Mitt Romney also thinks cold fusion is a solved problem if only we could duplicate the results at the University of Utah. (For those of you too young to remember, cold fusion was debunked 22 years ago.)
Also, too: The one good thing about this whole “plane windows” idiocy is that I learned that Patrick Smith, who wrote the excellent Ask the Pilot column in Salon, has his new site up and running.
arguingwithsignposts
Maybe if I repeat this in enough places, one of you FPers will maybe try to fix something or explain it so us lowly commenters can understand. At least a cole “Fuck you all, we know the comments are borked and we’re not going to do a damned thing about it” rant:
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SACRED, WILL SOMEONE FIX THE GODDAMN COMMENT SYSTEM!
This has been going on for MONTHS now, and fuck if any of the front pagers have so much as mentioned it to explain WTF is going on, or if anything is being done to remedy the obvious multiple comments and page-load time out bullshit.
Seriously, this is beyond ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah – yada yada yada you get what you pay for.
Baud
Maybe if I repeat this in enough places
WordPress will take care of that for you.
arguingwithsignposts
@Baud: +1000
Gin & Tonic
@arguingwithsignposts: Your rant worked. That comment only went up once.
Bill E Pilgrim
Oh thanks for that Patrick Smith link. My brother wrote to him a while ago asking where he was and he wrote back explaining that Salon had told him that he wasn’t in line with the new “Salon vibe” and thus had cancelled his column.
The Salon vibe, stray visitors may have noticed, seems to be pretty much this, and this, mixed in with some actual journalism still.
I must admit a certain nostalgia for Salon now that Ask the Pilot, Greenwald, and Tom Tomorrow are all gone. Despite the fact that it’s always pretty much been a tabloid, self-described that way by its creator, it was one of the first places I read regularly back in the early Internet days. Along with others apparently, TBogg explains in his blurb that his blog came out of being a commenter there ten years ago.
Salon is where I saw the news about September 11 2001, being out of the country and with no TV, and well lots of other stuff.
So no big news really, the headline of which could be “Sensationalist tabloid gets even worse”, but still, what a shame about that place.
Pavonis
A team of undergrads from my university tried to replicate the cold fusion results. They didn’t get fusion but in the process of setting up the experiment they did invent a new way to make smooth cuts in glass. The machine shop expert was amazed. If you claim to have made an extraordinary scientific discovery, people will rush to try to recreate it… and maybe stumble upon something else, who knows?
mistermix
@arguingwithsignposts: Take it up with Cole.
mai naem
I wish somebody would pull out all of Joe Scarbo’s quotes from when he was a rep during the Clinton era. I bet he’s got a bunch of quotes with him saying shit about Clinton. Now, he talks about Clinton like he’s some kind of god. Assh@#$. Joey ain’t learned shit. He just dissed Jimmy Carter. He doesn’t realize James Carter IV will be on his ass getting some secretly recorded tape with him admitting to foul play during the death of Lori Klausitis.
Bill E Pilgrim
@mai naem: Most of the Republican attacks are against entirely invented versions of Democrats, not real ones. The invented version of Clinton used to be bad, now it’s good.
Clint Eastwood was actually the perfect embodiment of the Republican mindset, despite what they say, it’s all like one giant Gestalt therapy session with Fritz Perls directing it.
arguingwithsignposts
@mistermix: yeah, sure. I’ll e-mail him, matok-chan.
Kirbster
If Romney had any political instincts at all, the airplane incident could have been a great humanizing moment for him. All he had to do was: (a) talk about how much he loves his wife, (b) express his gratitude to the pilot and co-pilot for safely landing the plane, and (c) praise the pilot and co-pilot for their skill, cool-headedness, and professionalism in an emergency situation (and even subtly suggest that this is the sort of competent leadership that voters could expect from the Romney/Ryan team). But Romney is a self-centered CEO, and acknowledging “the Help” is just not in his nature, hence the silly airplane windows statement.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@arguingwithsignposts:
I think you underestimate how much we front pagers can do. If the blog was a car, Cole would let us kick the tires and move the seat back a bit, but we don’t get to look under the bonnet. The borking of the comment system is as much of a mystery to us as anyone else. And I for one am profoundly grateful for the ability to say it’s not my problem.
WereBear
@Kirbster: Mitt Romney doesn’t need any humanizing moments! Mitt Romney cannot be improved!
LanceThruster
@mai naem:
Joe Scar’s a shameless hack with a cable network show to spew his drivel. Lying, spinning, shilling sack of shite.
Lihtox
“Cold fusion” as a concept hasn’t been debunked; it still might be possible to attain nuclear fusion at room temperatures (which would be great). What was debunked was the claim that it had been achieved. It is considered something of a fringe area right now but that’s more for historical reasons than anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
dmsilev
There are actually people who still believe in cold fusion and are still trying to replicate the original results. Only, the phrase ‘cold fusion’ is anathema now so they renamed their field LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions). They show up at physics conferences and mainly preach to each other plus a small audience of random scientists who are bored and want to listen to crackpots.
( Before anyone accuses me of belittling the next Einstein or something, these folks go out of their way to come across as crack-pottish. They never give sufficient details on their experiments to permit replication attempts; significant details are always kept hidden. Similarly, they do a bad to non-existent job of ruling out mundane effects that could explain their results, and get very very pissy with anyone who suggests even straightforward tests to rule out alternatives. Etc.)
arguingwithsignposts
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: I do understand that you FPers could maybe e-mail cole and get a bit more than a “Fuck you” out of it. Seriously, at least it would be nice if someone would acknowledge it’s a problem and say “we’re working on it” or “we don’t give a damn.”
A lot of good comes out of this site, and part of that is because of the many commenters who create the online community. It’s not like this is some sudden thing that’s happened today, and it’s a bit grating to CONSTANTLY have to scroll through repeats of the same comments over and over.
Pavonis
@dmsilev: A good rule of thumb for separating honest scientists from crackpots is that an honest scientist will encourage replication. Sometimes crackpots claim they’re keeping details secret because they want to make a proprietary invention, but if their discovery is so great, why don’t they go back to the lab, build and patent their miracle device, and get filthy rich?
VOR
No, the cold fusion thing is worse than that. First, as you say he seems unaware that the experiment is considered debunked in the mainstream scientific community. Second, he cites cold fusion as a way to transmit, not generate, electricity. Third, he also cited cold fusion in his response to a written science survey a few weeks ago. Not just an off the cuff thing.
I wonder if this is a thing in right wing circles. Perhaps the evil environ-liberals prefer solar and wind power to the proven alternatives like Clean Coal and cold fusion. And yes, that is snark.
bjacques
I went to a presentation years ago by some guy who claimed he’d invented a pump that produced more energy than it consumed, maybe through some hitherto-undiscovered principle of fluid dynamics. Anyway, he was trying to sell licenses to develop the pump.
These guys should go on the grift and charge suckers to waste their own time trying to make cold fusion work.
“Home? I have no home. Hunted, despised, Living like an animal! The jungle is my home. But I will show the world that I can be its master! I will perfect my own race of people. A race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
It may be a thing in RW circles, but my first thought was that he clings to it because of the University of Utah connection.
MonkeyBoy
Romney is often accused of being clever (or at least clever for Romney) by not ever providing the details of his policy proposals but instead presenting wishes or goals of policy as the policy itself.
But seeing as he is unable to distinguish the goal of cold fusion from the actual current results, maybe his whole thought process is unable to distinguish wishful thinking.
Wishing wishful thinking into being real is very common among people. While it would be cool to have colonies on the Moon, Gingrich may honestly not know that we will not have the technology to make them happen for a few hundred years.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
“Cold Fusion”, yes. (In the sense that it’s unlikely to be nuclear fusion as we currently know it).
Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions? not so much. NASA, the US Navy and others have been studying these reactions for two decades. Something is going on there. (I personally don’t expect any substantial energy source to arise from these studies, just some interesting new physics… but of course, one never knows).
(I guess that I get to be BJ’s local LENR pedant, at least until the 20+ year old “cold fusion, har har” reflex dies).
Narcissus
Well of course they can do it in Utah.
VOR
Re: Judas
Agree, there are possibilities there, it is just that particular experiment (Pons/Fleischmann) which was not able to be re-produced and there is nothing commercially feasible today.
Rasputin's Evil Twin
@Kirbster: Okay, R-Money doesn’t understand pressurized airplanes. I seem to recall learning about that in grade school.
Any ex-submariners out there want to explain to him that you guys didn’t have to hold your breath the whole patrol? He might find that interesting.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@VOR:
Yep.
The Cold Fusion story is more about botched PR and blatant opportunism by Pons and Fleischman than anything else.
In their rush to lay claim to any potential future profits, P&F essentially stopped being scientists. They crowed way too early to make sure they got sole credit, then got way too cagey about experimental details when others had difficulty replicating their results (presumably because they wanted to get any patents first). Money-grubbing trashed the science, and poisoned the field for at least a generation.
In hindsight, the whole debacle kind of foreshadowed the marketing excesses of the dot-com era that came only a few years later.
Mainline physicists have put forward theories to explain observed LENR results, and maybe someday someone will bother to construct experiments to test and prove one of those explanations. But until then, one can’t declare all of LENR to be ‘debunked’.
Ok, pedant mode off.
mdblanche
“I do believe in basic science. I believe in participating in space. I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with — with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it.”
If you can’t duplicate it, you’ve solved nothing. To me, Mitt’s lack of understanding of this basic principle of science if far more disqualifying than his poor knowledge of atmospheric pressure or his apparent belief in phlogiston.
Ruckus
@arguingwithsignposts:
One of the things I have noticed is that the response time of WP is, well fucking slow. So when you hit comment you aren’t sure you actually did. If I wait for it, WP will come back and say, and now I can’t remember what but it does notify you. It just takes an inordinate amount of time. So if you are in the middle of a conversation stream and don’t think you actually hit submit, you just may have.
On the other hand… even waiting I have had multiple posts. Maybe someone needs to hammer on the side of the WP. That always works for every thing else.
LanceThruster
@Ruckus:
I’ve learned to open another BJ window and scroll down. usually my comment in waiting in the other window is already there.
LanceThruster
@Narcissus:
Magic underwear creates a localized field allowing for results that are white and delightsome.
Just Some Fuckhead
I used to enjoy the Ask The Pilot column in Salon. Thanks for the heads up.
Another Halocene Human
@VOR: maybe he just confused cold fusion with superconductors
typical shallow hal narcissistic superficiality
sm*t cl*de
“Cold Fusion” is something of a dog-whistle among the loonier Lew-Rockwell wing of libertarianism. The attraction seems to be the lure of decentralised power generation, outside the choking grasp of the State, so we’ll all be living in Galt’s Gully / a John-Campbell-era Astounding-SF story.
They really do believe that physics is under some obligation to provide them with Ayn Rand plot devices.
Personally I believe all the world’s energy problems could be solved if we could somehow harness the forces of Crank Magnetism.
Triassic Sands
Mitt Romney is a Christian, albeit kind of a fringe or slightly weird Christian (unlike those normal Christians who handle snakes and speak in
gibberishtongues). And the fact is that Christians believe that if you want something bad enough (like the Virgin Birth or Resurrection) then, if you believe it with all your heart, it will be true, even if it defies all the laws of physics, or biology, or one of those other sciencey sciences. So, despite any debunking of cold fusion that scientists might have done, Mitt’s will to believe is really all that matters.If Mitt thinks commercial airplane windows should roll down, then by golly they should. After all, isn’t choice the the most important thing in America? And, besides, having an airplane window roll down doesn’t require any reordering of physical laws, it’s just a minor logistical problem. So, if Mitt wants his window rolled down (at 30,000 feet) then, dad-gum-it, the other passengers can just use their oxygen masks and wear expedition down jackets. Oh, wait, Mitt isn’t likely to be on a commercial airplane, is he? More likely, he’ll be on a private jet or an Airbus A380 he rented for the day to take the family on a picnic to the south of France.
And if Mitt wants the University of Utah to have solved cold fusion, so be it. The real problem is the losers who can’t duplicate it. No doubt Mitt will allocate a few hundred billion dollars to the University of Utah to show the rest of us where we’ve gone wrong. Or maybe the money will just go into re-education programs to teach the rest of us how to believe properly.
The good news is that when Mitt is president he’s going to believe that tax cuts for the rich will simultaneously create jobs and cut the deficit, and, since he’s going to believe it in his devout Christian way of believing, it’s money in the bank, so to speak.
No doubt Mitt will wish Iran’s nukes out of existence (which will be easier than balancing the budget, since unlike the deficit, Iran’s nukes don’t actually exist, at least not yet, whereas the budget deficits and the national debt have been a growing problem since Ronald Reagan “proved” supply side economics in the eighties). Mitt will also cut billions from Medicaid and because he believes that will improve care for the poor and elderly, then it surely will. In fact, it’s entirely possible that in the Christian dream world that Mitt inhabits, cutting the Medicaid budget may actually result in there being many fewer poor people. (No magic there, just the routine cause and effect where when you cut people off from health care they — unmysteriously — die.)