Two tools that ought to be

This week I worked most of three days trying to remove air-conditioner components from my 1996 Mercury Villager minivan -- and wishing for two tools that might be handy in a car repair shop.

  1)  Fixed wrench lever.   To turn a stuck nut or bolt crowded by neighboring structures.  The tool would hold a small eye wrench or C wrench firmly at any desired angle and provide mechanical advantage.

  2)  Shear on a stick.  To cut hoses crowded by neighboring structures.  This would have a hook and blade like a rose clipper at the end of a shaft, the blade forced into the hook by sliding motion rather than scissor motion.  The forcing of blade into hook would come from repeated gripping of a handle at the opposite end.  

Too many cosmic forces

Here's some idle speculation.
* When I was young, the only known cosmic force was gravity.  It attracted matter to matter; and I speculated that it would eventually attract all matter in the universe to a spot in the middle.
* In recent decades, galaxies were found to be distributed quite unevenly in the universe, tending to form a 3-D web or network of galaxy-rich strings with large voids between.  The distribution of galaxies is like the trabeculae of a sponge.  The scaffolding for this galaxy distribution does not emit, absorb or reflect light so it is called dark matter, but it does bend light by gravitational lensing.
* Not long ago, astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter compared supernova brightness (inverse distance) with supernova red shift (departure speed) and concluded that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate (by a logic that I have failed to follow).  Dark energy was postulated as the force accelerating galaxies apart.  It is said to arise from empty space and to become an ever growing fraction of cosmological force as space between galaxies increases.
  *  Dark energy is said to constitute 70% of the mass of the universe, dark matter is said to be 25% of the mass of the universe, and regular old visible matter is said to be only 5% of the mass of the universe.  That’s three kinds of mass and three kinds of mass-dependent force.
* Could it be that the observable universe is surrounded by a dense shell of matter and energy that departed first in the big bang and is attracting distant parts of the observable universe radially by ordinary gravity, thereby accounting for the relation between distance and rate of departure?   If so, dark energy needn’t be postulated.
* On the other hand, could it be that classic gravity is an illusion, that dark energy does it all?  Could dark energy account for all mass-dependent forces by exerting an isotropic repulsion everywhere from beyond and within the observable universe?  Could accelerations attributed to classical gravity result from shading of this repulsion by masses in the paths?
  *  This last speculation may be compatible with others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEIC42qDrqk 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSTH1o03dfU
In fact, it is a very old idea  from about 1700.

Firearms

  *  About 1 in 10 adult Americans have psychiatric disorders involving delusions, obsessions, depressions, fears, anxieties, etc.  Many more harbor irrational beliefs about racial, national, political and religious groups and about cause-effect relations.  Many enjoy cruelty.
  *  The vast majority of Americans can get their hands on firearms within a few days of trying.  Thus, the probability of a massacre in any month is substantial.
  *  In light of these facts, our society would seem justified in outlawing large clips and magazines, which greatly advantage anyone with an appetite for massacre – regardless of the NRA’s interpretation of the second amendment.
  *  What are the contrary arguments?

Ellipsoid Wall Thickness

Here's the front of our 2010-Family-Reunion T-Shirt.

It's the last thing I did before retiring about 1995.
Because of it, my 86-year-old wife gets lots of attention at the grocery store.

Here is the derivation:
 https://ethicsblackhole.blogspot.com/2013/08/blog-post.html

Transmitter Antenna

  *  Over several months, I've searched for a convincing description of transmitter-antenna function, unsuccessfully; so I decided to attempt my own.  A valid description must explain why or predict that the optimal length of a dipole transmitter antenna is half a carrier-wave length, each limb being 1/4 as long as the carrier wave.  An axiom of my theory is that photons are emitted as electrons are accelerated by a passing EMF pulse.  A postulate is that all photons share essential properties, so the radio wave is like Alice's looking glass, where classic deterministic physics might illustrate quantum probabilistic mechanics.
  *  The figure below shows a dipole antenna at ten evenly spaced moments.  The plus (+) and minus (-) show the input polarities at each moment.  The up and down arrows show the directions of electron acceleration in an antenna limb at those moments, black for a primary pulse, red for a reflected pulse (each arrow representing 1/4 of a pulse's duration).  Note that the negative input to a branch repels electons; positive input to a branch attracts electrons -- both branches therefore experiencing EMFs in same direction and analogous locations at any moment hence emitting photons of the same orientation at any moment.  In progressing from one moment to the next in the upper branch, the lower black arrow moves up, the upper black arrow becomes the upper red arrow with reversed direction, the upper red arrow moves down, and a new lower black arrow is  generated from the input voltage.  In the lower branch, the progress of arrows (EMFs) is inverted, the electron accelerations agreeing with those of the upper branch.
  *  This diagram is a crude way to see whether the mixture of primary pulses and reflected pulses would cooperate or cancel at various moments of the carrier-wave cycle in various segments of the antenna.  It turns out that the pulses in an antenna branch oscillate between cancelling (moments 2, 6 & 10) when the second half of a pulse meets the reflected first half of itself) and maximal coopertion (moments 4 & 8 when the first half of a pulse meets the reflected second half of the previous pusle) with weaker combinations in between (transition moments: 1, 3, 5, 7 & 9).
  *  Cooperating pulses crossing in the middle of an antenna branch constitute a standing wave.  Thus, the two antenna branches experience cooperative standing waves simultaneously, thereby maximizing signal output.  The 2 standing waves regenerate as long as the oscillator is active and connected.

  *  Below is an attempt to illustrate the same sequence just in the upper branch.  The black curve is the primary wave generated by an oscillator on the left and progressing rightward (ie upward).  The solid segment is the portion in the 1/4-wave antenna branch, the dashed segment continuing the wave cycle as if the antenna were as long as the carrier wave, so we can see its shape.  The red curve is the reflected wave in the antenna, which is the nearest segment of the dashed line flipped leftward for orientation and inverted for valence.  I believe this picture needs more work.

  *  The best YouTube description of antenna function that I have seen ANT06 Half Wave Dipole by Greg Durgin.  I haven't quite reconciled his and my descriptions, but I hope to.

Photon Model

 * The web is replete with lectures and articles on modern physics.  Most days I expose myself to a few of them in hopes of understanding photons, in hopes of accounting for photon formation, emission, dimensions, propagation or translation, absorption and action or effect, perhaps eventually reflection, refraction, transparence, polarization, filtering, shielding, birefringence, scattering, interference, coherence, etc.
 * An elegant mathematical model (Maxwell’s equations) predicts electromagnetic radiation, but presumed features of the predicted radiation are doubtful.  Specifically, light, heat and radio emissions are depicted as multicycle electromagnetic sine waves; but those emissions are probably half-cycle ie one-phase photons.
    1)  I doubt that multicycle photons exist, contrary to every depiction of radiation dynamics out there.  Multicycle photons are not expected from properties of their sources and do not account for the radiant effects on targets.  I doubt that they are implied in Maxwell's equations.  Misleading conceptualizations confuse, 
eg:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpGBs307qYs ,
and:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe4j144wDJo
I believe that half-cycle ie one-phase photons are expected from properties of radiant sources and half-cycle ie one-phase photons account for radiant effects.
    2)  I doubt that a radio wave is a long unitary/coherent wave of frequency matching the transmitter's.  Instead, each phase of a transmission cycle must be a shower of much shorter photons (possibly infrared) emitted from countless accelerating antenna electrons and spinning in phase-dependent directions on axes paralleling the transmitter’s antenna (transverse to the photon's trajectory).  A well known model envisions multi-photon composition of a radio-wave phase, but seems to confuse photon spin with circular polarization which isn't spin.
    3)  I suspect that photons are emitted from electrons of a radio-transmitter's antenna as they are accelerated by a pulse of electromotive force (EMF) being propagated between ends of the antenna.  This mechanism probably accounts for the fact that transmission is optimal when each branch of a dipole-antenna is 1/4 as long as the transmitted wave.  This length relation results in cooperative unimodal standing waves of EMF centered in each antenna branch).  Radio-wave photons would be much shorter than the radio waves they transmit.  Spin is the only photon characteristic that could faithfully carry radio-phase information so that alternate phases of photon showers would accelerate receiver-antenna electrons oppositely.
    4)    A radio telescope seems designed to pick up and analyze showers of ordinary-size photons rather than gigantic photons.  Conceivably, cosmic microwave background does consist of gigantic photons (postulated to be ordinary photons greatly stretched).
    5)    Considering how photons are made and act, I suspect that a photon is a disc or ring or spheroid of magnetic flux about an axis of EMF, progressing in space like a frisby (axis transverse to trajectory) not like a football or rifle bullet (axis in line with trajectory).  Unpolarized light and heat would have photon axes pointing randomly in all directions transverse to trajectory.  Polarized light and heat would have photon axes pointing mainly in two opposite directions transverse to trajectory.  Radio signals would be polarized paralleling the transmitter antenna, with photons of oppositely pointing axes sorted into phases as depicted below.

* This model can be tested and, if validated, can provide a platform to examine and understand photons in the ways listed in the first paragraph above.  After posting it, I saw that it is something like a reversed electron-spin model.
  *  In a Science Question/Answer site called Quora, under "What is the shape and volume of a photon?", Jay Wacker seems to anticipate my model:  Photons are point particles with no substructure as far as we have been able to determine.  Photons have momentum and spin, no mass or charge.  The spin is manifested in its polarization.  You can think of this as two different photons that can be interchanged by rotating them 90 degrees around the axis that they are going.

Stages of this conjecture have been published:
http://ethicsblackhole.blogspot.com/2016/11/radio-signals.html
http://ethicsblackhole.blogspot.com/2016/10/electromagnetic-radiation_7.html
http://ethicsblackhole.blogspot.com/2016/09/quantum-models.html

In a Quora article Phonse Fagan wrote:  According the writer R.W. Lam, Einstein said: ‘All the fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to answer the question, “What are light quanta?” Of course today every rascal thinks he knows the answer, but he is deluding himself.’

Gospelaires

  1.  Angel Band
  2.  The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn
  3.  Drifting Too Far From The Shore
  4.  In the Garden
  5.  Just a closer walk
  6.  Near the Cross
  7.  Never Grow Old Gospelaires
  8.  Old Rugged Cross
 8.  Old Rugged Cross
  9.  One Christmas Eve
10.  Over in the Gloryland Gospelaires
10.  Over in the Gloryland Gospelaires
11.  Peace in the Valley
12.  Silent empty chair
13.  Standing By the River
14.  Sweet by and by
14.  Sweet Bye and Bye
15.  Sweet Hour of Prayer
16.  Take it to the Lord in Prayer.mpg
17.  Victory in Jesus
18.  AreYouWashed
19.  Where could I go
20.  Whispering Hope
21.  Wings of a Dove
21.  Wings of a Dove