NOTES ON COMMENTS.

This site has only two primary functions,

1. To sell my book.
2. To disseminate scientific knowledge.

I am not interested in selling other products or services and I will not have any advertising for other products or services on my site.  To maintain the integrity of this site even family web sites are excluded even though I trust them.

At one time goods sold due to their obvious good quality, and generally by recommendations from other people.

My spam detector is fairly fierce but I occasionally rescue a comment from the scrap bin.

Any subtle attempts to pass spam through are checked by me. If they have something of interest despite being spam, I delete all sales or spam content and publish. The only changes I ever make to text is to correct any spelling mistakes or faulty grammar. In other word what you see on my site is what I received less the spam. Most of the spam I receive at present is pornography  related (which is rather sad really).

On bad days when a lot of spam arrives I will check for technical comments and just delete the remainder.  (It takes a lot of time to check out the validity of comments. They have to be copied to another computer, converted to text only format to check for embedded nasties, web sites checked and e-mail addresses verified)

Generally, if you are posting comments from an obviously commercial web site, the chances are that they will deleted. If comments are posted that are obviously just ‘standard’ comments, then again they will probably be deleted.

If you send comments through your own web site and your web site includes adverts for pornography or obvious scams, they are automatically deleted, because by allowing this type of advertising you have become part of the world-wide web’s worst problem.

Preferred comments are for or against the contents of my posts from a technical point of view. Both types will be given the same importance and are very helpful, both to me and the readers. Any other type of comment will be published if I think it of interest or amusing. Many comments have to be deleted because I have been unable to read the contents due to my limited command of foreign languages and I have been unable to get them translated. Most Spam is deleted before I see it.

Comments relating to help relating to computer related problems on this web site should be submitted through the ‘HELP PAGE’, this ensures that readers who need help and readers who are able to help, have a forum.

Technical queries relating to to the web site content I am happy to answer.

Brian

Strange Wasp Behaviour.

Head Hunting Wasps.

Many years ago, (here he goes again), we became plagued by wasps, and my wife forced me into the bathroom, (which was the worst effected) with a rolled up newspaper. After about 10 minutes of valiant efforts, I emerged triumphantly, having killed about 20 wasps. About halve an hour later, I re-entered the bathroom to clear away the bodies.

On arriving at the window area where most of the dead wasps were, I noticed about 6 more active wasps which seemed to be foraging amongst the dead ones. Closer scrutiny showed that these wasps were cutting off the heads of the dead ones and carrying them away, leaving the bodies behind for me to clear away. On the assumption that the wasps were not carrying out head transplantation, has anyone come across this behaviour and has a more logical explanation?

Wasp Survival.

This happened not 8 feet away from my above battle with the wasps, and happened about the same period. My first ever vehicle was a WW2 Ford Jeep. This had been fitted with a van body. After a few years I decided to strip off the van body and put the jeep back into its original condition. After stripping off the body I detached the windscreen assembly. Underneath the this assembly I found a wasp, apparently dead, that had been trapped beneath the Sorbo rubber seal.  I left the wasp where it was and carried on working.

After about an hour and a half I noticed that the wasp was twitching. Some three hours later the wasp was capable of flying away.

I did some checks on the jeep assembly to see if the wasp could have got into its position after the van body had been fitted, but there was no possible access. This meant that the wasp had been trapped under the seal for just under 5 years!

No water, no light, no food!  High temperatures from the sun and engine in summer and freezing temperatures in winter.

For 5 years! Tough eh.

Why Stereo?

I have over 3000 recordings on records, CDs, tapes including reel to reel.  Out of all there is only one track that benefits by being played in stereo. This track is Duelling Banjos, in which the audible separation of the two banjos is crucial. This leaves 2999 tracks for which stereo recording and playback is of no benefit. Stereo was (and still is) a gimmick without any logic

Are we claiming that all the musicians from orchestras to the Beatles have been getting it all wrong over the last 200-300 years? Should they scatter themselves around the various venues so that we can get a stereo effect? Should the opera singer stand at the opposite end of the concert hall to the orchestra? If they did I think you would find it very aggravating.

For over 20 years I used a KT 66 push-pull mono amplifier for parties, general get-togethers etc, and my guests included many stereo enthusiasts. yet I was never asked why I was only using mono. This was not because my guests were too polite to say anything, it was because they were listening to the music, or criticising the music or oblivious to the music. Whether it was in stereo or mono was irrelevant.

For those of you old enough to remember the introduction of stereo players will also remember the demonstration records in which you heard all sorts of unusual effects like footsteps walking across your room etc. Did you ever buy a recording with this type of effects on it? Apart from the original demonstration records very few were ever made.

A few years ago the BBC ran a demonstration of quadraphonic radio broadcasting and it was quite impressive, with people apparently walking and talking behind you. However, clever as it is, it really has no practical application to the public. Possibly about once a year some program could be broadcast that would benefit from this, but for 99.9% of the time it would be useless.

Stereo and quadraphonics in television are actually aggravating because they distract you from the program because if a parrot apparently speaks behind you, you have a natural tendency to look towards it, thus missing something more important on the screen.

It really is time we got back to common sense in general as well as physics.

Quantum leap

Did you know that if you had a quantum leap in your annual salary and your original salary was £20,000, then your new salary would be £20,000.01, i.e. a one penny increase. A quantum is the smallest quantity possible, one penny in England, one cent in America, etc.

A quantum leap in your annual corn yield would be one grain of corn. A quantum leap in the annual production of nails would be one nail.
Strange how a phrase coined by the physics establishment relating to a vague hypothesis on the structure of the atom, has been taken up by the press and advertisers, and is now considered by the public to have the opposite meaning.

A major problem with physics is that when something is discovered or hypothesised, the public pick up only the most ‘sensational’ aspects of it. Einstein’s fame really came from the ‘time dilation’ hypothesis relating to his interpretation of the Michelson-Morley experiment. This got so embedded in the public mind that even the physicists started to believe it. This problem was made worse when the science fiction writers picked up on it, and it is now almost a constant in science fiction books, and is now even considered by many people to be ‘real’ physics.

Author – Brian Williams

The Invisible Crane Fly

Many years ago I was breaking through an eighteen inch thick brick wall from outside. In a pause in my labours I became aware of a light buzzing noise close at hand. Concentrating on the noise I became convinced that it came from a small area in front of me, but I was unable to see any cause.

However, after a few more minutes the noise stopped and a crane fly appeared in the area I was watching. Watching the crane fly I hit the wall with my hammer and the crane fly immediately ‘disappeared’ again. Close scrutiny of the area allowed me to identify the lower few millimetres of the crane fly’s legs, but the rest of it was invisible. I carried out this procedure a few more times before blowing it away from the area that I was working in.

The question is, ”Is this a commonly known phenomena, or was it just a very clever crane fly that I was watching.”

Occasionally I have looked ‘crane flies’ up in various books, and recently on the internet,  but have yet to find any mention of this ability.

Possibly this explains why when your wife gets you out of bed to kill an annoying crane fly and you miss the first attempt because you are still dopey,  the crane fly  ‘disappears’ even though you can still hear it, but you didn’t see it fly off as you would with a fly or wasp.

You can now ask  “What has this got to do with physics?

Well, biology is part of physics (or should be), and crane flies are part of biology, and here we have an insect that can adopt a ‘cloak of invisibility’  (Magic) which it creates by means of classical mechanics, and all of modern physics can be explained by classical mechanics. Unfortunately, the physicists never seem to get beyond the ‘Magic’ stage of research. They have an inbred revulsion of mechanics which prevents them from progressing further. See Introduction

Note: My particular crane fly set up an oscillation in it’s body by rapidly moving it’s wings in a non-flying sequence. This oscillation is faster than the eye/brain can handle, therefore the crane fly ‘disappears’. This is indicative that the oscillation is just as effective with all of it’s natural predators, and thus that all it’s predators have the same optical frequency limitations that humans have.

It’s common British name “Daddy long Legs”  indicates its most recognizable feature, which must be the main reason it can carry out it’s disappearing act, which would not be possible in a short legged insect.  What we will never know is whether the oscillation initially had a different purpose (which may still be required) and the long legs evolved to provide the ability to ‘disappear’.