Relative motion next to a freight train

On U.S. Highway 65 recently somewhere near Dumas, Arkansas, goin' south. In case you can't understand the last part of my little diatribe on relativity, I'm saying that the essential thing about  relativity is whether you can do an experiment to detect whether you're at rest or you're moving. The answer in almost every situation (see below for exception) is no, you can't. Whether you're in straight line motion, or going around a curve, or accelerating upward in an elevator, or freely falling, you are in a rest frame. Remove the visual cues, and the Newtonian frame of mind that says there's an absolute rest frame, and the experiments you do to try to detect your motion will fail. For the speed of light to be constant for everybody, no matter how they are moving relative to each other, the sensory information you have is only interpretable as something or somebody moving at constant speed relative to you, or for your apparent accelerated motion, as you being at rest and acted on by a gravitational field. We should, but so far don't, describe relativity in terms of rest frames moving with respect to each other rather than "reference frames" moving with respect to each other.

The one situation in which you can detect that you are moving is the earth's motion on its axis* which can be detected by setting up a giant pendulum suspended by frictionless pivots so that the pendulum swings in a single unchanging plane of motion as the earth turns (was that the name of a soap opera?) beneath it.  However, the earth is so big it's like an unmoving flat surface as far as the relative motion of my car and the train (and the trees and highway attached to the earth) are concerned. Try imagining just me in my car and the train in empty space moving relative to each other. Then you can understand how they're both rest frames as far as the people in them are concerned.

*Well, okay, yeah, Earth's motion on its axis is just one example of general "motion in rotating frame," which is a somewhat controversial subject.

Pine Bluff downtown March 3, 2026

Strolling around downtown Pine Bluff after voting on March 3, I took some photos with my phone, a cheap ($15 per month T-Mobile) flip phone that's not great at taking pictures, since a lot of times in full daylight I can't even see an image on the little screen, and sometimes the image is blurred. A few photos turned out all right yesterday.

In the foreground are my 2008 GMC Canyon truck and the decorated former bus stop bench area next to the Southeast Arkansas Arts and Science Center at 8th and Main. In the background, starting on the left are the Pine Bluff library, the Chamber of Commerce building (where the Malco Theater once was), a glass wall covering the south side of an old brick building that once housed the Henry Marx Men's Store at 6th and Main, the as yet unrestored Hotel Pines (built in 1913), and close up on the right side the Arts and Science Center's satellite buildings (restored old brick buildings) housing, among other things, the Art Space on Main. An upper corner of the 11-story Simmons Bank Building (still the headquarters) can be seen farther back. 

This is the old S. H. Kress building, what's left of it, still standing I'm glad to say, at 4th and Main, where the 4th Avenue railroad tracks are. Other buildings in this area are in decent shape and are usable but not currently being used. Just across the railroad tracks is the still-being-remodeled Baim's Department Store building where the new location of Pop's Barbershop, currently at 3rd and Main, will be.

Below is the entrance, on the right, to the former Cohen's Department Store, now vacant, and further down a vintage car parked next to a bar/poolhall at 2nd and Main.

The vintage car is a Buick LeSabre or Centurion convertible, 1972 or 1973. This is 2nd an Main, where Reed's Drugstore was. There's a "pool hall" (my name for it) there now. It hasn't been open in recent years but apparently is now. It was open about 15 years ago, and Mark Townsend, Dennis Burnette and I played some pool and drank a few beers in there. Diagonally across from it (where I took the photo from) is a more active bar and restaurant, RJ's Sports Grill, where live music is played at least once a week. I haven't yet been there except for a brief visit when no band was playing.

Here's an example of a blurred image, in this  case because of my hurry to snap the photo without being seen. The car was parked in the Pine Bluff library parking lot (I parked next to it when I got there), and the sticker says "Good Without a God, humanist.org." Unusual to see in Pine Bluff! At least now that most people like June and Ed Freeman are no longer there (they likely would not have had a bumper sticker of any sort, however).  The former Shrine Temple where I voted is only a couple of blocks north on Main Street from the library, and I did spend some time in the library after voting and before going on my stroll down and up Main Street.