Bridges into the unknown

I woke up this morning afire with ideas. Happens sometimes. Some of these I will be implementing, but the best ideas involve community, how to create and strengthen community, and, in particular, the LENR community, and especially the young, with life and career ahead of them. They are the future, I merely am a dreamer and observer. Well, I’ve done more than that.

Then I touched my computer and my screen lit up with the Windows “screensaver,” and it was the image above. That led me to the work of Zaha Hadid, who, somehow, had escaped being noticed by me before. What … an … amazing … woman! The world is larger than I imagine, and, in line with that:

The future does not exist yet. But it’s possible, and I declare that the future will be better than anything we can imagine.

Because we say so. Join me?

Continue reading “Bridges into the unknown”

Let’s Move the Needle with our Core Competencies

This post was inspired by Cole Schafer, a professional copy writer, and it shows.

We don’t need everyone to buy in , but if we open the kimono, we can attract a few good men. Ahem, scientists, people.

Empower the community with this bleeding edge technology, instead of drinking the Kool-Aid, that Rossi or Widom-Larsen will save us.

Put out some feelers and develop our human capital!

LENR has lots of moving parts, so, double-checking, get our ducks in a row, stop working in silos, and accept that it’s just business!

If we each give 110%, we will . . .

Take a nap, that’s my idea. Whew!

110%, 24/7! Let me sit down. I just cleaned up much of my office.

Continue reading “Let’s Move the Needle with our Core Competencies”

Going dark on a topic

(May 2, 2018) This is obsolete. Some pages are still hidden, being reviewed before being re-opened. The content here has been misrepresented elsewhere. Simple documentation has been called “attack.” If we are attacked by reality, we are in big trouble no matter what others say!)

I have been documenting the Anglo Pyramidologist sock puppetry and massive disruption. Because of what I have found, and the tasks before me over the next year, I am going dark. All pages in the category of Anglo Pyramidologist will be hidden, pending, and possibly some others. Some have been archived (often on archive.is) and will remain available there. If anyone has a need-to-know, or wants to support the work, contact me (comments on this post will be seen by me, and if privacy is requested, that will be honored, the comments will not be published. Provide me with an email and a request for contact and I will do so.)

The connection with cold fusion is thin, but exists and is significant.

Warning: documenting AP can be hazardous to your health.

As well, the next year’s journalism will need support, some of this may become expensive. I will be asking for support, to supplement what is already available or in the pipeline.

Sometimes reality comes to our door and knocks. Do we invite her in? Other times we need to search for her. Ask and you shall receive. She is kind and generous.

Don’t ask, and reality might seem to punch you in the nose, and you might be offended. In reality, you just walked into a lamp post. Who knew?

Summary:

The sock family known on Wikipedia as Anglo Pyramidologist is two brothers, Oliver D. Smith (the original Anglo Pyramidologist) and Darryl L. Smith, perhaps best known as Goblin Face, who continues to be highly active with the “skeptic faction” on Wikipedia. It is possible that there is a third brother involved.

They have engaged in impersonation socking, disrupting Wikipedia while pretending to be a blocked user, leading to defamation of the target user, and they have engaged in similar behavior elsewhere.

I was attacked for documenting the proven impersonation and other socking. My behaviot did not violate any policies or the Terms of Service,

The Smith brothers were able to coordinate or canvass for multiple complaints, (they have bragged about complaining) and it is possible that this led to the WikiMedia Foundation global ban, but those bans are not explained and the banned user is not warned, and has no opportunity to appeal or contest them.

Substantial damage was done to the long-standing tradition of academic freedom on Wikiversity.

Action to remedy this will continue, but privately.

In Memoriam: John Perry Barlow

A page popped up in my Firefox feed: John Perry Barlow’s Tips for Being a Grown Up

The author adds this:

Barlow was determined to adhere to his list of self-imposed virtues, and stated in his original post about the principles in 1977: “Should any of my friends or colleagues catch me violating any one of them, bust me.”

This was written in 1977 when Barlow was 30. It’s a guide to live by, and living by it can be predicted to create a life well worth living. I would nudge a few of his tips, based on more than forty additional years of experience and intense training, but it is astonishing that someone only 30 would be so clear. Whatever he needed beyond that, he would find.

Barlow’s Wikipedia page.

His obituary on the Electronic Frontiers Foundation.

I never met Barlow, but I was a moderator on the W.E.L.L. when he was on the board, and I’d followed EFF in general. This man accomplished much, but there is much left to do. Those who take responsibility are doing that work, and will continue.

While his body passed away, as all bodies do, his spirit is immortal, at least as long as there are people to stand for what he stood for.

We will overcome.

And, yes, “should anyone (friend or otherwise) catch me violating the principles of a powerful life, bust me.” I promise to, at least, consider the objection, and to look at what I can rectify without compromising other basic principles. There is often a way. Enemies may tell me what friends will not, and I learned years ago to listen carefully, and especially to “enemies.”

Farewell, John Barlow. Joy was your birthright and your legacy.

How are we doing?

As the first anniversary of this blog approaches, some statistics:

As of now, there are 247 published posts and  101 published pages. In terms of the number of comments, so far, the top posts, with 50 or more each:

Continue reading “How are we doing?”

What next? So much meshegas, so little time.

Watching LENR Forum, as well as looking at unfinished business here, there are endless provocations to write. I’m going to list some topics.

Interest?

Continue reading “What next? So much meshegas, so little time.”

Off-topic comments are the bane of useful content creation

I’ve often mentioned the issue of off-topic comments on LENR Forum. Discussion of issues there is often heavily derailed by off-topic comments. Some of these are from trolls (who choose what to claim or evidence by the anticipated — or easily anticipable — emotional responses, or pursuing their Favorite Topic, everywhere, and with the LF access paradigm and the lack of comment threading, this heavily damages the utility of LF.) One might think that if one is researching the stated topic, one could read a variety of opinions or find evidence on that topic, but these can be buried under piles of irrelevancies, personal arguments, etc.

What can be done about this? Continue reading “Off-topic comments are the bane of useful content creation”

Woot!

Today I uploaded consolidated deposition files for Penon and three for Rossi (for himself, for Lenoardo, and for JMP). These files were prepared by Bruce H. We have many extracts from the depositions, and we must maintain them because they are cited by specific case exhibit and pdf page, in our study documents. But if someone just wants to read as much as possible of a deposition, these consolidated files make it far easier. There are many more to be done, but Bruce is a pioneer, and I want to take this occasion to acknowledge that, and the help of all those who have made and are making this site useful.

All deposition exhibits (and the consolidated files) are listed on RvD: Depositions

Rossi’s blog: Fact, Flabber, Flim-Flam, or Fun?

Whatever, it begins with F. If a reader knows me, the reader will expect that, every time, I’ll vote for Fun. Yay, Rossi! Endless generation of excess fun!

Okay, was it fun for IH? I recommend they declare that. Otherwise, $20 million down the tubes, a stupid mistake, start to finish. But fun is irrevocable, if we say so. Life is fun, and then we die. Does that change “life is fun”? I say not.

Onward with FFFF: Continue reading “Rossi’s blog: Fact, Flabber, Flim-Flam, or Fun?”

How to beat the law

Don’t try to do it to often, don’t push your luck, but it’s actually easy to experience. Just buy lottery tickets (as a weak example, but easy to understand) until you win. Look at that transaction only: you beat the odds but you won. With some games, you might win immediately, you’ll have a net lifetime gain, unless you continue playing, having decided that you are lucky or smart or whatever. Then it becomes

Usually, anyway. This post is inspired by Simon Derricut’s defense of his ideas, and because he’s exposing some basic principles, worth looking at, and commonly misunderstood, I’m giving this a primary post here, instead of it merely being discussion on posts that aren’t on the point. So below is his last effort, responding to me:

(The Laws of Thermodynamics are statistical: they may be violated with isolated interactions, and this is all well-known, except that people forget and say things, quite commonly, that are inconsistent with that, giving impossibility arguments that are not actually the Laws as understood by those who know them well. This sometimes impacts LENR discussions.)

Take it away, Simon: (my comments are in indented italics): Continue reading “How to beat the law”

At last! The opportunity you’ve been waiting for!

I.e., to send Infusion Institute funding to keep this work going. I started a GoFundMe campaign:

Cold fusion journalism

I intend to go to Miami for the trial in Rossi v. Darden — if it happens, which is seeming likely, though the scope of the trial remains unclear at this point. Getting there is relatively cheap (I’ll probably take the bus), but a hotel would be expensive, I expect, unless I share a room — which is how I managed to afford ICCF-18.

This blog isn’t expensive, though it is beginning to push resource limits and I may need to start paying more for hosting.

Abd on Abd as the Center of the Universe

They are talking about me on LENR Forum again. While the history of my ban there is quite open, if one studies history on LF and looks at what I wrote here about it when it happened, it’s obvious that few actually know the history. LF Staff are far from transparent, which is a major part of the problem.

Let’s start with this: the Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (CMNS)  community needs to develop what are called, in my training, Structures for Fulfillment. From the beginning, the community was fragmented and ineffective, compared to what might be seen as possible. When I came into the field in 2009, I found no evidence of sane collective decision-making procedures that were anything more than ad hoc. Fund-raising was isolated and largely individual. Factions were fighting with each other, but aside from a few highly opinionated individuals, internal criticism was mostly missing. Experts in CMNS did not criticise the work of others, they would not even comment on it (and I asked).

I saw, in CMNS conferences, no mechanisms for finding and expressing consensus. So, from a social point of view, it was all primitive, and mostly the community was reactive, blaming the lack of progress on “them,” the mainstream refusing to accept experimental reality. But how was that reality being communicated? Was it effective and clear? Were experts in communication being sought, either as paid consultants or as volunteers?

Mostly not. Something was missing, and, since I could see it, it became my responsibility to create it. So, now, to LF. This will be long, because many complex issues are raised. Part of the problem is an intolerance of complexity. Complexity is not for everyone, but what I’ve found, many times, is that those who hate complexity will act to suppress it, even though they could simply step around it. What we do not understand, we try to kill, it is probably a basic survival instinct, xenophobia.

In a sane organizational structure, complexity is channeled. In an insane one, it is repressed, censored, or at least ridiculed and insulted. Continue reading “Abd on Abd as the Center of the Universe”

Trying out hypothes.is with LENR Forum

I’ve been seeing spots of interest — and bubbles of mishe-gas — on LENR Forum and missing the hot format of immediate comment, even though, long-term, what I’m settling into here is much more useful.

I started using hypothes.is for commentary because Steve Krivit filed a copyright violation notice on a copy of a page of his here. It’s an interesting tool.

I will create tools here to link to my hypothes.is comments (or others if contributors take it up), and here are some to start. (If you don’t see annotations after following a link, look for a small “>>” link at the top right. That should open up annotations.)

Look down the page as linked through hypothesis.is. The page should show highlights on text on which there is public comment. With a hypothes.is account one may create comments or reply to existing ones. It’s a browser extension allowing one-click setup of annotation of any web page.

The links below are actually all the same, they point, through hypothes.is to the same LF page.

response to Zeus46.
response to joshg
response to IH Fanboy
comment on Paradigmnoia just giving a link

And more.

and then  The next Rossi v Darden page.

Comments may be made here, or, with a hypothes.is account, comment replies can be entered with the annotations.


More annotation:

Playground 58
Playground 59
Playground 60

More Rossi v Darden threads on LENR Forum

Rossi vs. Darden developments 143
Rossi vs. Darden developments 144
Rossi vs. Darden developments 145
Rossi vs. Darden developments 146
Rossi vs. Darden developments 147

Still not caught up. When I do, I may add information to the above, if I find some annotation worth calling attention to. Anyone may also do that in comments below. Or, hey, you could annotate our pages.

My annotations may also be edited or deleted, comments here, or as replies to annotations, may include suggestions. Be nice, and you will be respected.


 Update

Looking at the above links today, there are problems. There are now “orphan” annotations. In at least one case, it appears that LF admin may have deleted a post, which then causes all subsequent paginations to be off. The post number appears to shift, but I’m not sure of that yet. LF is a moving target. So hypothes.is may not work reliably. There are also, it appears, hypothesis.is bugs. A URL with “no follow” in it was generated for an LF page, and the URL was badly formed, with an extra quote mark. I’ll be looking at this.

I attempted to annotate this post by THH.   I can load this in my browser, which has the hypothes.is extension enabled, and I can see my annotations. However, hypothes.is generates this URL for the page:

https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/4745-rossi-vs-darden-developments-part-2/

This, as would be expected, loads the root page for that thread, and then my annotations are shown as orphans, with no reference.

If I, instead, generate the link for a specific annotation, say the first on that post, I get

https://hyp.is/fzLkLBehEeeUeSf3eNAWcg/www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/4745-rossi-vs-darden-developments-part-2/

I get the annotation, all right, but orphaned, and the original page is not displayed, rather the root.

If I go to the original page,

https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/4745-rossi-vs-darden-developments-part-2/?pageNo=159

I get a message that “there are no annotations in this group.” However, if I follow the link to the post, I can then see them. There are two annotations shown as orphaned. I recognizer the original post for one. It was not on that page, it was on one of the pages listed above. I think. This was the annotated text: “This notion that opinions are somehow magically equal or that any notion you dream up is somehow valid because it is your opinion is new-age nonsense”

This page has records from the hypothes.is feed, for me:

http://jonudell.net/h/facet.html?facet=user&search=Abd

This was the post:

Abd 3/27/2017 8:49:04 PM #

This notion that opinions are somehow magically equal or that any notion you dream up is somehow valid because it is your opinion is new-age nonsense

Hey, I’m the New Age, my first teacher actually wrote a book, “This is the New Age, In Person,” and Jed Rothwell is sometimes a beknighted curmudgeon. However, he is also an expert on all things LENR, world-class, even though he is “only” a writer and LENR librarian. Librarians learn a lot.

The real New Age isn’t each and every stupid idea. It’s humanity waking up.

The quoted material at the top is from Jed Rothwell.  With some effort — google doesn’t find it, so I manually went through Jed’s contributions, I found the post: https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/4745-rossi-vs-darden-developments-part-2/?postID=53407#post53407

With that URL loaded, the comment shows. But the comment actually is on a quotation of Jed: https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/4745-rossi-vs-darden-developments-part-2/?postID=53413#post53413

The way that LF handles paging and links apparently breaks hypothes.is. I’m sure LF staff will be crushed, absolutely crushed, to realize this. The annotation returns a direct link of https://hyp.is/V8qVJBNQEeeNLe9YiXMQdw/www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/4745-rossi-vs-darden-developments-part-2/

which returns the annotation, with text in strike-out, since it isn’t on the loaded page, which is page 1 of that thread. I’m going to see if there is a workaround here. Meanwhile, back to the drawing board and some real work. Darn. I thought I could just add snarky comments to my heart’s content. Maybe my heart doesn’t like snark. Wouldn’t surprise me.

Update2

This is related to what is happening, perhaps. My guess is that the pages changed enough to break the annotation links for some annotations. Something else is going on with the inability to properly link to annotations that are still connected with the necessary page load. The problem is difficult, and there is apparently a current effort to support previous page versions, where orphans are caused by page changes.

An obvious cause of page change on LF could be post deletions, which would be enough to break some remaining annotations because the page number would change and also the post number (which is calculated at display time, it is not fixed) — the site-wide post number is constant, but the number of a post within a thread is recalculated based on all undeleted posts.

Some user or mod edits might also affect some annotation anchors.

Posts deleted by the author remain in the LF thread with a small-text note. Ordinary moderator deletions also remain, but some mods elect to totally delete, which then changes pagination and post thread number, and I previously saw that LF staff didn’t care about breaking incoming links (and took steps to break them, deliberately, which effort was abandoned when a workaround was created here).

 

How to find Rossi v. Darden documents

On LENR Forum, Zeus46 wrote:

Is there a Barry West or Dewey deposition somewhere amongst this document avalanche?

Someone might point out to this fellow that the docket reference here is annotated. On that page, a browser search for Barry West immediately pops up the deposition. It’s about 92 pages out of 235.

Dewey Weaver is mentioned in a number of annotations; the third is the deposition. Unfortunately, it’s just six pages out of what must be more than 250.

I plan to extend and expand the annotations.

I’d go crazy if not for that index. Okay, okay, I’m crazy anyway, spending days creating study documents from the Motions for Summary Judgment. But this is how I learn stuff, by often-boring exposure, I become familiar with it. (Those documents should be ready by the end of this week. The core of the Rossi study is published as a draft, but when I realized there is a good chance that whole thing will need to be rewritten, I stopped work on it and started on the IH Motion.

And Abd’s favorite topic

Abd!

Draft. If you are reading this on an archive site, be sure to check the original URL for updates, corrections, retractions, etc.

LENR Forum trolling of Zeus46, joined by Alan Smith. I’m amazed at the research Zeus46 has obviously done, he must think I’m worth all that effort. I’m adding the More link before going on because the only importance that I see here, other than bringing up nostalgia for me, is how LENR fora attract really unpleasant people whom I have very little interest in ever meeting, and especially some moderators. However, there are others I’d love to spend time with. And some I have been blessed to meet in real life. Continue reading “And Abd’s favorite topic”

Conversations: Sam

Sam has posted ten comments on this blog. One today happens to bring up some issues that I think are worthy of a post, so I’ll be quoting it here and commenting in indented italics as in the Conversations series. Also, Bob responded to him, I’ll quote that also. Welcome, Sam, you have the floor.


Hi Abd
I think Fan boy gives some balance to the Ecat debate on Lenr Forum.
The same as Jed Rothwell can do on Ecat world.
If the blogs are one sided they are not as interesting to read.
Maybe we should pick teams and have the great Ecat debate.
Actually I think it would be better if they forgot about the Doral test and start fresh with the Quark X.
Regards
Sam

Let’s deconstruct this:

Continue reading “Conversations: Sam”

The boiling point of water

Well-established, eh? There are complexities, some of which I knew, some not. Thanks to Paradigmnoia, who is almost always informed and informative, if not always transparent at first. He’s kind of an anti-Abd, the kind which, when combined with an Abd, can generate pure energy.

He pointed to The Myth of the Boiling Point, by Hasok Chang of the University of Cambridge. I highly recommend this article for the history of science and as an example of a scientific approach where ideas are tested and confirmed (or rejected) by experiment, instead of by just shoving words around.

And then I look at how all this applies to Rossi’s work, and turn to an explanation of what this blog is, what the “cold fusion community” is, and how we will transform the scientific mainstream, powerfully and effectively. Or, at least, take the first steps in that direction. Continue reading “The boiling point of water”

Conversations: Simon Derricut 5

Simon writes long, thoughtful comments. Another. My comments, thoughts, reactions are in italics, indented.

Abd – it’s been obvious for a long time that Peter ignores evidence he doesn’t like. I’ve tried to show him that the evidence for 1MW doesn’t exist except for what Rossi’s metering shows, and I’ve given him calculations of how much water would be required to put that much energy down the drains (to both keep the locked room suitable for life and to avoid a heat-plume being visible and measurable by an IR survey), yet he still thinks that Rossi will provide an explanation that will be physically possible. As an experienced industrial engineer, he should be able to do the calculations himself and recognise that the claims are absurd as they stand. There comes a time when it’s not worth the time spent analysing the claims since Peter will not accept the results if they show that Rossi does not have LENR+. Of course, that’s what any sober analysis will show. Continue reading “Conversations: Simon Derricut 5”