On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 20:23:28 -0500, "Jack Painter"
wrote:

Thanks. I always find your comments about scientific material interesting.

Hi Jack,

Well, when I look at these tempests in a teapot, I reduce things
myself.

For instance, this distinction between a sharp point on a rod and a
blunt point on a rod. Nature hardly takes the time in a lightning
strike to be so particular. This is so multivariate a problem that no
single variable is going to be a determiner at this rather fussy level
of detail.

The reduction consists of the logic in the extreme. We have a blunt
rod, we have a sharp rod. It is purported (or I have read the
controversy completely wrong) that this makes a difference, somehow.
We put those on a yet blunter rod (a tower); or with a yet blunter rod
(another tower) nearby (in the scale of miles transit, nearby by
hundreds of yards/meters/feet/inches/cm is very proximal) and yet such
neighbors are not the choice of the stroke (or they are and this
upsets the catalogue of evidence).

Hence the reductio ad absurdum is that blunt points are significant,
but not too significant.

All that aside - I do not dismiss the topic entirely. It offers
something I have found in my own work. The near field area to a
monopole:
http://home.comcast.net/~kb7qhc/ante...ical/index.htm
displays a very marked disturbance above it. The introduction of a
metal pole into space distorts it far beyond the borders of the
graphic pointed to. In a sense, it acts like (in my imagination) the
vertex of a energy well; or at greater scales, a dimple in the fabric
of the æther. Such analogies and illustrations are intriguing, but
not conclusive of anything but how to intellectually amuse while
monkeying with numbers.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC