🚀 go-pugleaf

Let me try to tone down the level of invective in this discussion by
not being sarcastic for once.  I will instead try to make the discussion
somewhat more precise by asking snarfy@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us what
is actually being claimed.  He has posted a demonstration
that Ohm's Law, applied in a very literal way in its large-scale,
integrated form, implies instantaneous communication by means of the
placement of a load across the oscillating voltage in a continuous
electromagnetic wave.  It is claimed that this will produce an
immediate effect at the transmitter.  Others have posted that
this is contrary to the statement, derivable from Maxwell's equations,
that such influences propagate only at c; and that the apparent 
contradiction between Maxwell's equations and the laws of Ohm and
Kirchoff come from the extra assumptions used to derive them from
Maxwell.

So, snarfy@cruzio, do you claim that:

1) These objections are incorrect, and Maxwell's equations actually
*do* permit such instantaneous effects?  If so, I'm sure we would
be interested in seeing how.  

2) The truly fundamental laws of electrodynamics are *not* Maxwell's
equations, but Ohm's Law and Kirchoff's Law?  If so, then you are not
reasoning within the usual framework of electrodynamics, but are
instead proposing a radically new theory of electromagnetism (whether
it was you or somebody else who first proposed it is not the issue here).
We can then argue about whether there is any experimental evidence to
support this theory.  Orthodoxies have of course been incorrect before. 

3) That you frame no hypotheses, but rather report an experimental 
result that implies instantaneous communication by this means?  If 
so, then this is such a radical result that the theorizing about it
should probably await replication of the result; and we'd like to
hear who did the experiment and where we can find out about it. 

Let me make absolutely clear that I am not asking these questions
to taunt or harass you.  The last time I asked a series of questions
similar to these was in response to a remarkable statement by Tom
van Flandern.  When he answered them to my satisfaction (actually he
coincidentally answered them *before* reading my post, if the sequence
in which the messages appeared here can be trusted), he
actually managed to convince me that he was right, and I recanted
my earlier objections.

At the very least, you'll be able to focus your argument, leave the
realm of ad hominem rhetoric, and get a much less hostile response 
from the readership of sci.physics. 

-- 
Matt McIrvin, professional gradgrind, amateur Usenet drifter