Re: Grounding (fwd)

[lcs Mixmaster Remailer <mix@anon.lcs.mit.edu>]

It seems so pointless to correct Choate.  The guy is almost totally
impervious to enlightenment.  But a couple of whoppers have to be
pointed out...

> Secondly, you're considering an electron carrying a photon as a
> single wavicle, it ain't. It's a superposition of several wavicles (3 quarks
> and a lepton to be exact under the standard model).

Electrons don't "carry" photons.  An atom can absorb a photon, raising
an electron to a higher energy level, but the photon is then gone.  And
a single moving electron certainly doesn't carry a photon.  Photons move
at the speed of light, always.

Quarks are constituents only of baryons.  There are no quarks in electrons
or photons.

Choate's bizarre description of a "spark gap" inside a conductive
globe culminates with this:

> Unlike charges attract. Therefore the gas of electrons are attracted to the
> inside surface. Now since the globe is neutral it must follow by
> conservation of charge that there is a negative charge equal to the charge
> held in the gas on the *OUTSIDE* of the ball.

The net charge within the sphere will not change.  If the box in the
middle with the "spark gap" is spraying out electrons, this can only mean
that the box is itself becoming positively charged.  The sphere sees a
constant charge within itself; at best, the charge can be redistributed.
There are no net changes of charge within the sphere and so there will
be no changes in any charge appearing on the outside of the sphere.

Choate's whole model of how a spark gap transmitter works, and why it
emits electromagnetic radiation, is so bizarre that it is hard to believe.
Someone else can bang their head against the brick wall of his ignorance
on that topic.

Choate is, by far, the worst poster on the cypherpunks list today.  He
posts off-topic material, he is argumentative, and 90% of the time, he
is simply wrong.