At 06:59 PM 2/1/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:
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.
Thanks. Eventually, they come around, Jed. For an unfortunate few,
they die first.
A hazard we all face, sooner or later.
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.
Right. With the assumption, one will continue digging, and only when
exploration is thorough, there have been multiple efforts, including
consultations with others, does it start to become reasonable to even
think of "obfuscation."
I've been pretty frank about Stoern, because it became clear to me
that they weren't trying to make it all clear. Indeed, they are
really pretty open about that, if you just think! They don't want you
to know what they are doing if you don't pay them the developer fee!
How the hell do they expect to make money if they just give the ideas
and the exact procedures and results away!
And then I was not thrilled to see Larsen basically acknowledging
that the "understanding" they have is "proprietary." Big red flag.
He's not going to explain it to us unless we pay him, and probably
with even more restrictions than that. Down this road we have already
seen many go, and what happened to them?
Sure, someday, someone *might* be quite legitimate, who follows this
business model. But I'm not holding my breath. None of this means
that W-L theory is wrong, but it sure doesn't mean it's right.
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.
To me, I'm sure, *much more confusing*!
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.)
Cool. That is a fabulous joke about Japanese-American couples, I
doubt that I will ever forget it. I won't reveal your secret Jed,
others will just have to look for themselves. His girlfriend was
right, though. He'd have made a bad husband, guaranteed, she'd have
been unhappy. There was no actual misunderstanding here, though, this
was just an excuse to share the joke with us. They knew what the
words meant. Thanks, though.
As to the book, I can't wait to read it in English. Stupid search
ends each excerpt just when it's getting really juicy!
