Because of Mr. Winter's constant bragging that he didn't have to obey any court, and because, as it turned out, he was right when he told me his followers were "too stupid to know" that he was making up his claims about the golden spiral, we expected he would continue to do the same thing, and he would continue to believe that he could get away with it. (This continues today.)
So, because we knew that Mr. Winter would again claim that he had been threatened (or denied an attorney, or that he was sick), the Court retained jurisdiction, and turned the stipulated Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order -- Mr. Winter's second "confession" -- into the Court's Orders, which the Court ordered to be posted elsewhere on this site. Mr. Winter's sworn statement that his (second) "confession" was of his own free will, and that he had hired an attorney to draw up the contractual settlement, can be found at www.danwinter.com/DWFreeWill.html.
As anyone can see, Mr. Winter is and always was aware that he was deliberately lying and misrepresenting.
Notice especially where Mr. Winter acknowledges that he never realized that it is exactly because the golden spiral is self-symmetric (as Mr. Winter himself has always pointed out) that it can not be a representative of asymmetry. Nevertheless, in public, Mr. Winter and his followers continue to "not realize" this, and continue to make untrue claims for the golden spiral.
We will pull out additional excerpts from the sworn transcript that respond to particular questions, as the need arises.
In spite of Mr. Winter's wild claims of having been coerced or threatened (neither was ever true), Mr. Winter gave this sworn testimony voluntarily in the presence of Brian Coyne, Meru Foundation's attorney, and two independent Officers of the Court, one acting as the stenographer and court reporter. Cynthia and Stan Tenen were also present. (And of course, we have the videotape of the entire deposition.)
As the trial date drew near, Mr. Winter hired an attorney, Stephen Salai, Esq., in Rochester, New York, and again "confessed", this time permanently, and with the assistance of an attorney -- which is why Mr. Winter's second confession (the Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order, elsewhere on this website) is the one that became the Court's Order.
Mr. Winter's "confessions" in his second "confession" are essentially the same as in his first "confession," but they are more detailed, and because they were written with the help of his attorney, they are written in binding legal language, and cover more issues.
It is explicitly because Mr. Winter attempted to deny what he had already confessed to in his first "confession" that language was added to his second "confession", the Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order, to make it clear that Mr. Winter's constant reversals and denials were also to stop. And finally, this is why a separate sworn statement was required of Mr. Winter, where he again, in front of witnesses, confirms that his confessions were entirely voluntary, and that he did have an attorney.
The Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order, Mr. Winter's second "confession," included his admissions (and the Court's confirmation) that all of his claims and arguments were false. No part of Mr. Winter's story or claims was confirmed by the court. ALL of Meru Foundation's claims were upheld.
This is public information, from the sworn record. Please help
to get it into the hands of people who have a need to know -- such as
some
of the many e-lists and chat rooms where Mr. Winter has been active,
and
Mr. Winter's followers in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
Thank you all.
Yours truly,
Stan Tenen
Director
TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EXCERPT
Mr. Winter's Original "Corrective Notice"
Mr. Winter admits he was fired from Transecon Corp.
Mr. Winter admits he never worked with Mr. Tenen or for Meru Foundation
Mr. Winter admits that he was copying Mr. Tenen's
form
(Mr. Tenen produced this form, with the assistance of programmers at
UMECORP in Larkspur, California, before he ever met Mr.
Winter.)
Mr. Winter admits that Mr. Tenen never tried to copyright the Hebrew alphabet
Mr. Winter Admits He Did Not Need To Copy
Tenen's
Copyright Form to Make Letters
(Any form that includes a coil or two can make shadows that look like
letters in any alphabet. Mr. Winter could have picked any other
form.
He picked Mr. Tenen's form deliberately.)
Mr. Winter Admits he Does Not Know that the Name
of
the Hebrew Alphabet, Meruba, means "Square-Form"
and that therefore it would seem more natural to identify the Hebrew
letter shapes with a square or a cube, than with the tetrahedron, as
Mr.
Tenen did.
CORRECTION OF A TRANSCRIPTION ERROR, Pointed Out by a Correspondent
DEPOSITION OF DANIEL E. WINTER, taken 25 May 1998
Excerpts taken 14 November 2002
This is an accurate and true copy. A few minor spelling errors have been corrected.
[NOTE: "Q" indicates a question by Mr. Coyne, the attorney for
the Plaintiffs. "A" indicates an answer by Mr. Winter.]
MR. COYNE :So, on the record, today is May 25, 1998. We're at Rochester, New York.
A. Daniel Winter.
Q. And do you have a statement you'd like to make about flame letters, Mr. Winter?
A. "The corrective
notice.
My use of alphabet and vortex forms was unauthorized and has been
permanently
discontinued.
My claims that these vortex forms were related to the golden mean spiral were false. Alphabet letter forms can always be made as shadows of an arbitrarily bent wire or ribbon with a loop.These unauthorized works will be exchanged for new tapes or repurchased. All new tapes, printed materials, and computer media or web sites must have this notice.
My personal characterizations as well as those by Vincent Bridges and Ray Flowers, of the authors of the work on alphabets and vortex forms as greedy, secretive, and harassing, and my antisemitic comments were wrong, and I apologize.
Materials about vortex geometry and vortex geometry and alphabet forms are available exclusively from Meru Foundation, with which I am not connected in any way. Please contact them through their web site at http://www.meru.org, by writing to Meru Foundation at P.O. Box 503, Sharon, Mass. 02067, or by calling them at 781-784-8902.
Q. Are you good at identifying the Hebrew letters?
A. Not particularly.
Q. Do you read or speak Greek [or] Hebrew?
A. No.
page 46 line 12 - page 48 line 18
Q. Okay, then did you get an opportunity to work for Transecon in Colorado?
A. I worked for a consulting group that was contracted by Transecon.
Q. Do you know the name of that consulting group?
A. I think it was called R & D.
Q. R & D what?
A. R & D -- R & D Multimedia, I think.
Q. So they were a contractor for Transecon?
A. Yes.
Q. And did that include Russell Wright?
A. Yes.
Q. And who did -- and did Russell Wright work for R & D Multimedia?
A. I'm not sure how his contracted stated, but Russell and I - -
MR. TENEN: Your contract was separate from his?
MR. WINTER: I -- yes.
MR. TENEN: So there's a contract in your name?
MR. WINTER: Well, R & D was --
MR. TENEN: A shell created so they could pay you.
MR. WINTER: Basically.
Q. Okay, and they provided an office to you to work in?
A. I worked in various places. I worked mostly in their facility.
Q. In their facility?
A. Yes.
Q. And how did you get paid?
A. Check was made out to R & D, and then
R & D paid me.
Q. And that was through Russell Wright?
A. Russell was involved in R & D.
MR. TENEN: Who else was involved in R & D?
A. No one.
Q. You didn't file a d/b/a?
A. R & D was registered. It was.
Q. And did you do computer animations with him?
A. Yes.
Q. And did that include the flame letter vortex?
A. They were very careful not to use any flame letter vortex materials there.
MR. TENEN: But did you do the animations there?
MR. WINTER: No, not really.
MR. TENEN: Not really?
MR. WINTER: They didn't want me to.
MR. TENEN: But did you do them there?
Q. Did you use their equipment to create computer animations?
A. No, not flame letter vortex animations. I would have been fired.
MR. TENEN: You were fired.
MR. WINTER: Well, that was a long story.
p. 58 line 15 - p 60 line 18
MR. TENEN: Now, if we can work out the cheapest possible way for all concerned to set the record straight, that's the best goal.
MR. WINTER: Okay.
MR. TENEN: That's what needs to be accomplished, and it needs to take Mr. Bridges' cooperation so there's not going to be anymore biographies and histories of events that never occurred and things that never happened, and twists on things that only a politician could come up with.
MR. WINTER: I'm hoping that I can work with my heart biofeedback project and really be out of the alphabet thing all together.
MR. TENEN: And has Mr. Flowers and Mr. Bridges and Ms. Dinkel and Ms. Ambrose and Mr. Wright and the rest of the crew going to be out of this business, too, and the folks in Australia and Europe --
MR. WINTER: Absolutely.
MR. TENEN: -- going to be out of the business?
MR. WINTER: Yes.
MR. TENEN: And you're going to set the
record straight that I didn't share Meru with you, you never worked
with
me; is that true, you never worked with me or did -- you think you
worked
with me? Well, would you like to tell us on the record if you worked
for
or with me or Meru Foundation ever?
MR. WINTER: It was never work. We met a few times, that's all.
MR. TENEN: So that when you allow Mr. Bridges to tell me that we both worked for Meru and that somehow I got rid of you, that's not true.
MR. WINTER: We didn't both work for Meru. I never worked for Meru.
MR. TENEN: And when you tell people that these alphabet letter forms existed in "One Crystal's Dance," that's not true, is it?
MR. WINTER: "One Crystals Dance" had a golden spiral in it.
MR. TENEN: That's all it had. No shadow grams of letters. It had sonograms taken from some other work.
MR. WINTER: It also had a golden spiral on a cone, not on a donut.
MR. TENEN: Yes. But it wasn't the sculpture we're talking about.
MR. WINTER: No, no.
MR. TENEN: And the Diamond book that you showed at the last deposition didn't have the sculpture in it either, did it?
MR. WINTER: It wasn't the same.
MR. TENEN: It wasn't the same, no. So a number of things you said at the last deposition need correction, don't they?
p. 62 line 16 -- p. 64 line 17
MR. TENEN: No, no, not going back to -- the courts can -- if the courts can decide we're going to trial.
MR. WINTER: Okay.
MR. TENEN: So I want to know your
opinion.
Are the forms you produced inspired by, derivative of, created in
consequence
of attempts to make copies of the forms that I did?
MR. WINTER: It was.
MR. TENEN: We're losing the tape.
(There was a pause in the proceeding.)
MR. TENEN: Can you name or write the Hebrew letters? I think you already answered that.
MR. WINTER: I probably -- I probably would miss some. I can't name them.
MR. TENEN: How many different styles of Hebrew alphabets do you know of?
MR. WINTER: I don't --
MR. TENEN: Is there more than one style?
MR. WINTER: I assume there are.
MR. TENEN: So you agree that no one like
me and no one ever attempted to copyright the Hebrew alphabet? You at
times
have said, "I have attempted to copyright the Hebrew alphabet.'' Since
there is no ''the one single Hebrew alphabet, that has to be an absurd
statement, right?
MR. WINTER: Uh-huh.
MR. TENEN: You're agreeing with that?
MR. WINTER: Yes.
MR. TENEN: You do agree, okay.
Did you depose that you did not have formal training in mathematics and that you do not know the equations for a category of spiral curves? Can you give us the equations for a golden spiral?
MR. WINTER: R equals theta to the five power, or R equals Theta to the -
MR. TENEN: You left the "e" out. It's an exponential. How about the Archimedean spiral?
MR. WINTER: I don't know that equation. I'm not a --
MR. TENEN: Do you know the equations of any other spiral?
MR. WINTER: Not off hand.
MR. TENEN: All right, you left the exponential out. Never mind.
MR. WINTER: Okay.
MR. TENEN: Do you now agree that if you take -- even if you started with a golden spiral, if you just started with a mathematical function, even if it was due to the computer program, if you massage the data points, if you move them for convenience, for necessity for whatever it is under the sky, once you bend a mathematical function, it is no longer a function; isn't that true?
MR. WINTER: I would say.
p. 68 line 7 -- p. 69 line 24
MR. TENEN: Are you aware, do you agree, that there is more than one spiral that is based on the Fibonacci proportions other than the golden spiral? Are you familiar with the dinurgic spiral?
MR. WINTER: I'm aware of --
MR. TENEN: Dozci's book?
MR. WINTER: I'm aware, but I'm not familiar with the details.
MR. TENEN: No, but you do know that one can create different spirals other than the one commonly called the golden spiral from the same Fibonacci numbers?
MR. WINTER: The Fibonacci progression meets the golden mean.
MR. TENEN: And also leads to other spirals.
MR. WINTER: I'm not -- I've never mapped the details on that.
(There was a pause in the proceeding.)
MR. TENEN: Are you aware of the history
of the golden spiral?
MR. WINTER: Probably not.
MR. TENEN: No. When do you believe the first golden spiral was ever produced?
MR. WINTER: I don't know.
MR. TENEN: Would you like to guess?
MR. WINTER: Greeks? Egyptians?
MR. TENEN: Those are pseudospirals, correct? They didn't have math functions.
MR. WINTER: Then I don't know.
MR. TENEN: You don't know. So if I told you that the golden spiral was defined for the first time in human history by Descartes in the 1630s, would that surprise you?
MR. WINTER: No. I --
MR. TENEN: It wouldn't. If that were true, wouldn't it be an anachronism to attribute the Hebrew alphabet to something that didn't exist when the Hebrew alphabet or the Greek alphabet or the Arab alphabet were formed?
MR. WINTER: Very good --
MR. TENEN: That would be a technically embarrassing thing to present, wouldn't it? It would be kind of a technical disparagement, wouldn't it?
MR. WINTER: Well -- I don't know.
p. 71 line16 -- p. 77 line 18
MR. TENEN: Yes. In other words, if I look at a storm cloud I might see one mathematical function being modeled. Another person might see another mathematical function being modeled. Each would be useful for making a computer model, but neither would be absolute truth. They would just sort of convenient ways to represents something. For one and-a-half or one turn you can't tell the difference.
MR. WINTER: That's not --
MR. TENEN: Is that true?
MR. WINTER: Good point. It makes sense to me.
MR. TENEN: Thank you. Are you aware that you could take a piece of
wire
like that (indicating) - -would you put a loop in that wire, please?
That's
enough. That's fine.
Do you believe that you can make shadows of that piece of wire,
arbitrarily
bent, make believe it's stiff like a coat hanger, that can make just
about
any letter in any alphabet? Do we have to demonstrate it?
MR. WINTER: I believe you.
MR. TENEN: All right. You think it's plausible?
MR. WINTER: It's plausible.
MR. TENEN: Right, so that there's no absolute need for you to have copied my sculpture if you wanted a three-dimensional object in order to make alphabetic letters. You didn't have to use my sculpture.
MR. WINTER: I don't know. I take your word for it.
MR. TENEN: Well, is your earlier trash can model capable of making letters?
MR. WINTER: Then -- they looked a little distorted, but they were letters.
MR. TENEN: But you would agree that there's probably an infinite number of other forms that could make letters?
MR. WINTER: Probably.
MR. TENEN: So you could have made other choices?
MR. WINTER: Probably.
MR. TENEN: And you probably don't know this
but the name of the Hebrew alphabet that I have been designing here for
my sculpture is Meruba. Do you know what "Meruba" means?
MR. WINTER: I think you told me once, but I don't remember.
MR. TENEN: It means square shaped.
MR. WINTER: Oh.
MR. TENEN: So you could have put it in a cube instead of a tetrahedron if you had done your homework, if you had actually known about the Hebrew alphabet. A cube, a square shape would have been more appropriate as a box than a tetrahedron. Is that not plausible if you had known that?
MR. WINTER: Now Meruba is cubic --
MR. TENEN: Well, it's not a cubic; but Meruba is square-shaped.
When you took my work you also took the descriptions of it. I published -- not published, I produced a document which was labeled "confidential" called "The Light in the Meeting Tent," which you saw.
MR. WINTER: Yes.
MR. TENEN: Okay.
MR. WINTER: I saw that book.
MR. TENEN: You saw that form?
MR. WINTER: I saw "The Light In The Meeting Tent."
MR. TENEN: And in that "Light In The Meeting Tent," this document here, would you like to hold it for the camera and read the bottom line on the cover page?
MR. WINTER: "Preliminary pre-publication, confidential."
MR. TENEN: And you saw that document?
MR. WINTER: Right.
MR. TENEN: Would you open the document?
MR. WINTER: Yes.
MR. TENEN: Would you look inside until you get to a graphic?
MR. WINTER: Here (indicating)
MR. TENEN: No, go to another one maybe. Yes -- I'm looking for one particular one. Keep going because that's the -- right. Would you read what it says at the top there? Show it to the camera.
MR. WINTER: "Three turns per ribbon."
MR. TENEN: That's what it says, yes. Do you remember that the original version you saw said three and-a-half turns per ribbon, and that you changed it when I changed it because at that time the condition for you getting rid of the other 700 copies was you make that correction? Do you remember that? You paralleled when I said three and-a-half, you said three and-a-half; when I said three, you said three?
MR. WINTER: I remember we had a conversation about that.
MR. TENEN: Okay, that's enough. That's old stuff.
Do you remember also that my -- my ideas -- ideas aren't copyrightable, sculptures are. My idea was that this sculpture should represent distinction between symmetry and asymmetry.
MR. WINTER: Yes, I remember that.
MR. TENEN: That was an important idea.
MR. WINTER: Yes, it was.
MR. TENEN: And you hadn't heard that referred to this kind of model before, had you?
MR. WINTER: I don't think so.
MR. TENEN: No. And at the symmetry element, of course, was the tetrahedron?
MR. WINTER: Right.
MR. TENEN: And you agreed with me on that?
MR. WINTER: Yes. You said the flame letter had asymmetry --
MR. TENEN: That's right, the vortex was asymmetrical.
MR. WINTER: I remember that.
MR. TENEN: Now, you also taught -- and I believe this is true -- that the golden spiral is always self-similar; isn't that one of its defining characteristics like all the logarithmic spirals? Isn't the word "self-similar" a synonym for symmetry, symmetric? Isn't it dynamic symmetry? Isn't that one of the reasons you were so fond of it?
MR. WINTER: Yes. When I think of self-similar, I always think of self-embedded; but --
MR. TENEN: And whatever the word is, we're talking about asymmetry, aren't we?
MR. WINTER: Yes.
MR. TENEN: So that picking a spiral whose qualities include asymmetry for projection would be inappropriate, would demean, deface, dilute the concept that if a spiral were needed in contrast to a symmetrical form, it would have to be the most asymmetrical spiral, and it would have to not include any gratuitous extraneous features because that would dilute its meaning. It wouldn't be the model of symmetry or asymmetry. It would be a sort of asymmetry; half of this, half of that. So that choosing a golden or long spiral, a self-symmetric spiral, even if you start working on it, but as a philosophical base is inconsistent, so that when you took my language of symmetry and asymmetry, but then said the spiral was a golden spiral, you debased the concept; isn't that true?
MR. WINTER: That's interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way before.
MR. TENEN: Is it true?
MR. WINTER: I think I followed you. What you're saying is there's too much symmetry in the golden mean --
MR. TENEN: Yes. Even when you work on it a bit. It still -- why start from a symmetrical form if you're looking for something asymmetrical? One has to be elegant in doing science and math. This wasn't a mailing list.
[NOTE: A correspondent pointed out an obvious transcription error in the long question from Mr. Tenen immediately above, beginning with "So that picking a spiral...". Below is the email exchange with our correspondent regarding this error.]
Dear Stan,
Thanks for the transcription. There was one place where a word might
have been incorrectly transcribed or misspoken. It is below: the word
'asymmetry'
in the second line should be 'symmetry' in the context here.
[name deleted]
MR. TENEN: So that picking a spiral whose qualities include asymmetry for projection would be inappropriate, would demean, deface, dilute the concept that if a spiral were needed in contrast to a symmetrical form, it would have to be the most asymmetrical spiral, and it would have to not include any gratuitous extraneous features because that would dilute its meaning.
[Stan Tenen responded:]
Yes, that was a transcription typo. You can imagine the poor court stenographer trying to keep up with this. We decided to keep it as it is, because that is the official Court transcript. But the video shows the correct statement. Please include this message as a footnote when you pass on the transcript.
And in any event, Mr. Winter seems to have understood that you can't call the most symmetrical spirals (the log, golden, and Fibonacci spirals) asymmetrical. That's a self-contradiction. To do this would make the model irrational and illogical with respect to itself. He clearly admitted this here, but he and his followers continue to make the same phoney claims about the golden spiral in public anyway.