Where Science Went Wrong (hilarious web site)

On 12/05/2010 12:36, wrote:
In rec.arts.sf.written Martin Brown wrote:

The worst sin I have ever seen was by a physicist. A mains cable
with a male plug at each end used to power a 4way socket
extention. A friend at university who seemed to attract bad luck
was very nearly killed by it.

Er. How does one even go about getting a male-to-male mains
cable? Is that the sort of thing you fashion yourself? I
didn't think such things were sold.

For rather obvious product liability reasons they are not sold!

However you cannot prevent some idiot (even a highly qualified one) from
getting the component parts and assembling a death trap!

Many mains cables are pre moulded now but it was not always the case.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Martin Brown wrote:

Quadibloc wrote:

The trouble is that people like Velikovsky and von Daniken can spin
pretty impressive and convincing arguments to a naive layperson. To a
person otherwise helpless against them, while authority may be a weak
reed, it is better than having no defense at all.

The devil has all the best tunes. Showing where their claims conflict
with the known laws of physics is the way to do it and not by appeals to
authority. It should not matter who constructs the refutation, although
it helps if they are sufficiently articulate to win the argument.

Velikovskys interplanetary billiards is risible, but there are plenty of
credulous nutters who buy his books and believe every word

I find it very annoying when some nutter who claims to be an alien
abductee is given exactly the same credulity in a TV interview as a
scientist pointing out that the claims are bogus.

That's what they consider "objectivity", it's politically correct so
get used to it.

--
ewe spik flensh?

On May 12, 2:58*am, Martin Brown
wrote:
Showing where their claims conflict
with the known laws of physics is the way to do it and not by appeals to
authority.

Of course it is. However, to avoid being taken in in the first place,
people should take the claims of mavericks with a few extra grains of
salt. This is not to say that a grain of salt should not be used even
for what the authorities say.

John Savard

On 12/05/2010 13:46, Quadibloc wrote:
On May 12, 2:58 am, Martin
wrote:
Showing where their claims conflict
with the known laws of physics is the way to do it and not by appeals to
authority.

Of course it is. However, to avoid being taken in in the first place,
people should take the claims of mavericks with a few extra grains of
salt.

Or a bucket full of salt as the emetic effect would be beneficial.

This is not to say that a grain of salt should not be used even
for what the authorities say.

John Savard

Appeals to authority should never be trusted unless the authority can
explain their reasoning. Even famous professors are sometimes wrong.

Stephen Hawking as a student famously shot down a paper presented at a
public lecture by Fred Hoyle who was at the time one of the most
prominent cosmologists when the orthodoxy was Steady State. History
shows that Hawking was right although Hoyle at the time was furious.

Fifth para on this website has a bit about that encounter.

http://campus.udayton.edu/~hume/Hawking/hawkingbio.html

Regards,
Martin Brown

Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:

Okay, I managed to completely confuse several different family
stories.

Dad was working on gaseous diffusion at the Nash building at Broadway
and 133rd Street in New York. The stuff about the casing/shielding
was me misremembering a couple of anecdotes my mother had told me
about the machinists on the Project. (She was a secretary on the
Project in '44 and '45.)

My apologies for the confusion.

No problem. But it does explain why he didn't understand the
engineering of the bomb - he probably wouldn't have known anything
about it. If you knew the details about the guts of the bomb, you
were almost certainly interned at Los Alamos. Somebody working on
diffusion probably wouldn't have been allowed into the bomb security
'compartment'.

Much came out about the bombs postwar, but it was still (essentially)
elementary school level stuff. It's not until the last ten or fifteen
years that anything really 'juicy' has been revealed - and recent work
indicates even that was largely misdirection. It's recently been
deduced, for example, that the 'official' description of Little Boy is
wrong.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

On 5/12/2010 1:58 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

The worst sin I have ever seen was by a physicist. A mains cable with a
male plug at each end used to power a 4way socket extention. A friend at
university who seemed to attract bad luck was very nearly killed by it.

Which immediately leads one to ask, "What university did James Nicoll
attend?"

--
Murphy was an optimist.

In article , Martin Brown writes:
On 12/05/2010 13:46, Quadibloc wrote:
On May 12, 2:58 am, Martin wrote:

This is not to say that a grain of salt should not be used even
for what the authorities say.

Appeals to authority should never be trusted unless the authority can
explain their reasoning. Even famous professors are sometimes wrong.

Stephen Hawking as a student famously shot down a paper presented at a
public lecture by Fred Hoyle who was at the time one of the most
prominent cosmologists when the orthodoxy was Steady State. History
shows that Hawking was right although Hoyle at the time was furious.

Of course, Hawking's arguments didn't boil down to "what you're
saying is hard for me to understand, so I don't believe it."

At least, that's how I'd bet.

--
Michael F. Stemper
#include Standard_Disclaimer
Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.

On May 12, 11:01*am, (Michael Stemper)
wrote:

Of course, Hawking's arguments didn't boil down to "what you're
saying is hard for me to understand, so I don't believe it."

No, they didn't. Had they done so, Hoyle wouldn't have been shot down,
rather Hawking would have been laughed out of the room. That's the
wonderful way science works.

John Savard

On May 12, 4:29 am, Martin Brown
wrote:

Or the various sceptics in the pockets of big oil and the fossil fuel
lobby groups who spend an inordinate amount of effort persuading the
public that there is no risk to the climate from increased CO2 levels.

Going back to who can you trust...

Or the various skeptics who *know* that the environmental movement has
spent forty years *lying* about nuclear power so why the heck should
we believe them about CO2?

And if their claims about CO2 are correct, why the heck aren't they
advocating nuclear power for all they're worth, now?

Once someone has lied, believing them is a poor bet, even when they're
telling the truth or something that resembles the truth.

The environmental movement can't be trusted. They are proven liars.

Their lies about nuclear power caused global warming.

On Wed, 12 May 2010 10:42:39 -0700 (PDT), trag
wrote in

in sci.astro.amateur,rec.arts.sf.written:

On May 12, 4:29 am, Martin Brown
wrote:

Or the various sceptics in the pockets of big oil and the
fossil fuel lobby groups who spend an inordinate amount
of effort persuading the public that there is no risk to
the climate from increased CO2 levels.

Going back to who can you trust...

Or the various skeptics who *know* that the environmental
movement has spent forty years *lying* about nuclear
power so why the heck should we believe them about CO2?

And if their claims about CO2 are correct, why the heck
aren't they advocating nuclear power for all they're
worth, now?

Once someone has lied, believing them is a poor bet, even
when they're telling the truth or something that
resembles the truth.

The environmental movement can't be trusted. They are
proven liars.

Their lies about nuclear power caused global warming.

'They' is a wonderfully wide brush. It lets one make
wonderfully silly assertions that almost sound halfway
reasonable.