Please Read Please Write: November 2011

Friday, November 4, 2011

Speaking the Truth

Galileo is a good example of how we can be completely innocent and still get into terrible trouble by speaking the truth. Galileo lived from 1564 to 1642 A.D. in Italy and is known as the father of modern science. He said the Earth is not the center of the Universe. For saying this, he got himself into big trouble.

The Sun appears to rise in the east in the morning. It seems to set in the west in the evening. Because we can see sunrise and sunset with our own two eyes, people used to think that the Sun rotated around the Earth. They also thought the Earth was flat. However, as everybody knows, appearances can be deceiving.

When Galileo said that the Sun was the center of our solar system, some people thought he was attacking the Pope, who was the main authority in those days. Galileo thus alienated the Jesuit priests, an important religious order inside the Catholic Church.

Galileo was put on trial for heresy in 1633 and was forced to recant. Recant means that he was forced to say he was wrong.

After that, Galileo spent the rest of his life under arrest. This was perhaps not such a bad thing for Galileo, because he used the remaining nine years of his life to write one of his greatest scientific books.

Science goes step-by-step and there is no hurrying it. It took a long time for the world to believe what Galileo already knew. Even little children today know that the Earth orbits around the Sun.

Speaking the truth without understanding how that truth might be received by others is a kind of communications glitch that has little to do with cell phones, the computer, or any other electronic device.

Communication is a two-way street. When you communicate, you must always think: Who will be hearing this or seeing this? How will they react? Unfortunately, most of us speak first ... and think afterwards.

Yet we don't want to fall completely silent and live in fear of what other people will think ... or of what we think they will think about us.

Where is that happy medium? Today, I don't know where it is.

Some Questions for Discussion:

1. Many scientists are idealistic and feel removed from traditional social and political considerations. Are you interested in science or engineering? Do you think the world runs along scientific principles? Do you think that social and political rules should be different for scientists?

2. The American writer Herman Melville wrote a classic short story, Billy Budd, in which a young man's innocence attracted bad luck. Perhaps it is not advisable, given the state of the world, for an adult to be too good and too innocent? Or is innocence a quality that we must always value and preserve?

3. Most Americans believe that the world is a better place because of the progress of science. Science is supposed to protect us from things that are beyond our control. What is your opinion on that subject?

4. Have you ever gotten into trouble for saying something you thought was 100 percent true?

5. Have you ever gotten into trouble by clicking on "send" after writing an email?

6. Galileo's words startled other people who were not ready to change their beliefs about the world. Do you think Galileo should have kept his scientific observations secret in order to protect himself?

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Cellphone Echoes in my Head

Pictures are worth thousands of words. I'm still trying to sort out the events of the past couple of weeks around here. Everything is still happening ... I feel like I'm part of someone's science experiment.

In mid-September I began to hear echoes and repetitions of my own voice when speaking. Except I wasn't on a cell phone. I was on my land line.

Yesterday around 11:00 a.m., I suddenly saw a swirling, churning motion inside the upper right-hand corner of my own right eye. I was on the Internet at the time.I say that the visual effect was inside my eye, because if I looked to the right to see it better, the swirling movement would move off further to the right, as my eye moved.

At the same time, I heard people up on the roof. I live on the sixth floor, directly under the roof. In a few minutes, after calming down a bit, I went up there to look around.

The following photo shows you what I saw: Two rectangles on the surface of the roof exactly over where I sit when I'm on my computer on the floor below.

It looked like two rectangular objects had been put down there to be painted, because there were flecks of what appeared to be white paint around the rectangular shapes. Also, one is more off to the right, which corresponds to the fact that the visual effect was inside my right eye, not in the left eye or in both eyes.

The photo at the beginning of the article shows you a new WiFi cellphone device, recently installed. All buildings owned by the landlord are now equipped with these.

The electrical wires from the WiFi cellphone device run along the outside the building and appear to go inside the building to connect to a big, black box mounted on the wall between the sixth floor and the roof floor. That black box is connected to the same electric line that supplies power to the building's hall lights. But maybe the black box inside has nothing to do with this story. I don't know.

None of this explains that odd swirling visual phenomenon I experienced for about 3 minutes yesterday morning when I was on the Internet.

But the cell phone device on the roof a few feet above my head while I'm in the apartment probably goes a long way to explaining why I was hearing echoes and repetitions of my own voice, even when I was on my land line telephone. The cell phone 'tower' is about 40 feet from my head when I am on the telephone.

I don't think the equipment on the roof was put there by Verizon, Sprint, Nextel, AT&T, or T-Mobile, the traditional cell phone companies, but rather by some other company, perhaps a start-up. I had better leave it at that, dear readers, since all these companies are currently fighting turf wars that are fierce and frightening. Such is the blood-thirsty nature of modern commerce.

We had an earthquake in NYC at the end of August. We also had a flood. In my personal life, I was bitten by a horde of virulent insects on September 8. Those events sound very Biblical. Then on September 13 I had minor surgery. By the end of October I experienced something very modern: I spoke to a psychiatrist about my difficulties with communication, and he thought I was suffering from paranoid delusions.

Am I deluded and having hallucinations?

If these echoes and other audiovisual effects are not hallucinations ... then what are they?

Are some people trying to make me so uncomfortable in my apartment that I am forced to move out? My apartment is located in a very desirable section of New York City. Many people would like it if I moved.

In fact, if we moved out, the landlord could probably rent the apartment immediately for five times the amount.

Maybe some tenants currently living in this building want me to move out so their friends can move in?

Stories about ghosts, hauntings, vampires, and psychic attacks are very popular in the media in the USA right now, so I must ask: Am I under psychic attack? In other words, is someone or some group of people doing this to me? Someone I know said that was the only explanation.

Or am I doing this to myself?

Is this happening by accident, because of thoughtlessness, or due to ignorance?

Maybe I"m suffering from interference caused by the electronic devices in the apartment or from electromagnetic pollution? A couple of my relatives think so.

It's true that over the years I've had trouble with many appliances in this apartment. The original electrical wiring was done in a patchwork fashion, with the tenants in residence at that time (100 years ago) responsible as individuals for paying to have their own apartments wired.

A crew of electricians came through a number of years ago, however. They installed four more outlets in every kitchen, one air conditioning outlet per apartment, and modern metal boxes with circuit breakers. So maybe the whole building was grounded and all the electrical problems fixed at that time. But I still have my doubts ....