Open System for Geniuses - by Chronostalker

One of the most trivial Evans’ errors is his statement that the group O(2) is isomorphic to U(1). In his recent complains (dated August 10, 2006) to the Editors of Physica Scripta Evans writes:

"I still await the elementary politeness of a reply from you concerning the Bruhn papers. In the meantime these are some rebuttal papers and proofs. They rebut Bruhn’s comments using standard Cartan geometry. I am able to rebut eveyrthing he has ever written in all detail, and have already done so. He is not using correct mathematics or standard Cartan geometry. Some of his errors are so trivial as to raise concern about what he is really doing."

Evans includes his rebuttals, one of them concerns the issue of O(3) being isomorphic to U(1). Let us examine this issue in details, not because it is important (it is rather trivial and not essential), but because it throws some light on Evans (miss)understanding of mathematics.

Evans quotes Ryder’s monograph "Quantum Field Theory" as an authority, and he copies from Ryder the erroneous statement that the two groups are isomorphic. Of course Ryder is wrong. And Evans repeats Ryder’s error. First of all Ryder defines, though not very precisely, the group O(n) as the group of orthogonal matrices n x n, that is matrices satisfying R^TR=I. From this it follows that det(R)² = 1, and so det(R) = 1 or det(R) = -1. Rider is not using at all the symbol SO(n), that normally is being used for the connected group of orthogonal matrices of detereminant one. So, when he writes that every element of O(2) is uniquely determined by a rotation angle - he is wrong. The matrix

(1 0)
(0 -1)

is orthogonal, and yet it is not a rotation matrix. It belongs to O(2), but it does not belong to SO(2). The group U(1) is isomorphic to SO(2), but not to O(2). Evidently Evans does not understand these mathematical "subtleties", so instead of fixing Ryder’s error, he proudly repeats it and call his error a "rebuttal". It should be noted that Ryder’s monograph is not a textbook on group theory, and Ryder is not a mathematician. Ryder’s book is on QFT, and it is assumed that the readers will be smart enough to fix the small mathemathical inacurracies by themselves. In fact, it is a good exercise in critical reading!

Evans ends his letter to the Editors of Physica Scripta with:

"Questions must now be asked about the editorship of Physica Scripta itself, and its refereeing procedures. Concern about this has already been voiced in the US Supreme Court, which ruled that academic refereeing procedures are biased."

And he is partly, but only partly right. The trivial errors in Ryder’s book should have been corrected, and they were not. Yet there are different procedures for publishing monographs, and for publishing research papers in scientific journals. While it is rather usual to find errors in voluminuous monographs, it is not permissible to publish trivial errors in scientific journals that follow the peer review procedures.

We may ask: why is Evans not correcting his trivial errors? Why is he so stubbornly repeating them? Some light on this subject can be found in an opinion of one of Myron’s close ex-collaborators (L. B. C.) who wrote:

"Myron […] became increasingly hostile to any criticism of anything that he thinks is real. In effect what he thinks is serious theoretical physics has become more a matter of his own delusions. He became very hostile to anybody who deigns to point out problems with anything he claims, and his reactions are very similar to what is seen with people afflicted with delusional mental states."

How does a British Civil List Scientist reacts to a scientific critic? My usually well informed friends in Wales tell me that he is sending homeland security after those who dare to find elementary errors in his papers.

MWE: […] “I will contact the FBI in New York City to explain that this is another instance of a campaign of systematic harassment against the British Civil List Scientist by felons. This may stir them into some action. The Governors of New York and Pennsylvania might take notice and order the police into action against both …”

It is really a shame for the British science. Is there a method in this madness? Perhaps there is.

I my previous post I have mentioned psychopathy. This is even more interesting than Evans’ idea of what science is about:

“Cheating skills seem to have an adaptive value in our society. The fact is: psychopaths often end up on the top of the heap.”

http://www.autismwebsite.com/crimetimes/04b/w04bp2.htm

Also:

“Gary Evans grew up in Troy, New York, where he was physically and emotionally abused by both parents until they divorced in 1968. His mother attempted suicide on numerous occasions. Likely at his mother’s behest, Evans began stealing at a young age. He also reportedly abused and killed neighborhood pets, which is widely considered an early sign of antisocial personality disorder.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_C._Evans

Psychopathy is another interesting subject:

“Psychopaths are notorious for not answering the questions asked them. They will answer something else, or in such a way that the direct question is never addressed. They also phrase things so that some parts of their narratives are difficult to understand. This is not careless speech, of which everyone is guilty at times, but an ongoing indication of the underlying condition in which the organization of mental activity suggests something is wrong. It’s not what they say, but how they say it that gives insight into their true nature.

But this raises, again, the question: if their speech is so odd, how come smart people get taken in by them? Why do we fail to pick up the inconsistencies?

Part of the answer is that the oddities are subtle so that our general listening mode will not normally pick them up. But my own experience is that some of the “skipped” or oddly arranged words, or misused words are automatically reinterpreted by OUR brains in the same way we automatically “fill in the blank” space on a neon sign when one of the letters has gone out. We canbe driving down the road at night, and ahead we see M_tel, and we mentally put the “o” in place and read “Motel.” Something like this happens between the psychopath and the victim. We fill in the “missing humanness” by filling in the blanks with our own assumptions, based on what WE think and feel and mean. And, in this way, because there are these “blank” spots, we fill them in with what is
inside us, and thus we are easily convinced that the psychopath is a great guy - because he is just like us! We have been conditioned to operate on trust, and we always try to give the “benefit of the doubt.” So, there are blanks, we “give the benefit of the doubt,” and we are thereby hoisted on our own petard.

Psychopaths view any social exchange as a “feeding opportunity,” a contest or a test of wills in which there can be only one winner. Their motives are to manipulate and take, ruthlessly and without remorse. [Hare]

http://www.hare.org/

At the present moment in history, the appeal of the psychopath has never been greater. Movies about psychopaths are all the rage. Hare asks “Why? What accounts for the terrific power that the personality without conscience has over our collective imagination?

One theorist proposes that people who admire, believe, or identify with psychopaths, are partly psychopathic themselves. By interacting with a psychopath, even peripherally, they are able to voyeuristically enjoy an
inner state not dominated by the constraints of morality. Such people are enabled to enjoy aggressive and sexual pleasures at no cost.

For normal people, such movies may serve to remind them of the danger and destructiveness of the psychopath. They will shiver with the sense of something cold and dark having breathed on their neck. For others, people
with poorly developed inner selves, such movies and glorification of psychopathic behavior only serves as a role model for serious acts of violence and predation against others.

The only difference that family background seems to make is how the psychopath expresses himself. A psychopath who grows up in a stable family and has access to positive social and educational resources might become a white-collar criminal, or perhaps a somewhat shady entrepreneur, politician, lawyer, judge, or other professional. Another individual with the same traits, and a deprived background might become a common con-artist, a drifter, mercenary, or violent criminal.

The point is, social factors and parenting practices only shape the expression of the disorder, but have no effect on the individual’s inability to feel empathy or to develop a conscience.

Robert Hare once submitted a paper to a scientific journal. The paper included EEGs of several groups of adult men performing a language task. The editor of the journal returned the paper saying “Those EEG’s couldn’t have come from real people.”

But they did. They were the EEG’s of psychopaths.

Some people have compared psychopathy to schizophrenia. However, there is a crucial distinction as we will see:

Schizophrenia and psychopathy are both characterized by impulsive, poorly planned behavior. This behavior may originate from a weak or poorly coordinated response inhibition system. We tested the hypothesis that
schizophrenia and psychopathy are associated with abnormal neural processing during the suppression of inappropriate responses.

The participants were schizophrenic patients, nonpsychotic psychopaths, and nonpsychotic, nonpsychopathic control subjects (defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised), all incarcerated in a maximum security psychiatric facility. We recorded behavioral responses and event-related potentials (ERPs) during a
Go/No Go task.

Results: Schizophrenic patients made more errors of commission than did the nonpsychopathic offenders. As expected, the nonpsychopathic nonpsychotic participants showed greater frontal ERP negativity (N275) to the No Go stimuli than to the Go stimuli. This effect was small in the schizophrenic patients and absent in the psychopaths. For the nonpsychopaths, the P375 ERP component was larger on Go than on No Go trials, a difference that was absent in schizophrenicpatients and in the opposite direction in psychopaths.

Conclusions: These findings support the hypothesis that the neural processes involved in response inhibition are abnormal in both schizophrenia and psychopathy; however, the nature of these processes appears to be different in the two disorders.

“More and more data are leading to the conclusion that psychopathy has a biological basis, and has many features of a disease,” says Sabine Herpertz, a psychiatrist at the RWTH-Aachen University in Germany.

The brain imaging techniques of positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provide the opportunity to investigate psychopathy further. They might allow researchers to discover whether
psychopaths’ physiological and emotional deficits can be pinned down to specific differences in the anatomy or activation of the brain.

Among researchers who are starting to explore this area, there are two main theories of psychopathy. One, championed by Adrian Raine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and supported by the work of Antonio Damasio of the University of Iowa, gives a starring role to a brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex (see diagram, below). This is part of an area of the brain, known as the prefrontal cortex, involved in conscious decision-making.

The other theory, promoted by James Blair of University College London, holds that the fundamental dysfunction lies within the amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure that plays a critical role in processing emotion and mediating fear. Recently, using PET scanning, Blair has shown that activation of
the amygdala in normal volunteers is involved in responding to the sadness and anger of others, and he hypothesizes that amygdala dysfunction could explain the lack of fear and empathy in psychopaths.

The two theories may not be mutually exclusive, Blair points out, as the orbitofrontal cortex, which does the ‘thinking’, and the amygdala, which does the ‘feeling’, are highly interconnected.

Following widespread concern that the criminal justice and mental health systems are failing to deal effectively with dangerous psychopaths, there is a movement in several countries to instigate fundamental legal reform. The most controversial suggestion is to make it possible for individual who have severe personality disorders to be detained in secure mental institutions even if they have been accused of no crime. Although these particular provisions have alarmed civil liberties campaigners, the raft of measures also includes a major initiative within the prison service to improve the handling of those with APD–including psychopaths.

According to one individual who suffered at the hands of a psychopath:

“The World has only one problem, Psychopaths. There are two basic types of Psychopaths, Social and Anti-Social. The essential feature of Psychopaths is a Pervasive, Obssesive- Compulsive desire to force their delusions on others. Psychopaths completely disregard and violate the Rights of others, particularly the Freedom of Association which includes the right not to associate and the Right to Love.”

And we have come full circle. Over and over again we come up against that little problem: religion and belief systems that have to be defended against objective evidence or the beliefs of others. We have to ask ourselves “where did these belief systems come from that so evidentially are catastrophic?” And then, we have to think about the fact that now, in the present day, when many of these systems are breaking down and being replaced by others that similarly divert our attention away from what IS, it becomes necessary to “enforce” a certain mode of thinking. And that is what Psychopaths do best.

Psychopaths dominate and set the standard for behavior in our society. We live in a world based on a psychopathic, energy stealing food chain, because that’s just the way things are. Most people are so damaged they no longer have the capacity to even imagine a different system based on a symbiotic network.

They are not only damaged by others, but also by the thousand little evils they have done to others to survive. For them to see the system for what it is, would require them to see the part they have played in perpetuating it. That is a lot to ask of a fragile ego. Also, those who are not psychopaths, still want to make human connections but are afraid to, for fear of being taken advantage of and stolen from energeticaly speaking.

With the brief historical review we have examined, we are acutely aware that this is NOT a phenomenon confined to our present “time.” It is a trans-millennial evolutionary strategy that, step by step, has brought us to our present position. What emerges in the present day is just Machiavellian diversion that focuses the attention of those who are easily deceived. This is reinforced by the “clappers” in the audience, and there seems to be an entire army of psychopaths among us whose job it is act as vectors of attention and direction. We hope that the readers of these pages will give themselves permission to imagine, research and implement a different way of being. And to stand up for themselves while doing it.

The great British Civil List Scientist, Myron W. Evans has discovered not only the Grand Unified Field Theory . He has disovered also this blog! So, let us examine his new discovery. According to my usually well informed friends MWE wrote:

“MWE: There is a garbage website by “chronostalker”, who deos not have the courage to debate with me directly or to reveal who he or she is, or even to inform me of the existence of his or her garbage website. ”

Well, what is considered to be garbage and what not is highly subjective. Some scientists think that MWE “papers” contain quite a bit of garbage. But MWE is not willing to admit his errors. Those who have “courage” to write to MWE directly are being threatened by him. They are being personally and professionally harassed.

“MWE: It is this kind of public trashing of an innocent person that needs to be punished heavily under the new
net laws. ”

So, here we have an example. If scientific criticism is not allowed, then it it is the end of science.

“MWE: This site continues the “Evans is an idiot” game and I have been aware of it for some time. ”

No one says “Evans is an idiot”. To decide whether someone is an idiot, and, if so, what kind of an idiot, a psychiatric expertise is needed. This blog offers only a scientific expertise. It is not about Evans, but about errors in his papers, and about Evans’ behavior that is not in accord with the scientific ethics.

“MWE: Lar Felker kindly came to my defence and was also also trashed personally by Bruhn for his honesty. For example it is claimed by the venerable stalker of time that r = x i + y j + z k is not a straight line because it is a vector, and in an immediately following note it is claimed that a unit vector makes no sense because it is a tautology.”

Certainly r = x i + y j + z k is not a straight line. A straight line has infinitely many points, while r = x i + y j + z k is just one point. While it is true that there is exactly one straight line through the origin in the direction of any given vector, in mathematics it is absolutely crucial to distinguish between a vector and line through the origin in the direction of this vector. Otherwise lot of confusion happens, and the more ambitious is a given theory, the more crucial is avoiding elementary mathematical errors.

“MWE: It is then concluded that Evans is an idiot who knows nothing about vectors at all. ”

While it is hard to say why MWE is making these elementary mistakes and is unwilling to have them pointed to him, so that he could fix them, the fact is that MWE does not understand a difference between a vector and straight line in the direction of this vector. Hopefully someone will be able to explain this to him. But it is really hard, when Evans only replies are by threatening his friends lawsuits. I say “friends”, because those who are pointing errors is someone’s papers should be considered as friends, not as enemies.

“MWE: Coming back to the real world we all know from school that a polar vector defined as above must be a straight line in 3-D Euclidean space”

And this is wrong. A vector is NOT a straight line. These two mathematical concepts have different definitions. This is explained already in elementary schools on the continent. I do not know how it is in USA or in GB.

“MWE: and we all know that i, j and k are unit vectors. ”

No, we do not know for sure. But we can guess that it is indeed the case. Nevertheless a vector is not the same as the straight line through the origin, and in the direction of this vector. Question is what are x,y,z that enter the formula r = x i + y j + z k. For instance, if we assume that x=0, y=0, z=t, t being a “variable” in the range -infinity, +infinity, then, indeed, we have a straight line. But if we assume t being a variable in the range 0,+infinity, then we have a half-line. Finally, if we assume that t is just a number, then we have a point. And if we assume that x,y,z run through the set of all integeres, then we have a cubic lattice!

“MWE: So we are all idiots and so are all the staff of “Vector Analysis Problem Solver”.”

Vector Analysis Problem Solver is not a good place to learn elementary mathematics. More basic education is needed.

“Needless to write, Bruhn quotes “chronostalker”. With supporters like this, who needs comedians? ”

One could write a mathematical comedy based on the subject “vector is a straight line”. But not, this is not comic. This is simply an elementary error. Instead of writing about comedians, MWE should simply correct his papers, and thanks to those who pointed errors in them. I guess it should not take too much of his time.

“With all due respect to Sanskrit, Mayan and Tibetan cultures, resonance was not inferred mathematically until 1739 (in Europe), and vectors were invented by Heaviside until the end of the nineteenth century (again in Europe).

According to Wikipedia: “Vector analysis has its origin in quaternion analysis, and was formulated by the American scientist, J. Willard Gibbs ”

“MWE: I think it is very necessary to expose Bruhn as a foul mouthed fraud, and necessary to draw attention to him through the Widlar Committee, and from his Dean and President, offering him a letter of resignation, or a letter firing him outright. If this is not done we know that the Dean and President support garbage scientists on
their faculty. These are all highly paid by the working taxpayers of the EEC.”

Here we have again Evans’ invitation to “debate with him directly”.

That is enough about vectors, straight lines and “garbage scientists”. Recently another subject drew my attention, namely that of “the psychopaths”

I have been travelling all around the world. There was neither time nor opportunity to post to my blog. I am back to my Chronostalking. There are scientific issues where distorsion abodes, and there less scientific, yet reaching much wider public - these are even more dangerous than the scientific ones. Jeff Rense site is one of such sites. I was always suspecting something terribly wrong about the disinformation propagating from there - reaching wide audinces. Including those audiences that are looking for undistorted truth abou science and its peryphery.

Today I’ve found a confirmation of what I have been suspecting - an article on WingTV site
Jeff Rense: A Reinvention of What?
by Lisa Guliani. It’s worth to be quoted in extenso:

Patsy Smullin has run KOBI-TV for the last 30 years, and her father founded it. If anybody would have known Jeff Rense and the supposed 5,000 newscasts he claims to have made, it would be Patsy.

As it happens, Patsy Smullin does remember Jeff Rense, and in two different telephone conversations I had with her over the past few days, she confirmed that he did have a position at her television station for a brief time as a reporter and news anchor. Smullin stressed that Jeff Rense, or “a guy calling himself Jeff Rense” (her words), was employed at KOBI (an NBC affiliate) from June 1983 to May 1984, and she is not aware of him working at any other station in the state of Oregon either prior to his employment at KOBI-TV or afterward. [I would think if he’d worked at other stations previous to his KOBI position, these would be listed on his job application or resume when given to KOBI-TV.]

Patsy had more to say. She revealed that in her experience as Jeff Rense’s employer (and this is a direct quote), “He was not known for his honesty.” Think about it. Patsy Smullin was Rense’s employer some twenty-odd years ago. After all this tiime, the characteristic that has remained clearly in her memory is that “he was not known for his honesty”. What does that say to you? According to Ms. Smullin, at that time Jeff was also involved in several court battles with other people. One wonders if it has anything to do with him not being known for his honesty?

When asked if she could elaborate on the comment she’d made regarding Rense not being known for his honesty, her response was: “Sure. He was a compulsive liar.” Also, when questioned as to the claim that Jeff anchored and produced “5000 newscasts,” Patsy Smullin laughed heartily and stated, “This is absolutely false. He never did that here.” Okay, if not at KOBI-TV, then where? Perhaps Jeff Rense will reveal this to us all at some point so we can check it out.

But on his own website, Jeff Rense claims to have been an award winning news director and TV news anchor for 10-12 years (accounts vary). If not at KOBI, then where?

An American Treasure

“…an award-winning television News Director and News Anchor for over ten years, Jeff continually pushed for higher standards of journalism and responsible, intelligent reporting and inquiry. Regrettably, those goals were often at odds with the irrevocable TV news obsession for tabloid exploitation of the trivial, the tragic and the sensational. The situation became so dubious and distasteful that one day he walked away from his highly-successful news anchor/news director career (as high as a 53 Share of the audience - Nielsen) and moved to radio, recognizing it as the last viable approach to bringing reality to the American public…and now with the internet, to the world.”

Interesting that Rense declares himself to have worked as a news director and TV news anchor. An online search to verify this claim will return only Jeff’s words – repeated endlessly ad nauseum - as to the truthfulness of this assertion. There is literally no data to substantiate this claim anywhere on the Internet. The claim exists only on the Rense website and a few other websites that have copied and pasted the Rense claims onto their own pages.

Here’s another variation on the same theme: Jeff Rense Hosts Sightings

“During 12 years as an award-winning broadcast journalist, Jeff anchored and produced more than 5,000 television newscasts. This devoted single dad is also author of the book AIDS Exposed and passionately investigates ways to prevent diseases and extend life. His brother is Rip Rense, longtime reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Jeff first did radio while an education major at the University of California Santa Barbara, and in 1994 he returned to this first love with the talk radio show “End of the Line.” In 1997, by agreement with Henry (”the Fonz”) Winkler and Paramount Pictures, this show transformed into the ratings star “Sightings.”

_______________________________________________________________

Based on the following article he was a former news anchor at KOBI-TV. However, if one searches KOBI, there is no information on the former popular TV news anchor/news director Jeff Rense to be found.

The Truth Is Up There

“Presiding over this conspiratorial miasma is talk-radio host Jeff Rense, whose weeknight show, Sightings, is broadcast from a studio somewhere in Southern Oregon. (Citing threats to his life, Rense asked WW not to print his exact location.) Five nights a week, millions of Americans (including an estimated 21,000 Portlanders) in 120 cities tune in to Rense to catch up on the latest news on alien abduction, Bigfoot, paranormal phenomena–and chemtrails. A former news anchor at KOBI-TV in Medford, Rense began to hear reports of chemtrails in 1999.”

________________________________________________________________

The above page also says:

“…By the late 1980s, Rense had worked for a handful of network affiliates in the West. He said his ratings were high, and he got ‘lucrative offers’ from several Oregon stations. But he had also become disillusioned with TV news and decided to quit the business….” “…After walking away from his TV career path, Rense returned to Santa Barbara and opened three pet stores…”

“…By the early 1990s, he had sold his All About Pets outlets and in 1994 approached KTMS with his idea for a talk-radio show, or at least his version of one…”

A Professional Broadcast Journalist

“As an award-winning broadcast journalist, Mr. Rense has anchored and produced well over 5,000 live 30-and 60-minute television newscasts… He began his End of the Line radio show which is now in its fourth highly successful year. Recently, the End of the Line was acquired by the Premiere Radio Networks, one of the top two radio syndicators in the U.S., and renamed Sightings On The Radio through an agreement with Paramount.”

“As a journalist and private citizen, he became aware of the misinformation and propaganda surrounding the worldwide AIDS epidemic. Devoting three years of his life to researching, collecting, and compiling information, Mr. Rense authored the underground best-seller, AIDS Exposed, published in 1996. This 420-page book has been acclaimed as ‘overwhelming,’ ‘invaluable’ and ‘the supreme public service’ by broadcasters, medical professionals, and educators alike. Appearing on scores of radio and TV talk shows as an author, Mr. Rense has also been invited to lecture at such institutions as the University of California and USC. He has also written numerous articles, papers, and reports on a wide range of subjects and acts as a consultant on many different issues.”

Rense’s radio show “End of the Line” was renamed “Sightings on the Radio” with Paramount’s backing.

An extensive online search for articles, journalistic reports and papers from Rense’s purported pre-Rense.com prior journalism career yields nothing.

How can this possibly be if he has written ‘numerous articles, papers and reports’? His book, AIDS Exposed, does not appear to be available anymore, with the exception of potential availability of a random used copy, if you’re lucky.

A search on the publisher of this book, Bioalert Press, coughs up nothing as far as any listing for a company website. The top link on Google search for Bioalert Press says: Bookstore– Balaam’s Ass Suggests you Read These Good Books– Health AIDS Exposed– Jeffrey Rense– BioAlert Press– Order from Jeffrey Rense, Box 764, Goleta, CA 93116. www.balaams-ass.com/bookstor/health.htm -

The above Google link would not come up for me in multiple attempts on different days. Regarding the Balaam’s Ass link, one has to order the book directly from Jeff Rense. Is Bioalert Press really just Rense? Has anyone out there ever heard of BioAlert Press?

I find it very ironic that Rense claims to have become so disillusioned with the nature of the mainstream news broadcast business and its inclination to report tabloid style and sensationalistic material, when all anyone has to do is peruse the Rense.com website for 10 minutes to realize that this well-funded site – funded by the same mainstream businesses that Rense claims to detest – is full of nothing but a never-ending series of sensationalistic, tabloid-type, speculative, unsubstantiated or fabricated “news” articles. I have to ask: Is it only wrong, disillusioning and distasteful when “other” people do it, Jeff? Or are you doing it for them?

Furthermore, online searches for any evidence of Jeff Rense’s longstanding claims regarding his extremely elusive broadcast journalism career path result in even more dead ends. There is an article on the Rense website entitled “The Most Dangerous Man in Talk Radio”, authored by an alleged LA writer named Kennedy Grey.

In this article, Kennedy Grey tells us, “When Jeff Rense walked away from a #1 rated Oregon TV news anchor position, people suspected job burnout. But Rense wasn’t burned out on his job - his dissatisfaction was with the entire news media mainstream itself. Grey also states that Jeff spent “Twelve years as on on-air news anchor and News Director “up and down the west coast”. Grey further says, “Rense set out to re-invent himself into a liberator of truth from the confines of a corrupt and bloated news broadcast industry.” He directly quotes Jeff Rense, who states that “Radio is theatre of the mind - a classroom of the mind.”

Very interesting comments, aren’t they? The news anchor/news director statement is impossible to verify via the Internet, and thus far Jeff Rense is not forthcoming with information in spite of email sent to him containing a link to our website inquiry dated Friday, May 26, 2006 entitled Who is “Jeff Rense”?.

Does anyone have a copy of any of these 5,000 Jeff Rense newscasts? We’d sure like to see one. Thus far, we have not been able to locate anyone other than one person who remembers seeing Jeff Rense anchoring a TV newscast.

Only one TV news station’s call letters has been identified thus far. KOBI-TV 5 out of Medford, Oregon, which is an NBC affiliate. Pretty slim pickings. Nevertheless, I made a few phone calls to Medford, Oregon. One would think that as popular as Jeff Rense supposedly was, surely someone would remember him from the 1980s – particularly if he had produced and anchored 5000 newscasts up and down the West Coast. I contacted the Mail Tribune and spoke with an employee in the newsroom there. She had never heard of Oregon’s (former) #1 top rated news anchor, Jeff Rense. I’m awaiting a call back from Bob Hunter, editor of the Mail Tribune newspaper, to see if he has any recollections on this matter.

“5000 newscasts” is a lot of face-time, wouldn’t you agree?

Three calls to Rense’s former place of employment, KOBI-TV, speaking to four people who worked there didn’t help Rense very much. The first three individuals I spoke to had never heard of Jeff Rense and have no idea who he is. The fourth person was the owner of KOBI-TV, Patsy Smullin.

Jeff claims to have left KOBI due to his disillusionment with the mainstream news business and the tendency of TV news to sensationalize and dip into tabloid reporting, as stated above. I read Jeff’s published claims about this to Patsy Smullin. She responded, “That’s not the reason he gave to us at all. He said he was leaving to join his wife in their pet store.” (I am currently checking out the pet store information.)

Overall, Patsy Smullin did not give the impression that Jeff Rense had been a good employee while at KOBI-TV. In fact, her remarks lead one to believe that he was dishonest and untrustworthy. It was all I could do to restrain myself from asking if he conducted newscasts while wearing a wig.

The question we are entitled to ask is: why would Jeff Rense make so many claims about himself, and why would he twist the truth and make public assertions that are simply not true? Isn’t the “reinvented Jeff Rense” supposed to be all about truth and realism as opposed to sensationalistic, tabloid-style garbage? If one looks through his massive website, is it conceivable that a person might have some difficulty trying to discern the difference between Rense shinola and honest-to-god truth? Where does one end and the other begin? Furthermore, is Jeff Rense the person we really want to ask? Maybe that’s a little like asking the Bush Gang to investigate 911? (Oh, right! That’s already been done. Vanity Fair called it a “whitewash.”)

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“Jeff Rense” is a familiar name to countless political/conspiracy talk radio listeners and web surfers. In these circles, virtually everyone has heard of Rense.com. What very few people realize, or have even stopped to think about, is that very little is known about Jeff Rense himself. The available online biographical information is vague and deals in generalities, and has been copied and pasted from one web page to another over the years. The Rense legend has been dished out for public consumption in small, measured doses over time in word-bytes, with hardly anyone daring to openly question its veracity. Rense fans embrace, and often even vehemently defend the legend; those who don’t end up being ridiculed and attacked. That’s a curious feature of Rense’s position as a “Don of Conspiracy Theory.”

Jeff Rense is an interesting guy, wouldn’t you say? He’s almost a “legend,” and is even listed on a government site as the number one purveyor of “misinformation.” That’s quite an accomplishment in a world where “conspiracy theories” are mostly ignored and/or ridiculed. You could even say that it’s very good PR to get on such a list.

My curiosity about Jeff Rense began to grow when I realized that he has maintained a large Internet presence for over a decade, and despite this, there is virtually no information on him other than that which one finds on his website. How has Jeff Rense managed to keep information about himself off the world wide web all these years? That’s an interesting question.

We live in a time that discourages curiosity about the ‘wrong” topics – that’s a hallmark of the Fascist Bushistas - and it seems that questioning Rense is definitely “off limits”. We have to wonder why that is? Asking questions about the ‘wrong” people is treated almost as sacrilege. We love to hold our heroes and gurus high, don’t we? But we have learned the hard way that questions are only discouraged by those who have something to hide.

What could such a nice guy, such a great “patriot” as Jeff Rense possibly have to hide?

After spending some time combing through his claims and trying to find verification, I began to realize that “Jeff Rense” is little more than a reinvention. He has made some very interesting claims over the years, particularly with respect to his former stints in broadcasting and journalism; claims that served as building blocks in the creation of a legend, a legend constructed from the twisting of truth.

Well, let’s look at “Jeff Rense” shall we?

Claim #1: On the Rense.com homepage, we see the following:

“7-time Peabody Award Nominee”

Rense Peabody Talkers claim

Peabody Awards

Truth: The Rense.com website claims 7 Peabody Award nominations. The Peabody Awards do not have nominees. Anyone can fill out an entry, and then later the winners are announced. The following is an email from the Peabody Awards Foundation:

“The Peabody Awards program receives between 1,000 and 1,200 entries each year. We have a 15 member judging panel that meets several times during the judging season, as well as listening to/watching entries alone in their homes. They discuss all entries as a group, usually awarding between 30 and 35 Peabodys each year. There are no set number of awards given, and the board does not choose winners according to categories. We do not have a list of finalists or “nominees” as other awards programs have.

Basically we have entrants and winners.

Danna L. Williams Senior Administrative Assistant, emailed Feb. 6th 2006 ”

In other words, you could nominate me, I could nominate you, and we could all nominate Bozo the Clown. The Peabody panel will most likely be interested in these suggestions, but ultimately it is THEY who choose the winners – not the public. There are no official lists of “nominees”. Rense’s website claim to be a “7 Time Peabody Award Nominee” is not only misleading, it means essentially nothing. It is presented to create a false impression of Rense’s achievements, basically it’s deceptive bullshit.

Talkers Magazine

Claim # 2: The Rense website states: “Talkers magazine top 100 Host”

Talkers Magazine ‘Heavy Hundred’

Truth: Please note that Jeff Rense isn’t listed in the top 100, and he isn’t even listed in the additional 250 names cited in the rest of Talkers Top Radio Show Host picks for 2006. Rense failed to make the cut for 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, etc. Rense was on the list once about 6 or 7 years ago, according to a response to my inquiry from Talkers. In fact, they find it pretty interesting that Jeff Rense is continuing to present this claim on his website, creating the appearance of his inclusion on this popular list, when in fact he is currently not listed. Talkers characterized this misleading representation in one word: “deceptive”, saying they will be keeping an eye on Rense and any Talkers-related claims from here on. Take a look at the list linked above. Call Talkers Magazine and ask them yourself if he is indeed on the Heavy Hundred list.

Claim #3: Rense’s Myspace web page at:

Rense My Space Profile lists his location as Ashland, Oregon – yet his Rense.com fan page says he is in California. Which is it? Oregon or California? Does Rense have two residences? If so, how does one afford two residences on an Internet radio income?

Of course, the answer could be that one is his residence and the other is his business address, but again I ask: if he is just doing his thing because he is a “true patriot,” knowing how hard it is for other true patriots to make ends meet, we have to ask who is paying for his office? What money is backing him? His MySpace page states an income of $100,000-$150,000 per year. That’s a pretty good chunk of change for a guy who claims to be in the business out of the goodness of his heart and his interest in truth.

Claim #4: Jeff Rense From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Former television news anchorman Jeff Rense, who lives in Santa Barbara, California, is a popular conspiracy theorist and is the host of the Jeff Rense program which is broadcast on terrestrial radio and on the Internet. He originally became famous in the 90’s with the program “Sightings”. His radio program and website (See below) cover such subjects as UFO reports, paranormal phenomena, conspiracy theories, reports of new diseases and a plethora of other material rarely covered by the mainstream media. Jeff Rense leans towards a populist approach regarding politics and media. Rense does not subscribe to any conventional political standpoint and many of his views are simultaneously left and right leaning. Rense has one brother: writer, Rip Rense. His step mother, New York socialite and editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest Magazine, is Paige Rense. His father, now deceased, was sports journalist, Arthur F. Rense (1917-1990). Jeff Rense is also a vegan.”

Here we learn that Rense’s views are simultaneously both left-leaning and right-leaning. Sounds like an impossible contortion to me. It is also established from more than one source that Jeff’s father, Arthur Rense, formerly a sportswriter and sometime poet, also landed a job at Douglas Aircraft doing PR. How does a poet and sports writer qualify for work as a public relations director at Douglas Aircraft, one of the biggies of the Military Industrial Complex? Here is the NY Times obituary for Arthur Rense:

Arthur F. Rense, Public Relations Executive, 74
Published: January 5, 1991
“Arthur F. Rense, a retired public relations executive, died on Dec. 28 at his home in Las Vegas, Nev. He was 74 years old. He died of leukemia, said his wife, Paige Rense, editor in chief of Architectural Digest. Mr. Rense had been director of public relations for the Summa Corporation, owned by Howard R. Hughes, until he retired in 1985. He had been public relations director for the missiles and space systems division of Douglas Aircraft Company and director of public relations at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. Besides his wife, Mr. Rense is survived by three sons from a former marriage, Kirk of Irvine, Calif., Jeff of Santa Barbara , Calif., and Rip of Sherman Oaks, Calif.; four brothers, Randy, Andy and Frank, all of Cleveland, and William of Denver; and two grandchildren.”

Regarding Summa Corporation: The Washington Post for April 1, 1975, carried this information:

Summa Corp. is the financial umbrella under which most of (Howard)Hughes’ worth is contained. . . .Most recently, another Summa “asset” hit the news: the $350 million Hughes Glomar Explorer vessel that Hughes built at the behest (and the expense of) the Central Intelligence Agency . . . Mormons, Hughes, & CIA

Summa Corporation has been tied to CIA contracts on more than one occasion, to say the least. Douglas Aircraft Company is also well-known for its numerous government contracts, not to mention the starring role it is now playing in Bush’s Endless War. So again I ask: how did “poet and sports writer” Arthur Rense end up as public relations director for Douglas Aircraft and Summa Corp? In bed with the Feds? More importantly, what kind of connections does his son Jeff have with these same gangs? After all, his views are “both left and right” which suggests that he could have “left” views to vacuum in his audience all the while subtly converting them to “right” views.

Douglas Aircraft also has ties with RAND Corporation:

RAND (Encyclopedia)

The RAND Corporation is an American think tank.

“A think tank is a group of individuals dedicated to high-level synergistic research on a variety of subjects, usually in military laboratories, corporations,… first formed to offer research and analysis to the U.S. military. The organization has since expanded to working with other government and commercial organizations Project RAND was set up in 1945 by the USAAF, under contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company. An interesting aside, Condoleezza Rice is a former RAND CorporationTrustee 1991-1997 and current Secretary of State for the United States, a war whore if ever there was one.”

Okay, I think everybody knows that Summa, Douglas Aircraft, and RAND are all major players with DOD, military and intelligence agencies in the fascist government that Jeff Rense claims to oppose. Yet we find that his father, Arthur Rense, poet, sports writer, was “somehow” a public relations director for both Douglas Aircraft and Summa Corporation? I would very much like to hear Jeff Rense publicly discuss this curious fact one of these fine days and explain how he could live much of his life with alphabet soup guys swarming around and avoid being sucked into the game. Funny how this topic never seems to come up, isn’t it? Perhaps he just keeps forgetting to mention it.

Now I want to come back to the fact that Jeff Rense has been “honored” by being listed on an official government website as a major purveyor of “disinformation.” Among the conspiracy minded crowd, that is a high kudo indeed. But is it evidence that Jeff truly is a news source standing in opposition to the Bush Reich and their Endless Wars of Lies and Agression? Maybe not. As Robin Ramsay, Editor of Lobster Magazine, wrote in the February issue of Fortean Times:

Recently, the US State Department has begun trying to rebut some of the current conspiracy theories about America. Their first targets were a couple of websites - www.rense.com and Conspiracy Planet - and the late Joe Vialls, an Australian. What a boost for the named sites! Attacked by the State Department![…]

[Y]ou don’t have to be a PR genius to see that what you simply mustn’t do is launch official attacks: all they do is amplify and legitimise the theories by announcing that they are deemed to be worth attacking. [Fortean Times 206, February 2006, p. 19]

What a coup for Rense and Alex Jones! To be officially declared the primo disinfo sites! Now, if you know anything about COINTELPRO, you expect that the real COINTELPRO operations will be attacked “officially” in order to legitimize them exactly as Robin Ramsay has described. That also means that those who are honest and sincere seekers of truth and who do their homework and expose the lies of the Bush Reich will most certainly NOT be martyred by the official government. It’s way too dangerous and gives them legitimacy. Rather, they will be defamed by the “officially designated disinformation agents” – and dare we say it? – agents of COINTELPRO - such as Jeff Rense, Alex Jones and similar disinformation agents that have received the Bush Reich seal of approval. In fact, it seems that this is a well-orchestrated plan that is described in detail in that much maligned document, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” A really good way to keep your eye on the ball is to consider Protocol 12…

Now, it is important when reading the Protocols to not assign it’s origin to any national, ethnic, or religious group. Rather, consider it to be a statement of any group that seeks to control and dominate and use the public for their own gain Then you will truly begin to understand who is who. (Excerpts of Protocol 12: Control of the Press are located at the end of this article):

Recently, Jeff Rense accused WING TV of engaging in deception, trickery, subterfuge, lying, slandering and libel, just to name a few of the charges. He has publicly called Victor Thorn and myself “dirtball scum” and together with Alex Jones and their groupies, charged us with being “cointelpro assets, government agents and un-American operatives.” True to form and apparently attached to Rense at the hip and the lip, (and linked on the official government site, I should add), Alex Jones reinforces, endorses, and repeats Rense’s vomitus, only louder. What’s amusing about this is that Rense, Jones, nor any of their groupie parrots have yet to substantiate any of these bogus charges made against us.

Let me get this straight: nobody has to qualify with data anything they say, including (and particularly) veteran journalist Jeff Rense? Alex Jones has yet to qualify any of his ridiculous comments about us either, and he refuses to hold himself accountable for his own words.

Ask yourself: Why? Is it conceivable to anyone out there that they cannot PROVE the things they say about WING TV? Moreover, this begs the question, can they prove any and all of the other “gospel-truth” claims they’ve made over the years? That is another very good question.

You see, we are supposed to just believe what they say simply because they say it. Forget about facts, data or substantiation. Forget about showing evidence of their assertions; forget about journalistic ethics; just nod your head and agree. Don’t ask questions. Gobble up the lies and twisted half-truths and get your fill of the fix du jour. After all, in the words of Jeff Rense, it is all a “theater of the mind”.

What we observe is that both Rense and Jones pander to a “least common denominator” audience demographic, the people out there who don’t bother to check things out for themselves and will just repeat what they hear and read over and over, like good little automatons. This is the ideal Rense-Jones target audience, one which will worship blindly, surrender critical thinking skills, believe without questioning or disagreement, and of course, shell out the bucks.

Incidentally, I did a search on Kennedy Grey, the LA writer who penned the article about Rense entitled “The Most Dangerous Man in Talk Radio”. He (she) is supposedly the founder of a group called RAS, an acronym for ‘Rock Against Suicide’. Unfortunately, a Google search for Kennedy Grey did not yield a website for the RAS group anywhere, but there is an interview with Kennedy Grey on this website: The Internet Nirvana Fan club.

Nirvana Fan Club. Oh boy, how impressive. A Curt Cobain suicide website.

I was not able to find any links online to Grey’s organization, RAS, or to Kennedy Grey, other than the single article he wrote which is published on Rense.com. I would like to find Kennedy Grey and ask whether he/she even bothered to check out any of the claims Rense made to him in the interview. I’d like to learn if Kennedy Grey is a real person, for that matter, or just a construct of Rense. Whatever the case may be, it doesn’t look like Grey checked out any of the statements Rense made in that interview. If some fact-checking had been done, Grey’s article would probably be written a bit differently. At the very least, it should have been.

Rense and Alex Jones enjoy howling that “Honest-to-God patriots” NEVER attack other patriots. That sounds a lot like:

“For any attempt to attack us, if such still be possible, we shall inflict fines without mercy…. No one shall with impunity lay a finger on the aureole of our government infallibility. The pretext for stopping any publication will be the alleged plea that it is agitating the public mind without occasion or justification.” [Protocols]

The fact is, those who do the research know that the Founding Fathers engaged in a great deal of spirited, heated, sincere dispute with one another. Some of them hated one another with a passion, yet in spite of this animosity, worked together for the common good of all; as the cause was greater than themselves, and they all knew this to be true. So where do Rense and Jones come off bellowing such obnoxious bullshit, especially when we consider the fact that merely branding oneself a “patriot” does not necessarily make it so. I could call myself “Madonna”, but that doesn’t mean I AM Madonna.

Appearances can be very deceiving, especially when some so-called “patriots” choose to hide behind microphones in undisclosed locations, behind wigs and a couple of re-touched, photo-shopped cartoon pictures of themselves, and when all they choose to disclose is a limited amount of extremely vague babble about their alleged past accomplishments, achievements, or experience designed solely to “create a legend”.

And then, when we discover, with a minimum of investigation, that their claims do not hold up, that it is all completely manipulated, twisted, exaggerated, amplified and contorted facts designed to present a false front, we are entitled to question everything else. Why do people tell lies, whether overtly or by omission? Some do it because of mental issues, some do it for profit, and some do it just because they can.

Bottom line: Jeff Rense has falsely accused WING TV of trading in lies, deception, duplicity, innuendo, disinformation and trickery. Jeff Rense better start looking in the mirror, because I see a so-called “patriot” that needs to come clean about a few things, someone who is “not known for his honesty”.

Definitions of deception on the Web:

• misrepresentation: a misleading falsehood
• the act of deceiving
• magic trick: an illusory feat; considered magical by naive observers
• Deception is providing intentionally misleading information to others.
• To practice deceit.
• To give a false impression: appearances can deceive.
• To cause to believe what is not true; mislead.
• to cause to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid intransitive verb : to practice deceit
• be false to; be dishonest with - 2: cause someone to believe an untruth

Stay tuned, because this investigation is not over. More to follow soon.

“The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.”
~ Tom Waitts ~

Protocol 12: Control of the Press

1. The word “freedom,” which can be interpreted in various ways, is defined by us as follows –

2. Freedom is the right to do what which the law allows. This interpretation of the word will at the proper time be of service to us, because all freedom will thus be in our hands, since the laws will abolish or create only that which is desirable for us according to the aforesaid program.

3. We shall deal with the press in the following way: what is the part played by the press to-day? It serves to excite and inflame those passions which are needed for our purpose or else it serves selfish ends of parties. It is often vapid, unjust, mendacious, and the majority of the public have not the slightest idea what ends the press really serves. We shall saddle and bridle it with a tight curb: we shall do the same also with all productions of the printing press, for where would be the sense of getting rid of the attacks of the press if we remain targets for pamphlets and books? …

For any attempt to attack us, if such still be possible, we shall inflict fines without mercy…. No one shall with impunity lay a finger on the aureole of our government infallibility. The pretext for stopping any publication will be the alleged plea that it is agitating the public mind without occasion or justification.

I BEG YOU TO NOTE THAT AMONG THOSE MAKING ATTACKS UPON US WILL ALSO BE ORGANS ESTABLISHED BY US, BUT THEY WILL ATTACK EXCLUSIVELY POINTS THAT WE HAVE PRE-DETERMINED TO ALTER. WE CONTROL THE PRESS

4. NOT A SINGLE ANNOUNCEMENT WILL REACH THE PUBLIC WITHOUT OUR CONTROL. Even now this is already being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them.

5. If already now we have contrived to possess ourselves of the minds of the GOY communities to such an extent that they all come near looking upon the events of the world through the colored glasses of those spectacles we are setting astride their noses; if already now there is not a single State where there exist for us any barriers to admittance into what GOY stupidity calls State secrets: what will our positions be then, when we shall be acknowledged supreme lords of the world in the person of our king of all the world ….

6. Let us turn again to the FUTURE OF THE PRINTING PRESS. Every one desirous of being a publisher, librarian, or printer, will be obliged to provide himself with the diploma instituted therefore, which, in case of any fault, will be immediately impounded. With such measures THE INSTRUMENT OF THOUGHT WILL BECOME AN EDUCATIVE MEANS ON THE HANDS OF OUR GOVERNMENT, WHICH WILL NO LONGER ALLOW THE MASS OF THE NATION TO BE LED ASTRAY IN BY-WAYS AND FANTASIES ABOUT THE BLESSINGS OF PROGRESS. Is there any one of us who does not know that these phantom blessings are the direct roads to foolish imaginings which give birth to anarchical relations of men among themselves and towards authority, because progress, or rather the idea of progress, has introduced the conception of every kind of emancipation, but has failed to establish its limits …. All the so-called liberals are anarchists, if not in fact, at any rate in thought. Every one of them in hunting after phantoms of freedom, and falling exclusively into license, that is, into the anarchy of protest for the sake of protest…. FREE PRESS DESTROYED

7. We turn to the periodical press. … if there should be any found who are desirous of writing against us, they will not find any person eager to print their productions. Before accepting any production for publication in print, the publisher or printer will have to apply to the authorities for permission to do so. Thus we shall know beforehand of all tricks preparing against us and shall nullify them by getting ahead with explanations on the subject treated of.

8. Literature and journalism are two of the most important educative forces, and therefore our government will become proprietor of the majority of the journals. This will neutralize the injurious influence of the privately-owned press and will put us in possession of a tremendous influence upon the public mind …. If we give permits for ten journals, we shall ourselves found thirty, and so on in the same proportion. This, however, must in no wise be suspected by the public. For which reason all journals published by us will be of the most opposite, in appearance, tendencies and opinions, thereby creating confidence in us and bringing over to us quite unsuspicious opponents, who will thus fall into our trap and be rendered harmless.

9. In the front rank will stand organs of an official character. They will always stand guard over our interests, and therefore their influence will be comparatively insignificant. 10. In the second rank will be the semi-official organs, whose part it will be to attack the tepid and indifferent.

11. In the third rank we shall set up our own, to all appearance, opposition, which, in at least one of its organs, will present what looks like the very antipodes to us. Our real opponents at heart will accept this simulated opposition as their own and will show us their cards.

12. All our newspapers will be of all possible complexions — aristocratic, republican, revolutionary, even anarchical - for so long, of course, as the constitution exists …. Like the Indian idol “Vishnu” they will have a hundred hands, and every one of them will have a finger on any one of the public opinions as required. When a pulse quickens these hands will lead opinion in the direction of our aims, for an excited patient loses all power of judgment and easily yields to suggestion. Those fools who will think they are repeating the opinion of a newspaper of their own camp will be repeating our opinion or any opinion that seems desirable for us. In the vain belief that they are following the organ of their party they will, in fact, follow the flag which we hang out for them.

13. In order to direct our newspaper militia in this sense we must take special and minute care in organizing this matter. Under the title of central department of the press we shall institute literary gatherings at which our agents will without attracting attention issue the orders and watchwords of the day. By discussing and controverting, but always superficially, without touching the essence of the matter, our organs will carry on a sham fight fusillade with the official newspapers solely for the purpose of giving occasion for us to express ourselves more fully than could well be done from the outset in official announcements, whenever, of course, that is to our advantage.

14. THESE ATTACKS UPON US WILL ALSO SERVE ANOTHER PURPOSE, NAMELY, THAT OUR SUBJECTS WILL BE CONVINCED TO THE EXISTENCE OF FULL FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND SO GIVE OUR AGENTS AN OCCASION TO AFFIRM THAT ALL ORGANS WHICH OPPOSE US ARE EMPTY BABBLERS, since they are incapable of finding any substantial objections to our orders. ONLY LIES PRINTED

15. Methods of organization like these, imperceptible to the public eye but absolutely sure, are the best calculated to succeed in bringing the attention and the confidence of the public to the side of our government. Thanks to such methods we shall be in a position as from time to time may be required, to excite or to tranquillize the public mind on political questions, to persuade or to confuse, printing now truth, now lies, facts or their contradictions, according as they may be well or ill received, always very cautiously feeling our ground before stepping upon it …. WE SHALL HAVE A SURE TRIUMPH OVER OUR OPPONENTS SINCE THEY WILL NOT HAVE AT THEIR DISPOSITION ORGANS OF THE PRESS IN WHICH THEY CAN GIVE FULL AND FINAL EXPRESSION TO THEIR VIEWS owing to the aforesaid methods of dealing with the press. We shall not even need to refute them except very superficially.

16. Trial shots like these, fired by us in the third rank of our press, in case of need, will be energetically refuted by us in our semi-official organs.

17. Even nowadays, already, to take only the French press, there are forms which reveal masonic solidarity in acting on the watchword: all organs of the press are bound together by professional secrecy; like the augurs of old, not one of their numbers will give away the secret of his sources of information unless it be resolved to make announcement of them. Not one journalist will venture to betray this secret, for not one of them is ever admitted to practice literature unless his whole past has some disgraceful sore or other …. These sores would be immediately revealed. So long as they remain the secret of a few the prestige of the journalist attacks the majority of the country - the mob follow after him with enthusiasm.

18. Our calculations are especially extended to the provinces. It is indispensable for us to inflame there those hopes and impulses with which we could at any moment fall upon the capital, and we shall represent to the capitals that these expressions are the independent hopes and impulses of the provinces. Naturally, the source of them will be always one and the same - ours. WHAT WE NEED IS THAT, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS WE ARE IN THE PLENITUDE POWER, THE CAPITALS SHOULD FIND THEMSELVES STIFLED BY THE PROVINCIAL OPINION OF THE NATIONS, I.E., OF A MAJORITY ARRANGED BY OUR AGENTUR. What we need is that at the psychological moment the capitals should not be in a position to discuss an accomplished fact for the simple reason, if for no other, that it has been accepted by the public opinion of a majority in the provinces.

19. WHEN WE ARE IN THE PERIOD OF THE NEW REGIME TRANSITIONAL TO THAT OF OUR ASSUMPTION OF FULL SOVEREIGNTY WE MUST NOT ADMIT ANY REVELATION BY THE PRESS OF ANY FORM OF PUBLIC DISHONESTY; IT IS NECESSARY THAT THE NEW REGIME SHOULD BE THOUGHT TO HAVE SO PERFECTLY CONTENDED EVERYBODY THAT EVEN CRIMINALITY HAS DISAPPEARED … Cases of the manifestation of criminality should remain known only to their victims and to chance witnesses - no more.

I think that all of the above may sound very familiar to all of you reading this. The only difference is that now we work with the Internet and not printed materials. But the principles are the same.

We continue our critical analysis of Cramer’s "Transactional Interpretation" of quantum mechanics. This interpretation is, for instance, being propagated in connection with "Remote Viewing and Consciousness Entanglement"!

3. Differences between the Transactional and the Copenhagen Interpretations

In this section I want to focus on the differences between the transactional interpretation and the Copenhagen interpretation. I have decided to do this with a question and answer format, asking an interpretation question implicit in the quantum mechanics formalism and then providing answers from the points of view of both the Copenhagen interpretation (CI) and the transactional interpretation (TI). The answers given are based on my understanding of both interpretations, and there is perhaps room for other views of how the CI might answer the questions posed. Where there was this sort of disagreement during the discussion session of this Conference, I will try to indicate this.

"An Overview of the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", was an invited paper presented at The 1987 Symposium on Relativistic Quantum Theory and Interpretation, Loyola University, New Orleans, May, 1987. From the web page "Jesuit Identity":

The Jesuit educational network is one of the largest systems in American higher education, with more than 200,000 students currently enrolled in the 28 U.S. Jesuit universities. Worldwide, Jesuit universities and colleges have graduated more than 1,000,000 students.

And what about Jesuits? An excerpt from the web page THE COUNTER REFORMATION

They came to be perhaps the most effective agents in the combat with heresy. Loyola himself felt that the Reformation was the result of ignorance and corruption on the part of the Catholic clergy. He had no very detailed knowledge of the works of the reformers; he forbade his followers to read the writings of heretics, and followed this counsel himself. His own attitude toward heretics was without bitterness; he hoped rather that they might be won back by persuasion. This was the position adopted by his followers, who generally refused to enter the service of the Inquisition, although they tended to be in favor of depriving heretics of civil rights and of banishing them if they could not reconvert them.

Let’s get back to "transactional interpretation" - Cramer continues:

Q1: Does the wave described by the state vector have physical reality?

CI: The state vector does not describe a real physical wave moving through space, but rather a mathematical representation of the knowledge of an observer.

TI: To the extent that the formalism contains state vectors represented in position space (as opposed to momentum space or other parameter spaces), the formalism is describing real physical waves moving through space which are the first steps in the formation of transactions. The completed transaction describes the exchanged particle.

Discussion: It was pointed out in the Conference discussion that for some quantum mechanical systems (e.g. an ensemble of particles with spin) there is no known formalism capable of representing the system in position space. Therefore, it was argued, it is inappropriate to discuss “waves physically present in space'’. This is a very relevant observation, for the interpretation of a formalism cannot and should not go where the formalism itself does not venture. The TI, when applied to a formalism representing waves in position space, can interpret them as physically present in space. When applied to momentum space formalisms, etc, the issue of physical presence is moot, since it is not clear that “physical presence'’ in an arbitrary parameter space is a meaningful concept.

Now, listen "To the extent that the formalism contains state vectors represented in position space…". What is the meaning of that sentence? Since publishing of John von Neuman’s opus "Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik" in 1932 the formalism of quantum mechanics is based on Hilbert space, with understanding that position variables are just one of infinitely many commuting systems of observables. Moreover, even in position representations the "waves" (for particles without spin) propagate in 3 times N (N - the number of particles) dimensional space. They are not real physical waves moving through space as Cramer seems to imply. Cramer notices that "this is a very relevant observation", but he stops short of drawing the only reasonable conclusion, namely that his "transactional interpretation" fails to deal with all those case when the standard interpretation, extended by von Neumann and Dirac, works without any problems whatsoever.

To be continued ….

Continue with Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation:

The latter half of my review article[1] provides examples of the use of the transactional interpretation in analyzing the accumulated curiosities and paradoxes (the EPR paradox, Schrodinger’s cat, Wigner’s friend, Wheeler’s delayed choice, Herbert’s paradox, etc.) that have lain for decades in the quantum mechanics Museum of Mysteries. It is shown that the TI removes the need for half-and-half cats, frizzy universes with split ends, observer-dependent reality, and “knowledge'’ waves. It removes the observer from the formalism and puts him back in the laboratory where he belongs.

Really? And it happens just because of transactions between advanced and retarded waves? Waves of what? Did Cramer forget that Quantum Field Theory (QFT) - the most advanced part of quantum mechanics - is about quantum fields - that is about operator-valued functions of space and time? There are no waves there - as QFT, especially relativistic one, is usually represented in a Heisenberg picture, not the Schroedinger picture. It is operators that "move in space and time", no wave functions. Moreover, in open systems, and all realistic systems are open, states are represented by density matrices, not by "waves". It is hard to believe that Cramer does not know these elementary facts. (That is elementary, dear Watson!) But if he knows them - how can he not address these fundamental issues at the very beginning? Only because other physicists are all to busy with their stuff so that they have no time to read about "Transactional Interpretation?"

To be continued…

Continue with Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation:

This advanced-retarded handshake is the basis for the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is a two-way contract between the future and the past for the purpose of transferring energy, momentum, etc, while observing all of the conservation laws and quantization conditions imposed at the emitter/absorber terminating “boundaries'’ of the transaction. The transaction is explicitly nonlocal because the future is, in a limited way, affecting the past (at the level of enforcing correlations). It also alters the way in which we must look at physical phenomena. When we stand in the dark and look at a star a hundred light years away, not only have the retarded light waves from the star been traveling for a hundred years to reach our eyes, but the advanced waves generated by absorption processes within our eyes have reached a hundred years into the past, completing the transaction that permitted the star to shine in our direction.

So, Cramer is telling us that physics is much like business: the future and the past are signing a contract "for the purpose" of transferring energy, momentum, etc. It is interesting, who is choosing the exact purpose of this contract? Who and how decides whether it is going to be energy transfer or momentum transfer, or something else? The future is "enforcing correlations"? What correlations? What correlations exist between the universe and the universe? It all sounds much like a world salad. But let us wait. Maybe the "future" will bring some correlation between the TI and the reason Our eyes are allowing the star to shine! Unbelievable! But wait, "ours" means "whose?". What about dog’s eyes? What about a piece of dust in the cosmic space? The star is shining on all of them. It is also shining on itself. So what is really responsible for the star shining?

It is a serious interpretational problem for the Copenhagen interpretation that it characterizes as mathematical descriptions of the knowledge of observers the solutions of a simple second-order differential equation relating momentum, mass, and energy. Similarly, it is a problem for the transactional interpretation that it uses advanced solutions of wave equations for retroactive confirmation of quantum event transactions. While this provides the mechanism for its explicit nonlocality, the use of advanced solutions seems counterintuitive and contrary to common sense, if not to causality. Can this account of a quantum event be truly compatible with the austere formalism of quantum mechanics?

Which second order differential equation relates momentum, mass and energy? And again we have "quantum event". The author does not even try to define it.

From one perspective the advanced-retarded wave combinations used in the transactional description of quantum behavior are quite apparent in the Schrodinger-Dirac formalism itself, so much so as to be almost painfully obvious. Wigner’s time reversal operator is, after all, just the operation of complex conjugation, and the complex conjugate of a retarded wave is an advanced wave. What else, one might legitimately ask, could the ubiquitous psi* notations of the quantum wave mechanics formalism possibly denote except that the time reversed (or advanced) counterparts of normal (or retarded) wave functions are playing an important role in a quantum event? What could an overlap integral combining psi with psi* represent other than the probability of a transaction through an exchange of advanced and retarded waves? At minimum it should be clear that the the transactional interpretation is not a clumsy appendage gratuitously grafted onto the formalism of quantum mechanics but rather a description which, after one learns the key to the language, is found to be graphically represented within the quantum wave mechanics formalism itself.

But quantum mechanics is not just Schrodinger-Dirac formalism! There are books about matrix quantum mechanics, and about quantum mechanics in Hilbert space. The real power of quantum mechanics is somewhere else, not in the wave equations, but in the much more general Hilbert space and algebraic formulation. Is the author trying to tell us that in this much more general and powerful applications his idea fails completely? Wigner’s time reversal is NOT just the operation of complex conjugation. I am sure Cramer knows it perfectly, but he chooses to forget it right now. How time reversal is implemented (if it is implemented at all) depends on the representation. There infinitely many possible representations. The whole book by Dirac is about representations. We can have position, momentum, energy, and all kinds of mixed representations - which we select according to the problem at hand. The form of a particular operator (time reversal, for instance) depends on the chosen representation (that is an orthonormal "bases" in the Hilbert space). In this more general approach psi* is an element of a different Hilbert space - the dual space. Therefore psi and psi* never meet! They live in different worlds!

To be continued…

USA is going downhill faster and faster. Reuters brings the most alarming news today: USA is telling the world what “freedom” means when interpreted

Last Update: Monday, April 25, 2005. 9:40am (AEST)
US incarceration rate climbs

The US penal system, the world’s largest, maintained its steady growth in 2004,
the US Department of Justice reported.

The latest official half-yearly figures found the nation’s prison and jail
population at 2,131,180 in the middle of last year, an increase of 2.3 per cent
over 2003.

The United States has incarcerated 726 people per 100,000 of its population,
seven to 10 times as many as most other democracies.

The rate for England is 142 per 100,000, for France 91 and for Japan 58.

The figures issued by the department’s statistical unit showed that 12.6 per
cent of black males in their late 20s were behind bars.

The comparable rate for Hispanic males was 3.6 per cent and for whites 1.7 per
cent.

“Unless we promote alternatives to prison, the nation will continue to lead the
world in imprisonment,” said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Justice
Policy Institute, a think-tank that studies prison issues.

According to the Justice Department, violent crime in the United States fell by
over 33 per cent from 1994 to 2003 and property crimes fell by 23 per cent.

Yet the prison population has continued to climb, increasing an annual average
of 3.5 per cent since 1995, partly due to high recidivism.

Within three years of their release, two of every three prisoners are back
behind bars.

Criminologists attribute the growth in the prison population to “get tough on
crime” policies that have subjected hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug
and property offenders to long mandatory sentences.

“We have to be concerned about an overloaded system which sentences many
offenders quickly and is not doing a good job of sorting out people who should
be incarcerated from people for whom other responses would produce better, less
expensive results,” said Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing
Project, a Washington think-tank.

The rise in the prison population varies by state.

Since 1998, 12 states experienced stable or declining incarceration rates but
crime rates in those states declined at the same rate as in the other 38.

Texas, with 704 per 100,000 people in state prisons, incarcerates almost seven
times as many as Maine, at 149 per 100,000.

It costs around $22,000 to lock up one person for a year.

The United States spends about $57 billion annually on its prison and jail
system.

Women remain the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, increasing by
2.9 per cent over the year to over 103,000.

In 1980, the United States imprisoned 12,000 women.

In addition, the United States jails around 283,000 people with serious mental
illnesses and almost 92,000 foreigners.

This country is bringing the world to destruction. In science the situation is deteriorating as well, though not with the same speed. Not yet. A quote from Peter Woit blog:

Peter, it looks like there are two seperate issues here:

1) Emminent scientists with proven track records are attempting to think deeply about speculative ideas which appear completely crazy to others. Some, like Weinberg, even had the temerity to make an experimental prediction based on anthropic reasoning. Others, like Arkani-Hamed and Dimopolous, are continuing this ridiculous trend, making assumptions and following the reasoning through to extract experimental predictions from fine-tuning scenarios.

This abandonment of science from some of its leading stars is appalling. People simply shouldn’t consider these ideas as it’s obvious that they’re wrong and won’t lead anywhere.

2) Other leading scientists, like Dyson and Vilenkin, are receiving money from templeton, an organisation which clearly has an agenda that many of us disagree with. While there’s no suggestion that templeton is dictating the research of these people, it’s disgusting that they would accept the money, especially in the current climate where the DOE are showering departments with funds.

We continue with J. G. Cramer’s "An overview of the Transactional Interpretation". Second paragraph reads:

At the interpretational level, the nonlocality of the quantum mechanics formalism is a source of some difficulty for the Copenhagen interpretation. It is accommodated in the CI through Heisenberg’s “knowledge interpretation'’ of the quantum mechanical state vector as a mathematical description of the state of observer knowledge rather than as a description of the objective state of the physical system observed. For example, Heisenberg in a 1960 letter to Renninger wrote[3], “The act of recording, on the other hand, which leads to the reduction of the state, is not a physical, but rather, so to say, a mathematical process. With the sudden change of our knowledge also the mathematical presentation of our knowledge undergoes of course a sudden change.'’ The knowledge interpretation’s account of state vector collapse and nonlocality is internally consistent but is regarded by some (including the author) as subjective and intellectually unappealing. It is the source of much of the recent dissatisfaction with the Copenhagen interpretation.

Nonlocality - if there is any at all, is not the source of any difficulty. The difficulty lies somewhere else: in the fact that QM is incomplete. It if was complete, nobody would pay any attention to apparent difficulties with nonlocality. The "knowledge interpretation" is indeed a problem, as we are not told how to describe individual physical system in an objective way. Heisenberg did not know the answer, so he tried to make his failure into a failure of everybody. But the "knowledge interpretation is not internally consistent" at all. Because the "knowledge" itself is not a part of the theory. A theory that pretends to be generally valid but then blames the most important process (verification of the theory with experiments) on external concepts that are not part of the theory (change of "knowledge") is not internally consistent. It is being considered as "internally consistent" only due to wishful thinking and lack of courage of the physicists and philosophers. The dissatisfaction with the Copenhagen interpretation because of its "knowledge interpretation" is not "recent" at all. It is as old as quantum mechanics itself.

The author has proposed an alternative and more objective interpretation of the quantum mechanics formalism called the transactional interpretation (TI). It employs an explicitly nonsocial “transaction'’ model for quantum events. This model describes any quantum event as a “handshake'’ executed through an exchange of advanced and retarded waves and is based on time symmetric Lorentz-Dirac electrodynamics and on “absorber theory'’ originated by Wheeler and Feynman. In the absorber theory description any emission process makes advanced waves (schematically represented by the time dependence exp(i omega t)) on an equal basis with ordinary “retarded'’ waves (exp(-i omega t)). Both advanced and retarded waves are valid orthogonal solutions of the electromagnetic wave equation, but in conventional electrodynamics the advanced solutions are conventionally rejected as unphysical or acausal. Wheeler and Feynman used a more subtle boundary condition mechanism to eliminate the non-causal effects of the advanced solutions.

Here we meet the first undefined concept: "quantum event". What is a "quantum event?" How does it differ from an "ordinary event"? It is a always a good idea to define the concepts one is using - otherwise no one will be able to understand the author. Then we have the concept of "advanced and retarded waves", but we are not told what kind of waves they are supposed to be? Waves of what in what? If "waves" are at the foundations of QM, then we immediately have a problem. Because quantum mechanics works perfectly well in a two-dimensional Hilbert space, that is how the simplest spin system is being described. But then there is no place fro "waves" whatsoever. Is the author going to abandon 90% of quantum mechanics that deals with spin systems? "Both advanced and retarded waves are valid orthogonal solutions of the electromagnetic wave equation"??? This sentence does not have any meaning whatsoever. What are "orthogonal solutions?" Orthogonal to what? In which space they are orthogonal? What has electrodynamics to do with quantum mechanics? For instance with quantum gravity?

In the Wheeler-Feynman picture when the retarded wave is absorbed at some time in the future, a process is initiated by which canceling advanced waves from the absorbers erase all traces of advanced waves and their “advanced'’ effects, thereby preserving causality. An observer not privy to these inner mechanisms of nature would perceive only that a retarded wave had gone from the emitter to the absorber. The absorber theory description, unconventional though it is, leads to exactly the same observations as conventional electrodynamics. But it differs in that there has been a two-way exchange, a “handshake'’ across space-time which led to the transfer of energy from emitter to absorber.

Now, if we have a more complicated theory, that involves more processes, including mysterious "erasing all traces", but "leads to exactly the same observations" as the simpler theory - what’s the point of developing such a theory?

To be continued…