Re: Androcles and Draper resume Einstein 1905

From: Gregory L. Hansen (glhansen_at_steel.ucs.indiana.edu)
Date: 01/15/05 

Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:57:10 +0000 (UTC)

In article <k7bGd.141134$48.126972@fe1.news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
Androcles <dummy@dummy.net> wrote:
>
>"Gregory L. Hansen" <glhansen@steel.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote in message
>news:csba41$uob$1@rainier.uits.indiana.edu...
>> In article <7E9Gd.140909$48.129788@fe1.news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
>> Androcles <dummy@dummy.net> wrote:

>>>> --
>>>> "Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea --
>>>> massive,
>>>> difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of
>>>> mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it. "
>>>> -- Gene Spafford, 1992
>>>
>>>Well, I think it is time for you to *** out of the conversation I was
>>>having
>>>with Paul, since you are clearly too simple-minded to understand that
>>>the rod travelling at near c isn't long enough to span your contacts.
>>
>> Are you running out of minutiae to object to? We're on definitions
>> and
>> thought experiments, what's important is that simultaneity and lengths
>> can
>> be meaningfully defined.
>
>Exactly. We are on definitions, not glib comments from Gene Spafford
>or you. Go away.
>Androcles

Do you still see a problem with simultaneously determining the locations
of the front and back of the bus? Even just to whatever limited extent is
necessary to show that the concept of simultaneous measurements of
position in a particular frame has meaning?

It looks to me like the direction your argument is heading is that in any
given reference frame, time can be measured in exactly one location. So
any discussion of the time that an event occured anywhere else is
meaningless. "Dude, when's the concert?" "I won't be there, so the
question has no answer." I cannot believe that you believe that.

I can come up with more. I've been focusing on the bus, but what about
those stripes on the road? Imagine a bar fixed to the bus and held
parallel to the road, and lined on the bottom with scrapers. Lower it so
that it "ticks" the road just for an instant, and the extent of the line
will be given by the length of paint. That one, like the large *** of
film, doesn't even involve a clock or directly involve time measurements
over a distance.

But I thought Einstein's recipie of a field of clocks and a
synchronization procedure was perfectly fine. 

-- 
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