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Thread, Here is a really neat application of the Spherical Rhombic Dodecahedron combined with the grid system for TAR coordinates, repurposed and calibrated to be used as a one picture color space descriptor. I came up with it earlier today and am calling it the HAS system (Hue, Additive Color, Subtractive Color) system. It is similar to the HSL (hue, saturation, luminence) but uses the additive nature of light and the subtractive nature of pigments to move a hue toward white, or toward black. The hue system is the same as the HSL system with Red at 0 degrees, Yellow at 60 degrees, Green at 120 degrees, Cyan at 180 degrees Blue at 240 degrees and Magenta at 300 degrees, with all the rainbow colors at the appropriate places between. These six diamonds are taking the place of diamonds 2,7,12,5,9, and 11. Red Green and Blue are additive colors and the 12 segment figure works out perfectly to have a red diamond, a red yellow diamond and a red magenta diamond. a green diamond a green cyan diamond and green yellow diamond. a blue diamond, a blue magenta diamond, and a blue cyan diamond. Yellow, Cyan and Magenta are Subtractive colors and it works out to have a yellow diamond connected to that red yellow diamond and that green yellow diamond. a cyan diamond connected to the green cyan diamond and the blue cyan diamond, and a magenta diamond connected to that blue magenta diamond and the red magenta diamond. 6 vertical 3 diamond areas are thusly described with red, green and blue going from 0 to 255 south to north and yellow, cyan and magenta going 0 to 255 north to south. This is perfect, because Red and cyan are complimentary colors, and if you have red 255 you are going to have yellow 0 at the north pole, where white is located at the juncture point of Red 255, Green 255 and Blue 255. Which is where yellow is 0 cyan is 0 and magenta is 0, as you would have white if you put no toner/pigment/paint down on a white canvas. Conversely where you have the max amount of toner down, what this system would call yellow 255, cyan 255 and magenta 255, you would have no light (red 0, green 0 and blue 0) or black. It also works out that any color has its complementary color on the opposite side of the sphere. For instance diamond 2 is red, and opposite side of the sphere is diamond 5 which is cyan. The complementary colors are Red/cyan, Green/magenta, and Blue/yellow. How this would actually look, color wise, I am not sure. But it seems like it might be interesting, complete and jive with human RGB perceptions as well as the the rainbow in terms of wavelengths and the CMYK system in terms of pigments. I am anxious to learn visual basic and try it out. The system can be shown in two dimensions as pictured here. Regards, TAR

Sunshaker, What are you talking about with a building bending over the horizon? It seems you have some analogy or another backward or goofed up in your mind. You made a similar no meaning suggestion when you were talking about the salt flat being consistently flat. If it does not have any bumps in it, does not mean its not curved. Look at a crystal ball. Perfectly smooth. No dips, no rises. Like a salt flat. But the surface comes around, and touches itself. There is only one side to the Earth. The outside, or the surface we are standing on. If you believe there is evidence for a flat earth AND the Earth is a 3 dimensional figure, what 3 dimensional figure do you figure it looks like, were you to view it from 50 thousand miles above where you are standing, from 50 thousand miles off to your right, from 50 thousand miles behind you, and from 50 thousand miles below you? Does this 3D geometrical figure that you believe there is evidence for, fit the evidence? Regards, TAR

Strange, But wait...if the spherical Earth is just a simulation, wouldn't the flat earth be a simulation as well? What kind of evidence for a flat earth could he witness, that might not just as easily be a simulation by the foolers, and what they did was meant to hide the fact that the whole operation is happening INSIDE a glass orb which is a gamepiece on the field of some immense creatures, like at the end of one of the "Men in Black" movies. If wishes were fishes, we'd all have a wonderful Christmas. I would think that any reasonable worldview would have to be internally consistent, and the pieces would have to fit together flawlessly. To that, you would have to start with something that you knew was NOT a simulation, but was actually real, in order to discern which parts were simulations. If you have no such evidence. No such starting point. Then ANYTHING and EVERYTHING could be a simulation, in which case the flat earth could be simulated, just as easily as a round one. So either way, Matrix or not, its best to go with the facts that fit together the best. Then you have the best chance of dealing with reality, and finding something to eat for dinner. Regards, TAR

John Cuthber, Yeah, I suppose if you sit down in the chair he says his invisible friend is sitting in, to show him there is nobody already in the chair, he will just say the guy got up to go pee, just before you sat down. But, my point was not that Sunshaker had to prove the thing to his irrational friend. My point was that Sunshaker should prove the thing to his own rational self. Does not matter what we show him, or tell him. It matters what he sees with his own eyes. Regards, TAR Besides, there is enough slop in the eyelet experiment to have the beam hit feet or even yards up or down on the post. If he wants to, he can easily position the laser pointer to point at the flat Earth line. If he wants. But if he is interested in really finding out which is true, he can refine the experiment and screw the eyelets in a little so the laser can only go though a tiny slit, and only hit one precise spot on the post on the other side of the lake...if he really wants to know the true, actual, real answer, to whether the surface of the lake is flat or whether it is curved. Or perhaps the sunset is the best evidence. Sunshaker, Call someone you know (and trust) in another timezone. Have them tell you how many degrees the Sun is, off (above or below) the horizon, when it is half way below yours. Last Easter I called my wife, who was at the Newark airport, from a high point next to rt. 287(about 30 miles West of Newark) (on my way back home from driving her and her cousin to Newark) to share the Easter sunrise with her. It was just starting to rise, where I was, and she said it had already risen where she was. I thought we could see it at the same time. I forgot to figure, that since she was East of me, she would see it, before me. (cause the Earth is round, and turns from West to East.) Regards, TAR

Whatever Theory, You showed with the butterflies, that it MIGHT work. But again, YOU picked the areas. You have not described how the camera/app is going to pick the areas to find a number for, nor how a particular number is to be arrived at, in a mechanical way, nor how an identifiable range of numbers for an area is to be decided upon. Without the details, you can't "test" the idea to see where it works and where it does not work. For instance do you have a number for the white area of black and white butterfly number one, that you will always arrive at when you analyze the white area of any member of the same species, using any smart phone, in any weather conditions, regardless of what colors are behind or around the butterfly? AND is this number different from the number of the white area of species two? You for instance gave us three numbers for each species white area. Do these numbers represent upper red mid red and lower red? Does this mean we will never take a picture of species number one, where any pixel in the white area of its wing will have a red value greater than 242? If there is one pixel found in the white area of species number ones wing that has a red value of 243, does that prove your scheme does not work? If we read a number of 242Red 220Green and 216Blue, in the white area of the wing of a black and white butterfly, does it belong to species one or species two? I am thinking you need to come up with a way to average, or blend the numbers, that will give you the same number, within a certain small band, no matter what large group of pixels in the white area of that subject you randomly chose to analyze. Then, you have a number to work with. Not a large window that an elephant could walk though, but a tiny slit, that only a number arrived at by analyzing a large number of pixels off the white area of THAT species of butterfly, would fit through. Since shadow and glare can vary your numbers greatly, I suspect you might fair better concentrating on your ratios, or on what turns out to be the hue, or tint. This makes sense to me, because the pigments that exist in the white area of the wing of one member of a species is likely to exist in similar quantities and distribution in another member of the same species. Not only would concentrating on the tint, help to eliminate shading issues, and allow IDing in various known lighting conditions, but there is also a good chance that a certain protein ALWAYS absorbs the same wavelengths of light, and the existence of that protein, would ALWAYS leave the same identifiable hole in the "white" light, or whatever known topline collection of wavelengths the subject was illuminated in. Regard, TAR

tonylang, Do you know how to do it, or not? If there is NOBODY that knows how to do it, then calling people deficient in not knowing how to do it, is not reasonable. You say that people will be able to do it better, if they are taught as they grow up, how to do it. Do what? If you know, teach someone. You don't need to know how to do it as you are growing up, you need to know how to do it when you die. If you know...tell us. If you are making it up and you don't know a darn thing about it, then stop talking like you know something nobody else knows. You know no such thing. You are talking nonsense. Regards, TAR

...OK mascot, take off that goofy chicken head, put on some pads and a helmet and get on the field, I have an idea for a play that just might work. Take one part magenta and 1.83 parts yellow and paint a patch. It should be the color of those snakes. Even paint the snakes if you are in the mood, with a little black for the darker areas and a little white for the lighter. I took an average of the 8 colors in the snake post and got red 176 green 110 and blue 55. These numbers had Whatever's "ratios" of -66 and -55. The ratios are just how much more of the one color there is than the next. Transferring the RGB value into CMY we have Cyan 80 Magenta 146 and Yellow 201. Using the under color reduction principle we can take Cyan 80, Magenta 80, and Yellow 80 (a certain shade of black) out of that and get Magenta 66 and Yellow 121. This is equal to one part magenta and 1.83 parts yellow, or if you want to bring the tint up in word or paint or whatever, using RGB values, use 121 Red and 55 Green. Regards, TAR So the snake's RGB value, based on those 8 samples could be thought of as R/G 2.2 or in CMYK, Y/M 1.83

Whatever Theory, Here is another challenge for you. Something my wife brought home from the grocery store and something I brought in from the garden. They have similar looking colors, but are not of the same species. By the way, I don't think you are allowed to consider only natural species. Many of the species that the users of your app are going to be taking pictures of are from the grocery store, or from the garden. In both cases, some heavy human hands have been adjusting the species to our needs. There might even be some "tricks" the food producers have, to make the colors look more appealing to humans...so you have to have ways to identify artificially engineered species as well. Also another point brought up by another member, was that the pictures that the smart phone takes, may be "optimized" for color and contrast, or the numbers may easily be otherwise manipulated, in manners you might not be aware of, that would throw off the "meaning" of the numbers you are working with. Picture taken early morning on a cloudy day with kitchen window behind me to my left, under an under shelf light with an unknown type of bulb. Taken with a Samsung S4 smart phone, with unknown settings. Regards, TAR whoops, I meant butterflies in a previous post...I was not trying to be gross or crude Another picture of the same subjects taken with the under cabinet light turned off. Diffused, reflected and refracted rainy day sunlight through two windows, around assorted glasses and pots, only.

Tony Lang, Nope. You are moving back and forth between knowing and being oblivious. And you are claiming this ID can go anywhere in the universe and currently the operation is controlled by nature (whatever ID nature has) but "in the future" knowing how it works will allow an ID to chose a vacation spot for a lifetime and then come back to Earth and catch up on the news. IF such a situation is what we have, why did we not know this, until the other day, when Tony Lang thought of it? How does Tony Lang know if TAR already knew this, and is on his 192,422nd instantiation, and ranks the Earth as the number 345th best planet to live on? You are just making it up. You have no evidence. You have no mechanisms that you can show us, how they work and let us in on the secret so that we can check out the 10 best places to live in the 10 best viable life forms. You can not tell us natures current decision making process and how we can bypass it or master it, or overrule it. Its just dream talk. No substance, no rules, no mechanisms, just wishful thinking. Here is a difficulty. The whole of the universe, currently is out of reach. Even neighboring planets on the other side of the Milkyway are currently experiencing now and we will have no connection to this now, there, until 100,000 years from now, here. If I am right, in my muses, every part of the universe is doing what its doing now, for the first time. The arrangement of the entire universe, has never been like this before. When we look out and see a quasar that existed 10 billion years ago we are looking at a thing that is already history, there is not a place to transfer our POV to that looks like that. That area of space has had 10 billion years to evolve and is currently doing something that we (on Earth or around here somewhere) will not know about for possibly ever, since that area of space may currently be outside the area where light currently emitted will ever reach the Milky Way. So, if I am right about that, which seems consistent with what we know about reality, then your claim that you can relativistically go anywhere you want has a problem. Namely, if you want to go somewhere you can see from this POV, you have no way of getting the travel brochure that shows what kind of weather the place is having this century. Even close places, a few light years away have only sent us 2 year old news. So your round trip hopes are garbage. Regards, TAR So you claimed the transfer is done relativistically, which I suppose is at the speed of light. But I have just pointed out that that speed, given the immense size of the universe, is too slow for any round trip hopes, so what, are you now going to claim that you meant that the transfer would be done at superluminal speeds, and that there is no distance to an ID, as well and it can go anywhere it wants , even outside the observable universe, and to it there is no time either, and that it can go to the quasar and be a hydrogen clump if it wants? If in your theory, you have to ignore space and ignore time, ignore this universe and any matter or metamatter in it, I would say that basically you are talking about something that has no bearing on this reality. So what is the point? Why not just subscribe to an Eastern religion and believe in reincarnation. They have been aware of the situation for 4 thousand years. They have all the "rules" worked out and documented. Regards, TAR

Tony Lang, Nope. Does not compute. If each cell has its own entanglement molecule, that has its unique history throughout spacetime, then you, with your million or billion of cells has a billion different unique histories, so your master complex individual Tony Lang ID makes no sense, as this particular collection of Earthbound molecules, never existed anywhere before, and never will again. Not in Tony Lang form. Not that has Tony Lang's parents and was born in the hospital in the town in the country on the planet on the date that Tony Lang was born. And each time a skin cell dies, that ID goes off to get reinstated on Planet Zircon, and some other ID that was just a cell in the hair folicle of a Quiching on Veralzibub, takes its place, changing the history of the IDs that make up Tony Lang. You can't have it both ways. Either the history of the cell's ID is paramount or the history of the Tony Lang is paramount...and I don't think YOU get to decide, which its going to be. Whatever is true is already true, and what you "think" about it, is not going to be the deciding factor. I repeat, that your theory is in the realm of dreamland, and can take any form and follow any rules you dream up. This is not a waking world based set of universal laws and principles you are talking. They don't work out here in the waking world. They don't fit, they do not add up. There is only one place where they work out. In the space between your ears. Regards, TAR Tony Lang, I described an idea litmus test back a while ago in some thread. How many things would have to change, for your idea to be correct? If the answer is more than zero things, you might consider the possibility, that you are dreaming the thing up and it has little to do with fitting the world, and only to do with fitting you. Regards, TAR (unless of course if it is within your power to affect the required changes)

Whatever Theory, I just noticed a greenish area on the body of the left snake, over toward your pinky. This would indicate to me, by the direction that the faces of the scales that are greenish are facing, that there is an arbor over your head, or you are wearing a green hat (or shirt). Sampling the colors in this area would more likely result in you being able to identify the location of the source of the dyes in your hat, than you being able to ID the snake. Regards, TAR Might be good to follow some white dress protocol, especially with species designed to blend in with their surroundings. Or maybe R128 G128 B128 gray outfits only. Whatever Theory, Also in regards to my OCR comment and the snakes in #130, I noticed that the markings on the two snakes are identifiably different. For instance the mark on the back of the neck of the bigger snake might be IDed as a carrot shape, and the mark on the back of the neck of the little snake, might be IDed as a bowling pin shape. To Strange's mention of cows and zebras and other species I did not look up to see their common names, I would have to add whatever species of whale that was I saw on a tour North of the tip of Cape cod. Each member of the species had its very own pattern of markings. The tour guides knew each whale, by sight. Going by their color though, they could have easily have been very large amputee Holsteins with reverse tracheotomies and faces misshappened by the accident, that just really loved the water off the cape. Regards, TAR Whatever Theory, The two latin names that strange just gave are black and white buttflies. Enough with the easy stuff. Show us the difference in the numbers between these two species. Regards, TAR

Whatever Theory, In looking at the snakes there are areas in the brown spots that are darker brown, like around the edges. There is also a shade difference due to lighting, as can be readily expected by the presence of the heavy glare on the left snake. My 36 point average system was an attempt to come up with an average tint and shade, that would define the color area in such a way as you might expect to arrive at the same number, should you test the same area again. With the markings on the snake being definite different shades at different areas of the marks, averaging the two areas together, would not be helpful, instead would represent a loss of important identifying data. Your program needs to have rules decided upon as to what areas on the subject are to be considered areas of a "different" color, where a number for that particular color should be arrived at, that will exactly match that particular color anywhere on the snake or anywhere where it is found on any member of the species in the same area. For instance, you may need a number for the border of the mark, and a different number for the area of the mark, inside the border. Which introduces another type of issue. Let's say one species of snake has brown markings that have a darker border of the same tint as the color in the center of the marking, and this is also true of species number two, but in species one the inside color is uniform, but in species two it is a very light shade in the center of the mark and gradually darkens as you get closer to the border. The "average" of the center color would be the same in both species, the average of the border color would be the same in both species, but you would have the same numbers listed as the color of both species, so you would not be able to ID the snake. Just say that its either this species or that species which is what you already knew and were hoping that the color ID process would resolve for you. This is a different type of issue than if one species had exactly the same inside color and border color of their marks, but the one species marks were big and few and the other species marks were little and many. Or if the one species had round marks and the other diamond shaped. Being as there are optical character recognition programs, you should be able to handle the shapes and sizes of the marks, but how are you going to handle transitions of color, where the average color is the same color in two species, but the way the pigment is distributed is the defining factor? Regards, TAR

Sunshaker, Well suppose you do have this weird friend that you are trying to reel in a little, as his conspiracy ideas are along the line of Matrix, and you have this .01 percent thought that he may be right, and you want to prove the reality of the world to yourself. You want to know for sure that you are not being fooled by some master fooler. Let's suppose that, and then look for a way to trip up the master fooler. What might he/she/it have forgotten to hide? How can we see the wires on the puppet. How can we see where he/she/it has failed to cover his/her/its tracks. Do the experiment with the laser pointer and the eyelets. Its just you and the laser against the fooler. You can see how it really works. Nobody else is forcing the laser to hit the round earth line or the flat earth line. Its just you, and reality. The way it has been with scientists for thousands of year. Or watch the eclipse with your friend. Or make a model of the shape of the Earth that your friend thinks it actually is in, and see if that works out and fits the facts that you know. Like if its a disc shape, can you stand on the other side of the disc? Or if you were to throw a stone off the edge, which way should the stone go? I wouldn't even get into what might be motivating this fooler into fooling people, or whether or not some super master fooler was fooling the fooler. I would just do the experiment, or go to Sandy Hook NJ on a clear day and watch the ships come and go over the horizon. Or measure the pixels on any wide horizon picture, or look closely at two widely separated uprights. The master fooler has left all this evidence that the Earth is a globe. What did it forget? How can you find a place where the master fooler slipped up and let the secret of the real shape of the Earth out of the bag. Regards, TAR

So you are going to use orbiting satellites to suggest the Earth is not an orb??? And the earlier pictures of the salt flats you are talking about, clearly had a horizon. When I just took the square root of 12,000 I got 109. If the salt flat was 109km long and 109km wide it would be 11,881 sq. km. 109 km is not a 10th of the circumference of the Earth. If the thing is 100km long and you can not see the end of it, its because the Earth is roundish and the surface has dropped away from your line of sight. Why do you figure you can not see the peaks of the Rockies from Eastern Ohio. It is pretty flat in the midwest, there is nothing blocking your view. sunshaker, are you sure about that 99.99 figure. You are not sounding like you are exploring a .01 doubt. You are sounding like Phi for All has you pegged. You will not have to wait until next week to see your friend...unless that is when you are getting the bathroom mirror repaired. Regards, TAR

Whatever Theory, Think as if you are building an app, for a smartphone, that would tell you the species you are looking at, just by taking a picture of it. You would need a database of data for the picture to compare itself against. What would be the nature of the data in the data base and what would be the nature of the data you would extract from the picture to compare against the data base. Have you designed the system in such a way that every species is always positively IDed? When would the system NOT properly ID a species? How do you fix this situation so that the system would positively ID the subject? What percentage of false positives would you accept? What can you do to decrease your projected amount of false positives? Does your system ID a species correctly enough times that a child would buy the app? An adult? A scientist studying little know species of wild flowers in the Andes? Regards, TAR Does such an app already exist? Is it faulty in any way that you can correct with any of your ideas? Whatever Theory, One thing I learned about scientific investigations is that if you have a good idea, and its a workable idea, someone has already thought of it. Not only already thought of it, but built a whole area of study around it, and investigated it from many different angles. And not only is it already being studied, but there is already standards and systems built and used in the field. And not only has someone thought the workable thought before, but they thought it, and developed it, and shared it 600 years ago. I like your idea, and I think it has possibilities, but you are not the first to study color, you are not bringing wonderfulness to an ignorant world, Mike Smith Cosmos is not your team mascot. You are on a science board, and people are trying to harness your energy and creativity and industrious nature, and get you to run in a sound manner. As opposed to running around in circles. Mike Smith Cosmos and I are in the later 1/3 of our lives. We would love to present the world with a gift. Some thought or picture or direction that would make life better and more enjoyable for people. We would love to answer unanswered questions or show people how wonderful this or that aspect of the universe is. But we have had these desires for years, long before you came on the board. You are not our captain though. We are not following you. We are guiding you. Regards, TAR

Tony Lang, Well wait. According to your theory Albert Einstein should reinstantiate. Where and when might that be? How would we know? Why would we care? Where was he 20 BC? I am afraid you are looking for immortality and there is very little evidence that that is what has happened, is happening or will happen...to anybody. We have zero evidence that the same ID pops up for a second round somewhere. And were your theory to be correct, this particular instantiation of you is not the first time you have been instantiated, and there is zero difference between what would happen if you knew about the quantum ID or you did not know about the the quantum entanglement ID. It makes no difference to WHAT would happen, if you knew the score or remained oblivious. What can we do to change the scheme? Can we do it better or screw it up? Can we master it and control it? What difference does knowing what you know make to anybody but you. Regards, TAR

String Junky, But if he sets up the laser thing, and before he turns on the laser, which is 30 inches off the ground, he makes two marks on a post across the lake, one at 30 inches labeled "flat Earth" and one at 32 inches off the water labeled spheroid Earth, and had the guy measure the height of the eyelets and the level of the board and measure the eyelets and measure the marks on the post and predict which mark the laser will hit, he is going to predict the flat Earth mark. Once you turn on the laser, he's got some spots to rub off. Regards, TAR

The Earth curves away at about 8 inches a mile, I just read. If this is true, at 50 feet, your laser mark should be around 4 60ths of and inch higher than the eyelets are, off the ground. You can see more of a difference with a longer distance. Maybe if you have a large lake, you can set the eyelets up on one shore and use the lake surface as ground level, and shine the laser on a post sticking out of the water on the other shore. If you can manage a 1/4 mile, your laser should hit 2 inches higher off the water, than your level eyelets are. Show that to your friend. He will no longer have any reason to think the Earth is flat. (Because it isn't)

sunshaker, In fact, you could simplify that experiment and take just one eightfoot board, with the two eyelets and shine the laser though the eyelets once the board is level, against a distant wall (50 feet away). Mark the spot on the wall where the laser hit. Measure the distance off the ground of the eyelets. Measure the distance off the ground of the mark where the laser hit. Explain why the laser hit "high" if the Earth is flat. To check your ground level take a 50 foot hose with water in and hold the ends so that you can see the water level at both ends. Mark a wall or an upright at both ends, with the water level. Measure the height of your eyelets with respect to the water level mark. Measure the height of the mark where the laser hit, in respect to the water level mark at that end. Bet you 10 reputation points, that the laser mark will be higher off the ground, than the eyelets. Regards, TAR

sunshaker, I played with some boards a little but it would have taken too much work to get ends sawed at exact 90 degree angles and I only had 6 and 8 foot boards, and I thought the difference would be hard to show convincingly so I abandoned that effort, but thought of an experiment you could run for yourself, that if convincing, you could show your friend. Inside a large structure where you can make it a little dark, like a long basement, or barn or something, where you can set up two boards, 50 feet from each other, take two 8 foot boards (like a 1 by 6) and into each screw to eyelets on the same face of the board, exactly an inch from the top edge and one inch from either end (so they are almost 8 foot apart), and turn the eyelets perpendicular to the ground so you can see the other through the one. Do the same on the other 8 foot board. Now get a laser pointer so you can shine it through the two eyelets and then through the other two eyelets on the other board. See if you can get both all four eyelets to line up AND have both boards level, to a level placed at the center of each of the boards. If you do not have any difficulty performing this feat, with the two boards, right next to each other. Take one of the boards 30-50 feet away and see if you can do it. If the Earth is flat, you should have no trouble getting the 4 eyelets in exact alignment AND the top of both boards, exactly level. If the Earth is curved, you will have to put the 2nd board a little higher up to get the laser that is going through the first two eyelets to go through the first eyelet of the second board...AND if the second board is level, the fourth eyelet will not be in line with the first three, it will be a little below the laser line, which is getting further and further from the surface of the Earth, as it goes. (Since the Earth is curving down away from the location of the first board.) So don't believe what we, and billions of others have been saying for hundreds of years. See for yourself. Regards, TAR

Altitude is measured in relation to sea level. On a curved Earth, someone far away from you, at the same altitude will be below your level line of sight. My brother-in-law, in construction says that if you use a level over here to place a board parallel to the ground and then use a level way over there to place a board parallel to the ground, the two board will not line up with each other. If they were very long boards and had right angle ends, and you butted them up against each other, the bottom of the boards would touch and there would be a little gap at the top. I will have to try this and see if I can get a big enough difference, that you can show your friend. Regards, TAR

Sunshaker, Well then have YOU ever stood at the water line on a beach and watched a ship appear from beyond the horizon, or seen one disappear behind the sea? Regards, TAR

Off Sandy Hook NJ you can see large ships coming in and out of Newark/New York harbor. As they come from the East you see them appear, top first on the horizon. As they depart, you see them disappear over the horizon, bottom first. Looks just like the ocean's surface curves away downward.

sunshaker, Pretty powerful powers that be to fool everyone in all the ways they would have to fool them. Once I left Japan on Saturday mid to late afternoon, flew NE into the night along the great circle route over Alaska, saw the vast mountain ranges of Alaska in the morning, flew over Canada and down into Newark, and landed in Newark on Saturday afternoon, a few hours before I left Japan (on the clock). While I was in the air, it sure looked like I was flying around a globe. I can not see how what happened happened unless the Earth is a globe. The great circle route, the curvature of the planet beneath me, the flying into the night, and into the morning, the crossing of the date line...all these things would only have happened if the Earth was a globe. They would not have happened if the Earth was flat...you need to get out more. Take the picture shown early in the thread with the bridge and NYC taken from South Jersey. Print the thing out on an 8 and half by 11 sheet. Draw a line as straight as you can and as parallel to one of the bridge uprights as you can, right next to the left bridge upright, from the bottom of the sheet to the top. Do the same for the right upright. When I did this, I measured the distance between the lines, at the top at 125/60th of and inch. The distance between the lines at the bottom was 120/60th of an inch. It appears that if the two uprights are perpendicular to the ground, that the surface of the Earth must be curved. If the Earth was flat, you could not take the great circle route over Alaska to get from Japan to Newark. With the cost of jet fuel you would have gone directly East to get to the U.S. Which makes me wonder how the powers that be got the North Pole to be North of Russia, AND North of Hawaii, AND North of New York. How do you figure they arranged that? If you leave your camp and go 1 mile south, 1 mile east and 1 mile north and arrive back at your camp and see a bear eating your stores, what color is the bear? Regards, TAR If you start traveling in any direction and continue straight, not turning even a little left, or a little right, you will wind up (after many months of swimming, walking and climbing) approximately where you began your journey. This you could only do, if the Earth were a globe, as it certainly is. If the Earth were flat, what would happen on your journey? Would you come to the edge of a disc? What would that look like? Why have we no pictures or accounts of this sight? Somebody must have set out in a direction and stuck to it, at some point in the history of the world. I would think such a secret as an edge, would be extremely hard to keep. Take the journey in a straight line, on Google Earth and see that you wind up back home. All the countries are set up exactly like they are on the globe. If you ask a Frenchman in what direction the U.S. lies he would say to the West. If you asked a Turk in what direction does France lie, he would say to the West. If you asked a Chinese woman in what direction does Turkey lie she would say to the West. If you asked a Hawaiian in which direction does China lie he would say to the West. If you asked a Californian in which direction does Hawaii lie, he would say to the West, if you asked a New Yorker in which direction does California lie, he would say to the West. Do you think all these people are lying about what lies to their West? Do you think they are incorrect? Why would they say they know what lies to their West, if the place didn't really lie there? Regards, TAR

Whatever Theory, The 6 x 6 grid idea was not considering neighboring pixels but conceived as a way to select 36 widely separated pixels, without "matching" them. In your process, you look around the area with your dropper (what specific program is this?) and mentally notice the pattern and ratio as the numbers go up in the light areas and the numbers go down in the dark areas, but then the cherry pick happens. You choose the number you think is the most representative, and then go find this same number again, to verify that it is this species number. But you just ignored the other 100 triplets in the same picture, that could also be matched within the picture. The 6 x 6 grid idea was designed to take YOU out of it. This, so anybody else could take the same picture, randomly select 36 pixels from all over the sample area (without "trying" to match anything) and average the numbers in an agreed upon way, to arrive at "the" number that best represented the sample area. I do not know if the method would work. Maybe you need more pixels or a different way to calculate an average. Maybe the averaging idea makes no sense, and you are coming up with a good number, by some subconscious calculation you don't even realize you are doing. But the way to check it out, is to arrive at some mechanical process that takes YOU out of it, and arrives at a number. Maybe your paint program already does something like this for us and you can just ask the program for an average pixel in a given area. I don't know, nor do I know the process it would use to figure such. So I suggested that you come up with a mechanical way to arrive at the number, that takes no human judgement to arrive at it. The pixels that would be selected by the 6 x 6 grid would not be next to each other. Say you are looking at a square inch of picture at 300x300 resolution and you thought of it as rows and columns of pixels. You would select the pixel from the 25th column and the 25th row, and the pixel from the 25th column and the 75th row.... The selected columns would be 25th, 75th,125,175,225,275 and the rows would be 25th, 75th,125,175,225,275. My thought was not that you had to figure an exact pixel, but that you would conceive of a 6x6 grid the size of the sample you where testing and select a random pixel from each of the 36 smaller squares that the grid would lay out. Taking the pixel directly under a dot (corner where four grid boxes met) however, would avoid the possibility that you would be "selecting" a certain collection of pixels subconsciously (like always picking a mid range pixel from the group). Regards, TAR This "ratio" thing though, we need to fully explore. There may be a way to describe it, and then this description would be the "number". There would be less than 16 million such descriptions, as there would be all the different shades of the same tint, and the ratio description would just describe the tint and not the shade. I am thinking though, in terms of IDing the species, the shade gives us additional information, as to the surface characteristics of the species, so it would not be good to loose the average shade of the tint, which you would lose, with a ratio description...so, nevermind. The ratio, if we were to describe it, might be helpful in determining what pigments are present, but we would lose some contour and surface information. Which is probably important in feathers and such. And how exactly to handle iridescence and soap bubbles and photonic crystals and peacock feathers and the like, is still up for grabs. Whatever Theory, The pink pattern on the paper towel might affect your numbers. Pink is a light shade of red. If the flash is putting out white light, the pink design has pigments in it that are absorbing green and blue (cyan) light. Therefore, you don't have 100 percent white light bouncing around the inside of the box, your pink design is soaking up a little green and a little blue light, so my guess would be that a subject, say a grey subject that would read Red 50, Green 50, Blue 50 if the design was not on the paper towel, would read Red 50, Green 49, Blue 49, with the pink design in the box. Regards, TAR This is however a good test of any system you come up with to arrive at a number for the subject. If you put another object in the box, that is absorbing certain wavelengths of light, it should affect your numbers, accordingly. Or if you have come up with some consistent numbers using the paper towel with the pink design on it, does using a white sheet of paper, instead, change your numbers. I wonder if you should not put multiple objects in the box as what light the one absorbs will affect what the other will reflect. I am not sure though if it makes a difference if the other objects are absorbing the same colors...I would have to think that out. Which brings up another issue. Does the one color on a multicolored subject affect the color of a neighboring area of a different color. Do we want this difference in our number, or do we not want this difference in our number. If we want it, we take the samples as they show. If we don't want it, we have to cover the subject with a white mask and take a picture only of the target colored area.