Climate of Complete Certainty

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 14:56:12 -0500, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 2/10/20 1:36 AM, whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

The first real electronic component, the vacuum tube, could have been
conceived by a scientist, but wasn't. Science often follows invention,
scribbles some related equations, and then takes credit.

What are you smoking? The vacuum tube was how science discovered
the electron. A few other devices (crystal rectifier diodes) were
known before that.

Useful vacuum tube amplifiers were designed by scientists, AFTER
understanding the electron. Clinton Davisson's Nobel prize in physics (1937)
was for explaining characteristics of a vacuum tube he repaired... while
he was improving them for Bell Labs.


The thermionic effect was discovered by Edison et al, the first
practical vacuum diode was Fleming, the first triode was De Forest, the
first research into what to _do_ with a triode that would make it more
than a novelty was Edwin H. Armstrong, and much of the early research
into vacuum-state electronics was formalized by Irving Langmuir.

Only one of these guys, De Forest, is the odd-man-out the rest almost
certainly fit the modern definition of "scientist"

DeForest had a degree in physics and didn't understand how his triode
worked.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 21:43:38 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
wrote:

On 2/9/2020 1:47, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

Americans buy the products that work, whether Scientists were
involved or not. Often, they weren't.

Somehow, Americans bought President Trump.   It's not working.

Works for me.

Not just "somehow" - the guy's a master manipulator. He went "Boo!"
at the Republican Party and by the time they changed their pants, he was
the nominee. "Insane Clown President" covers this....

This was a master stroke, really.

Yes. But I think he clearly does not possess half the brains it takes
to mastermind what happened.

Hillary's team had a mountain of brains, and money, and lost.

Who is the real puppeteer can only be speculated in a conspiracy
theory mode of course (I do not think it was the Russians though
they did some of the work, nor do I think it was anyone US based...),
we are unlikely to know the truth in our lifetimes.
I don't think Trump knows that himself either.

He has common sense, a will to win, and luck.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[whit3rd]

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 1:29:25 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

DeForest had a degree in physics and didn't understand how his triode
worked.

Are you sure? Was that true for all his life, or just the day of discovery?
Why is that significant at all?

To solve the space charge around a heated cathode, and fields in a symmetric
cylindrical-electrodes geometry, is a nontrivial problem. If you don't
know how to solve a diffusion equation, and second-order differential equations,
it's arguable that you don't understand how a triode works.

DeForest didn't start with a well-designed triode, just an amusing effect, worth publishing.

 

[bitrex]

On 2/10/20 4:29 PM, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 14:56:12 -0500, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 2/10/20 1:36 AM, whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

The first real electronic component, the vacuum tube, could have been
conceived by a scientist, but wasn't. Science often follows invention,
scribbles some related equations, and then takes credit.

What are you smoking? The vacuum tube was how science discovered
the electron. A few other devices (crystal rectifier diodes) were
known before that.

Useful vacuum tube amplifiers were designed by scientists, AFTER
understanding the electron. Clinton Davisson's Nobel prize in physics (1937)
was for explaining characteristics of a vacuum tube he repaired... while
he was improving them for Bell Labs.


The thermionic effect was discovered by Edison et al, the first
practical vacuum diode was Fleming, the first triode was De Forest, the
first research into what to _do_ with a triode that would make it more
than a novelty was Edwin H. Armstrong, and much of the early research
into vacuum-state electronics was formalized by Irving Langmuir.

Only one of these guys, De Forest, is the odd-man-out the rest almost
certainly fit the modern definition of "scientist"

DeForest had a degree in physics and didn't understand how his triode
worked.

The patent for warp drive has already been abandoned! Definitely a
potential investment opportunity here...

<https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030114313A1/en>

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 13:50:19 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 1:29:25 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

DeForest had a degree in physics and didn't understand how his triode
worked.

Are you sure? Was that true for all his life, or just the day of discovery?
Why is that significant at all?

It's significant that he discovered the triode by fiddling with
basically a flame detector in a jug. He thought that gas was the
amplifying element.

JJ Thompson was deflecting electron beams with electric and magnetic
fields. Others before him observed electric and magnetic deflection of
"cathode rays". It seems to me that a deflection-based amplifier and
oscillator should have been obvious after that. The gridded triode
should have been obvious too. Maybe the scientists weren't interested
in applications.

To solve the space charge around a heated cathode, and fields in a symmetric
cylindrical-electrodes geometry, is a nontrivial problem. If you don't
know how to solve a diffusion equation, and second-order differential equations,
it's arguable that you don't understand how a triode works.

Don't be a jerk. Nobody likes a jerk.

Neither Edison nor Flaming nor DeForest did that math.

DeForest didn't start with a well-designed triode, just an amusing effect, worth publishing.

More than amusing. Worth patenting.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[bitrex]

On 2/10/20 5:44 PM, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 13:50:19 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 1:29:25 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

DeForest had a degree in physics and didn't understand how his triode
worked.

Are you sure? Was that true for all his life, or just the day of discovery?
Why is that significant at all?

It's significant that he discovered the triode by fiddling with
basically a flame detector in a jug. He thought that gas was the
amplifying element.

JJ Thompson was deflecting electron beams with electric and magnetic
fields. Others before him observed electric and magnetic deflection of
"cathode rays". It seems to me that a deflection-based amplifier and
oscillator should have been obvious after that. The gridded triode
should have been obvious too. Maybe the scientists weren't interested
in applications.

The applications probably weren't that obvious circa 1895; long-distance
CW radio transmission hadn't been invented yet and the moving-coil
loudspeaker hadn't been invented yet.

I don't think the "intellectual concept" of voltage/current/power
amplification was well-understood at that time it's hard to invent
something to do something when you don't even know what you're looking
for it to do.

To solve the space charge around a heated cathode, and fields in a symmetric
cylindrical-electrodes geometry, is a nontrivial problem. If you don't
know how to solve a diffusion equation, and second-order differential equations,
it's arguable that you don't understand how a triode works.

Don't be a jerk. Nobody likes a jerk.

Neither Edison nor Flaming nor DeForest did that math.


DeForest didn't start with a well-designed triode, just an amusing effect, worth publishing.

More than amusing. Worth patenting.

 

[bitrex]

On 2/10/20 5:56 PM, bitrex wrote:

On 2/10/20 5:44 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 13:50:19 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 1:29:25 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

DeForest had a degree in physics and didn't understand how his triode
worked.

Are you sure?   Was that true for all his life, or just the day of
discovery?
Why is that significant at all?

It's significant that he discovered the triode by fiddling with
basically a flame detector in a jug. He thought that gas was the
amplifying element.

JJ Thompson was deflecting electron beams with electric and magnetic
fields. Others before him observed electric and magnetic deflection of
"cathode rays". It seems to me that a deflection-based amplifier and
oscillator should have been obvious after that. The gridded triode
should have been obvious too. Maybe the scientists weren't interested
in applications.

The applications probably weren't that obvious circa 1895; long-distance
CW radio transmission hadn't been invented yet and the moving-coil
loudspeaker hadn't been invented yet.

I don't think the "intellectual concept" of voltage/current/power
amplification was well-understood at that time it's hard to invent
something to do something when you don't even know what you're looking
for it to do.

It wasn't until the early 1920s apparently, what like 40 years after the
invention of the dynamic microphone when they figured out "oh you can
use the same principle and run this deal backwards with power
amplification and produce sound as well as transmit it"

 

[dp]

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 11:27:55 PM UTC+2, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 21:43:38 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 2/9/2020 1:47, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

Americans buy the products that work, whether Scientists were
involved or not. Often, they weren't.

Somehow, Americans bought President Trump.   It's not working.

Works for me.



Not just "somehow" - the guy's a master manipulator. He went "Boo!"
at the Republican Party and by the time they changed their pants, he was
the nominee. "Insane Clown President" covers this....

This was a master stroke, really.

Yes. But I think he clearly does not possess half the brains it takes
to mastermind what happened.

Hillary's team had a mountain of brains, and money, and lost.


Who is the real puppeteer can only be speculated in a conspiracy
theory mode of course (I do not think it was the Russians though
they did some of the work, nor do I think it was anyone US based...),
we are unlikely to know the truth in our lifetimes.
I don't think Trump knows that himself either.

He has common sense, a will to win, and luck.

He does. So do a few millions of people.
These are not whay he is in the o al office.

Dimiter

 

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 4:27:55 PM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 21:43:38 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 2/9/2020 1:47, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

Americans buy the products that work, whether Scientists were
involved or not. Often, they weren't.

Somehow, Americans bought President Trump.   It's not working.

Works for me.



Not just "somehow" - the guy's a master manipulator. He went "Boo!"
at the Republican Party and by the time they changed their pants, he was
the nominee. "Insane Clown President" covers this....

This was a master stroke, really.

Yes. But I think he clearly does not possess half the brains it takes
to mastermind what happened.

Hillary's team had a mountain of brains, and money, and lost.


Who is the real puppeteer can only be speculated in a conspiracy
theory mode of course (I do not think it was the Russians though
they did some of the work, nor do I think it was anyone US based...),
we are unlikely to know the truth in our lifetimes.
I don't think Trump knows that himself either.

He has common sense, a will to win, and luck.

Super smart people I admire have met with Trump privately.
They were blown away. They say the man's brilliant.

I'm amazed at the level of his opposition's ignorance. PBS'
Newshour's Mark Shields and David Gergen, for example.

Easing obnoxious regs and lowering the marginal corporate tax
rate have re-ignited half the country (or more).

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[whit3rd]

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 2:44:59 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 13:50:19 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 1:29:25 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

DeForest had a degree in physics and didn't understand how his triode
worked.

Are you sure? Was that true for all his life, or just the day of discovery?
Why is that significant at all?

It's significant that he discovered the triode by fiddling with
basically a flame detector in a jug. He thought that gas was the
amplifying element.

To solve the space charge around a heated cathode, and fields in a symmetric
cylindrical-electrodes geometry, is a nontrivial problem. If you don't
know how to solve a diffusion equation, and second-order differential equations,
it's arguable that you don't understand how a triode works.

Don't be a jerk. Nobody likes a jerk.

I wasn't being a jerk, I was asking what the sphinx-like phrase "didn't understand" referred to.
Thanks for the clarification, jerk.

By the way, gas IS a kind of amplifying element in breakdown, that's why neon lamps make
such good surge protectors. A gas-amplifier model wasn't far wrong. Trigger electrodes
in a thyratron make a kind of triode based on that principle.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 8:27:55 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 21:43:38 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 2/9/2020 1:47, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

Americans buy the products that work, whether Scientists were
involved or not. Often, they weren't.

Somehow, Americans bought President Trump.   It's not working.

Works for me.

You got a tax cut, and haven't got enough sense to worry about the budget deficit that funded it.

Not just "somehow" - the guy's a master manipulator. He went "Boo!"
at the Republican Party and by the time they changed their pants, he was
the nominee. "Insane Clown President" covers this....

This was a master stroke, really.

Yes. But I think he clearly does not possess half the brains it takes
to mastermind what happened.

Hillary's team had a mountain of brains, and money, and lost.

She won the popular vote handily, by about three millions votes. The Russian intervention was concentrated on what turned out to be the three crucial states, where Trump's winning margin was some 70,000.

Who is the real puppeteer can only be speculated in a conspiracy
theory mode of course (I do not think it was the Russians though
they did some of the work, nor do I think it was anyone US based...),
we are unlikely to know the truth in our lifetimes.
I don't think Trump knows that himself either.

He has common sense, a will to win, and luck.

He hasn't got enough sense - nor a long enough attention span - to listen to expert advice. He may have a will to win, but doesn't know enough about what he's doing to translate that into effective action.

So far he's been lucky enough to get away it.

Betting the long term future of your country on him isn't exactly clever.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 11:05:24 AM UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 4:27:55 PM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 21:43:38 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 2/9/2020 1:47, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

<snip>

I don't think Trump knows that himself either.

He has common sense, a will to win, and luck.

Super smart people I admire have met with Trump privately.
They were blown away. They say the man's brilliant.

James Arthur seems to think that the Kockh bothers are super-smart, and seems to have collaborated with their scheme to astro-turf the Republicna Party into the brain-dead Tea Party Faction.

His idea of "super-smart" would seem likely to apply to people who are dumb enough to share his bizarre political delusions.

Trump is obviously expert at selling himself. He also sold a bunch of real-estate deals that ended in huge bankruptcies. His brilliance is rather specialised in looking brilliant rather than performing brilliantly.

I'm amazed at the level of his opposition's ignorance. PBS'
Newshour's Mark Shields and David Gergen, for example.

James Arthur regard people who don't share his particular delusions as ignorant. He doesn't know the difference between communism and democratic socialism, and thinks that anybody who is aware of the difference is "ignorant".

Easing obnoxious regs and lowering the marginal corporate tax
rate have re-ignited half the country (or more).

Ask anybody who wants to manufacture more cheaply by poisoning their neighbours. It's a no-brainer - one of the side-effects of lead poisoning.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 4:26:19 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 07:17:51 -0800 (PST), George Herold
ggherold@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, February 8, 2020 at 6:47:08 PM UTC-5, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

Americans buy the products that work, whether Scientists were
involved or not. Often, they weren't.

Somehow, Americans bought President Trump. It's not working.


Not just "somehow" - the guy's a master manipulator. He went "Boo!"
at the Republican Party and by the time they changed their pants, he was
the nominee. "Insane Clown President" covers this....
Trump is loved here in 'Trump land' Western NY. It's like nothing I've
seen before. The Deli down the bottom of my hill sells Trump hats at
the check out.

Makes sense. In the culture (and financial) wars, T is on the side of
the working-class, not college indoctrinated, non-coastal folks.

You've got to be seriously dim to think that. Trump is on Trump's side, and nobody else's. He'll say anything to get people on his side, but he's been a serial liar all his life, and you have to be as dim as John Larkin to be unaware of this.

> The ones who keep us alive.

They does include quite a few of the people who keep society running, but the college indoctrinated folk play their part in that as well.

Growing the food that you eat is part of the process of getting it onto your plate. John Larkin has enough sense to realise that if it isn't grown in the first place it won't get onto his plate, but has no idea how complicated the rest of the process is.

The Electoral College, and representation in the Senate, are good
ideas.

The Senate was a good idea - not original, but good. Subsequent constitutions have copied it. The Electoral College was a bad idea, and nobody has copied it.
Minority presidents have been fortunately rare, and remarkably unimpressive. Trump is a particularly depressive example.

Oh I didn't read the NY times article. There is much that is kinda 'broken'
in science that many on the left don't want to see.
Take peer-review as one problem. Peer review can operate as a gate keeper
for ideas, and not to get the 'best' science published.

Exactly. In some areas of study, having an unorthodox idea can be
career-ending.

Depends on the unorthodox idea. Continental drift was unorthodox when Alfred Wegener championed it in 1912, but when the evidence for it started to accumulate it finally made it.

The idea that stomach ulcers were caused Helicobacter pylori bacteria in the stomach was equally unorthodox, but had better evidence and got adopted \very rapidly.

Peer review is one enforcement mechanism to suppress
genuinely new ideas.

Most genuinely new ideas are genuinely bad idea, and need to be suppressed.

Max Planck didn't much like the content of Einstein's four 1904 papers, but he really liked the quality, and didn't bother getting them peer-reviewed before publishing them.

Of course, the more a science is subject to
experimental verification, the more tolerant it is of radical ideas.

John Larkin hasn't got a clue about observational science. The observations required to validate continental drift took a long time to accumulate, but once they'd got published the theory got to be very respectable.

The nice thing about experimental science is that you can choose what to observe when you want to observe it. Quite a few sciences don't have this luxury.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 9:44:59 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 13:50:19 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 1:29:25 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

DeForest had a degree in physics and didn't understand how his triode
worked.

Are you sure? Was that true for all his life, or just the day of discovery?
Why is that significant at all?

It's significant that he discovered the triode by fiddling with
basically a flame detector in a jug. He thought that gas was the
amplifying element.

JJ Thompson was deflecting electron beams with electric and magnetic
fields. Others before him observed electric and magnetic deflection of
"cathode rays". It seems to me that a deflection-based amplifier and
oscillator should have been obvious after that. The gridded triode
should have been obvious too. Maybe the scientists weren't interested
in applications.

Everything is obvious after somebody has explained it. In patent law the dictum is that everything is obvious to the Supreme Court, because all teh explanation have been refined in the lower courts.

To solve the space charge around a heated cathode, and fields in a symmetric
cylindrical-electrodes geometry, is a nontrivial problem. If you don't
know how to solve a diffusion equation, and second-order differential equations,
it's arguable that you don't understand how a triode works.

Don't be a jerk. Nobody likes a jerk.

John Larkin knows all about that

> Neither Edison nor Flaming nor DeForest did that math.

Edison certainly hired mathematicians to do that kind of stuff for him. He had that kind of money.

DeForest didn't start with a well-designed triode, just an amusing effect, worth publishing.

More than amusing. Worth patenting.

If people skilled in the art don't find an idea obvious, it's worth patenting.

One of my three patents looked perfectly obvious to me, but after I'd had to explain why it was obvious a couple of times I realised that I'd better put in a patent query.

Inventors - and De Forest was definitely an inventor - are rather more enthusiastic.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Les Cargill]

Dimiter_Popoff wrote:

On 2/9/2020 1:47, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

Americans buy the products that work, whether Scientists were
involved or not. Often, they weren't.

Somehow, Americans bought President Trump.   It's not working.


Not just "somehow" - the guy's a master manipulator. He went "Boo!"
at the Republican Party and by the time they changed their pants, he was
the nominee. "Insane Clown President" covers this....

This was a master stroke, really.

Yes. But I think he clearly does not possess half the brains it takes
to mastermind what happened.

I think that's mostly undecidable. Nothing in his communication style
is designed to expose actual information. It's more like sleight-of-hand.

Perhaps you'd have had to see this in real life for it to make sense?
It's schematically described in David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross", in
an intentionally obscure manner.

I've worked for a couple guys like that.

Who is the real puppeteer can only be speculated in a conspiracy
theory mode of course (I do not think it was the Russians though
they did some of the work, nor do I think it was anyone US based...),
we are unlikely to know the truth in our lifetimes.
I don't think Trump knows that himself either.

There is no puppeteer.

.....

As for 'scientists weren't involved', that's a hard sell.   I'm
reading these words on a plate of glass adorned with a few million
TFTs, based on the science of Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley (Nobel
prize Physics 1956), illuminated by LEDs (Nobel prize Physics, 2014
to Nakamura et al), through the medium of the Internet (US National
Science Foundation) and worldwide web (from CERN).


Technology is a distant cousin to science. We'd have had
no progress at all had Shockley not been dislodged. They were
not called the Traitorous Eight for nothing.

In truth, thousands, perhaps millions of individuals created
all this. We humans just like heroic narrative, much to our
peril.

Makes perfect sense to me, though me too like "we humans"
seem to like heroic narrative more than it is sensible.

Of course we do - it has massive efficiencies at a cost
in information loss.

Well may
be not that much nowadays but I did for most of my life.

Right. The more data-driven you become, the less you trust stories.

It has its
positive impact... on society, makes you work harder chasing
the dream .

Work your fingers to the bone, all you get is bony fingers....

Dimiter

--
Les Cargill

 

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 19:00:41 -0800 (PST), George Herold
<ggherold@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 12:26:19 PM UTC-5, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 07:17:51 -0800 (PST), George Herold
ggherold@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, February 8, 2020 at 6:47:08 PM UTC-5, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

Americans buy the products that work, whether Scientists were
involved or not. Often, they weren't.

Somehow, Americans bought President Trump. It's not working.


Not just "somehow" - the guy's a master manipulator. He went "Boo!"
at the Republican Party and by the time they changed their pants, he was
the nominee. "Insane Clown President" covers this....
Trump is loved here in 'Trump land' Western NY. It's like nothing I've
seen before. The Deli down the bottom of my hill sells Trump hats at
the check out.

Makes sense. In the culture (and financial) wars, T is on the side of
the working-class, not college indoctrinated, non-coastal folks. The
ones who keep us alive.
Yeah, if you come here and sit on a bar stool, you'll also
find a good dose of racism. (I'm thinking NFL at the moment.
blacks who earn a lot of money are hated.)
T knows just how to tweak his base. Rather than being presidential,
we now have reality TV Prez. (live in T's reality, or else.)
I'm mostly fear we'll have another four. Amy K. my only hope.

13 more years.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 16:05:19 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 4:27:55 PM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 21:43:38 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 2/9/2020 1:47, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

Americans buy the products that work, whether Scientists were
involved or not. Often, they weren't.

Somehow, Americans bought President Trump.   It's not working.

Works for me.



Not just "somehow" - the guy's a master manipulator. He went "Boo!"
at the Republican Party and by the time they changed their pants, he was
the nominee. "Insane Clown President" covers this....

This was a master stroke, really.

Yes. But I think he clearly does not possess half the brains it takes
to mastermind what happened.

Hillary's team had a mountain of brains, and money, and lost.


Who is the real puppeteer can only be speculated in a conspiracy
theory mode of course (I do not think it was the Russians though
they did some of the work, nor do I think it was anyone US based...),
we are unlikely to know the truth in our lifetimes.
I don't think Trump knows that himself either.

He has common sense, a will to win, and luck.

Super smart people I admire have met with Trump privately.
They were blown away. They say the man's brilliant.

I'm amazed at the level of his opposition's ignorance. PBS'
Newshour's Mark Shields and David Gergen, for example.

Good grief, force yourself to read the Sunday New York Times. It's all
Trump, Race, Trump, Global Warming, Trump, and Trump.

Easing obnoxious regs and lowering the marginal corporate tax
rate have re-ignited half the country (or more).

Cheers,
James Arthur

The small biz tax cuts will pay off bigly, but slowly.

If the stock market tanks before November, DT can blame the
coronavirus. Again, he's lucky.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[George Herold]

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 3:51:19 PM UTC-5, whit3rd wrote:

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 9:26:19 AM UTC-8, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 07:17:51 -0800 (PST), George Herold
ggherold@gmail.com> wrote:

...There is much that is kinda 'broken'
in science that many on the left don't want to see.
Take peer-review as one problem. Peer review can operate as a gate keeper
for ideas, and not to get the 'best' science published.

Exactly. In some areas of study, having an unorthodox idea can be
career-ending. Peer review is one enforcement mechanism to suppress
genuinely new ideas. Of course, the more a science is subject to
experimental verification, the more tolerant it is of radical ideas.

That's an oddly stilted view. The orthodoxy of 'an idea' isn't something that
really matters, because you don't publish 'an idea' unless it can be applied
to a puzzle, problem, or reality-as-we-see-it. String theory is often lambasted,
because it DOES apply to a puzzle (what is the mathematical basis of a consistent
theory of everything), but but does NOT apply in any clear way to our observations.

The replacement of planetary-motion epicycles with planetary-motion ellipses
was certainly not orthodox, but went smoothly; peer review had no damping effect.
The insertion of continental drift into planetary evolution was unorthodox, and
was only slowly accepted, because the evidences were scattered (literally,
all around the world) and a multiplicity of movement scenarios had to be evaluated
before one of them was found to fit.

The problem nowadays is NOT peer review; the problem is funding for 'basic' researches,
where a judgment call by a committee determines the future. It's impossible
to make progress without a team and multiple-year effort, sometimes (there's
no way to replace a Large Hadron Collider, for instance). Only a large chorus of interested
voices could get that funding accomplished- the SSC in the US got shouted down
in a Congressional session after a whisper campaign in the press, it
was not peer review that did the career ending there. A few US researchers
contributed to CERN's efforts, but not as members.

Peer review causing difficulty publishing is a common complaint, but there
are journals that will take... almost anything. Those don't make good reading.

Sure, you can get published somewhere.. but it's not the same.
And people and ideas can totally get f'd... changed,
My fav. distopian science story at the moment is,
"all of our mice are broken",
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kast-media-2/the-portal-2/e/66665404

Sticher link.

All scientists are human.
humans are fallible.
Grin...
GH.

 

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 15:23:28 -0800 (PST), dp <dp@tgi-sci.com> wrote:

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 11:27:55 PM UTC+2, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 21:43:38 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 2/9/2020 1:47, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

Americans buy the products that work, whether Scientists were
involved or not. Often, they weren't.

Somehow, Americans bought President Trump.   It's not working.

Works for me.



Not just "somehow" - the guy's a master manipulator. He went "Boo!"
at the Republican Party and by the time they changed their pants, he was
the nominee. "Insane Clown President" covers this....

This was a master stroke, really.

Yes. But I think he clearly does not possess half the brains it takes
to mastermind what happened.

Hillary's team had a mountain of brains, and money, and lost.


Who is the real puppeteer can only be speculated in a conspiracy
theory mode of course (I do not think it was the Russians though
they did some of the work, nor do I think it was anyone US based...),
we are unlikely to know the truth in our lifetimes.
I don't think Trump knows that himself either.

He has common sense, a will to win, and luck.


He does. So do a few millions of people.
These are not whay he is in the o al office.

Dimiter

Read "Shattered." Great fun. Bill did warn them - WJC has political
instincts, like DJT - but they were too smart to listen.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[George Herold]

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 12:26:19 PM UTC-5, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 07:17:51 -0800 (PST), George Herold
ggherold@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, February 8, 2020 at 6:47:08 PM UTC-5, Les Cargill wrote:
whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2:34:27 PM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

Americans buy the products that work, whether Scientists were
involved or not. Often, they weren't.

Somehow, Americans bought President Trump. It's not working.


Not just "somehow" - the guy's a master manipulator. He went "Boo!"
at the Republican Party and by the time they changed their pants, he was
the nominee. "Insane Clown President" covers this....
Trump is loved here in 'Trump land' Western NY. It's like nothing I've
seen before. The Deli down the bottom of my hill sells Trump hats at
the check out.

Makes sense. In the culture (and financial) wars, T is on the side of
the working-class, not college indoctrinated, non-coastal folks. The
ones who keep us alive.

Yeah, if you come here and sit on a bar stool, you'll also
find a good dose of racism. (I'm thinking NFL at the moment.
blacks who earn a lot of money are hated.)
T knows just how to tweak his base. Rather than being presidential,
we now have reality TV Prez. (live in T's reality, or else.)
I'm mostly fear we'll have another four. Amy K. my only hope.

The Electoral College, and representation in the Senate, are good
ideas.

I'm mostly disappointed in the Senate, they've been breaking their
old rules (filibuster-wise) for a while now. (both sides)
And I fear it will continue.

I heard from someone (Pogo :^) that because we don't have an outside
enemy, we are fighting ourselves.

George H.

Oh I didn't read the NY times article. There is much that is kinda 'broken'
in science that many on the left don't want to see.
Take peer-review as one problem. Peer review can operate as a gate keeper
for ideas, and not to get the 'best' science published.
GH



Exactly. In some areas of study, having an unorthodox idea can be
career-ending. Peer review is one enforcement mechanism to suppress
genuinely new ideas. Of course, the more a science is subject to
experimental verification, the more tolerant it is of radical ideas.

Yeah, I heard a suggestion it might be better with one editor...
but still anyone with a stick in the game will have some vested interest.
(I'm re-reading this short bio of Newton... wars with Hooke..
He (Newton) mostly just kept his ideas to himself.

My laser diodes came in today. These things are tiny!
How big is the output facet? (Tiny is good!) If this works
I'm going to want little fiber coupled PD's (and fast!)
I've got these photo diodes that look huge in comparison..
BPW34
(I think I can tape 'em off to make the optical size smaller.
(there will be a little shadow effect on the sides)
There're some parts of optics... maybe a large part..
that I don't understand so well.

George H.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"