Thursday, November 28, 2024

Happy Thanksgiving!

Best wishes for a happy Thanksgiving to all!

Remember, the first Thanksgiving was the English pilgrims thanking God for teaching them (the few survivors) the evils of communism.




Wednesday, November 20, 2024

True Communism

The zealots of the Left always proclaim that "true Communism" hasn't been tried.

Bullshit.

I joined the Army when I was 19 to fight Communism.  I served in West Berlin.  When I got there, they were still killing their own people who were trying to escape.  The Communists killed a dozen Soldiers from my unit in three separate attacks in the three years I was there.  (The Cold War wasn't all that cold in Berlin.)

Communism isn't an economic theory.  It's a religion of total human control.  It is evil distilled down into its most abhorrent form, given teeth, and then told to bite and spread its disease among the innocent.  And its teachings and methods have been wholly embraced by the modern Left, including all the influential powers of the Democrat party.

Read To Shatter Men's Souls if you dare.  It may be fictionalized, but it's all true.  True Communism.

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Pulpy goodness

I like a double helping of pulpy humor every now and then.  So I listen to The Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast while I'm doing the dishes.  They only update once per month these days, but the WorkJuice Coffee players have been putting on their shows for years.

  • Don your robot fists and strap on your astro-spurs with Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars.
  • Combat evil with the power of lasers alongside Captain Laserbeam.
  • Solve supernatural troubles with a martini shaker in a fashionable penthouse apartment in Beyond Belief.
  • Fight for Truth, Justice, and more comfortable shoes with Miss America.
Give them a try.  It's not like it costs anything.

Friday, November 15, 2024

The importance of readability

Software has to meet several goals, some of which may conflict with each other.
  • It has to work.  Performing a function is the entire point.
  • It has to be efficient.  This may involve using less time, memory, power, etc.
  • It has to be maintainable.  80% of programming is debugging and updating.
To be maintainable, your code must be readable.  The trade-off between readability, writability, functionality, and efficiency is why there are so many different programming languages.  Well, that and fashion trends in the industry.

What is readable code?  That's partly opinion, partly experience, but also partly objective fact.  "GOTO considered harmful" isn't just a meme, it was a real wake up call for the industry 56 years ago.

XKCD


Spaghetti code may sound delicious, but it's a toxic mess for others to try to clean up.


That brings me around to one of the main points of my programming language, Listack.  I have been fascinated by stack based languages ever since I read a book on Forth way back when I was a teen.  I even implemented Forth in BASIC.  It was incredibly slow, but it worked.  And then, a few years ago, I discovered Factor.  It's a modern stack-based language.  Factor lead me to Joy about the same time I discovered the False esolang.  Joy has (for a programming language) a relatively large amount of well written theory behind it.  False is an extremely minimal language, but it shares a lot of conceptual space with Joy.  I enjoyed learning a bit about all these languages.  I even implemented a False interpreter in Python.

The problem is that, like Forth, these are all write-only languages.  They're efficient, they're fun, they're concatenative, and they're terrible to try to read a program of any complexity at all.  But hey, at least they're not APL.

And then I started learning to program in Nim.  It's a more-or-less standard high level, compiled language.  It has Python-like syntax with significant whitespace (no curly braces or semicolons needed).  And it has uniform function call syntax.  That was a revelation for me.

That's where I got the idea for Listack.  I could make a more readable stack-based language.  Like most stack based languages, it would be concatenative.  It would make heavy use of first-class functions and combinators.  And it would be my creative contribution to the art of programming.  Note how handy the immediate block (code blob) makes things.

Compare these code snippets.  They all do the same thing.

style                    simple                                complex    
Call:          +(1, 2)     func1(data1, func2(data3, data4))
Prefix:         +: 1 2      func1: data1 (func2: data3 data4)
Infix:          1 + 2       data1 func1 (data2 func2 data3)
Postfix:        1 2 .+      data1 data2 data3 .func2 .func1


Concatenative style aids readability.  It's easier to follow the logic when it's written left to right than when it is inside out.

inside out:      func3(func2(func1(data1), data2), data3)
concatenative:   data1 .func1 data2 .func2 data3 .func3


Then I added one more thing that may be genuinely unique - the single word comment.  One of the major problems with powerful and efficient languages like Factor and Lisp is that they have almost no syntax.  That helps the language designers and talented macro programmers, but it significantly reduces readability.

Compare these code snippets.  They all do the same thing.

(truth test) {good branch} {bad branch} .if
(truth test) if {good branch} {bad branch}
if: (truth test) {good branch} {bad branch}
if: (truth test) #then {good branch} #else {bad branch}

Syntactic sugar is important for code readability.

easier to follow                                  harder to follow
if: (test one)                if: (test one)
#then {if: (test two)             {if: (test two)
    #then {good good}                 {good good}
    #else {bad good}                  {bad good}
    }                             }
#else {if: (test three)           {if: (test three)
    #then {good bad}                  {good bad}
    #else {bad bad}                   {bad bad}
    }                             }




Thursday, November 14, 2024

Less boring content

In an effort to bore "normal" people a little less, I am moving my science rantings over to Substack.


Don't worry.  I'll continue to bore you with my other esoteric hobbies here.

The "no more deficits" amendment, with teeth

Proposed amendment to the US Constitution:

  1.  Any federal deficit spending outside time of war shall result in the confiscation and sale of all assets, tangible and intangible, of every member of Congress who voted to pass the bills authorizing that excessive spending, as well as of their immediate family members, saving three sets of clothing each and a single motor vehicle for the entire family. Two consecutive years of deficit spending outside a time of war shall result in the execution of those members of Congress who voted to pass the spending bills.

  2.  These penalties are to be enforced by the judicial branch, headed by the members of the Supreme Court, within no more than 90 days from the date of the passage of the bill or bills authorizing the excessive spending.

  3.  Failure to enforce said penalties by the legislative branch in a timely manner shall result in the execution of every member of the Supreme Court by the executive branch within a further 7 days.  The executive branch shall then have a further 30 days to enforce the penalties prescribed by paragraph one above.

  4.  If the executive branch fails to enforce the penalties prescribed above in a timely manner, the federal government shall be declared in breach of its collective duties, immediately dissolved of all power and authority, and every elected or appointed member of that government declared to be outside the bounds of the law.  Let any man's hand be raised against them, their immediate families, and their property.

  5.  Within 30 days of such time as described in paragraph four above, the governors of the various States shall meet in conclave to select, by majority vote or random chance, one of their members to assume the role of chief executive for a period of no more than 180 days.  During this period, new elections for all federal Representatives and Senators, as well as for the President and Vice President, shall be arranged and conducted.

  6.  Time of war, for the purposes of this amendment, includes only a period from the date Congress formally declares war against a specific enemy nation or group of nations, through no more than 90 days after the cessation of hostilities in that specific conflict, either by victory, defeat, or stalemate. Any period of six consecutive months during which fewer than 100 US citizens are killed or injured by enemy action in that specific conflict shall count as the cessation of hostilities by stalemate.

Monday, November 11, 2024

The 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month

1918.  The guns finally dell silent.  Four years of bloodletting finally stumbled to a close.  Half a generation of men had succumbed to the wills of uncaring kings and incompetent aristocrats.




But hey, at least the peace plans unleashed the Socialist menace and guaranteed a new war a generation later.



Sunday, November 10, 2024

Happy birthday, Marines!

I wish a very happy birthday to our nation's second oldest armed service, the United States Marines.  Who are, in fact, older than their "parent" service, the U.S. Navy.  Yes, they really were formed in the back room of a bar.



Saturday, November 9, 2024

VB day + 35 years

35 years ago today, we won the Cold War.  The Berlin Wall fell to the will of the people.  Communism failed, and the world would know peace instead of nuclear obliteration.  There was so much hope and joy.

I was there.  When I got to Berlin, the border guards were still killing people trying to escape.  When I left, Germany was once again a single nation.  We knew it would take them at least a generation to heal the wounds.

(Pictures as found elsewhere on the internet.)









Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Time conservation

Okay, so my theory of spacetime as a potentiokinetic field checks out by everything I have looked up, and explains things I didn't know or understand before.  Time (potential energy) is imaginary, and its spin is positive (particles) or negative (anti-particles).  Charge is directly tied to time, so an anti-particle (with opposite time) must have the opposite charge.  Neutrinos carry time (potential energy).  Thus, electro-weak theory is created from first principles.

In particle decay, charge and time are both conserved (among other things).  This explains the charge-parity conservation violations, as time is what is really important.  Thus, CPT symmetry is conserved, and my explanation is much more simple and elegant.

Neutrinos carry time.  Left-handed neutrinos are the matter particle, so time is left handed.  Anti-neutrinos are right handed, and carry anti-time.  Note that they're not really going backwards in time, their time (potential energy) component is spinning in the opposite direction.

Particle decay always results in an even number of new time-based entities (quarks, leptons) being created, and they always appear in particle / anti-particle pairs.  This is because time must be conserved.  Photons do not have time, and so are chronometrically neutral.  For example B- decay converts a neutron into a proton, creating an electron to balance the charge (positive + negative = neutral) and an antineutrino to balance the time (positive time + negative time = neutral).  B+ decay converts a proton to a neutron, creating a positron to balance charge and a neutrino to balance time.

You can imagine the handedness of time instead as a one dimensional (scalar) property, being positive (normal matter), negative (antimatter), or zero (photons).

So, everything adds up to nothing, except energy density, which is a constant determined by potential energy, which is time.  Energy and time cause change to happen in space.

------

Our positive matter, positive time universe exists.  Everything adds up to nothing, except potential energy, which is time.  Cosmologically, a negative time, negative energy universe to balance our own is logical.  However, we have no means of knowing, as we went in opposite directions of time from the moment of creation.  Everything adds up to nothing.

------

No, antimatter is not moving backwards in time the way movies would have it.  They have opposite handed chronometric spin.  They proceed from cause to effect just like everything else.  All energy is positive, with an upper bound of the Planck energy and a lower bound of zero.  But some of it is moving in different directions.

------

Gravity is a combination or kinetic energy, its gradient, and the gradient in potential energy.  Every form of energy is deducted from potential energy, but the elasticity of space creates a curve, not a pinprick.  Thus, the potential usually has a gradient.  This creates motion in the direction of lower potential energy, which is acceleration towards the source of the energy drain (matter), which is kinetic energy.  And so all forms of energy always add up to a constant.

Motion (velocity, momentum) is a local perturbation is the potentiokinetic field.  It is a wave whose velocity (speed + direction) is determined by its own local gradients.  These gradients can also be observed through the effects of special relativity.  Photons emitted in the direction of travel gain a boost of energy from the local down gradient, while photons emitted in the opposite direction lose energy to the uphill climb, as it were.  So two particles with the same velocity will exchange photons that have the exact same energy (to them), while particles travelling in different directions will exchange photons with more or less energy depending upon the velocities involved.

And thus, nearly everything derives from first principles and geometry.  Some things still need to be measured to be known, though.  Why is the speed of causation and the elasticity of space what they are?  No idea.  But they can be measured.

Sunday, November 3, 2024

I accidentally unified physics?

It's a bold claim, I know.  But I may have accidentally unified physics.

Potentiokinetic Field

What we call spacetime is really a field of scalar of potential (proper/subjective time) and a 3D vector of kinetic (space/motion/momentum).  When you square these, you have potential energy and kinetic energy.  Thus, the potentiokinetic field (instead of a confusing spacetime).  Exactly like the electromagnetic field is a combination of a scalar electric charge and a 3D vector of magnetic flux, which when squared produce electric energy and magnetic energy.

Fun fact:  Newton's force law, f = ma, can be derived from this.  Veritasium video

Electro-Weak-Potential, Strong-Kinetic correspondence

The weak force (nuclear decay/fission) corresponds directly to potential energy/time and also to the electric charge - all scalars.  (CPT symmetry)  So I was idly wondering, what if the strong force (nuclear force/fusion) corresponded to the 3D vector of momentum?  Well, the weird part of the strong force is the color charge, which always has to balance to clear (nothing), with three different colors (red, green, and blue) and their anti-colors.  Which correspond roughly to the three dimensions of space, but where r+g+b = 0.  (Think of them each as pulling 120 degrees away from each other.)  The composite particle is stable when the pulls cancel out.  So color charge is equivalent to momentum if you squint hard enough at it.

Rule of 1+3

  • The electromagnetic field is a scalar and a 3D vector.  1+3
  • The potentiokinetic field is a scalar and a 3D vector.  1+3
  • The weak-strong field would be a scalar and a 3D vector.  1+3
  • Everything works in 1D time and 3D space.  1+3
  • Thus, all of physics is 1+3 fields of 1+3.

Everything checks.  There are no contradictions.  There are no infinities.  There are no singularities.

  • Everything adds up to nothing.
    • Except for time and energy.
  • Proper (subjective) time is potential energy.
    • Potential energy is real energy.
    • Time is the potential for change.
    • Time is the reservoir from which all other things are made possible.
  • Energy density is a constant.
    • This includes the potential energy of time.
    • This is the Planck energy constant.
  • There is no such thing as negative (anti) energy.
    • This is completely different from opposite charges and spins, which are all different forms of positive energy.
    • The lowest an energy level can go is zero.
      • In a theoretically empty space, potential energy is maximized, because all other energies are zero.
      • Black holes are hollow shells of maximal energy density surrounding the absolute nothingness of zero potential energy (no time).  

Cosmology

Rule 0 of physics holds that everything adds up to nothing, except for time and energy.  But what if these aren't really exceptions?

At the moment of creation, space, time, and energy were created.  Equal amounts of time and anti-time, equal amounts of energy and anti-energy, and space and anti-space.  The negative energy (and thus, anti-matter) went with the negative time and space, and the positive energy went with the positive time and space.  Thus, a universe and anti-universe were simultaneously created, each the opposite of the other, maintaining rule zero.  From nothing emerged a total of nothing.  (This can be adapted to creation in a pre-existing infinite space, because negative and positive space are identical.)