacuum differs infinitely
from that of any medium filled with matter however rare, any body which moves
in a plenum through a certain space in a certain time ought to move
through a vacuum instantaneously; but instantaneous motion is an impossibility;
it is therefore impossible that a vacuum should be produced by motion.
SALV. The argument is, as you see, AD HOMINEM, that is, it is directed
against those who thought a vacuum a prerequisite for motion. Now if
I admit the argument to be conclusive and concede also that motion
cannot take place in a vacuum, the assumption of a vacuum considered
absolutely and not with reference to motion is not thereby invalidated.
But to tell you what the ancients might possibly have replied and in
order to better understand just how conclusive Aristotle's demonstration
is, we may, in my opinion, deny both of his assumptions. And as to the
first, I greatly doubt that Aristotle ever tested by experiment whether
it be true that two stones, one weighing ten times as much as the other,
if allowed to fall, at the same instant, from a height of, say, 100 cubits,
would so differ in speed that when the heavier had reached the ground,
the other would not have fallen more than 10 cubits.
SIMP: I DON"T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT !!
.

User: "Seymour Grass"
Title: Re: A lock of wool, a bit of lead, and thou beside me in the wilderness	19 Jan 2005 03:18:46 AM

"Lewis Mammel" <l.mammel@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:41EE05A9.4D980155@worldnet.att.net...

Seymour Grass wrote:

I didn't know about that, and said so: "Well, as I recall, it's all
pretty
well explained by Newton's laws, something about how the amount of weight
in
the grand piano as opposed to what's in the hair of Veronica Lake, is
like,
cancelled out . . . or, how's it go?"

Observation of the way rock, sand and gravel fall in a slide would lead to
such a conclusion since it is always the larger bodies that move further
down in the cascade. At the bottom you find the larger rocks, while further
up is the gravel and highest on the slope is the sand, and in fact, the silt
above that. While density also enters into it, if all the material was of a
like density, it would always be the bodies of larger volume which rolled
the furthest, by virtue, as it might seem, of a larger volume, such that
roll for roll, every roll of the larger body would take that body further
than a smaller particle of sand can go.

In the second case he assumes that the speeds of one and the same body
moving in different media are in inverse ratio to the densities of the
media;
thus for instance, if the density of water were ten times that of air, the
speed in air would be ten times greater than in water. From this second
suppostion, he shows that, since the tenuity of a vacuum differs
infinitely
from that of any medium filled with matter however rare, any body which
moves
in a plenum through a certain space in a certain time ought to move
through a vacuum instantaneously; but instantaneous motion is an
impossibility;
it is therefore impossible that a vacuum should be produced by motion.

SALV. The argument is, as you see, AD HOMINEM, that is, it is directed
against those who thought a vacuum a prerequisite for motion.

I'm not following that. Isn't it one thing to argue that a vacuum is not
produced by motion, and quite another to attribute to Aristotle's argument
that "motion through a vacuum is impossible"? However, I've not seen the
text of his arguments on this matter, so . . .

Now if
I admit the argument to be conclusive and concede also that motion
cannot take place in a vacuum, the assumption of a vacuum considered
absolutely and not with reference to motion is not thereby invalidated.
But to tell you what the ancients might possibly have replied and in
order to better understand just how conclusive Aristotle's demonstration
is, we may, in my opinion, deny both of his assumptions. And as to the
first, I greatly doubt that Aristotle ever tested by experiment whether
it be true that two stones, one weighing ten times as much as the other,
if allowed to fall, at the same instant, from a height of, say, 100
cubits,
would so differ in speed that when the heavier had reached the ground,
the other would not have fallen more than 10 cubits.

SIMP: I DON"T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT !!

What's being discussed by the characters in the above passages from the
story, is the standard explanation given by many a physicist to create an
understanding of how it could possibly be that a "platinum blonde hair" and
a grand piano would both fall at the same rate of acceleration, or i.e. 32
feet per second, per second. As my textbook set it out for me, the mystery
lies in the agency of *inertia*. So, in direct contradiction to what you've
presented as Aristotle's reasoning, it is thought nowadays that if one body
has less inertia than the other, then there is that much less resistance to
the falling motion of acceleration. Contrary to what is observed about the
rock-slide above, this argument of modern physics is saying that the less
mass there is in the body, the more apt it is to fall, whereas the more mass
there is, the less apt it is to move at all.
It would seem that in this way gravity is conceived as being like the cell
of a battery, such that howsoever much current or 'gravity' is required to
serve the appliance, or i.e. cause the body to fall at the required
universal rate of 32 feet per second, per second, well, that is precisely
the amount that will be 'drawn', so to speak, from the gravitational cell.
It's as if to say that though there is more inertial resistance to motion in
the larger mass, even so there will be no delay in that motion since gravity
is a boundless supply of energy that will suffice to put that large inertial
mass into immediate motion of fall right along with the smaller body: they
will both be served in accordance with their need to fall at the prescribed
rate.
This strikes, the character, 'Seymour Graszman' as a highly elegant argument
of convenience; but it is one and the same with the justification for the
concept of inertia--a concept of convenience--which unfortunately once the
doctrine is followed to its logical conclusion turns out to be a tautology.
He is there talking to McCoy with the aim to convince him that there is
another explanation entirely, to solve the mystery discovered by Galileo and
proven on the Moon, as to why that platinum blonde hair of Veronica Lake and
the grand piano, really do fall, most incredibly at the same rate of
acceleration.
--
JP
.

User: "Lewis Mammel"
Title: Re: A lock of wool, a bit of lead, and thou beside me in the wilderness	21 Jan 2005 12:28:12 AM

Seymour Grass wrote:

I wouldn't say so. They are discussing the Aristotelian notion
that the speed of descent ( with no clear concept of acceleration )
is proportional to the weight, such as would be qualitatively
supported by the experiment of dropping a grand piano and a platinum
blonde hair in air at STP, which we presume is why Aristotle
conceived it.
Note Salviati is in the process of brushing these notions aside
on the basis that they have no quantitative experimental support.
After another 10 pages of discussion on the nature and action
of resistive media, Salviati announces his conclusion :
SALV. ... Having observed this I came to the conclusion that
in a medium totally devoid of resistance all bodies would fall
with the same speed.
SIMP. This is a remarkable statement, Salviati. But I shall never
believe that even in a vacuum, if motion in such a place were
possible, a lock of wool and a bit of lead can fall with the
same velocity.
There then follow more pages of discussion on the nature
and action of resistive media. Galileo is reasoning from
appearances, and never argues from postulates, as Newton did.
These passages were an epiphany for me when I first read them,
as I realized the tremendous difficulties in arriving at a place
which seemed so natural to someone acclimated from youth to the
Newtonian system.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
.

User: "Uncle Al"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	18 Jan 2005 03:51:22 PM

Seymour Grass wrote:

[snip crap]
Boring uncreative idiot troll.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
.

User: "Seymour Grass"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	18 Jan 2005 04:24:48 PM

"Uncle Al" <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote in message
news:41ED84DA.176FC14C@hate.spam.net...

[snip crap]

Boring uncreative idiot troll.

This is the way Uncle Al expresses the irrepressibly hyper-competitive sense
of his own inconsequence: he sees something, which despite the immense
obesity of his egotism, and how it occludes his beady-eyed perception,
something that speaks to him of the "creative"--and what else does he do but
feel himself moved immediately to whine in denial as he loudly squeals . . .

Boring uncreative idiot troll.

Uncle Al wants always to be the bigshot. Uncle Al at center-stage, out on
Front Street, like Baby-Face Nelson with a sub-gun ready for any and all
comers.
You're just a fat, no-account punk, Al.
--
JP David http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
New Site: http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/520b8/
"We all behold with envious eyes,
Our equal rais'd above our size.
Who would not at a crowded show
Stand high himself, keep others low?
I love my friend as well as you
But would not have him stop my view.
Then let him have the higher post:
I ask but for an inch at most."
--Jonathan Swift
From: "Seymour Grass" <daddio45@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Do You Mind If I Smoke?
Date: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 2:37 PM
--
Graszmann came in and we talked; he had just a few things to say concerning
this recent flooding in California, the Sumatra tsunami--and, okay, then he
mentioned something about "Sunspots."
When he saw me looking at him kind of funny, he started squinting his eyes
down real narrow-like; so I put on my best smile and said, "Well,
sunspots--which ones exactly?" I hadn't known that we'd been having any
notable outbreaks of those just of late, so I mentioned that as I looked
down to sort through some copy on my desk. Hearing nothing further from
him, I glanced up and, oh my, did this guy have a look--it was halfway
intelligent, or so it might have seemed, I mean if the look that makes you
look like an idiot, can by contrast make the other guy look smart, then
yeah, he looked intelligent, but since he wasn't answering my question, I
asked him again, "What?" And that's when he asked me if he could smoke.
Shocked by the very suggestion, my editorial assistant who happened to be
coming through the door, turned to look down on him like he was one of those
poisonous little green tree toads of the Amazon jungle; she informed him
that he most certainly could not smoke; that if he even so much as tried it,
he would be tasered by the nearest security guard, put in plastic wrist and
ankle restraints, and be delivered down to the Chicago Police Department
rolled up in a drab green piano mover's quilt.
Whoa. Look out. I watched as this guy rose slowly out of his chair--and you
know how the Frankenstein monster looks when he's going after somebody?
Well, if a look could go thudding across the room on ten pound boots with
its arms stiffly outstretched, that's how the ice green glare in Mr. Seymour
Graszman's eyes went reaching across to throttle the throat of poor Ms.
Melba Tostquist, right there where she stood--it was such a look! From her
shaking hands, she dropped that copy to my desk and backed out of the office
never taking her eyes off that man for an instant.
I had to grab my hat and coat so we could go out and find some other place
to talk, off the premises . . .
From: "Seymour Grass" <daddio45@yahoo.com>
Subject: The Hammer & The Feather
Date: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 3:22 AM
I was watching the floor numbers flash in descending order when to my dismay
I felt a jab to the ribs. I turned to see Graszman there at my right beaming
an aggressive looking grin that caused me to take a step beyond range of any
more of that! "Tell me, McCoy," he said, closing the distance between us all
the more, "what do you think would happen if in a few seconds from now, the
cable on this thing were to snap?"
I braced against my body's downward momentum as the car had abruptly begun
slowing to a stop at the 12th floor. We stepped back to admit an elderly
woman; the spot on my ribs was yet throbbing from that unwelcome familiarity
of his and he was still at me, still talking:
"I'm talking about your feet?" He was pointing toward my shoes. "Would they
remain in contact with the floor as we went down, or not?"
I thought it rather an inopportune moment for such a discussion, considering
especially that we now had company, and I said so, but soon felt reason to
regret it as there appeared something in the stance he was taking, even so
slight as he was by comparison to my height of 6'1", and weight of 195; a
bearing he had that was oddly intimidating for someone who from the look of
it would hardly turn the scale past 150, nor stand any higher than 5'10" in
those high-heeled cowboy boots of his.
"I don't know," I said, lowering my voice for his ears alone. "My guess is
that we'd soon drift upward toward the ceiling and stay there until the car
came down on that spring at the bottom of the shaft." I shrugged at the
sardonical look he was now giving me: "Well, that's my guess--for what it's
worth."
At the 9th floor, two twenty-somethings of the female flavor had boarded;
their laughter not being entirely left echoing behind in the corridor as the
doors slid to a close. "Well, you ought to know better than that, McCoy," he
was saying. "I thought you were the science editor for this . . ." he raised
a hand to indicate the surroundings, ". . . glorified producer of bird cage
liner and fish wrap."
To the somewhat distraught expressions of insulted esteem on the other faces
about us, I managed a smile of apology for the character of my company. "Of
course I'm the science editor, Graszamn. What of it?"
"Then you ought to know that since our bodies inside this car would not be
falling, like the car itself, against any resistance of air, our rate of
acceleration would be the same as for the car."
Now that he was mentioning it, I did have a glimmer of recollection, having
to do with Galileo, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, some feathers and a
cannonball.
The elevator had gone past the Mezzanine and was slowing to a stop at "L"
for "Lobby". Just as the doors were opening, Graszman was still going on: "I
suppose you must recall that they proved it on the Moon."
We were going across toward the expanse of doors leading out of the
building. "I'm sorry," I said. "Proved what?"
"Holy Christly Night!" He stared in disgust, as he went out ahead of me
into the cold of what was in the proximity of five below zero. For a time,
after descending the stair, we strode along huffing our vapors in silence.
He bore on his head a tweed stingy-brim cap, and about the neck, a bright
red woolen bulky-knit muffler tucked into a Navy surplus "P-coat". As we
were nearing the Purple Angus, perhaps the nearest place with a cocktail
lounge where smoking was permitted, I suggested we cross at the coming
corner and get on over there.
At a table near the window looking out on Randolf Street, we sat in the
Mahogany Lounge of the Purple Angus over two steaming mugs of coffee,
waiting for the Reuben sandwich for him, a pastrami with Swiss cheese on rye
for me. As we talked for those first few minutes, I brought up the fact that
according to what I'd heard from Dr. Nielsen, he, Graszman was in no
position to talk when it came to scientific credentials, and so who was he
to sit there in judgment of me? I further suggested he keep in mind that
nobody in the Physics department over there had as yet set the dogs on me.
Well, that humbled him well enough and as he began to show some sign of
contrition, I reminded him that I was about his only chance to be heard. Of
course, he knew this to be true, and apologized for treating another guy
just as he hated to be treated himself. I was finally starting to like him a
little, so I took a chance: I swore him to secrecy and told him of the
extent of my own "science education".
Surprisingly, that seemed greatly to please him, he had a good laugh on the
thought of it and then surprised me to confess that he'd pulled a like scam
once when he got his first job teaching for an accredited music school in
Oak Park, explaining that when he'd first applied, he could barely read
music, which was a problem since five or six of his students were advanced
far beyond him; even so, he'd managed to keep them dazzled by showing them
lots of fancy ***** Dale and Chuck Berry riffs, while he took the time to
cram like crazy to catch up to their places in the books.
By the time our sandwiches had arrived, we were happy to raise a toast, my
pastrami and cheese to his Reuben, upon my pronouncement that there was no
hurdle a man could not surmount in this world if he had the acting skills to
pull it off, and a will to do the catch-up work to make it look good, as
ever it could.
A little later, after our cups had been refilled, the conversation had
turned once again to that scary business on the elevator and I was saying
that now as we were on the subject, I did recall how Apollo 15 had proved
Galileo's theory true, what with the whole thing on film, the feather and
the hammer falling together only to hit the dust at the same time.
Then he said an odd thing: "But, you see McCoy, scientists who can play only
by the book and not at all by ear, they just don't hear in the fall of that
feather and the hammer, what silent awesome melody is being played to the
mind."
I had to shake my head. "Could you try to be just a little more obscure,
arcane and full of metaphorically dangling conversation, there Seymour?"
He took a big bite from the Reuben, and some of the sauerkraut got out.
I was waiting: "Help me out a little, here."
After a slug of coffee, he said, "You could go to the Moon, you could build
yourself a Leaning Tower of Pisa up there, you could drop from the top of
it, at the same time, a grand piano and a hair from the head of--okay,
Veronica Lake, you should be so lucky as to find one of her hair-brushes on
Ebay?"
I don't know what I'm hearing but I say, "Alright."
"You drop that platinum blonde hair of the Hollywood starlet and the grand
piano, and they both hit bottom--at the same time? That needs to be telling
you something. There's a song in it, that science has a head too full of
jangling facts to hear."
I didn't know about that, and said so: "Well, as I recall, it's all pretty
well explained by Newton's laws, something about how the amount of weight in
the grand piano as opposed to what's in the hair of Veronica Lake, is like,
cancelled out . . . or, how's it go?"
"Yeah, they would explain that it's harder for the piano to get moving, to
get over its own inertia than it is for the hair with far less inertia."
I set down my cup: "There's more inertia in the grand piano."
"Yes and no. There's a problem in that thinking, which is part of the reason
we're here talking about all this."
I had to consider that over a bite of my sandwich, and when my mouth was
almost empty enough, I said, "I would ask what you mean."
--
John http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/520b8/
"Once when Sir Isaac Newton--a mere lad--got over into the man's apple
orchard--I don't know what he was doing there--I didn't come all the way
from Hartford to q-u-e-s-t-i-o-n Mr. Newton's honesty--but when he was
there--in the main orchard--he saw an apple fall and he was a-t-t-racted
toward it, and that led to the discovery--not of Mr. Newton (who got back
over the fence quick enough) but of the great law of attraction and
gravitation." --Mark Twain (if any bowdlerizing parenthesis may be pardoned
or ignored)
.

User: "Uncle Al"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	18 Jan 2005 04:41:38 PM

Seymour Grass wrote:

"Uncle Al" <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote in message
news:41ED84DA.176FC14C@hate.spam.net...

[snip crap]

Boring uncreative idiot troll.

[snip crap]
Whining idiot

Shocked by the very suggestion, my editorial assistant who happened to be
coming through the door, turned to look down on him like he was one of those
poisonous little green tree toads of the Amazon jungle;

[snip mor crap]
Hey stooopid, Epipedobates tricolor ain't green. It's also a first
class whizzer for its epibatidine - 500X as potent as morphine and not
antagonized by naloxone, naltrexone, or nalorphine. Ya wanna get
high, punk? Move your leaden ***** into the lab and whip up a batch of
ABT-594 (without the neuromuscular side effects and non-addictive).
Happy happy joy joy. Idiot.
Do you want clever engaging science fiction, you horrid whining
momma's little boy?
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/bigpart.htm
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
.

User: "Seymour Grass"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	18 Jan 2005 04:49:09 PM

I knew I could get the "mother" out of this Norman Bates, if I waited long
enough . . .
"Uncle Al" <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote in message
news:41ED90A2.7819A980@hate.spam.net...

Seymour Grass wrote:

"Uncle Al" <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote in message
news:41ED84DA.176FC14C@hate.spam.net...

[snip crap]

Boring uncreative idiot troll.

This is the way Uncle Al expresses the irrepressibly hyper-competitive
sense
of his own inconsequence: he sees something, which despite the immense
obesity of his egotism, and how it occludes his beady-eyed perception,
something that speaks to him of the "creative"--and what else does he do
but
feel himself moved immediately to whine in denial as he loudly squeals .
. .

[snip crap]

Whining idiot

Shocked by the very suggestion, my editorial assistant who happened to be
coming through the door, turned to look down on him like he was one of
those
poisonous little green tree toads of the Amazon jungle;

[snip mor crap]

Hey stooopid, Epipedobates tricolor ain't green. It's also a first
class whizzer for its epibatidine - 500X as potent as morphine and not
antagonized by naloxone, naltrexone, or nalorphine. Ya wanna get
high, punk? Move your leaden ***** into the lab and whip up a batch of
ABT-594 (without the neuromuscular side effects and non-addictive).
Happy happy joy joy. Idiot.

Do you want clever engaging science fiction, you horrid whining
momma's little boy?

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/bigpart.htm

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf

User: "Seymour Grass"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	18 Jan 2005 07:12:52 PM

See what I mean . . .
"Uncle Al" <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote in message
news:41ED90A2.7819A980@hate.spam.net...

Do you want clever engaging science fiction, you horrid whining
momma's little boy?

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/bigpart.htm

But of course, anything that Carbuncle Alphonso and his particle physics
cronies would write on the subject of "virtual particles" and "gravitons";
it's all sci-fi fantasy to start out with, which is to say nothing of what
massive mischief it comes to in the biggest Fulton's Folly and waste of
money of all time in these expensive silly-***** boy-toys of particle
accelerators which are advancing man's knowledge of the microcosmos about
next to nil.
You don't need to write no steeeking sci-fi, Carbuncle Alphonso when you are
already doing it, acting in the movie of it under the title of "Real
Science".
But as to your "engaging" chapter of science fiction under that link?
Godalmighty! What? Yeah, send that off to Analog or Galaxy and see what
you get. And while you are busy reading the rejection notices, consider in
your conceit of presumed knowledge, how little you care to bring your reader
up to speed on the subject of which you write, and then continue to wonder
why there's not a publisher on earth who would waste ink on a bunch of
myopic, beady-eyed, jargon-loaded sludge like that.
--
John http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/520b8/
"I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability." Oscar
Wilde
.

User: "tj Frazir"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	18 Jan 2005 08:17:58 PM

Say More grass ..more grass.
nasa thinks the hammer and feather fal at the same rate but 1/6 the
rate on the moon.
Nasa fucked up.
Wile they understand the hammer and feather fall at the same speed on
earth they think they fall 1/6 the speed on the moon.
Wrong .
its 1/6 the wieght falling and 1 pound and 6 pounds falls at the same
speed.
On the earth it is 6 pounds falling but on the moon its 1/6 pound
falling.
nasa thinks gravity works slower.
gravity works at C . Its not slower on the moon its 1/6 pounds falling
instead of 6 pounds falling.
Thats why I say nasa faked it.
I clocked evry step and they got it wrong.
The dropped the hammer and clocked it.
They think things fall 1/6 the speed.
1/6 the weight is falling .
.

User: "Seymour Grass"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	18 Jan 2005 10:02:39 PM

"tj Frazir" <GravityPhysics@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:21384-41EDC356-475@storefull-3212.bay.webtv.net...

As to your apparent doubt about the actual mission itself, well, I
definitely *see more grass* in that than I ever had in my pipe. As to the
rest of it, I'll ask you a question: Setting the concept of "weight"
momentarily aside, when was the concept of *inertia* first introduced to the
study of physics, and in respect to what manner of experiment and/or theory
did it arise, and who is the person that came up with it?
--
JP David http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/520b8
"It is a much cleverer thing to talk nonsense than to listen to it.
-Oscar Wilde-
.

User: "Nick"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	19 Jan 2005 12:38:52 AM

tj Frazir wrote:

Say More grass ..more grass.
nasa thinks the hammer and feather fal at the same rate but 1/6 the
rate on the moon.
Nasa fucked up.
Wile they understand the hammer and feather fall at the same speed

earth they think they fall 1/6 the speed on the moon.
Wrong .
its 1/6 the wieght falling and 1 pound and 6 pounds falls at the

same

speed.
On the earth it is 6 pounds falling but on the moon its 1/6 pound
falling.
nasa thinks gravity works slower.
gravity works at C . Its not slower on the moon its 1/6 pounds

falling

instead of 6 pounds falling.
Thats why I say nasa faked it.
I clocked evry step and they got it wrong.
The dropped the hammer and clocked it.
They think things fall 1/6 the speed.
1/6 the weight is falling .

Why not bump it up TJ?
A potentially infinite mass will fall in any gravitational
field. Gravity can move a potentially infinite mass.
If that doesn't invest the incredible power of gravity
I don't know what does.
.

User: "tj Frazir"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	20 Jan 2005 12:42:02 AM

The point is the rate gravity acts on a mass is C.
So a hammer and feather fall at the same rate . Gravity has one speed.
The speed of the moons gravity is the same speed asthe earths .
its 1/6 the gravity. NOT 1/6 the speed.
On the earth you drop 6 pounds and the same thing is 1 pound dropped on
the moon.
On earth you drop 6 pounds ..............
On moon you drop 1 pound............
1 pound and 6 pounds fall at the same speed.
Nasa got confused.
nasa thinks things fall 1/6 the speed.
They filmed and recoded a hammer fearther drop on the moon ,,,at the
WRONG SPEED.
They doctored up the time to be X6 to look like it was on the moon to
drop them boath.
1/6 the gravity toulk 6 times as long.
They were wrong.
They dropped 1/6 the wieght and it fell.
Drop 1 pound and 6 pounds ..they fall at the same speed.
a 6 pound rock and a one pound rock fall at the same speed.
Even if its the same rock.
In earth its a 6 pound rock falling.
On the moon its a 1 pound rock falling.
At the same speed...falling is falling.
nasa fucked up.
My personal grower produces the best bud on the planet . I see him
twice a year near fiji.
I like to sit on the bridge ,,autopilet 12 tvs on ,,navstar on and post
on globalstar or surf.
I live on my ship.

.

User: "G=EMC^2 Glazier"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	21 Jan 2005 02:21:59 PM

Hi Wild Coyote Drop a weight 3 feet up on the Earth you would have to
drop it 18 feet up on the moon for the same velocity of impact. Reality
is dropping it on the moon 18 feet up its fall in the very beginning
would appear like slow motion. Bert PS mass stays the same every where
.

User: "tj Frazir"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	21 Jan 2005 08:13:08 PM

Thats what nasa thinks herb.
Hi herb .
drop 6 pound rock on earth.
drop 1 pound rock on moon.
Its the same rock herb ..so lets say
drop 6 pounds and drop 1 pound.
5 pounds and 1 pound falling .
Because the pit of gravity is the same slope :::
then a 6 pound and a 1 pound will fall at the same speed.
Evry gravity pit has the same shape.
Falling is falling.
1/6 the gravity is 1/6 the weight falling .
Gravity has one speed.
Drop a 100,000 ton rock and a 1 pound rock they fall at the same speed.
The WEIGHT woun't change it's speed.
Its 1/6 the weight on the moon ,,nasa fucked up and think it's 1/6 the
speed .
the weight changes ,,not the reactive time of bouyancy .
In ORBIT if you jump you will afect the speed but standing on the moon
is not in orbit.
Nasa fucked up and filmed the wrong speed.
The speed of fall is the same on earth and the moon ,,the weights
changed ,,not the speed of gravity.
Gravity bouyancy is a reactive dencity.
The speed of the change in dencity is a fixed rate C.
C wount change . call C the rate the FALL .
thats the shape of the energy gradiant .
All energy gradiants have the same shape.
No matter how big or small the gradiant dencity or..pit ,,bent space
,,gravity,,the slope is the same and the shape of the pit the same no
matter the size of the pit.
its 1 pound falling the same speed it fell when it was 6 pounds.
Nasa is confused.
saying less gravity is less speed is lik saying less wieght is less
speed.
They can't have it two ways .
Its incoherant and wrong.

.

User: "G=EMC^2 Glazier"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	22 Jan 2005 09:02:25 AM

Hi Wild Coyote The strength of the gravity field ties right in with the
speed of acceleration. The reason light can't get out of a black hole
is its force of gravity is so strong that even light speed is not fast
enough for escape velocity. It is a little tricky,and I know where your
coming from,but as little I like NASA they are right about this. Bert
.

User: "tj Frazir"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	22 Jan 2005 12:41:15 PM

You then think the 1/6 pice of the magnet will fly off the table and
stickk to the plate slower than the hole magnet.
You think the stronger gravity is faster you will fall ,,but no
,,the more you will wiegh.
shure a black hole is so strong light cant go fast enouph for exacpe V
at that radius.
But at the radius of an atom it can excape the gravity of a black hole.
The atoms pit has the same shape.
as I pick up any mass ,,it gains mass .
so evry atom is between an energy dencity.
1/2 of evry atom has more mass in that 1/2 of the dencity.
A change in mass wount change the speed it falls .
If the mass wount change the speed it falls ..
and 1 pound falls the same rate 6 pounds falls.
1 pound falls as fast as 60000 pounds.
1 pounds falls as fast as 60000 million pounds.
1 pound falls as fast as 6000 trillion pounds.
1 pound falls as fast as 6000 billion trillion pounds.
Now the moon and the 1 pound are falling the same rate.
Im dropping them boath !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
whats the kenetic value of each mass dropped ?
I could drop the 1 pound on the moon because the kenetic value of the
rock and the moon.
The rocks kenetic value is smal and the moons keneti value large.
They are all like pices of the same magnet.
the smallest pice you bust off te magnet moves twards the steel at the
same V.
The moon wil fall at the same speed as the rock.
If the rock follows the moon it will orbit th earth at the same speed.
But I have run the rate of fall at the same speed up till the moon and
rock fell twards each other .
Notice the are not going twice as fast !!
falling side by side they fall t the same rate as they do falling
twards each other ,,like one of them dont move . Combine the gravity of
the earth and moon will change the weight but not te speed of fall.
We combine gravity in the tides.
the weight of the water will change as the earth and moon combine
gravity ,,yet the rate of fall is identical.
a drop of atomic clock water dropped at high tide.
My ship sits .02 inches deeper at low tide.

The combined gravity is a change in the strenth of gravity

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I can prove it now !!!!!!!!
The moons gravity combines with earths gravity , the strenth of
gravity is alter yet the speed a rock falls is identical.
It wount be identical on a scale but will fall at ideentical speeds.
nasa fucked up.

.

User: "tj Frazir"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	22 Jan 2005 12:57:59 PM

I have 34 years watching the speed of bouyancy ,,the speed evry atom
displaces or is displaced.
a balloon under water ,,the water is 100 psi at its top and 101 psi at
its bottom.
deeper it is 1000 psi top 1001 bottom.
no matter what sise balloon I let go will float up at the same speed
,,no matter how deep.
1/2 of evry atom has more mass on one side than the other and its
falling.
Its falling twards the least mass gain.
dont matter how big or how many atoms or how big the mass gain on 1/2
of evry atom.
the same as evry atom of the magnet will jump off the table to the
steel .
Big pice of the magnet ot small pice ..dont matter ,, evry pice is at
the same speed.

.

User: "tj Frazir"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	21 Jan 2005 09:10:28 PM

lets drop just one atom on another.
they all fall the same speed.
But Ill give you 1/6 orbital speed per 100 miles up in orbit ,,the moon
is the same shape pit at the earth 1/6 as big .
It will take 1/6 the energy to go the same speed with a rocket.
The weight of the mass is 1/6 .
But on the moon the angle of the pit is 90 deg from the horisen . At
that angle of gravities slope the speed is FALL.
At the same slope angle the rate of fall is equal.
The mass don't matter , 6 pounds and 1 pound fall at the same speed.
The reaction rate to the slope is allways C.
Thats why heavey things and light things fall at the same speed.
lets curve the slope and be in orbit.
inside a 5 ton rocketship I let go and float by its self a 4 oz... now
notice as long as the slope angle is the same ,,the speed and rate of
fall is the same.
Notice ,,if the angle the slope is equal the speed is equal .
Notice ,,the angle of the slope ,,and evrything at that angle is
going the same speed .
the ege of the dish is slow and the deaper you get ..
but anywhere on the slope ,,
at 90 % is the surface of earth and tthe
moon ..at 90 deg the speed is the same no matter the wieght.
A curve in any space starts at the surface at 90 deg from the horisen.
.

User: "tj Frazir"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	21 Jan 2005 11:05:13 PM

Im still trying to explain .
In undeniable terms.
humm.
The slope is the same for evrything in an orbiting space ship.
The floating object inside it is in the same slope angle and the same
speed.
Lets turn the slope angle to 90.
they are not in orbit and fall strait down wile I dial the angle to
zero and the object is still floating inside the space ship.
the slope is 0 or 90 deg off the horisen.
at the serface of the moon the angle is 90 deg and on the earth 90 deg.
So that cake floating in the space ship
even if I eat 3/4 of it it will still float inside the ship.
Its not th mass , its te slope.
Its not 1/6 the thrust of fall.
Falling is not thrust it is dencity displacment.
The rate the change in mass is equal
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
mass vieries and up is a gain in mass.
The rate of gain of mass is proportonal to the angle of the slope.
2 ,,, the shape of the pit is the same for moon and earth ,,the moon
is smaller but the shape of its gravity pit is the same .
.............................................................
6 pound rock from earth is 1 pound on the moon. But 1 pound falls the
same rate 6 pounds will fall on the same slope angle.
..........................................................................
the pit angle from any surface is 90 deg.
even if the pit is 1/6 as big.
................................................................
How soon will 1/6 of a magnet act on iron !!
The magnet jumps off the table as the iron passes over. << now try 1/6
of a magnet and try telling me it will jump 1/6 te speed because its 1/6
as powerfull !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The magnet will lift 1/6 the mass .
The magnet is 1/6 as strong in the steel it will pick up. But 1/6 of
a magnet will jump off te table the same rate the hole magnet jumps.
...................................................................
gravity of the moon is 1/6 of earth just like I can bust off 1/6 of a
magnet .
But manets 1/6 as strong would be thrust and gravity is not thrust .
Only some of the properties are simular.

.

User: "tj Frazir"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	21 Jan 2005 11:17:42 PM

maybe I should dig a hole threw te earth so a rock wount stop falling
because it wount hit the ground.
When will it slowen its rate of fall !!!!
Lets go into the hole near the same radius as the moon where we will
be 1/6 the wieght and drop the rock from there.
evry 100 feet up till theres a rock ready all the way up to 1000 feet
above the ground.
let them all go at the same time and the 100 feet between evry rock
will stay 100 feet between evry rock all the way down.
That will work till I stack one evry 100 feet up till the slope
starts to curve .

.

User: "tj Frazir"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	21 Jan 2005 08:30:58 PM

same kenetic .
V is the same but the weight is 1/6
so it will drop 18 feet to make the same knetic dent.
To make a 1 pound rock make the same dent a 6 pound rock makes the
kenetic energy must be ajusted by V.
You can jump higher and land from higher because your less kenetic
energy.
35 pounds hitting the ground instead of 200 pounds.
But the speed you fell is not 1/6.
Its just less weight falling not falling slower.
nasa dont have minds coherant enouph .

1/6 the speed of fall is saying 1/6 the wieght will fall slower.

<<<<<<

.

User: "Androcles"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	18 Jan 2005 07:06:24 PM

"Uncle Al" <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote in message
news:41ED84DA.176FC14C@hate.spam.net...

Seymour Grass wrote:

[snip crap]

Boring uncreative idiot troll.

LOL! He's a fucking sight less boring, a whole lot more creative and far
less miserable than you, jealous *****!
Androcles.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf

User: "Seymour Grass"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	18 Jan 2005 08:14:25 PM

"Androcles" <dummy@dummy.net> wrote in message
news:koiHd.173810$Z7.96205@fe2.news.blueyonder.co.uk...

Boring uncreative idiot troll.

LOL! He's a fucking sight less boring, a whole lot more creative and far
less miserable than you, jealous *****!

Androcles.

Roar, lion, roar!
--
From: "Seymour Grass" <daddio45@yahoo.com>
Subject: {Story} House of the Rising Ophiuchus {1,208}
Date: Sunday, January 09, 2005 3:16 AM
--
It was a whale of thing to try and keep unfolded and spread out in the mind,
a whole sky full of stars all at once, and much as I'd tried, I couldn't
hold the entire view of it, so I had to go to the Gypsy Woman--what I've
been calling her anyway, even if she is mainly Cajun French, with maybe a
dash of Afro-Cuban and a pinch or two of Creole sprinkled in for some real
spicy good gumbo; and my, what a dish with that curly black hair, those
sparkling eyes and big gold rings--some fine kind of gris-gris come to
Chicago here from some little town down on the bayou around Baton Rouge.
I found this doll, name of "Mirabelle" working out of a little boutique up
on Wells street a few blocks south of the Lincoln Park hotel. She has that
whole Zydeco Zodiac thing down pat and has been making her living by drawing
up charts of people's horoscopes in her parlor there, where she also does
some dealing in potions and herbs, Voodoo dolls and I don't doubt but that
she's got a brisk under-the-counter trade in all kind of hoodoo, if maybe
you got you a two-dollar bill as the fixings for some of that *John, the
Conqueroo* to be mixing for a mojo of red, green or blue, whether its a
piece of tail, piece of eight, or peace of mind you might kind of crave,
could be she'd have some of that down in the dark somewhere under there,
too.
But as to the reason I needed to see her, well, if you knew the name of the
newspaper I work for, then you'd know they aren't fussy when it comes to the
hire of a science editor like me who still has something to learn about a
difference between Astronomy and Astrology. Even so, it wasn't hard to
bluff my way into the position when the guy who held the desk before me got
too drunk to keep sitting up behind it. I mean, I was available, being just
one desk over which pretty much eminently qualified me above all other
comers. But as to a good solid background in science to justify moving my
stuff over to Joe's old desk? Well, I did have a couple years of night
courses at Northwestern under my belt, including one in General Physics for
Math Dummies (that's the actual title) and another called, "Star Gazing for
Amateur Astronomers."
So, that being pretty good for government (or journalism) work, I got the
Science desk. It's meant a minor boost in pay to move up from being a lowly
police beat reporter, to a full fledged editor, but since I'm the only
reporter working under me, the only real change is the desk, and yes, the
slight increase in pay--about fifty bucks a month. Of course, I'm rubbing
shoulders with a lot of real scientists all the time, got a rolodex full of
their office numbers, plus the phone numbers of some of their girlfriends in
case they weren't in when I tried to get them--I don't really have too many
of those, but a few, from the two or three professors I've managed to get
cozy with over cocktails. And come to think, it was by way of Dr. Reuben
Schlitzquirt's main squeeze, Meredith Swanson that I got the lead on this
Cajun Astrologer dame--and who else but her, Meredith Swanson, I mean?
Certainly you don't suppose Schlitzquirt himself, a well-tenured full
professor of nuclear particle physics, that such as he would know anything
about tea-leaves, the little known 13th House of Ophiuchus, and High John
the Conqueroo, do you? No, I suppose you most earnestly do not--I'll give
you that much anyway.
Face it, this recent Tsunami disaster has caught the whole world of science
with its pants down, and it's really been tough knowing where to turn to get
down on it from the science angle of the thing. As science editor, it's not
my job to be getting the tear-jerker angle on all the misery, the
flotsam-jetsam of wrecked lives and villages, so tragic as all that is, if
not to me personally--then not. The heart-rending stories of obliteration,
the vaporization of whole Islamic terror training camps--I'm not paid to get
all wet and gooey over that. No, it's the natural causes for such an event
that a science editor/reporter is after--not the divine, or 'spiritual', the
emotional, if you will.
So, anyway, one day, I got a call from Dr. Sigurd Nielsen over there in the
Geology department at the University of Chicago, and he reports to me that
he's got this guy who's been bugging him almost daily at his office with a
bunch of calculations he's made which according to his claims, are showing
that this is only the beginning of a whole lot more of a big she-bang going
on, geophysically and astronomically, in terms of further trouble on the
way. The guy had been given the gate over at the Physics department, which
is why he came over to Geology where the professors are a just little easier
going--hale, hearty outdoor types that they are. So, Nielson says to me on
the phone that day, "He may be just another kook with a crank theory, but
unlike most of that sort, as he presents himself, his face isn't jumping
around from all kind of tics, he isn't sitting there with his hands
vibrating in his pockets, eyes bugged, and breathing loud; he's better
groomed than most of my students, and there seems to be a certain logic in
what he says."
I'm going, "Oh, yeah?"
"Well, put it this way," says Nielsen, "I'm not finding any holes in what he
says."
"Nothing like those big black hugely radiating X-class sunspots we've been
seeing of late?"
"No, nothing like that, but those are part of his considerations."
"So why do you send him to me?" I mean, I had to ask him: "Why aren't you
rocketing his theory off to the professional journals?"
His answer? "It's too risky. We're not going to stake our own scholarly
reputations on some anonymous layman's calculations, which could be screwier
than a green-tailed bacterial flagellum--know what I mean?"
Well no, I didn't but I said, "You bet I do!"
"You got it," said he.
"Yeah," I said. "Because if somebody's theory doesn't have the imprimatur of
that Ph.D. stamped on it, then it might as well be somebody's raggedy old
Green Arrow comic book, right?"
He said, "Well . . ."
I said, "Sure, because you got to have that brand recognition, else who will
buy it? And if it doesn't come from consecrated hands in the priesthood of
the black square hat and tassel, forget you, right?"
After some ponderous silence, I got this through the horn: "Look here,
McCoy, I'm saying that there may well be something to the stuff this guy's
got, and you're the one who is in a position to bring it to the attention of
the scientific community, by reporting it as news to the public. I believe
the man may have something. I'm doing all I can, here." He hung up.
Imagine that. He actually hung up on me, the Science Editor for a major
cosmopolitan newspaper? Yes, he did. So then, anyway, next thing I knew,
the morning following, my intercom is dinging me with the jingle bells
(they've always got that on there around the Holidays--and it's like, some
people never get around to taking that Christmas tree down); it's the
receptionist telling me there's some guy named Grassman here with a letter
of introduction from U.C. wanting to see me on a very urgent matter. Fine.
Urgency is my main m�tier. So, what do I do? I tell her to send him right
in.
From: "Seymour Grass" <daddio45@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Do You Mind If I Smoke?
Date: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 2:37 PM
--
Graszmann came in and we talked; he had just a few things to say concerning
this recent flooding in California, the Sumatra tsunami--and, okay, then he
mentioned something about "Sunspots."
When he saw me looking at him kind of funny, he started squinting his eyes
down real narrow-like; so I put on my best smile and said, "Well,
sunspots--which ones exactly?" I hadn't known that we'd been having any
notable outbreaks of those just of late, so I mentioned that as I looked
down to sort through some copy on my desk. Hearing nothing further from
him, I glanced up and, oh my, did this guy have a look--it was halfway
intelligent, or so it might have seemed, I mean if the look that makes you
look like an idiot, can by contrast make the other guy look smart, then
yeah, he looked intelligent, but since he wasn't answering my question, I
asked him again, "What?" And that's when he asked me if he could smoke.
Shocked by the very suggestion, my editorial assistant who happened to be
coming through the door, turned to look down on him like he was one of those
poisonous little green tree toads of the Amazon jungle; she informed him
that he most certainly could not smoke; that if he even so much as tried it,
he would be tasered by the nearest security guard, put in plastic wrist and
ankle restraints, and be delivered down to the Chicago Police Department
rolled up in a drab green piano mover's quilt.
Whoa. Look out. I watched as this guy rose slowly out of his chair--and you
know how the Frankenstein monster looks when he's going after somebody?
Well, if a look could go thudding across the room on ten pound boots with
its arms stiffly outstretched, that's how the ice green glare in Mr. Seymour
Graszman's eyes went reaching across to throttle the throat of poor Ms.
Melba Tostquist, right there where she stood--it was such a look! From her
shaking hands, she dropped that copy to my desk and backed out of the office
never taking her eyes off that man for an instant.
I had to grab my hat and coat so we could go out and find some other place
to talk, off the premises . . .
From: "Seymour Grass" <daddio45@yahoo.com>
Subject: The Hammer & The Feather
Date: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 3:22 AM
I was watching the floor numbers flash in descending order when to my dismay
I felt a jab to the ribs. I turned to see Graszman there at my right beaming
an aggressive looking grin that caused me to take a step beyond range of any
more of that! "Tell me, McCoy," he said, closing the distance between us all
the more, "what do you think would happen if in a few seconds from now, the
cable on this thing were to snap?"
I braced against my body's downward momentum as the car had abruptly begun
slowing to a stop at the 12th floor. We stepped back to admit an elderly
woman; the spot on my ribs was yet throbbing from that unwelcome familiarity
of his and he was still at me, still talking:
"I'm talking about your feet?" He was pointing toward my shoes. "Would they
remain in contact with the floor as we went down, or not?"
I thought it rather an inopportune moment for such a discussion, considering
especially that we now had company, and I said so, but soon felt reason to
regret it as there appeared something in the stance he was taking, even so
slight as he was by comparison to my height of 6'1", and weight of 195; a
bearing he had that was oddly intimidating for someone who from the look of
it would hardly turn the scale past 150, nor stand any higher than 5'10" in
those high-heeled cowboy boots of his.
"I don't know," I said, lowering my voice for his ears alone. "My guess is
that we'd soon drift upward toward the ceiling and stay there until the car
came down on that spring at the bottom of the shaft." I shrugged at the
sardonical look he was now giving me: "Well, that's my guess--for what it's
worth."
At the 9th floor, two twenty-somethings of the female flavor had boarded;
their laughter not being entirely left echoing behind in the corridor as the
doors slid to a close. "Well, you ought to know better than that, McCoy," he
was saying. "I thought you were the science editor for this . . ." he raised
a hand to indicate the surroundings, ". . . glorified producer of bird cage
liner and fish wrap."
To the somewhat distraught expressions of insulted esteem on the other faces
about us, I managed a smile of apology for the character of my company. "Of
course I'm the science editor, Graszamn. What of it?"
"Then you ought to know that since our bodies inside this car would not be
falling, like the car itself, against any resistance of air, our rate of
acceleration would be the same as for the car."
Now that he was mentioning it, I did have a glimmer of recollection, having
to do with Galileo, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, some feathers and a
cannonball.
The elevator had gone past the Mezzanine and was slowing to a stop at "L"
for "Lobby". Just as the doors were opening, Graszman was still going on: "I
suppose you must recall that they proved it on the Moon."
We were going across toward the expanse of doors leading out of the
building. "I'm sorry," I said. "Proved what?"
"Holy Christly Night!" He stared in disgust, as he went out ahead of me
into the cold of what was in the proximity of five below zero. For a time,
after descending the stair, we strode along huffing our vapors in silence.
He bore on his head a tweed stingy-brim cap, and about the neck, a bright
red woolen bulky-knit muffler tucked into a Navy surplus "P-coat". As we
were nearing the Purple Angus, perhaps the nearest place with a cocktail
lounge where smoking was permitted, I suggested we cross at the coming
corner and get on over there.
At a table near the window looking out on Randolf Street, we sat in the
Mahogany Lounge of the Purple Angus over two steaming mugs of coffee,
waiting for the Reuben sandwich for him, a pastrami with Swiss cheese on rye
for me. As we talked for those first few minutes, I brought up the fact that
according to what I'd heard from Dr. Nielsen, he, Graszman was in no
position to talk when it came to scientific credentials, and so who was he
to sit there in judgment of me? I further suggested he keep in mind that
nobody in the Physics department over there had as yet set the dogs on me.
Well, that humbled him well enough and as he began to show some sign of
contrition, I reminded him that I was about his only chance to be heard. Of
course, he knew this to be true, and apologized for treating another guy
just as he hated to be treated himself. I was finally starting to like him a
little, so I took a chance: I swore him to secrecy and told him of the
extent of my own "science education".
Surprisingly, that seemed greatly to please him, he had a good laugh on the
thought of it and then surprised me to confess that he'd pulled a like scam
once when he got his first job teaching for an accredited music school in
Oak Park, explaining that when he'd first applied, he could barely read
music, which was a problem since five or six of his students were advanced
far beyond him; even so, he'd managed to keep them dazzled by showing them
lots of fancy ***** Dale and Chuck Berry riffs, while he took the time to
cram like crazy to catch up to their places in the books.
By the time our sandwiches had arrived, we were happy to raise a toast, my
pastrami and cheese to his Reuben, upon my pronouncement that there was no
hurdle a man could not surmount in this world if he had the acting skills to
pull it off, and a will to do the catch-up work to make it look good, as
ever it could.
A little later, after our cups had been refilled, the conversation had
turned once again to that scary business on the elevator and I was saying
that now as we were on the subject, I did recall how Apollo 15 had proved
Galileo's theory true, what with the whole thing on film, the feather and
the hammer falling together only to hit the dust at the same time.
Then he said an odd thing: "But, you see McCoy, scientists who can play only
by the book and not at all by ear, they just don't hear in the fall of that
feather and the hammer, what silent awesome melody is being played to the
mind."
I had to shake my head. "Could you try to be just a little more obscure,
arcane and full of metaphorically dangling conversation, there Seymour?"
He took a big bite from the Reuben, and some of the sauerkraut got out.
I was waiting: "Help me out a little, here."
After a slug of coffee, he said, "You could go to the Moon, you could build
yourself a Leaning Tower of Pisa up there, you could drop from the top of
it, at the same time, a grand piano and a hair from the head of--okay,
Veronica Lake, you should be so lucky as to find one of her hair-brushes on
Ebay?"
I don't know what I'm hearing but I say, "Alright."
"You drop that platinum blonde hair of the Hollywood starlet and the grand
piano, and they both hit bottom--at the same time? That needs to be telling
you something. There's a song in it, that science has a head too full of
jangling facts to hear."
I didn't know about that, and said so: "Well, as I recall, it's all pretty
well explained by Newton's laws, something about how the amount of weight in
the grand piano as opposed to what's in the hair of Veronica Lake, is like,
cancelled out . . . or, how's it go?"
"Yeah, they would explain that it's harder for the piano to get moving, to
get over its own inertia than it is for the hair with far less inertia."
I set down my cup: "There's more inertia in the grand piano."
"Yes and no. There's a problem in that thinking, which is part of the reason
we're here talking about all this."
I had to consider that over a bite of my sandwich, and when my mouth was
almost empty enough, I said, "I would ask what you mean."
--
John http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/520b8/
"Once when Sir Isaac Newton--a mere lad--got over into the man's apple
orchard--I don't know what he was doing there--I didn't come all the way
from Hartford to q-u-e-s-t-i-o-n Mr. Newton's honesty--but when he was
there--in the main orchard--he saw an apple fall and he was a-t-t-racted
toward it, and that led to the discovery--not of Mr. Newton (who got back
over the fence quick enough) but of the great law of attraction and
gravitation." --Mark Twain (if any bowdlerizing parenthesis may be pardoned
or ignored)
.

User: "Androcles"
Title: Re: The Hammer & The Feather	19 Jan 2005 12:30:07 PM

"Seymour Grass" <daddio45@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:355u43F4jo2mtU1@individual.net...

"Androcles" <dummy@dummy.net> wrote in message
news:koiHd.173810$Z7.96205@fe2.news.blueyonder.co.uk...

Boring uncreative idiot troll.

LOL! He's a fucking sight less boring, a whole lot more creative and
far less miserable than you, jealous *****!

Androcles.

Roar, lion, roar!

Newton is my lion, bubba, and yes, he can roar.
Androcles.

--

From: "Seymour Grass" <daddio45@yahoo.com>
Subject: {Story} House of the Rising Ophiuchus {1,208}
Date: Sunday, January 09, 2005 3:16 AM

--
It was a whale of thing to try and keep unfolded and spread out in the
mind, a whole sky full of stars all at once, and much as I'd tried, I
couldn't hold the entire view of it, so I had to go to the Gypsy
Woman--what I've been calling her anyway, even if she is mainly Cajun
French, with maybe a dash of Afro-Cuban and a pinch or two of Creole
sprinkled in for some real spicy good gumbo; and my, what a dish with
that curly black hair, those sparkling eyes and big gold rings--some
fine kind of gris-gris come to Chicago here from some little town down
on the bayou around Baton Rouge.

I found this doll, name of "Mirabelle" working out of a little
boutique up on Wells street a few blocks south of the Lincoln Park
hotel. She has that whole Zydeco Zodiac thing down pat and has been
making her living by drawing up charts of people's horoscopes in her
parlor there, where she also does some dealing in potions and herbs,
Voodoo dolls and I don't doubt but that she's got a brisk
under-the-counter trade in all kind of hoodoo, if maybe you got you a
two-dollar bill as the fixings for some of that *John, the Conqueroo*
to be mixing for a mojo of red, green or blue, whether its a piece of
tail, piece of eight, or peace of mind you might kind of crave, could
be she'd have some of that down in the dark somewhere under there,
too.

But as to the reason I needed to see her, well, if you knew the name
of the newspaper I work for, then you'd know they aren't fussy when it
comes to the hire of a science editor like me who still has something
to learn about a difference between Astronomy and Astrology. Even so,
it wasn't hard to bluff my way into the position when the guy who held
the desk before me got too drunk to keep sitting up behind it. I
mean, I was available, being just one desk over which pretty much
eminently qualified me above all other comers. But as to a good solid
background in science to justify moving my stuff over to Joe's old
desk? Well, I did have a couple years of night courses at
Northwestern under my belt, including one in General Physics for Math
Dummies (that's the actual title) and another called, "Star Gazing for
Amateur Astronomers."

So, that being pretty good for government (or journalism) work, I got
the Science desk. It's meant a minor boost in pay to move up from
being a lowly police beat reporter, to a full fledged editor, but
since I'm the only reporter working under me, the only real change is
the desk, and yes, the slight increase in pay--about fifty bucks a
month. Of course, I'm rubbing shoulders with a lot of real scientists
all the time, got a rolodex full of their office numbers, plus the
phone numbers of some of their girlfriends in case they weren't in
when I tried to get them--I don't really have too many of those, but a
few, from the two or three professors I've managed to get cozy with
over cocktails. And come to think, it was by way of Dr. Reuben
Schlitzquirt's main squeeze, Meredith Swanson that I got the lead on
this Cajun Astrologer dame--and who else but her, Meredith Swanson, I
mean? Certainly you don't suppose Schlitzquirt himself, a well-tenured
full professor of nuclear particle physics, that such as he would know
anything about tea-leaves, the little known 13th House of Ophiuchus,
and High John the Conqueroo, do you? No, I suppose you most earnestly
do not--I'll give you that much anyway.

Face it, this recent Tsunami disaster has caught the whole world of
science with its pants down, and it's really been tough knowing where
to turn to get down on it from the science angle of the thing. As
science editor, it's not my job to be getting the tear-jerker angle on
all the misery, the flotsam-jetsam of wrecked lives and villages, so
tragic as all that is, if not to me personally--then not. The
heart-rending stories of obliteration, the vaporization of whole
Islamic terror training camps--I'm not paid to get all wet and gooey
over that. No, it's the natural causes for such an event that a
science editor/reporter is after--not the divine, or 'spiritual', the
emotional, if you will.

So, anyway, one day, I got a call from Dr. Sigurd Nielsen over there
in the Geology department at the University of Chicago, and he reports
to me that he's got this guy who's been bugging him almost daily at
his office with a bunch of calculations he's made which according to
his claims, are showing that this is only the beginning of a whole lot
more of a big she-bang going on, geophysically and astronomically, in
terms of further trouble on the way. The guy had been given the gate
over at the Physics department, which is why he came over to Geology
where the professors are a just little easier going--hale, hearty
outdoor types that they are. So, Nielson says to me on the phone that
day, "He may be just another kook with a crank theory, but unlike most
of that sort, as he presents himself, his face isn't jumping around
from all kind of tics, he isn't sitting there with his hands vibrating
in his pockets, eyes bugged, and breathing loud; he's better groomed
than most of my students, and there seems to be a certain logic in
what he says."

I'm going, "Oh, yeah?"

"Well, put it this way," says Nielsen, "I'm not finding any holes in
what he says."

"Nothing like those big black hugely radiating X-class sunspots we've
been seeing of late?"

"No, nothing like that, but those are part of his considerations."

"So why do you send him to me?" I mean, I had to ask him: "Why aren't
you rocketing his theory off to the professional journals?"

His answer? "It's too risky. We're not going to stake our own
scholarly reputations on some anonymous layman's calculations, which
could be screwier than a green-tailed bacterial flagellum--know what I
mean?"

Well no, I didn't but I said, "You bet I do!"

"You got it," said he.

"Yeah," I said. "Because if somebody's theory doesn't have the
imprimatur of that Ph.D. stamped on it, then it might as well be
somebody's raggedy old Green Arrow comic book, right?"

He said, "Well . . ."

I said, "Sure, because you got to have that brand recognition, else
who will buy it? And if it doesn't come from consecrated hands in the
priesthood of the black square hat and tassel, forget you, right?"

After some ponderous silence, I got this through the horn: "Look here,
McCoy, I'm saying that there may well be something to the stuff this
guy's got, and you're the one who is in a position to bring it to the
attention of the scientific community, by reporting it as news to the
public. I believe the man may have something. I'm doing all I can,
here." He hung up.

Imagine that. He actually hung up on me, the Science Editor for a
major cosmopolitan newspaper? Yes, he did. So then, anyway, next
thing I knew, the morning following, my intercom is dinging me with
the jingle bells (they've always got that on there around the
Holidays--and it's like, some people never get around to taking that
Christmas tree down); it's the receptionist telling me there's some
guy named Grassman here with a letter of introduction from U.C.
wanting to see me on a very urgent matter. Fine. Urgency is my main
m�tier. So, what do I do? I tell her to send him right in.

From: "Seymour Grass" <daddio45@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Do You Mind If I Smoke?
Date: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 2:37 PM
--
Graszmann came in and we talked; he had just a few things to say
concerning this recent flooding in California, the Sumatra
tsunami--and, okay, then he mentioned something about "Sunspots."

When he saw me looking at him kind of funny, he started squinting his
eyes down real narrow-like; so I put on my best smile and said, "Well,
sunspots--which ones exactly?" I hadn't known that we'd been having
any notable outbreaks of those just of late, so I mentioned that as I
looked down to sort through some copy on my desk. Hearing nothing
further from him, I glanced up and, oh my, did this guy have a
look--it was halfway intelligent, or so it might have seemed, I mean
if the look that makes you look like an idiot, can by contrast make
the other guy look smart, then yeah, he looked intelligent, but since
he wasn't answering my question, I asked him again, "What?" And
that's when he asked me if he could smoke.

Shocked by the very suggestion, my editorial assistant who happened to
be coming through the door, turned to look down on him like he was one
of those poisonous little green tree toads of the Amazon jungle; she
informed him that he most certainly could not smoke; that if he even
so much as tried it, he would be tasered by the nearest security
guard, put in plastic wrist and ankle restraints, and be delivered
down to the Chicago Police Department rolled up in a drab green piano
mover's quilt.

Whoa. Look out. I watched as this guy rose slowly out of his
chair--and you know how the Frankenstein monster looks when he's going
after somebody? Well, if a look could go thudding across the room on
ten pound boots with its arms stiffly outstretched, that's how the ice
green glare in Mr. Seymour Graszman's eyes went reaching across to
throttle t