To vote or not to vote

Recently at a dinner someone made a comment that one hears often, that those who do not vote in elections have no right to then complain about the government’s actions or the way society is run. The speaker was implying that voting is the admission price one pays for the privilege of entering the public debate.

I disagree with this sentiment, for many reasons. For one thing, one can have principled non-voting. If one thinks the system is rigged, and that elections are merely a façade designed to give legitimacy to a corrupt political system, then not voting can be a very principled and political act. In such cases, not voting is akin to a boycott, or voting with one’s feet. There is a reason that almost all totalitarian societies still feel obliged to hold fraudulent elections in which the ruler gets an overwhelming majority, because elections tend to confer at least some legitimacy on the winner, even if it is rigged, as long as participation is reasonably high. This is why in many autocratic countries people are forced to vote or the ballot boxes are stuffed with counterfeits, while opponents of the regime urge people to boycott them.
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Bipartisanship in the service of the oligarchy

If you were paying close attention, you may have noticed that yesterday Congress, which is supposed to be locked in partisan gridlock that has paralyzed it, managed in a bipartisan manner to pass quite easily and with little fanfare major free-trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. The House passed the South Korea agreement by a vote of 278 to 151, Panama by 300 to 129 and Colombia by 262-167. In the Senate, the South Korean plan passed by a vote of 83 to 15, Panama by 77 to 22 and Colombia by 66 to 33.

Whether one thinks such agreements are good for everyone or not, the oligarchy definitely favors them because anything that enables them to move goods, money, and manufacturing capacity more easily and cheaply across borders enables them to make more money.

These agreements had been negotiated by George W. Bush but had stalled in Congress because of opposition from the labor movement that they would cost jobs here. This time they passed easily, thanks to the support of president Obama, which illustrates once again that the oligarchy can sometimes get more of what it wants under a Democratic administration than under a Republican one. It also illustrates once again how noisy partisan gridlock only comes into play when it comes to doing things that benefit ordinary people, and miraculously melts away when the oligarchy’s interests are involved.

Relativity-4: Measuring time and space

(For previous posts in this series, see here.)

To get a better grip on what is involved in the theory of relativity, we need to think in terms of ‘events’, things that occur instantaneously at a point in space and which every observer will agree happened and is unique. An example of an event might be me clapping my hands once. That occurs at one place in space (where my hands meet) at one moment in time (the instant they make contact) and all observers will agree that I did indeed clap my hands. Of course, actual events will be spread out over a region of space (my hands are quite big objects) and over a small but extended interval of time (the period during which my hands are in contact while clapping) but we can imagine idealized events as things that occur at a single point in space at a single instant in time. Specifying an event also uniquely specifies a location and a time since only one event can occur at any point in space at a particular time.

Suppose we have one event A that takes place at one place at one time (say a neutrino created by a nuclear reaction at CERN) and another event B that takes place at another place at another time (say the detection of the arrival of that same neutrino at the Grand Sasso laboratory). Einstein causality says that since event A caused event B, event A must take place before event B. Even if the neutrino were to travel at a speed greater than the speed of light, all that would do is reduce the time difference between the two events, not reverse their order, as was noted in the example given in the first post in this series. So why is this event seen as such a sensational development?

The answer lies in the fact that Einstein causality is believed to hold true for every observer who sees the same two events, irrespective of the state of motion of the observer. And the existence of faster than light neutrinos means that even though we on Earth will continue to see event A before event B, there are observers who are moving relative to us who will see the neutrino being detected at Gran Sasso before it was created at CERN or, more bizarrely in the case of the shooting example, that the bullet will emerge from person B and seem to travel back into the gun of person A. And unlike in that earlier example, this will not be due to an illusion due to the accident of where the observer happened to be located.

To understand how this can happen, we need to go more deeply into the question of how we measure the location and the time of events and how they differ for observers moving with respect to one another. Location and distance measurements seem pretty straightforward and we do it all the time when we measure the length of something. We simply hold a ruler along the line joining the two events, take the ruler readings at the locations of each of the two events, subtract the smaller reading from the larger, and the resulting number gives us the distance between the two events.

As for the time interval between two events, we can look at our watch when we see event A occurring and note the reading, then look again when we see event B occurring and note the reading, and once again subtract the smaller reading from the larger. The resulting number gives us the time that lapsed between the two events. There is a slight complication here in that it takes time for light to travel from one place to another so the actual time at which event A occurred would be a little earlier than when we see it. But since we know the speed of light, we can take that into account. All we have to do is measure the distance between where we are and the location of event A and divide that by the speed of light to get the time taken for the light to reach us. We then subtract that time from our watch reading to get the ‘true’ time at which the event A occurs. We can do the same thing for event B.

For example, in the earlier example, if you were standing next to the victim at B, you would have seen the bullet at the 2 meter mark 9 seconds after the gun fires. If you had been standing next to the shooter at A, you would have seen it 3 seconds after the gun fired. If you correct for the time of travel for the light to reach you from the bullet at the 2 meter mark, the bullet would be said to be at that point one second after the gun was fired, irrespective of where you were standing. So the time of an event can be specified uniquely in the case of different observers who are not moving with respect to the events.

What if the observer is moving, though? The question that Einstein pondered is the following. Suppose I, seated in my office, observe two events on the sidewalk outside my window and measure the distance between them and the time interval according to the above methods using my own ruler and watch. Now suppose another person is moving with respect to me (say passing by in a train) and sees the same two events as I do and measures the distance and time interval between them using her ruler and watch. Will that person’s measurements of the distance and time intervals agree with mine?

It is the answer to this question that determines whether we live in a world in which Galilean relativity rules or one in which Einsteinian relativity rules.

Next: Galilean and Einsteinian relativity

Rising Cain

I must admit that the rise of Herman Cain to becoming a major player in the Republican primaries took me by surprise. According to the latest PPP poll, he leads nationally with 30%, followed by Romney with 22%. “If the race came down to a two way match between Cain and Romney, Cain leads 48-36. Cain would pick up Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry, and Santorum’s supporters. Romney would get Huntsman and Paul’s. Cain would absolutely crush Perry in a head to head, 55-27. He would win over the supporters of every other candidate, including Romney’s by a 56-24 margin.”

Since I had not given much credence to the idea that Cain would win the nomination or the presidency, I had not really taken the time to examine too closely his stands on the issues or ponder what kind of president he might make.

But even if Cain is a truly awful person to lead the nation, the fact that there is a possibility that the two parties’ nominees for the next presidential election could both be people of color signals that the nation has come a long way in its acceptance of minorities in leadership positions.

Both Obama and Cain are obliging servants of the oligarchy, no doubt, but that is a given the way that the election system is currently set up. That particular hurdle will be harder to overcome than even electing a gay, non-Christian, minority woman as president.

The latest scary terror plot

So I turn on the radio this morning and hear Tom Gjelten of NPR regale me with a sensational story of how the US government had busted a plot by the Iranian government to collude with a hit man associated with the Mexican drug cartels to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador in a restaurant in the US, along with hundreds of bystanders. As always, faithful government stenographer that he is, Gjelten (in his case NPR stands for National Pentagon Radio) excitedly passes on uncritically what he hears from the US government. < [Read more…]

Relativity-3: The elusive neutrino

(For previous posts in this series, see here.)

Neutrinos are very elusive particles that are produced in nuclear reactions. They interact hardly at all with anything, which enables them to penetrate anything easily. In any given second, tens of billions of neutrinos are coming from the Sun and passing though each square centimeter of our bodies and the Earth without doing anything, and heading off into the vast empty reaches of space on the other side. As a result of its extremely low interactivity with matter, it is hard to measure their properties, even basic ones like mass, because measurement involves getting the measured object to interact with the detector so that we know something about it. The existence of neutrinos was first postulated in 1930 as a theoretical device to explain missing energy in certain nuclear reactions but its elusive nature meant that it took until 1956 for direct experimental detection of their existence.

While the fact that neutrinos interact hardly at all with matter makes them hard to detect and discern their properties, this same elusiveness make them attractive candidates for measuring speed. This is because once produced they ignore everything in their path and travel in a straight line with constant speed so that measuring the distance traveled and the time taken does give you the speed. Even light is not as good for this purpose because both its speed and its trajectory are affected by the matter it passes through, as we all experience when we see how distorted things look when seen through glass prisms or bowls of water. Even slight changes in the density of the atmosphere can affect the path of light, which is the reason why we see mirages. So if you use light, the path taken by it in going from one point to another may not correspond to the straight geometric line distance connecting the two points that can be calculated once we know the coordinates of the two points, and so calculating the distance traveled by the light is not simple. But in the case of neutrinos, the path taken is dead straight and thus the geometric straight-line distance between two points will be the actual distance traveled by the neutrinos.

Another advantage is that the speed of neutrinos, unlike that of light, is unaffected by the medium it travels through. When light passes through glass or water, its speed is reduced which is the cause of the distortions we observe. As another example, take the light coming from the Sun. This light is produced as a result of nuclear reactions that produce both photons (particles of light) and neutrinos, among other things. But because the Sun is such a dense gas, it slows down light considerably and the photons produced at the core of the Sun can take as much as tens of thousands of years merely to reach the surface of the Sun, a distance of roughly 700,000 kilometers. Once there, it can travel freely in the vacuum of space to cover the remaining150 million kilometers to the Earth (over 200 times the radius of the Sun) in just over eight minutes. Neutrinos that are also produced in the core, however, travel almost as fast within the Sun as they do in the vacuum in space because matter is almost invisible to them. So if a neutrino and a light photon are produced in the same reaction in the core of the Sun, the neutrino will reach us long before the photon does.

Supposing the CERN-Gran Sasso experimental result holds up and the neutrinos are in fact traveling faster than the speed of light. Does this mean that Einstein’s theory of relativity is completely overthrown? No. Einstein’s theory does not rule out particles traveling faster than the speed of light. Such particles, known as tachyons, have always been allowed by the theory but we have never confirmed their existence so far. There have, however, been various false alarms in the past, which is part of the reason for the skepticism about the present claim.

What Einstein’s theory says is that if a particle has zero mass, then it travels at exactly the speed of light but if it has non-zero mass, then its speed can approach the speed of light but cannot attain it. Particles can approach the speed of light ‘from below’ (these are the normal particles we have experience with that always have speeds less than that of light,) or ‘from above’ (they always have speeds greater than that of light, and these are called tachyons that we have never shown to definitively exist), but neither can cross the barrier of the speed of light to the other side. So the existence of faster-than-light particles would not overturn Einstein’s theory of relativity completely since that theory always allowed for their existence, but would still be a momentous discovery because it would be a completely new phenomenon.

So does this mean that the existence of tachyons can be easily absorbed into existing knowledge? Not quite. The problem with the existence of tachyons is what it does to something known as ‘Einstein causality’, which is something that is connected to the theory of relativity, but is in addition to it. What this says is that if two events are causally connected, (i.e., one event causes another) then the cause must precede the effect. Going back to the commonly used bloodthirsty example, if person A fires a gun and the bullet enters person B, Einstein causality says that the firing of the gun by A must occur before the bullet enters person B because one caused the other. This seems eminently reasonable but we have to bear in mind that it is an assumption that is based on experience and, like all such assumptions, is subject to empirical scrutiny. If faster-than-light particles exist, the theory of relativity says that Einstein causality can be violated. i.e., effects can precede causes. It is this possibility, sometimes referred to as ‘going backwards in time’, that boggles the mind.

So how does the existence of tachyons violate Einstein causality? In the first post in this series, I gave an example where there seemed to be a situation of going backwards in time but said that this was not really so, because that was an illusion that arose due to the fact that we were dependent on when light from an event reached the observer.

To better understand what constitutes violations of Einstein causality, we have to get into the subtleties of what we mean by measuring distance and time, and this lies at the heart of the theory of special relativity. What Einstein did was make our understanding of how to measure distances and time more precise and operational, and in doing so altered our fundamental understanding of those two seemingly mundane concepts.

Next: Measuring time and space

“Why the elites are in trouble”

Chris Hedges has been doing some powerful writing on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Here is an excerpt from his latest essay with the above title.

Even now, three weeks later, elites, and their mouthpieces in the press, continue to puzzle over what people like Ketchup want. Where is the list of demands? Why don’t they present us with specific goals? Why can’t they articulate an agenda?

The goal to people like Ketchup is very, very clear. It can be articulated in one word—REBELLION. These protesters have not come to work within the system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify their voices, and so they created a press of their own. They know the economy serves the oligarchs, so they formed their own communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back.

This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are. They don’t understand what is happening. They are deaf, dumb and blind.

Phasing out small shampoo bottles

Those tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner that hotels provide would last me about two weeks but I usually stay just one or two days and I suspect that the rest will be thrown away, which seems awfully wasteful of both shampoo and plastic. Do hotels expect you to leave the remnants behind or are you doing them a favor by taking the partially used bottles with you, saving them the trouble of throwing them away? It seems vaguely wrong to take them home with me without being given explicit permission and I have personally vacillated between taking them and leaving them. It would be nice if hotels left a little note telling guests like me who worry about such trivialities what to do.

But now apparently some hotels are going to be providing full-size bottles that are refillable, so that the ambiguity is removed.
That’s a welcome development. Now if they could do something about the waste of the remnants of those little bars of soap …