tar

I am reading the words. The guy on the embankment judges the flashes a simultaneous. That means he has seen the flashes. If he is there, she is there and the photons are there, then she can see them just as easily as him. There is a time it takes the light to get from either flash to the center. Is this time period prior the judgement ot the guy? Absolutely. It has to be. You can not rerun this time period again from the point of view of the woman, and say the light from the righthand flash is just starting out again. Regards, TAR It's the implications of it, and what actually must occur if it is true, where you and I seem to be at odds. For instance, you do not accept a "universal now", and I think there has to be such, or we would not just now be getting photons from an event that happened 3 years ago. That is, there has to be something happening now in a universal sense, for us to see it later. Strange, Not quite fair of you to post and animation, that you did not even check for accuracy or correctness. It was the visual assumptions and words of the video I was questioning, not Einstein's words. There are some deep philosophical questions of objectivity, subjectivity, observation and imagination that are involved here. And if one is to check their model of the world against the world and the observations and models of others, it is important to be percise about the defintions, and know when it is you are questioning what. Regards, TAR Besides the world, and how it operates can not be incorrect. Only our model can be at fault. True things remain true regardless of what we say about them.

Strange, Who said I don't think relativity is correct? It is absolutely correct. The video is wrong. Regards, TAR So, if you don't like my light flashing thought experiment, lets just take a crowd at a stadium and have two people (a man and a woman at different ends of the stadium) shout when they see the clock hit 2:14.00. Relativity would tell us (if we let sound stand for light), that the order of the shouts will be heard by people on the left side of the stadium opposite the order the people on the right will hear the shouts. And the inverval between the start of the shouts will be small at the center of the stadium and large near the ends, with a smooth ratio holding between time and distance in each case. So if the woman is running down the field, and she hits the 50 yard line at 2:14 she will hear the shout of the fan on the right first because she will be on the 48 yard line. But if she hits the 50 when a fan with a seat on the 50 yard line hears the shouts, she willl hear the shouts together, as well, but it will be a little after 2:14 when the fan and her hear the similtaneous shouts. Regards, TAR

Strange, Don't you see, that if she is in the center, when the guy sees the flashes, the light has already traveled to the center from both ends, She has already seen both flashes. You can not then have her proceed to the right to meet a photon she has already experienced. It makes no sense to do so. Your initial conditions have to be internally consistent, and you have to stick to them, you can not carry one thing from one reference point to the other without carrying everything from one reference point to the other. EVERYTHING has to add back and fit. That is the way the world works. Regards, TAR

Let's take a bunch of observers, all in a field lets say, and have each with a different colored light that they could flash once whenever they felt like it, but should record the color of the flashes they saw and the order and timestamp of each. We give them state of the art sensing equiptment that can discern the difference in time between his/her own flash reflected off a mirror 1 meter away and a mirror placed 2 meters away. All the observation points gathered together in a close cirlce before the experiment and synced up their clocks with a clock in the center of the circle. After the experiment, no two observers would have the same account of the order of flashes, color, and timestamp. It is impossible for a red flash on the left edge of the field and a blue flash at the center of the field to be logged as having flashed on the same timestamps on the log of the left flasher. the center flasher and an observer out on the right. So what are we calling the "same time" in this field experiment. We can only take the data and add everything back and then each observers position and record of flashes will add back exactly and make sense. Regards, TAR

Strange, I am not inventing objections. I have objections because certain things do not add up. For instance you say she is in the middle of the train and she knows she is in the middle of the train, she knows the one strike came from the front of the train, and that happened first, and then the strike came from the rear of the train which makes complete sense, except for the fact that we earlier agreed that she was exactly in the middle, between the strikes when the strikes occured and moved down the track a bit before she saw the righthand strike. If this movement is what allows her to see the righthand strike first, then the distance the right hand strike traveled to her eye is less than the distance the lefthand strike will move to her eye, meaning, to me, in not an invented way, but in a questioning way, that the strikes occurred before she and the center of the train got to the point in front of the man. All the beginning assumptions could therefore not have happened "at the same time", and somewhere the travel time of light is being ignored from the vantage point of either the frontstrike position, or the rear strike postiion, or the changing position of the woman, or the stationary position of the man, or the godlike position of the thought experiment imaginer, who can take each position in turn, and attempt to add back what happened in a general, or global way. In order to do this, I choose to take an instance of a photon at a time and track where that photon was throughout the experiment and how far away from each observer it was, and therefore each observer's position throughout the complete scene that unfolded in a thusly referenced "time". Regards, TAR

Strange, No, I don't get it. I don't see it like that. And what is this deluded crank bit? Perhaps making sense of the world is not important to you. It is to me. How is it that she knows the strikes were equal distance apart? She sees the front strike first and the rear strike later. The front strike traveled a shorter distance to her than the rear strike did. She traveled down the track a bit toward the right strike, by the time she saw it, so that strike traveled half a train minus the distance the train traveled before she saw it. On the other hand the rear strike traveled half a train, plus the distance the train traveled while the left strike was getting to her. So the distances the light traveled were not the same, as you propose, therefore if she calculated them as having traveled equal distances than she would be in error. Rather, she could add back the distances and the speeds and figure that for the guy on the bank the strikes would have been simultaneous. Regards, TAR

Strange, Well, that makes sense, and is the way I picture it. It is however contrary to the first scene where the circles of light converge on the man, while the center of the train is infront of him. As you say, to be simultaneous the strikes have to reach the man some finite time after they occur. The formulation of the video suggested that the strikes occurred at each end of the train, as the guy saw them, and when the center of the train was infront of him. The first scene shows exactly that. But we both know that can not happen. What is evidently meant, is that the strikes occured "when" the woman was infront of the man, but he did not see the flashes until a brief time later, at which point the train had already moved to the right, and the woman was in position to have already seen the right hand strike, before the guy, and would consequently see the lefthand strike, after the guy. If this is all that the thought experiment is meant to point out, I have understood it, since I first read it in my teens and have factored it into my understanding of reality and time and space. Regards, TAR

Strange, The question is not whether or not she is in the middle of the train, it is "when" the lightning strikes. The problem assumes and specifies that lightning strikes the two ends of the train, at the same time. This similtaneity can only be determined by a person halfway between the strikes, it is not a condition that exists otherwise. You can not base your understanding of the rest of the problem on the fact that the two strikes happened at the same time, as if that time is instantaneous and globally applicable to the whole problem, as if the strikes happened everywhere in and around the train, at the same time, when your definition requires the central position to determine the similtaneity. Even with the train moving, a dog at the back end of the train will see the rear strike first. A monkey at the front of the train will see the front strike first, and a woman in the middle of the train will see both strikes at the same time. The relativity, the fact that different positions will determine the order of events differently, is the crucial component, the important thing to know about reality. It is not so much the fact that someone is moving that causes this time dilation. It is the fact that one has changed position. In the video, the expanding circle from the front of the train and the one from the back of the train, must touch each other when the middle of the train is in front of the man on the embankment, or the simultaneity of the strikes is forfeit. And if the circles of expanding light were properly drawn, they would arrive at the woman, the same time the woman arrives infront of the man. If you expect some impossible thing to happen instead, then you are changing your definitions midstream. You cannot freeze the train in a central position at the start of the experiment, and also have it in a central position after the circles have expanded. It has to have happened one way, or the other. Either the train was not yet in a central position when the lightnings stuck and was then in a central position when the guy saw the lightnings, or it was in a central position when the guy sees the lightnings, in which case the woman is also in a central position at that time, which means the train had to be not in a central position when the lightnings struck. I can not "go by the words" if the words make no sense and contradict each other. Does the guy see the strikes at the same time, or not? Is the woman at the same spot, halfway between the strikes, when the guy sees the strikes, or not? If she is at the same spot as the guy, at the same time as the guy is there, and the circles of light are converging on the guy in a simultaneous fashion, they MUST as well converge on the woman, or you have goofed up the experiment somewhere, and called something wrong. Regards, TAR Perhaps the problem would better be stated if the microsecond differences between observers was taken into account and "the same time" defined in a standard way consistent throughout the problem. The end of the train, the other end of the train, the man, the woman and us observing the problem, are not all in the same place, at the same time, and the microsecond differences between each position, in terms of the speed of light, are crucial to take into consideration when defining what is happening at the same time, what happened before, and what happened after what. And the poor observer of the whole problem has an additional handicap, in that he/she can freeze the thing in any configuration he/she pleases, and is not bound by the speed of light, and can see the situation in an instantaneous fashion, "all at once". So, restate the question in a realistic fashion. And we can then figure out what makes the most sense. In the video, the first time they show the expanding circles from the guy's perspective, they train is right there infront of the guy, and the circles converge on the center of the train, right where the woman is seated. Then the next time when we see the train in motion, the circles converge in some different manner. The two depictions are of different events, not the same events witnessed from two different frames of reference. The video is flawed. The photons were only in the places they were in in the order they were in them once. The circles must converge in the same place, at the same time, no matter who is moving through the scene at any speed, from any direction. That is reality. If a photon is emitted from an atom and it goes in a certain direction at the speed of light, it is not all the places in that vector at the same time, it is only one place at a time. It may be vibrating left and right and up and down in such a way as to describe two sine waves orthogonal to each other of a particular wave length and thus a particular frequency, but the photon itself is only at one position on those "waves" at any particular moment. If a yellow photon has a wavelength of 530 nanometers and beats 500,000,000,000 times or whatever every second, which is spread over 186 thousand miles, the photon itself is not all the places on that line at once. It is only one of the places at once. It is either there, or here or inbetween, but it is only one place at a time. It is not spread out, over the entire distance. As the train comes by the first photons from the front strike and the first photons from the rear strike, are available for view in the vicinity of the area in front of the guy. If the center of a train is there, then, then the woman can experience said photons. If it is not there, then she can't. The video is flawed because the simultaneous nature of the flash requires the flashes to occur, and then be seen by the man. In the first scene the train is stationary and the circles moving. In the second scene the circles are sort of stationary and the train is moving into them and the front circle sweeps through the whole train, and then the rear circle sweeps through the whole train. The two scenes are not consistent with each other, in terms of the envisioned positions of the photons. In other words the two scenes are not of the same events.

All, Gentleman I work with's father quit the same day I did, back in April. Neither of us knew the other was quitting, or even knew each other. The son told me this was going to be his "test" because he was going back to China and would be "unsupervised", and on his own. He told me that he told his father he had to continue to not smoke as I, his quitting partner am continuing to not smoke. I suggested he tell his dad again Phi's "not an option" principle, and suggested the father should think of the most beautiful Chinese movie star, and consider that going out with her is not an option, and think of not smoking in the same way. Just not an option. By the way, the young lady that said she would stop if I did, that did stop a month or so back is still stopped and this weekend, I am coming up on the half year mark. My wife is still smoking, but less and less. I think she is on her own schedule of tapering. My sister has really bad bronchitis but has zero interest in stopping. It is probably very required that one wants to stop, in order to stop. I am just here to tell you that I find my quest for the 100 things that make you feel good, that are free and healthy and natural and good in and of themselves, is still "working" in a more and more sustainable way, with less and less chance of failure. I am not going to go back to smoking, when there are so many other ways to get the dopamine without the costs. If you do smoke, and would like to keep smoking, that is your choice, I can not change your mind, and I know exactly where you are coming from, and actually think its OK, while being somewhat dangerous, in that it does make one "feel good", and that is what we are all after anyway, but if you do think it might be better to not smoke, the best plan I can suggest is to learn how to live without the nicotine. And as I have repeatedly suggested, the best time to see what it is like, is Saturday Morning, when your nicotine levels are low, and your body and mind are demanding endorphines. Just see if you can't enjoy yourself for that first hour, without the nicotine, and then go ahead and indulge. I am 100 percent sure, you can feel good, without the nicotine. Its the endorphines or the dopamine rather, that makes you feel good, anyway. Its not the nicotine. The nicotine just causes the dopamine to get released. So just learn how to cut out the middleman, and go right for the dopamine, and you will learn that you do not need the middleman. Then if you would rather not smoke, than smoke, you can just not smoke. Regards, TAR

Strange, I just proved the photons must leave the position of the lightning strikes prior arriving at a point equal distant between them. And I proved that the formulation of the thought experiment puts the woman in front of the man, also equal distant from the two strikes, at the moment that the man sees the two strike. Therefore, she is in position to see both stikes at the same time, at least the start of both strikes, and therefore must have been to the left of the center when the strikes occured and got to the center, just when the first photons from the two strikes did. I don't see how this is a problem. It is, I agree, impossible that the woman be two places at once. She is either at the midpoint, along with the man, when the photons from the strikes arrive at the midpoint, some time after the strikes occured, or she is not. Her movement has nothing to do with which strike she sees first, if she is in position to see them both at the same time. Regards, TAR Similtaneity does not mean mutually inclusive. That is, the left strike and right strike happened at the same time, but that was slightly before the guy saw them. And the photons from the left strike get to the right strike after the right strike strikes and the photon from the right strike get to the left strike after the right strike stikes. From the point of view of the right strike, the right strike happened first, and then the left strike. An nobody is moving. So you can start, or at least I can start with a universal now, where everything, everywhere is the only instance of the thing that there is, and everything is exactly as old as the universe is. Every peice and part is exactly the same age. Nothing has been around longer than the universe has been, and anything we see, already happened. Once you have this baseline, then you realize that you are just as old as everything else, and what you do next will be the first time that has happened, because the universe was never in this configuration before. And since you know light takes time to travel, anything that is happening 300,000 km from here will be apparent in a second, but we can witness now, what happened over there, a second ago. This means some photons are on their way, inbetween here and there, and each photon also has the attribute of being only one instance of itself, and only present in that one, universal now that everything else is present in. It does not represent an image of the thing. It is an actual photon from the thing. And there are more like it, on their way. If we would travel toward that spot 300000 km from here, we would see all those photons blue shifted and when we got to the spot, it would still be now, and the rest of universe would have progressed the time it took us to get there. Regards, TAR

Strange, It is you that is missing simple fact. You have the woman in front of the man when your two machines fire their photon. So she travels a bit before the photon from the right machine hits her first. Then the photon from the left hits her. This is not the complete thought experiment. She is AT the center, directly in front of the man when the photon from machine A and machine B get to the man. Partner photons released from A and B pointed 5 ft above the track would arrive at the point 5 ft above the track infront of the guy at the same time as the woman was in that spot. That means that the woman had not yet reached this spot, when the photons were fired. (or the lightnings struck). You are mixiing instantaneous moments, and considering the two strikes are occuring at the same time everywhere. They are not. They are only happening at the same time for anybody on the plane between, and someone directly between will see them first and someone a ly away, but on that plane, will see them as simultaneous, on year later. Regards, TAR

Actually Strange, I saw that video up in Physics, before my comments. Its what made me think of it. I have Einstein's own discription of it in a book I just touched. I have read the passage many times over the last decade or two and thought about it a lot. A whole lot. That is WHY I have my photon tracking requirement, and my understanding of simultanaety, because I have read and attempted to grasp what is happening with light, and observers and time and space. Watch the video again. Why do the circles not touch exactly when the woman is in front of the man. They should. Because similtaneity IS when light takes the same time to get to an observer from two distant points. Every time the simulation shows the photons coming from the front and back of the train, whether from the point of view of the moving woman or the stationary man, the circles should touch, right when the woman is in front of the man. If they do not, then the simulation is wrong. It contradicts the initial condition that the strikes were simultaneous. Regards, TAR

MigL, I think you can have a good bear and an evil bear. They are certainly capable of intent, and when a bear gets aggressive around here, they are labeled 1A bears and hunted down and killed. But you are right that it was more a matter of self preservation than revenge, that the bear was shot. So what about the Israelis and the Paletinians? They each feel just in killing the other for past autracities. Or the Hatfields and McCoys. Or now Al Queda and the U.S.. The score needs to be settled. The "other" side needs to be brought to justice. How do you, or where do you draw the line, in some objective fashion between the type of action that you sluf off and continue on with life, after, or the kind of thing that requires a payback? I saw a video the other day of a woman keying a Mercedes after an argument with the owner. Pure spite. Chicken sh#t revenge. At least looking someone in the face and punching them in the nose puts the puncher "on the line" and the punched can punch back. Tit for tat is exactly revenge. Just a bit more serious and permanent when death is involved. When ISIS cuts of a head, as payback for support of its enemies, should the act stand? Should we "get them back"? "Now you've done it!" "I've had all I can take!" "OK, that's it, now the gloves come off!" "Oh, you want to play hardball, do you?" Even if testosterone is responsible for the desire for revenge, its a real hormone causing real emotions and desires. People have to operate, when dealing with other people, in such a way that acknowledges the other's ability to take revenge. Justice and revenge, I think, go hand in hand. Complicated maybe, by consideration of who has the power, who is in control of the situation, and an additional complication comes into play in that everybody WANTS control of the situation. Perhaps that is it. Having the last laugh. Dealing the final blow. Getting the best of the other guy. Sometimes the family of a person who was killed feels a kind of closure and victory when their loved ones killer is put to death. Does not bring back the loved one. But its a lot better than living with a bear that has tasted human flesh, roaming around. Regards. TAR

Bluedot, Well, I can not pick up any pattern or progression or notice any "other" way to look at the boxes that would guide one to know what the question mark box in number 3 should be. My only reasoning is that it seems more likely a figure that has not been yet presented would be the answer, than one already presented. The previous box has a figure with eight sides, the following box has a figure with eight sides, so perhaps the answer should have eight sides. There are two answers with this new eight sided figure, so maybe one of them. However I don't get what is happening with the background and forground black, grey and white, so just guess the one I originally guessed. But this whole reasoning is exactly the reasoning I had before Imatfaal got number one. Number one was so "good" and clear and satisfying that I expect the same kind of code to be "hidden" in number 3. Nobody has seen it yet, but I think its there. Hardly ill concieved or lame the answer will be. We already know what the maker of the challenge is capable of. Regards, TAR

Strange, Relativity is not a person. It does not have problems. I can have a problem with other peoples concept of it, as other's can have a problem with mine. General relativity and special relativity are two different concepts with two different purposes, designed for each purpose by humans. Any beef I would have with a concept is therefore with the concept holder, not with the thing that the each of us is conceiving. Regardless of which aspects of relativity you get and I do not, the two lightning strikes were similtaneous to all positions in the plane between them, and NOT to each other. Light takes time to get from one place to another. The lightning strike on the right, was not seen by an observer at the position of the left lightning strike immediately and similtaneously. The observer AT the left strike saw the other strike, after it saw its own. Show me where such a thought is wrong, Regards, TAR So, It would be required, in the thought experiment to be consistent with what we are calling the lightning strike, and its duration. If we are concerned with the midpoint, in terms of the duration of the strikes, lets say they each were a second long, then the traveler will experience the midpoint of the right hand strike, prior her experiencing the midpoint of the lefthand strike, but if this is what you are concerned about, you can not talk about WHEN the strikes happened as one instant, because the start of either lightning did not occur at the same time as the end of even its own flash. But in the thought experiment the stipulation is that the two strikes were simultaneous to the guy on the embankment. This stipulation requires that all points that are the same distance from both strikes, see the events as simultaneous. They must by definition start at the same moment for both the guy on the bank and the woman on the train. But the strike on the right will be over for her in a shorter time than the strike on the left, which, if you track the photons, would have to happen like this. The last photon associated with the lefthand strike, will pass by the guy and later reach the woman who is now a greater distance from the left hand strike, then she was when she saw the first photon. The train need not shorten to accomidate this reality, she just sees the light as redder than the guy. and the finish of the strikes was simultaneous to the guy, but not for the woman who saw the right strike's billion blueish pulses finish in slightly less than a second, and the left strike's reddish pulses finish in slightly more. She must see the same number of pulses as the guy, because those are the pulses the strikes made. If she is running into them they are bluish, if she is going away they are reddish, but this way of looking at relativity, does not require the train to shorten. It makes complete sense without the train shortening. Regards, TAR

Bluedot, Ok. So Imatfaal got number one. You got number 5. We agree on number 4, But number two is still up for grabs, Endy0816 sees some rhombus triangle thing resulting in E as the answer, you see some five line thing resulting in C, and I see some left to right progression of keep and change that points to A. And number 3 has not fallen into place for anybody yet. So, two to go. Regards, TAR Bluedot, Just noticed these are not questions 1 through 5, as I had first assumed. QNS is a clinical laboratory abbreviation for Quantity Not Sufficient. Don't know if that observation helps, but it seems to indicate that to "get" the answer, you have to bring something to the party. Sort of a BYOS (specimen) party. Regards, TAR

Strange, I've heard of that. I have a book on the arm of my chair, right now, entitled The Principle of Relativity. It is a collection of original papers on the special and general theory of relativity by Einstein, Lorentz, Weyl and Minkowski. I have actually read every word and thought about the ideas and implications. I consider similtaneity and what it would require. I am not in complete agreement when experiments call a thing simultaneous and then change the defintions, midstream. You should not have to shorten stuff to make your equations work. In the train experiment, with the lightning strikes at the front and rear of the train, happening similtaneously from the vantage point of the guy on the embankment, the actual photons from the one strike and the other are reaching him at a particular moment. The train rider is presumably directly inbetween the two strikes, at this moment, so the first photons from the left hand strike, and the first photons from the right hand strike will arrive at this central position, together. At the same time, even though the time is slighly after the strikes themselves. Perhaps the guy on the embankment was closer to the strikes and saw them first, or further from the strikes and saw them after, but because they have already been stipulated as being simultaneous, any position on a plane imagined directly between the two strikes, will experience the first photon from each, at exactly the same time. One strike will not occur before the other, no matter how fast, in what direction they are proceeding, as long as they are in a position on that plane, when they experience the first photon from the one, they have to experience the first photon from the other, simultaneously. What will be different between the guy standing on the embankment and the observer in the train, is the frequency of light they see, or if you will, when they experience the second photon from each. There will be a shorter amount of time until the second photon from the right strike reaches her, because she is traveling toward it, and will experience a bluer light. The strike from behind will be redder. Her train will not shrink when measured in the direction of movement, because she is moving. It has no reason to shrink. So if all of relativity stands on the fact that she will see the lead strike before the trail strike, I just don't agree. Because by definition, she needs to see the first photon from each strike simultaneously. You can not say the strikes are simultaneous and then say, "well no, there is no such thing". There is a universal now. And that is what is currently happening at every position in the universe. When we see it, will be exactly coincident, with how far away it was when it happened and how fast we are moving toward it, or away from it in the interim. That is, imaginarily, every position in space has some particular collection of photons, in and around it, and each of those photons is on its way to some other position, at the speed of light. Historically you have to account for a particular photon, and where it was and where it is going at a particular time. Whether that time is past present or future, does not change its starting point and time, nor the course it flew or will fly. I am offering an alternative way to look at what must be the case. I am not suggesting the world is any different than we experience it, or measure it. Regards, TAR The guy standing down the track to the right will see the right hand strike first and the lefthand strike after, because he is closer to the right hand one, then the left. In this case even two observers in the same frame of reference will not agree on the order of the strikes, or on their similtaneity. I am counting on that to be the case, because the universe is not all at the same place and time. It is all happening now, at different places, and its all arriving here presently, both. It can not just be one way or the other. That would not look the way that it does. It has to be the way it actually is, to look like this. (meant closer to the one than the other, wrote "then", but am having trouble with my edit)

Bluedot, On 2 you were thinking "the question may simply ask "which one is the most like others?". I do not think in general that is what the code maker is asking in the 5 questions. I think it is more like "do you see what I am doing here?" or in the spirit of code breaking "I am thinking something here, and you will know what it is, as soon as you see it, as soon as you break the code" Regards TAR Bluedot, Well since you know exactly what the code maker was thinking in five, why did he/she put the symbols in the northwest and southeast corners in the other two boxes and not in the answer? I guess you did not like my initial figuring for 3, or you would not be asking for something reasonable. I initially was thinking the answer had to be a new symbol, since all the others were different, and just tried to figure why the background and symbol shading would be a certain way. Could not really come up with anything. Made me wonder if the puzzle was originally in color and the shading did not give the proper clues. Anyway, that was before Imatfaal cracked the first one. Now I am thinking he/she is doing something obvious, and I am not yet seeing it. Let me look at it a bit, without looking at the answers and see if I can figure what should be where the question mark is. Regards, TAR

Bluedot, I agree with your answer to 4. I think the code is: Put a symbol inside another and if one symbol has more sides than the other, bold it. E follows the code. And in addition there are three boxes with symbols of the same number of sides, three with the bolded greater number of sides on the inside symbol, and only two with the bolded, greater number of sides being the outside symbol. So we need a combination of symbols where the outside symbol has more sides than the inside, and the outside symbol is bolded. E is just such a combination. I will look at your answer to number five again, to see if I understand what you are saying, but I think a guide to anwering the questions, is to forget completely about the answers given, and see if you can see the answer without being given any posibilities. Once you are sure of what the answer is going to look like...only one will be like that...and that will be the answer. Regards, TAR Three to go. Bluedot, OK, I see your 5,3 reasoning for number 5, but there is something about it that seems obscure or fishy, so that I am not really sure if you have the code. Your code works and you might have broken the code, in this case, but it is not as satisfying as Imatfaal's break of number one, and I am holding out hope that there might be a more satisfying answer for 5. So, still three to go. (or at least 2) Regards, TAR

Strange, I require there to be such, inorder to make sense of everything. How can you say there is not such a thing? Right now, the closest star to us is shining. We know this has to be the case, because the thing is a distance away, light takes time to travel, and we saw the thing yesterday, we see it today and we will see it tomorrow. Therefore there must be photons on their way here now, and photons that passed us, on their way somewhere else. ALL places in the universe must be, in actually, now, 13.8 billion years old, because everything came into existence 13.8 billion years ago. This establishes very firmly, with no question about it, a "universal now". That which is the case, presently, everywhere. On the other hand, we see very distant things as very young things, on millions of years old or only 10 billion years old, or whatever. Whatever age an observer is, is the age of the universe. Everything else is the same age, but is observed as being younger, because it took light some time to reach the eye of the observer. This would be the case if the thing was a billion lys away or a million, or one, or a million miles or a mile or a meter or a nanometer, or a planck distance, away. Regards, TAR

Ten oz, I bring up ISIS in this context because my primary beef with them is that they cut of women's clitiori, so they will not enjoy the sex act, This is about as abusive and demeaning as you can get toward women, as far as I can see. Justice and revenge, in this case would be to catch the Caliph, cut off his balls, and kill every male he has sired. That way the direct line from Ismael would be severed for good, and we could go about the business of making it possible for others to enjoy life, rather than live for the stupid, unreal promise of virgins and satin couches and rivers of honey...later. I am conflicted also in our stance in Syria, because I do not know how far to go with the "common enemy" thing, and there are many that would fight ISIS for different reasons than I would fight it, but I just figure, that if Kurdish women would take up arms against the IS, I am on their side. Even if the only thing we are protecting here, is their clitori. Regards, TAR Off topic, but this reveals a major flaw in Allah's plan. Are there male virgins waiting in heaven for female believers? And what happens to a virgin in heaven, male or female, after you have sex with them? After 20 times, 20 virgins would no longer be at your disposal. Or possibly very on topic. Abrahamic religions are very sexist, and between Judism, Christianity and the Muslim faith, much of the world is dominated by people who believe they have decended from Abraham. It also seems to me that the Bible and the Koran frame God/Allah as a father figure...a male. In this environment "justice" might be skewed toward a male's point of view, and Ten Oz might have a significant gripe.

Bluedot, Well wait. Imatfaal gave us THE answer to number 1. You are just floating the "best answer" or your "best guess". In other words you have not cracked the code, if therei is an element of doubt and if it a guess. Still four to go. You need someone else to say "oh yeah, now I see it", or you have not cracked it, just given a "possible", arbitrary assessment. Regards, TAR

or perhaps 4 to go

Strange, I am working on it, but it is difficult to find the right baseline. There seems to be two nows. I talked about this before I know, but it is crucial to the figuring. I am rather sure there is only one instance of a particular thing, that is what makes it a particular thing, but each thing is in a particular position in relationship to everything else. Deciding what is true about an item 3 lys from here is an interesting conundrum. It is really there, now, doing something, just one instance of the item currently extant. It has a definite history and will have a definite future, and will at all times, past present and future be just one particular item...but, we are looking at the darn thing, like it is here, now, which it actually is, in the most immediate way that the universe can present itself to other parts of itself. So for the galaxy in question that we are looking at from here, and from exactly as far away from the center of it, in the other direction, we have some interesting "time" shifts to engage in, and sort out in a manner that does not create any paradox. To do this, we (I) have to entertain the thought that there are two types of now to consider. One is an actual now, that exists for any "living" observer, as the present moment, which is made up of the historical information arriving continually from the rest of the universe. The other "now" is an imaginary consideration of the entire universe consisting of only the present moment, where every "living" observer is 13.8 billion years old. This type of consideration demands that what we see as Cosmic Background Radiation is historical information from shortly after the big bang, having eminated from a very distant section of our universe, which is currently 13.8 billion years old. Which now you consider real and which you consider imaginary, can change hands, depending only on which way you are looking at it. We can not ever actually see it all at once, and have to peice together our image of what it has to be really like, in our imaginations. So the calculations might not be difficult, but setting up the problem is hard because you have to be careful to choose, at the beginning, a reference point in time and space, that you will consistently refer to, throughout the entire calculation. This is hard for my brain to handle, in terms of the constant check backs, to make sure I am doing it right, and not forgetting that it takes light time to get from one place to another, and constantly assess the nature of my perspective, so that I do not inappropriately consider two things simultaneous in one manner, when the other is the appropriate manner in which to consider it, for the benefit of the calculation. After all, the distance between real objects takes time to traverse in the one sense, and can be transversed instantly in the other. Regards, TAR besides, you only figure I won't be successful in accomplishing the calculation because you can see what a challenge it would be to maintain the correct perspective at the appropriate points

Ten Oz, i have two daughters and a wife, I tend to do whatever I can to raise their status and power and control of their own lives. I am not thinking though that I would be as removed from the thought of revenge as Dimreeper would have me be, should someone ever abuse either of my daughters. I simply would not allow such action to stand. Perhaps I have been blessed with strength and size and smarts, to where I fear very few. But I do not think you give enough big strong males, and enough of the rich and powerful the benefit of the doubt. There are a tremendous amount of people who could take advantage, but do not. Plenty of big strong men that protect, plenty of rich and powerful that establish safe and sure livelyhoods for others, and plenty of intelligent folk who could easily fool others, but instead teach and solve problems and create wonderful things that make life better for others. Your statistics added up to requiring 40 million men to be in prison for abusing women. What if there were only a few million men who deserved prison and they had each abused 20 women over their lives? I think its ok to trust others. Even men. I go by a 90/10 rule. 90 percent of us are good, 10 percent not so good. Its just that the 10 percent mess it up for everybody else. Plus each of us has done a few bad things. Probably when we were 15-18 yrs old. We are better now. Don't do those things any more. Know better how to act. But there is always somebody whose buddy steals a pack of cigarettes, just that one time. Add it all up, it looks like the world is going to hell in a handbag...except that the most of us are going to keep it from doing so. We are going protect the weak, and poor and infirmed and stand against evil, try and reduce pain and anquish, and lock the biggest mischief makers away. But this thread is about revenge. I think we need to pursue revenge when someone ruins our lives. Its what keeps people in line, in terms of caring about what other people think. The world for instance is interested in stopping ISIS. Stopping ISIS seems an excellent idea to me. Killing Bin Laden seemed an excellent idea to me. Dimreeper might be able to take a higher perspective on the situation, but my feeling is, you have to use your best judgement, and you have to protect your way of life and help others on your teams, that believe in the same stories as you do, succeed in reaching their dreams. If somebody damages my way of life, if they harm me and mine, I am liable to fight back. If I have an enemy that wants me dead, I need to fight that enemy. On Sunday my wife and I were talking to the guy across the street about the bear we had taken a picture of, the week before, standing between our shed and house...at the same time a very rare event was occurring 3 miles away at Apshawa Preserve. 5 hikers encountered a bear who began following them. They became frightened and scattered and ran. Four rejoined and could not find the 5th. They called authorities who found the malled dead body of the 5th hiker 2 hrs later. A black bear was circling the body and would not leave. They shot it dead. First deadly bear attack in NJ in 152 years. Would you call killing the bear revenge? Or is it much better to not have a black bear who has tasted human flesh roaming around. I think the later. Take revenge, when taking revenge seems ultimately appropriate. Regards, TAR By the way another neighbor saw "our bear" Tuesday at 5 so he was not the culprit. He was innocent of the crime, and has been breaking my fence and eating my pears and breaking the branches of my neighbor's pear tree, quite in the manner a normal black bear should. There are around 2000 black bear in NJ. We only took our revenge against the one that deserved it. I was actually pleased to hear our bear was still alive, and not the killer. mauled