Think of mass, created in the Big Bang. And think of space, created at the same time. Imagine that mass is simply where space was pulled out of, and space is steadily being pulled back in to mass. Thus gravitational force is merely riding along in place as space gets pulled back into mass.

The total energy involved is given by Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence equation, E = M * C^2, and was created by the stretching out of space that created the mass.

As I think about it more, a particle that has been around awhile would have more of its equivalent space reeled in than a younger particle of the same type. The sum total energy released by the annihilation of the particle, as in a positron-electron collision where the energy is converted into photons, is the energy of the energy of the space that had been reeled in already, plus the energy of the space that remains still stretched out at that point in time. Thus seems at the moment to me to suggest that the space stretch of a positron is the opposite of the space stretch of an electron. In the early formation of the universe with equal amounts of terrene and contraterrene mass, the uneven distribution apparently involved more “black holes” of CT material to swallow up more of CT mass, leaving the terrene form of mass of our familiar universe. (I can’t remember how to spell “terrene” and “contraterrene”, CT, as I have not really consciously thought much about this since high school days, over half a century ago.)

As the stretching out of space, in that creation of the mass, extended throughout the extent of the universe, the annihilation of the electron-positron means the simultaneous loss of their part of “space” and that “snap” ought to be be simultaneously felt throughout the universe at the same instant. Although the means to detect the “snap” has yet to be explored.

The force of gravity exerted by the particle remains a constant since the rate of space it is pulling in is constant, the closer to the mass the stronger the pull due to the increased arc angle that the other mass intersects of that space. Since the “force” of gravity increases with the inverse of the square of the distance, instead of the cube of the distance, this suggests that that force is a two dimensional space force, which leads to further areas to explore.

This set of interrelated concepts surely ought to be able to be useful as part of a theme in some science fiction story which I have yet to write, anyway.

Back in the same employment era at Shugart Corp. in Sunnyvale, CA, where I worked in floppy disk development work, one day I was asked to see if I could help out at another division, the hard disk drive division. Arriving there for the first time, I found a few people whom I had worked with in earlier years in technology development. It was explained to me that they had a problem with their new Hard Drive product, and the production line was shut down and costing $20,000 a day because of that. They showed me an environmental test chamber (much as I mentioned in the above-mentioned post) which is a large box about 5 feet on a side, with a door in front and various controls on it and openings in sides for connecting to what was within. An instrument to be tested would be put inside, and the controls set to change the internal environment to some temperature and humidity level.

Inside this one was a hard disk drive, much advanced over the hard disk drives I had worked on in development half a dozen years before at a different company, Pertec Computer Corp. in Chatsworth CA. This hard disk drive had a transparent plastic covered chamber for the disks and heads, where the actuator could be watched moving the heads across the disks. They explained that it all worked fine, except in some installations, after running awhile there would be some hard errors appearing, an unacceptable thing. It only occurred when installed in a large electronic rack and after operating a few hours, usually when unattended overnight somewhere. They suspected that it was because in that sealed bubble environment where the disks and heads were, that when it got hot, the relative humidity went down, and that the plastic insulation of the wires to the heads might then generate enough static electricity – by occasionally rubbing on the plastic of the plastic enclosure – to generate a tiny spark; but they had not been able to prove that. They had a fine digital scope – something new in those days and this one cost $70,000 I recalled as I had recommended buying it years before and they did but gave it to somebody else to use – and it was hooked up to show the signals where the scope probes were hooked to the instrument, and caught the events triggered by an error detection. But nothing correlated preceding the error signal. The events only happened a couple of times a test run and usually during the night while it was all running unattended. It would be very expensive to have a metal casting made to replace the plastic bubble cover, taking a long time to make, and it might then turn out to not fix the problem. Could I help solve the problem, they asked.

Well, if there were indeed a small spark between the read-write head wires on the actuator, as they swept past the plastic enclosure during some kinds of track span jump vibrations of the wires, perhaps the spark could be detected by a piece of metal placed on the outer surface of the plastic bubble right across from the read-write head wires. (I had started out as a physics major in college, and only got into electronics as a career when I eventually dropped out of college – but that is another story dwelled on elsewhere: Tinnitus, wheat gluten, impoverished, lost girlfriend, Asperger’s without a support system, etc.) I asked one of the assemblers in the room, whom I had worked with before, if she had some aluminum foil and she said no. Asking a few other people got the same answer. I did not have any either in my own work area, so I determined the next day to bring some from home. I showed up the next day with some aluminum foil in my pocket, and taped it on the plastic bubble at the site where the read-write head wires came closest, and attached a 10 MegOhm scope probe onto the foil. Closed up the environmental chamber and coordinating to have the same test run again overnight sealed and heating.

The next morning I came over there and asked what the result was; they said that indeed, every time there had been an error signal, it had been preceded by a blip from the probe I had connected to the aluminum foil, as recorded by the pre-triggered digital scope. The problem was solved; it was thus proven that it was caused by static electricity discharge under the extreme condition of low hot humidity and particular motions of the read-write head actuator wire motion during a few of the random test jumps between tracks, due to proximity to the plastic of the transparent housing. The need for me was over so I turned and left, returning to my normal job in the floppy disk development area.

Although nobody ever thanked me or commented on it, I think that maybe that event contributed to my being put into a design-development engineer’s position.

I had forgotten about all that long ago. But now with memories coming back as stimulated by that woman’s nice comment on my blog post, daughter of the cherished manager back then, I now realize that those times had some pleasant memories too.

And moreso, back to that previous post I made re management, I recall that most of my immediate supervisors over my career were competent and considerate managers. Even the rare upper management that I had any connection with over my lifetime, seemed like very fine people.

As for those who were inspiration for my science fiction’s Ownma Corp and TANFL Corp inimically powerful management, most likely it was my frustration with upper management at my last two electronics jobs, people that I rarely if ever met but whom seemed quite hostile towards my efforts to get exceptions from their employment agreements regarding my prior personal creation of my space transportation concepts, particularly my KESTS to GEO concept and my Centristation concept. They refused to respond to my emails, and the HR lady when I hired in who said that of course the record would be made modifying the Employment Agreement, would not respond either and then soon was replaced. I began to suspect there was something afoot attempting to rob me of my authorship of those concepts, but was stonewalled whenever attempting to contact HR and upper management either directly or up through my immediate supervisor.

There was a bit of indirect help, however, in working then for a company named “Orbital Sciences Sensor Systems Division,” in that in my efforts to get a technical paper accepted for formal presentation and publication finally got an acceptance for the ASCE space conference to be held in 2000, shortly after I started working for Orbital Sciences in Pomona. (Having an employer named Orbital Sciences – nevermind in what capacity – apparently somehow got me into a peer-classification with those space industry folks; in contrast to my being employed by a small car alarm manufacturing company when I first came up with the integrated KESTS to GEO concept and the Centristation concept.) That broke the ice and eventually I also was invited to present technical papers on my KESTS to GEO concept in 2002, 2004 and 2005, getting published each time in the conference proceedings. Although it was too late to cheer my mother, who had financed my first formal presentation of the KESTS to GEO concept at the 1997 space conference at Princeton at the Space Studies Institute, where I was laughed away after I gave my extremely stressful presentation in the huge auditorium, and they refused to publish my paper, without giving any reasonable reason. Looking back I realize it was a huge academic ego thing, most likely; how dare I, an academic nobody, come up with a concept that they themselves had not thought of to enable large scale space activity in the near future; but that did not help cheer my mother’s faith in me, and she soon passed away after my 1997 space paper’s failure to be published, no doubt frustrated at my performance, which now is known as Asperger’s, or “high functioning autism;” but at the time was not recognized as other than being sometimes a bit odd as well as gifted.

Ah, the memories. I guess that is mostly all an old man has anymore. And also the opportunity to write high-tech science fiction novels, where I get to finally live out the adventures of creating systems using my space transportation and utilization concepts – if only in the virtual world of sci fi writing. Sometimes, like this morning reading the comment to my post last March, brings a nice comfy feeling of being appreciated.

Click on the diagram to bring it up to view much more clearly; use the back button to return here. Looking at it now, I see that there needs to be an added item, “co-worker” perhaps clockwise from “employee” although that seems to be a subcategory that does not yet fit smoothly into the diagram. Perhaps it is like “lover” in that it needs to be in both the upper and lower halves of the diagram.

Yet the phenomenon had existed long before that, available to be demonstrated, and most likely can be done right now in your home. Find some appliance, such as many of the outlet strips that are used in one’s computer setup, and find one that has the little orange light that is flickering a bit. The aging pilot light on it is a little bulb containing the gas neon; it has a resistor in series with it and is across the AC power line, to indicate that there is power applied to the outlets in the extension strip. When the voltage across the lamp goes above 45 volts, in either direction, the neon enables current flow through it, limited by the 47K ohm resistor. As the voltage cycle goes up then down below 45 volts, the neon light goes out, and restarts again when the voltage again reaches 45 volts in the other direction. When the little neon bulb ages, the quality of the gas inside deteriorates and it starts flickering. So if one dims the ambient light on the neon pilot light, it flickers more, having a harder time getting started emitting light – which is the clue to lasing, that need for adding ambient light – so do an experiment and shine a small flashlight on the neon pilot light, and it will then glow steadily, no longer flickering; its emission is being stimulated by the added light. Very weak “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation” yet indeed it is that, although not being reinforced by mirrors bouncing the light back and forth through the gas, necessary to provide a narrow directed beam of coherent light, going through a partially silvered mirror at one end. I recall experimenting with the little neon bulbs in the early 1950′s – the most embarrassingly memorable of which was when, at age about 17 and lacking awareness of the need for the 47K current limiting resistor, holding the glass neon-filled bulb carefully I inserted its two leads into an AC socket, which produced a brief brilliant blast of light, not so much from the neon in the bulb but instead from the vaporization of the leads of the bulb due to the huge current going through them – so they have been around since before that; this was before the heralded discovery of lasing in 1960.

Lasers have been important to me in the years since then – such as a R&D job I had in the mid-1960′s which sometimes involved use of a 5 mW helium-neon laser – and the pocket laser pointers I used when giving my presentations of my transportation concepts at space technical conferences – but the point here is that there may be phenomena in our everyday lives that only seem a bit odd, yet are potential demonstrators of principles that could be explored – instead of just being ignored – and maybe lead to some very useful devices and their applications.

Now, corporations typically exist for the purpose of “making money” although many get started with a vision to provide a very special product or service to the country – but then with new management the vision dims and the focus is only on the bottom line, how to make the most profit, as demanded by the stockholders need for those investment dividends for their income.

So the function of employment is mostly a happenstance to the corporations; making sure everybody is happily working at an appropriate job, is not their responsibility. So, whose is it? Nobody’s? Is it every man for himself, abandon ship? Or form allegiance with some Captain Bligh.

The thought congealing out of the murk seems to be that maybe the country – we the people – might well look at the appropriate and full use of human resources of America as a reasonable and maybe even a very necessary requirement. Since clearly the businesses, the corporations, have not taken it on to do the job, maybe it ought not to be in their hands anymore. At least not in the absolute power form it has been in.

How to do this? Perhaps there needs to be another path added. The dominant path has been that a business projects that a product or service will sell, and invests in the infrastructure to provide those goods and services to the customer, and if the customer base responds with appreciation, money flows up through the business to pay off the loans, pay for the employees and management and other infrastructure, providing feedback that it all is working. If they need more people to provide more goods and services, they go hire more. This means they need to have a eager pool of desperate people to hire at low wage to expand the business; or sometimes lure away an employee from another company to fill a position.

So the “other path” to be added might be that, instead of there being the pool of the unemployed, that they instead be essentially employed by another entity – maybe the government or civil service type system, or possibly by a corporation that is backed up by the nation that benefits by their existence.

This hypothetical corporation, then, would have the responsibility of “employing” all otherwise unemployed people. The jobs would be fitted to the aptitudes of the individuals, and primarily intended to increase the employees skill levels, through on the job training. Some of the OJT could be simply sending them to college or trade school. Or it might be digging the proverbial holes and filling them up again. Or both. Although some products and services are likely to be salable as a result, the primary product would be the finer potential employee ready for working out in the ordinary business world.

Since the nature of what we do is changing rapidly, as civilization advances the needs are not static. So there would likely be lots of fluidity of work position, between corporate employment and then back into the hypothetical human resource development corporation, for more retraining, broadening of skillsets and capabilities, finding new interests, before heading back into the business world workforce in some specific job position again.

There are some apparent advantages to linking this into my earlier proposed “home manufacturing workstation” concept, which could be the worksite at home, linked to function in either the human resource corporation or at times for some specific corporate business function including small scale manufacturing, without the wasteful commute to a central business worksite, for many job junctions.

This concept of an overarching human resource development corporation would include, as I envision it, everybody who is not currently employed in the regular work world. That includes not just the unemployed engineer and dishwasher, but also the handicapped, hospitalized, and retired folks. They all would be seen as potentially able to be productive withing their skillsets and situation; and the hypothetical HR Corporation would have the function of finding out what each person can do for the mutual benefit and satisfaction of both the nation and the individual, and using available resources to connect the individual with the resources for utilizing and improving them.

Most likely the real world situation will just be to stumble along as we are doing, and the corporate would will take up and use people as employees for the normal employment, and all others will just be out in the cold waiting for some business to provide a job. But this concept I have proposed here, at least could be pictured as an alternative that could be of great benefit to the country, and ultimately beneficial back to the conventional corporate business world through having a much finer skillset pool of future employees.

Compiling what seems to me to be the five basic principles of learning:

1. The protoplasmic moving toward that which nourishes, and away from that which causes pain.
2. The basic educational process: “Monkey see monkey do.” Watch me write on the blackboard, then write the same on your paper. Watch me pounce on him, so you know to do the same.
3. “Those who do not learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.”
4. “Half the solution of a problem is first the full and correct description of the problem.”
5. And “People are ruled not by force but by their imagination.” This principle is also used abusively from schoolyard bullies to world dictator wannabes.

- We as writers also seek to rule the imagination of the reader, if only for a little while. As do movie producers. And as do spin-masters of politics, business, advertising, and the news media. We as writers hope to make it more fun and interesting; but the arena is the same, that of the imagination.

“… “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.

“Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.

“He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.” ….”

Beside affecting our efforts to communicate with species elsewhere, Hawking’s thoughtful wisdom also might invite some soul-searching of ourselves. Remember, we humans often arrogantly refer to ourselves as the “top of the food chain” and “top predator”. Up until fairly recently, the only species on this planet that we actively worked to propagate and nourish, were the ones we used for food in agriculture, like wheat and sheep. Anything else edible was doomed if crossing paths with the hunter-gatherers.

So consider Prof Hawking’s wisdom. We might indeed get found by some spacefaring hunter-gatherer bunch with far more experience than we at being top predator, and just as arrogant. (Lots of sci fi has been written about just such a thing. If the sci fi writer wants to sell the books, it better have the humans as the winners. But the real world tells about America’s land vs the Amerind’s fate; do a reality test and check the results, as suggested by Prof Hawking. And worse yet, those space faring aliens might not recognize us as like themselves, and consider us more like … maybe turkeys or saber-toothed tigers.)

Yet, it is a big Universe, and there is the principle that “like tends to attract like.” I don’t know how well it would work, but maybe we might consider working on changing ourselves into something we would want to meet.

“Nine Myths About Socialism in the US
Monday 12 April 2010
by: Bill Quigley, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Glenn Beck and other far right multi-millionaires are claiming that the US is hot on the path toward socialism. Part of their claim is that the US is much more generous and supportive of our working and poor people than other countries. People may wish it was so, but it is not.

As Sen. Patrick Moynihan used to say “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But everyone is not entitled to their own facts.”

The fact is that the US is not really all that generous to our working and poor people compared to other countries.

Consider the US in comparison to the rest of the 30 countries that join the US in making up the OECD – the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. These 30 countries include Canada and most comparable European countries, but also include some struggling countries like Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Slovak Republic and Turkey.

When you look at how the US compares to these 30 countries, the hot air myths about the US government going all out toward socialism sort of disappear into thin air. Here are some examples of myths that do not hold up.

Myth No. 1: The US Government Is Involved in Class Warfare, Attacking the Rich to Lift Up the Poor.

There is a class war going on all right. But it is the rich against the rest of us and the rich are winning. The gap between the rich and everyone else is wider in the US than any of the 30 other countries surveyed. In fact, the top 10 percent in the US have a higher annual income than any other country. And the poorest 10 percent in the US are below the average of the other OECD countries. The rich in the US have been rapidly leaving the middle class and poor behind since the 1980s.

Myth No. 2: The US Already Has the Greatest Health Care System in the World.

Infant mortality in the US is fourth worst among OECD countries – better only than Mexico, Turkey and the Slovak Republic.

Myth No. 3: There Is Less Poverty in the US Than Anywhere.

Child poverty in the US, at over 20 percent or one out of every five kids, is double the average of the 30 OECD countries.

Myth No. 4: The US Is Generous in Its Treatment of Families With Children.

The US ranks in the bottom half of countries in terms of financial benefits for families with children. Over half of the 30 OECD countries pay families with children cash benefits regardless of the income of the family. Some among those countries (e.g. Austria, France and Germany) pay additional benefits if the family is low income or one of the parents is unemployed.

Myth No. 5: The US Is Very Supportive of Its Workers.

The US gives no paid leave for working mothers having children. Every single one of the other 30 OECD countries has some form of paid leave. The US ranks dead last in this. Over two-thirds of the countries give some form of paid paternity leave. The US also gives no paid leave for fathers.

In fact, it is only workers in the US who have no guaranteed days of paid leave at all. Korea is the next lowest to the US and it has a minimum of eight paid annual days of leave. Most of the other 30 countries require a minimum of 20 days of annual paid leave for their workers.

Myth No. 6: Poor People Have More Chance of Becoming Rich in the US Than Anywhere Else.

Social mobility (how children move up or down the economic ladder in comparison with their parents) in earnings, wages and education tends to be easier in Australia, Canada and Nordic countries like Denmark, Norway and Finland, than in the US. That means more of the rich stay rich and more of the poor stay poor here in the US.

Myth No. 7: The US Spends Generously on Public Education.

In terms of spending for public education, the US is just about average among the 30 countries of the OECD. Educational achievement of US children, however, is seventh worst in the OECD. On public spending for childcare and early education, the US is in the bottom third.

Myth No. 8: The US Government Is Redistributing Income From the Rich to the Poor.

There is little redistribution of income by government in the US in part because spending on social benefits like unemployment and family benefits is so low. Of the 30 countries in the OECD, only in Korea is the impact of governmental spending lower.

Myth No. 9: The US Generously Gives Foreign Aid to Countries Across the World.

The US gives the smallest percentage of aid of any of the developed countries in the OECD. In 2007, the US was tied for last with Greece. In 2008, we were tied for last with Japan.

Despite the opinions of right-wing folks, the facts say the US is not on the path toward socialism.

But if socialism means the US would go down the path of being more generous with our babies, our children, our working families, our pregnant mothers and our sisters and brothers across the world, I think we could all appreciate it.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.”