Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Nevertheless, the paper does show "reasonable agreement" with what
would be expected from d-d fusion, except for the obvious fact that
simple d-d fusion is hardly considered a reasonable hypothesis by
anyone. What is more to the point is a hypothesis that the fuel for
whatever is going on is deuterium and the principal ash is helium,
and, no matter what intermediaries exist, or what mechanism, and
unless significant other products exist, the 24 MeV Q factor would be expected.
This is well expressed. It is the point I have been trying to make
for many years, often to no avail.
Basic rule of interpretation of incomplete messages: assume that
they are mostly right, look for the explanation that maximizes rightness.
This is especially true when the text is not written by a native
speaker of language. It even applies to graphs and other
presentations of date, even without words. You would be surprised how
many differences there are in mathematical notation and customary
presentation methods there are between the U.S. and Japan for
example. There are big differences and small ones. The small ones are
apt to cause more misunderstandings than the big ones, because people
do not realize they are there.
There are also authors such as Arata who use old notation and some
idiosyncratic notation I have never seen elsewhere. For example, he
and one Japanese publisher I encountered many years ago tends to put
units in square brackets:
1 [kg]
14 [MeV]
Arata is a genius -- I am more and more impressed by his latest work.
But he does not communicate well! He uses all kinds of weird
typographic symbols such as letters with circles around them. The
late Akira Kawasaki and I agreed that Arata's notation and symbols
are confusing as heck, and his Japanese text is as confusing as his English.
You would be surprised how confusing & misleading language
differences can be, even in daily personal life. See Jake Adelstein,
"Tokyo Vice" p. 63 for details:
http://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Vice-American-Reporter-Police/dp/0307378799
Since I am stickler for proprieties I shall say no more, but you can
Search inside! for the text: "this lends itself to the joke . . ."
(I can't wait to read this book in Japanese.)
- Jed
