Misc and Flabber gas – May 2017

I’ve been watching Judge Judy videos and then I see much, every day, that is, as it were, screaming for comment, examples of how people behave on Planet Stupid. It’s amazing to watch Judge Judy in action — and the other “court shows,” they are pretty much the same. The plaintiff or defendant are stupid, sometimes both of them. “Stupid” means that they don’t see, or refuse to see, what is in front of them, but only stand for what they ‘believe,” usually a variety of “I’m right” and/or “they are wrong.” On Hot Bench, they face a panel of judges, all experienced lawyers at a minimum, with real courtroom experience. From behavior and comments after the show, the parties have learned nothing. And that is often what the Judge is telling them. (“Shut up and put on your listening ears,” Judge Judy says to a plaintiff who is interrupting, insistently, obviously obsessed, obviously not listening.)

Once in a while a losing party will say that they learned something. It’s relatively rare! That happens even if the legal and social issues are open and shut. “I’m right” is the foundational belief for many people, for sure! It’s axiomatic Truth.

Some people would rather die than be wrong. Or even merely to listen to the opinions of others about it, without interrupting. Basic skills.

Index to sections of this post
JONP old crap and where it leads
Long and useless on LENR Forum
Clueless rolls on floor laughing
But What If? RossiSays…
Surprise! Pot Calls Kettle Black!
And now for something completely different

In any case, if I wrote about everything I see, I’d be spending all day and never get through it. Since I do suspect that there is useful work to do before I kick the bucket, spilling the milk, I’m slowing down and will attempt to make shorter comments here, including answering questions some ask that haven’t encountered answers. Basic rule: there is no such thing as a stupid question, unless it is not actually a question but an attempt to prove that one is right by asking a question believed unanswerable. Not really a question, but a claim. And claims can be really dumb.

I find it highly useful to watch what, say, Judge Judy does. She’s fast, and generally cuts to the core. She might occasionally make mistakes, but even then, a party willing to listen to her would learn something about how they present themselves and how they look to others, including the audience. Even though the audience is fake, when they laugh, it’s real.

JONP old crap and where it leads

Ing. Michelangelo De Meo
May 18, 2017 at 4:28 PM

Woodford tech holding hit by fraud claim
Industrial Heat, a technology company backed by Neil Woodford, hit by $89 million lawsuit from scientist in dispute over claimed invention.

http://citywire.co.uk/money/woodford-tech-holding-hit-by-fraud-claim/a911347

This is apparently the commentator: http://blog.libero.it/ingdemeo/

The link is to a post of May 16, 2016, so it was a year old when cited. It contains many errors of interpretation.  Financial Times had a similar article, later, I blogged about them:

Directly: Financial Times slapdash knee-jerk reaction passes for journalism

Indirectly: The most bizarre article (about another blogger’s comment the article)

On LENR Forum, a thread was started May 18, 2016, about the Citywire story. Citywire UK covers Woodford hitting fraud case.

This post in that thread then brought up the exact links oft-quoted, including very recently, by Planet Rossi, on JONP, on E-Cat World, and on LENR Forum, also very old material, highly misleading, and extensively discussed. So the same material is regurgitated over and over. It appears that not everyone who eats it is Rossi himself.

That post was put up by ultrasure, who is still active, liking posts, which, with very few exceptions, are along certain lines, for example, ele bringing up the warmed-over vomit about the 2015 SEC wrist-slap for a Cherokee accounting error, taking place over about four years, gratuitous and unrelated to discussion context, coat-racking an attempted smear.

Compared to value and investments at stake, that was less than a parking ticket.

Or this by ele also:

Dewey you are in a complete mental coldfusion ( 🙂 ) state. Rossi have been never to Russia and probably has no interest to go there, Rossi has nothing to do with Pinball, Fabiani is the founder and CEO of the company that do that and if you look at FB you will see that Fabiani’s company is developing also an Arcade emulator.

Rossi is not founding Uppsala University other companies do and is not a mystery which…….

Are you trying to spread the usual disinformation ?

Ele was writing about this post by Dewey Weaver. Dewey also ranges off-topic. However, there is a huge difference between ele and Dewey Weaver: Dewey is a real person, openly an actual person-of-interest in Rossi v. Darden (and who has been deposed), apparently one of the original investors in Industrial Heat, a contractor to them, so, in some ways, his casual opinions on the case and the figures involved are primary source, at least. Ele is?

Weaver refers to “Rossele.” It’s plausible that ele is Rossi, though Weaver sometimes accuses others of being Rossi who may not be. I have also suspected that ele is not Rossi, but someone who takes material from Rossi and edits it. That is, sometimes the language is better — but sometimes not. Ele may be more than one person, and without access to what a site administrator with access to raw logs would know, my comments on identity remain speculation … but ele is still, and obviously, not on a level of probity with Weaver as a source (i.e., as to personal responsibility). Ele can just disappear. Weaver can’t and won’t. Weaver is an actual witness, responsible for what he writes, right or wrong.

In this case, sure, the investment in pinball research was made by USQL, Fabiani’s company. However, that company was set up by Johnson, Rossi’s lawyer, and the owner of Leonardo Corporation (Florida), a certain trust with Rossi as beneficiary — he wasn’t sure when asked, but “probably,” as I recall, was a co-owner of USQL until more recently. Leonardo Florida loaned $35,000 to USQL at roughly the time, as I recall, as USQL gave 35,000 Euros to Bologna University for a Levi-associated project. “No connection,” then, as is common on Planet Rossi, takes on a very special meaning.

Weaver had written: (let’s parse it)

So Rossi gets $11.5M for the most important technological breakthrough in decades then goes and buys condos,

Not only that, Rossi was apparently funded by Ampenergo, and IH took on the obligations, paying Ampenergo millions of dollars, relieving Rossi of that obligation. However, setting that aside, yes, Rossi received $11.5 million straight-out from IH. The story is that he bought condos in Florida, it’s oft-repeated and I’ve never seen any contrary claims. Notice that ele doesn’t object to that.

Cadillacs,

Perhaps. I cannot confirm this yet. One Cadillac or more than one? Dewey is telling a story, making implications and exaggeration is common when people do that. “Cadillacs” sounds more extravagant than “a Cadillac,” and both sound more extravagant than “Cars.” How many?

imaginary heat exchangers,

The purpose of the alleged heat exchanger, which was only asserted to exist this year, as to anything I’ve seen, long after Rossi claims to have dismantled it after the Plant shut-down, was to dissipate the unused megawatt. However, far easier would have been to reduce the power generation; JMP never needed more than a few kilowatts. Remember, this was allegedly steam at 100 C, and only a few grams of “product” were involved. An electric teakettle at a kilowatt, perhaps, could have kept all the product at “process temperature.” As to the alleged “test,” it depended on COP, not only absolute power. If even one of the older E-cats had been operational, it could have been the whole test. No specific number of units was required.

So why did Rossi make a heat exchanger? Mostly likely, he didn’t! Hence “imaginary.”

possible vacations to Russia,

From “possible,” Weaver is speculating that Rossi paid Fabiani’s expenses to travel to Russia. Is ele really so dumb as to be unable to discern the reference? (And Fabiani conveniently deleted all his Rossi email, I think, or at least this is alleged.)

possible visiting researcher funds to Oops-salla

Rossi, er, ele, does address this in some way, but it’s not coherent. He meant “founding” and the issue was not “funding Upsalla University,” but just, perhaps, a donation for a “visiting researcher,” or even a direct payment to Fabiani, so that Fabiani being a researcher there would not cost them anything. Again, “possible,” so this is speculation. Reasonable but without available evidence, so far.

Dewey has real information that is not public, but is not here writing as if he does. It’s speculation, given his general experience with Rossi and his thinking about it.

pinball source code development software at the prestigious and historic University of Bologna

Again, there is a plausible connection. The existence of that loan to USQL — what happened with that loan? Was it paid back? However, the extension of credit can be a consideration.

and $2 to $3M worth of litigation with the money.

That’s clear. I doubt that Annesser and Chaiken are working for free, and PBY&A before them.

He uses the balance for development of the be- all / end-all breakthroughs of the next century all without monetizing the breakthrough of this century. Huh???

It is so crazy that this is used as an argument in support of Rossi. He’d have to be crazy to do this. So, therefore, he is not a con artist, because any con artist would have run with the money, would not have gone into federal court chasing ghosts. However, con artists are routinely crazy, in one way or another. Some are sociopaths, know they are lying, but there are those who are delusional.

Dewey Weaver raised a series of facts or speculations that would lead to a conclusion, and ele did not actually negate any of them, but made irrelevant comments or self-serving denials. Very much like, in fact, Rossi in Rossi v. Darden in his responses to allegedly “uncontested facts.” IH would state a fact that was obvious from the evidence, and Rossi commonly “disputed” it without pointing to any contrary evidence, but adding other alleged facts that did not negate the IH claim.

That’s obfuscation.

Dewey’s overall point is actually obvious: if Rossi technology is real, he has the invention of the century. He was claiming that he’d do a public demonstration of the Quark-X. Eventually, he postponed that because of the pressure of the lawsuit, all of which was predictable. Every year of delay in introducing the Quark-X, if it is what he claims, is costing much more than a billion dollars (lost opportunity cost).

It makes no sense.

Long and useless on LENR Forum

Alan Smith put up LENR pdf. files – Long Alphabetical list by Author.

A colleague has sent me this large cache of pdf. links to papers on LENR, helpfully in alphabetical order of author. Many are obviously culled from Jed Rothwell’s magnificent library, but some may have other origins, overall I think it might be useful.

NOTE: I cannot certify that all these links are virus free or even lead where one might hope- click at your own risk. For convenience sake this list is also attached as a pdf. file.

I saw this immediately, but Zephir_AWT also pointed out:

Actually the same list (or even more complete one) can be accessed directly from Jed Rothwell’s site.

 Anyone who has done serious research into LENR would know this. Without the library, the list is useless. Reproducing that library elsewhere would largely be copyright violation, because lenr-canr.org has permission from authors, and that permission does not extend to hosting elsewhere (though I suppose Jed could set up a mirror). There are many papers on LENR that are not in the lenr-canr.org library, this list is only the library files. The library bibliography is much more complete.

A list of filenames is almost useless, then, but if one wants it, Zephir_AWT has pointed to where it is readily obtainable, and if we look at the end of the list, we can see a missing file in this Smith copy. It’s also not in alphabetical order, it is in ASCII order, because the lower-case v in van… comes after Z.

And there are utilities that will download all linked files from a given URL, in case one did want to create an archive. It’s big.

I looked at the HTML code, and all files appeared to be from lenr-canr.org, so the comments about viruses, etc., were mind-fog. Basically, Alan didn’t bother to check. If I wanted to be more thorough, I’d copy the code into a spreadsheet and sort it by URL, to see if there were any other domains than lenr-can.org, but it is not worth it. A quick review found nothing else. I access lenr-canr.org through the library interface, I never use the raw directory listing because it is much easier to use the library search.

There is an archive hosted here, the Britz archive. That is all identified peer-reviewed articles (in “mainstream journals,” which can be a little fuzzy). The pdfs themselves are not hosted, for copyright reasons. Serious researchers, even without academic access, can obtain copies of these files. Ask! Lenr-canr.org has many of the articles, often as preprints, which can be almost as useful.

Jed Rothwell also points to the same. He also points to a table that is sortable by Year of publication or Description (which always starts with the author), but which also shows co-authors and the publication. Far more useful.

My biggest complaint about lenr-canr.org lenr-forum.com was clueless administration and moderation, so clueless as to be dangerous for a writer. I don’t expect it to change, because the owner has set it up the way it is, and is impervious to public comment.

Clueless rolls on floor laughing

On LF, SSC wrote:

Dewey Weaver wrote:

I also find it amusing that several brave souls on LF want to wave the due diligence flag again. That was a complex analysis and risk assessment and the go decision was from a high risk $$ pool that was assembled for inventions that might change the world for the better. Do any of you teardown artist, naysayers and haters put your resources to work for change when loss is more likely than gain?

No, I think no one would put resources to work for change when loss is more likely than gain: we are not saint, we don’t sacrifice ourselves for the welfare of humanity. Would you like us to believe that IH did it? I do not think you can say anything more ridiculous….ROTFL!!!

This is worse than Planet Rossi, it’s Planet Stupid. First of all, human beings rather often put resources at risk when loss is more likely than gain. Examples: lottery tickets, insurance policies. Do I need to explain?

However, SSC is looking at absolute risk, as he states it. “Loss is more likely than gain.” And with LENR investments, the record is clear, so far: loss is far more likely than gain. Yet venture capitalists, in a high risk pool, which is what Weaver was talking about, don’t look simply at absolute risk and a simplistic assessement of what is more likely, but rather will quantify the probabilities. They will look at each possible outcome, assign it a probability, based on whatever evidence they have — or even “hunch,” knowing that hunches can be wrong — and then multiply the probability by the gain or loss, and that’s what they compare to decide courses of action. Game theory.

With a lottery ticket, overall loss is about 50% of total ticket sales, i.e., prizes are only half of all the funds collected. The rest is expenses and the beneficiary of the lottery. So if you could buy all the tickets, you would certainly (not probably) lose 50% of your investment. However, sometimes in cumulative lotteries, the prize has become large, so … maybe. However, overall, a lot of tickets returned nothing, so overall, loss is routine, much more likely than gain.

With an insurance policy, it’s obvious that loss is greater than gain (i.e., insurance payouts). People do not buy insurance to make money. some sell insurance to make money! (If they know they will get a payoff, they might be defrauding the insurance company. Hey, I’m coughing up blood, maybe I’ll buy that insurance before I go see a doctor. After all, why should I tell anyone about these minor symptoms? Probably just a scratch.)

With LENR, it was obvious that Rossi was a risky investment, for lots of reasons. People bought stock in HydroFusion, which lost most of the money raised, if I’m correct. High risk investment. How high a gain if the investment “wins”? A lot. This is all obvious with IH. They were gearing up, we know from the documents we have now seen, to raise hundreds of millions of dollars more, enough to pay Rossi his $89 million and then take the technology to the next stage, toward production — by someone else, willing to invest billions, but, at that point, the investment would no longer be such a high risk because of the test results IH would have been able to show.

That’s what venture capitalists do, and Dewey is one, it’s been much of his career, and that is what IH was about. High risk, but even higher gain, i.e., from their assessment of risk, probability of gain, easily enough to justify the likely loss.

If they were to shut down now, they would be sealing it with loss. Would continued investment be good money after bad? Not necessarily. All signs point to them being in this for the long haul, with Woodford behind them, having much more to invest if needed. The big danger would be to outspend the available capital on will-o’-the-wisps, instead of gradually deepening knowledge in the field. I think they know and understand that risk.

Rossi looked crazy as a loon, at best, and the knowledgeable knew that. From the Cassarino notes and deposition — we have nothing contradicting this except Rossi’s claim they were dancing with joy — Woodford saw him as a crazy inventor, “cagey.” Not confidence-inspiring!

However, clearing away the weeds, nailing the fact, rather than merely relying on a naive and unproven assessment, was essential to moving forward with LENR.

From my point of view, they had two alternate goals. One was to make billions of dollars in profits from being firstest with the mostest. The other was to find out if Rossi could be trusted. They found out. That’s what they paid all that money for.

They will likely get a little of that back, from Rossi and Johnson. For Cherokee Investment Partners, which shows how Darden operates on a large scale, it’s win a few, lose fewer, but Cherokee did not invest in Industrial Heat, this was, rather, a private risk pool, higher risk than Cherokee (which usually wins a profit), where the investors know especially clearly that all their money could be spent with no return, with more investment needed. Read the Annual Report of IH Holdings International, Ltd.!

SSC went on:

You dig up again the same old story about Rossi’s past, pretending not to know that he was acquitted of all charges

It’s been said that it is not what we know that gets us in trouble, but what we think we know but don’t.

SSC is repeating an old story, told by Rossi. It is not what Mats Lewan tells, and it is not what Rossi himself tells on his Italian blog, it is only what we have seen Rossi surrogates repeating. Like much Planet Rossi bloviation, it’s a half-truth, the words need special meanings, not specified, to make the statement true. As stated, it is just plain wrong.

Rossi was not acquitted of all charges. Some prosecutions were dropped, perhaps for lapse of time, or perhaps for some consideration that the prison time he served from convictions was enough. “Acquitted” implies a trial with an outcome of not guilty. He did have that, in perhaps one important case. We could go over and over all that old crap without coming up with anything completely clear. However, the fact is that, regardless of whose fault it was, an environmental mess was left behind. Rossi fans will blame others for that, the Mafia, corrupt officials, etc, and he blames the IH mess on others as well. It’s what he does. He may die believing that it was all the fault of others, never looking at what he, himself, obviously did.

Or he knows and is a pure sociopath. I kind of doubt it, I find “delusional” more likely. We might think that he “should” know, but sometimes people don’t think like we imagine they “should.” Still, people get tossed in jail, commonly, for appearances.

What if? RossiSays…

On LENR Forum, SSC wrote:

oldguy wrote:

It seems that Rossi did not meet the timing requirement as voiced in the depositions stating that the GPT timing was past before his move to Florida.

Are you sure the delay in starting the test is to be attributed to Rossi? It seems that IH people have voluntarily lost some time saying that to get started an authorization was necessary but that one was late to arrive …..

From 254: “It is undisputed that Defendant IH owned, controlled, and could have started testing the 1MW Plant at that or any time. See id. Yet Defendants prevented Plaintiffs from commencing the Guaranteed Performance Test in 2013 and 2014 by representing to Plaintiffs on numerous occasions that the parties needed authorization from a North Carolina Health Department but were unable to obtain such authorization. See SOFO ¶ 24. It was not until June of 2014 that Defendants received clearance from their nuclear radiation compliance consultant. See id. When, in June 2014, Plaintiffs brought to Defendants’ attention that Defendants had not – since 2013 – indicated where to install and operate the 1MW Plant, Defendant Darden responded that “ideally we would not make a decision about this new location for a while longer” and that the “decision [could] wait a while.” See id. Significantly, Defendants fail to identify a single written request made to Plaintiffs demanding that the GPT begin, or that Plaintiffs’ failure to timely assist in the commencement of the test amounted to a breach of the License Agreement or the expiration of the time for performance. As the delay in the test was caused by Defendants, they cannot now claim that Plaintiffs failed to timely perform as a result.”

SSC has pointed to an extended rant, where Rossi disputes obvious fact by asserting other alleged facts and speculations and implications. My “study” of the IH Statement of Material Fact (SOMF) includes Rossi responses to all the paragraphs, with an intrapage link for each original paragraph. So Rossi’s Statement of Fact in Opposition, SOFO 24, can be read at http://coldfusioncommunity.net/rvd-study-of-207ih-statement-of-material-fact-supporting-msj/#24

It is this which SSC quoted. The original ¶ 24 is simple fact, it is not actually disputed, except Rossi says “disputed.” All through his Opposition, he disputes simple fact, and this led the Judge to claim that there were hardly any undisputed facts. That was an error, my opinion, based on what I’ve seen so far, because a party saying a fact is disputed is not enough to establish a need for a jury to resolve the dispute, if it is merely a bald conclusion, devoid of admissible evidence. Read the study document on ¶ 24. Links have been place to all the evidences and sworn testimony, and they should be, for anything long, a specific page link so a reader can see them quickly.

SSC follows the Rossi intention in setting up a series of irrelevant facts or speculations. He’s distracted from fact, into vague implications. The original claimed fact is not controversial at all. Rossi may claim that some later agreement altered how the court should view the history, but instead he disputes bald fact, thus creating an appearance of debate and intransigent claim. As a result, issues that are not in dispute remain as matters to be resolved, silliness such as “255.Whether Leonardo NH still exists in good standing as a New Hampshire corporation.” Look at the SOMF study at ¶ 2, but also at ¶ 106.

Why is this in dispute? Rossi does not actually deny it, but asserts something else, a merger between Leonardo New Hampshire and Leonardo Florida. No evidence of the merger has been shown, it is, so far, it is purely RossiSays. No merger date has been shown or alleged. IH has shown quite enough to establish their claimed fact: Exhibit 75, showing that Leonardo NH still exists in good standing. Disputing this, Rossi claims merger (the legal meaning of a merger is questionable if the original corporation continues in legal existence, but that’s a legal issue, not a factual one) but asserts as evidence, as if it showed merger, the 2010 incorporation of Leonardo Florida. Rossi’s claims, commonly, present an appearance of having evidence for the claim, but when examined, there is no there there. This is a lawyer attempting to mislead the Court.

As near as I can tell, Leonardo NH was suspended in 2015, probably for not filing the 2014 and 2015 Annual Reports. It was reinstated 3/16/2016, shortly before filing Rossi v. Darden.

In practice, there may have been a merger, but there is no evidence that IH was legally notified of this.

oldguy wrote:

SSC
By the way, I don’t think it matter legally who caused a delay it is a matter of fact that it was delayed and past the required time window. If Rossi wanted to continue, he should have gotten a revision of the agreement signed by all three signatories to extend the time.

He noticed. While Rossi is insisting that IH didn’t notify him that the time had expired, in fact, the time expired and he knew it, and then there was an attempt to do something about it. The Second Amendment. That failed, but there never was — and still is not — a time when a Guaranteed Performance Test (GPT) — or equivalent  — became impossible. They could still agree, as they could have then, at any time. All three, or IH and Rossi by an explicit agreement that did not require the Ampernergo signature.

That remained possible as long as the relationship was straightforward and the parties trusted each other or were willing to act as if they trusted. It is probably difficult now that Rossi ran a faux test and sued. But it remains possible. Ampernergo could actually have signed that Second Amendment at any time and still could! There was no time limit for the signature. However, that signature would obviously have to precede the GPT. Rossi jumped the gun, badly.

Surprise! Pot Calls Kettle Black!

On LENR Forum, Wyttenbach wrote:

THHuxleynew wrote:

Why should I ask them to deliver measurement reports etc? They have, they say, been trying to get Rossi’s stuff to work for more than a year with every motivation (those $billion notes Cassarini took from a meeting of plans, if all panned out) to get it to work and no success beyond some initial illusory positives based on what was obviously Rossi-inspired measurement setups.

… It is completely un-scientific to compare a dilettantes write-up included in court-doc and a scientific report like “Lugano”.

Wytte (I call him that because he’s not) has a PhD in Mathematics. It is possible that he has a clue within his field, but he is almost always writing outside it. Here, he uses “unscientific” in a radically unscientific way. THH was writing about social fact, and he correctly attributes it. I.e., THH’s claim, while incorrect in some details, is just that: Cassarino notes, but it is also attested, which creates admissible evidence, whereas the Lugano Report is not attested (though it could be); it is simply a report, which then allows others to make statements “on information and belief,” but not attested fact, on personal knowledge, because it would be hearsay — if it is not an author.

Now, “dilletante’s write-up.” Does Wytte know who Cassarino is? Cassarino was deposed as the corporate representative for Ampenergo. He is not a dilletante. He and other AEG principals were major investors in Rossi technology, and parties to the License Agreement in 2012. They apparently had good communication with Industrial Heat, and apparently trusted them (and may continue to trust them, there is no sign of any withdrawal from that). Cassarino is not a “dilletante,” but Wytte can legitimately be called one, an armchair analyst without any demonstrated expertise or knowledge. Normally, I extend real-name users special courtesy, but Wytte has abused that. To be sure, he doesn’t claim expertise directly, but only impugns the intellectual integrity of others.

THH is actually a professor in a far more related field, to the issues being discussed, but the topic here was actually the lawsuit and business and social issues. Not “science,” per se.

Law, however, is a kind of science, often more formally developed than what is routinely called “science.” The Lugano Report was never published under peer review, and has not been defended with any depth by the authors. It contains blatant errors, as pointed out by many with serious expertise, starting with McKubre in his early review — even though McKubre was still impressed, as were others — but then the LENR community started noticing glaring details, never addressed by the Lugano Team, and now we know that, among other things, the Report was misleading about Rossi’s participation. Not “wrong,” it didn’t lie, but from the language of the Report, assumptions were readily made — I certainly made them! — that were not true, and these were never corrected by the principals (including Rossi and Levi).

Any reasoning/comparing of “IH-told stories ” with other experiments is below any allowed level. You/we! simply have not the slightest proof, that IH ever did something reasonable, including correctly documenting their work.

“IH” is a legal fiction, a corporation. “Reasonable” is a human judgment (never a fact). We have not seen “documentation” on IH’s work, but we have seen sworn testimony about the ultimate results. They did see, on occasion, apparent XP, but then concluded, presumably from further testing (as well as the famous inadvertent control experiment, the best kind, blind) that this was measurement artifact.

Did they know what they were doing? That’s another issue. However, they paid quite a lot of money for that opportunity to test the Rossi technology, they would make billions in profits if they could demonstrate it independently, they consulted with experts and arranged at least one independent test (Boeing), yet Wytte, apparently along with Planet Rossi, must assume that they are greedy investors, often assuming that they are protecting their investments in fossil fuel, I’ve seen recently, which makes utterly no sense. If the Rossi Effect is real, that is worth far more than any possible investment in fossil fuels, and if they were heavily invested in fossil fuels, tossing $11.5 million at Rossi would be colossally dumb, speeding up the end. To Wytte, however, if it could make him right, the dumbest possible arguments are allowed.

As is common with people like Wytte, we see the “you have no proof” argument, even though the proposition to be supposedly proven would be routinely true and assumed, for human beings, absent contrary evidence. Wytte is arguing from an emotionally attached position, though he would probably deny that, for he, of course, thinks that his expression is “logical,” failing to notice and distinguish his pile of assumptions about life and law and business and reality.

THHuxleynew wrote:

I do wish that, even on this thread, when trying to comment on my posts, you would do so using correct argument.

I gave up on Wytte when I was writing on LENR Forum. It often appeared as if he was drunk, his comments were incoherent and not related to what he was replying to. Wytte replied:

As said above: Your arguments are based on an unqualified (IH) writeup – on unproven/guessed “facts”. You should not complain, because you are the source of unqualified reasoning.

Wytte is maintaining a long-term argument, never conceding any point, even if that point is obvious. This is the behavior of obsessed parties on the court programs discussed in the introduction to this post. You can see other parties who are not obsessed; when an opposing party says something true, they nod their heads, yes, or even sometimes say “Yes, that’s true,” without then jumping immediately into denial of implications. This is normal, functional, human behavior, demonstrating listening. It seems to be unusual for Wytte, hence I suspect a social disorder — and, of course, that was less than popular on LF.

However, the Cold Fusion Problem is a social problem, not really a scientific one; it only appears to be a scientific problem due to an information cascade, which will ultimately collapse as the underpinnings become known. Social problems are relevant, for the Community.

Nobody should be excluded because of some social disorder, but whenever there are facilitated discussions, as with Judge Judy, they can be told to STFU, and only speak in turn and within rules of decorum. (Same for me, by the way, the same for anyone.)

We all know that AR makes mistakes, but we also know that they not lead to a COP of 1. May be you should first find ground for reasonable arguments, before supporting IH’s COP 1 claims.

It is not clear to me that Rossi behavior is a “mistake.” However, it is clear that Rossi has, many times, for many years, prevented fully independent testing of his technology, such that any particular COP can be verified; further, an obsession with COP is a Planet Rossi trope. It’s obvious that Rossi wrote, with only a little modification asserted by IH, the License Agreement and it’s terminally obtuse Guaranteed Performance Test, practically guaranteed to fail — and Ampenergo knew that, I suspect, that is why they did not want to sign the Second Amendment.

At that point, the GPT would have been managed on IH premises, with them having full access. There was no thought, apparently, at that point, of it being done somewhere else, and especially not with a fake customer who was only Rossi wearing a different corporate hat, having attempted to mislead IH about this, and setting up conditions where IH could not confront Rossi without basically terminating the relationship.

BDW: Such arguments (COP 1) made by IH will cause, that they will go down in the jury trial, as it will be very easy to prove that they are wrong…

“COP 1” is not an IH argument, as such. They, in fact, argued, in their Answer, that one of two possibilities was true:

  • There is no excess heat in Rossi demonstrations.
  • There is such heat, by Rossi did not disclose his secrets.

Annesser ridicules this, pointing out the “logical error.” I.e., there could be other possibilities, the main ones being the first two below.

  • IH is lying.
  • Their replication attempts were incompetent.
  • The gods must be crazy.

This was an example for me of how the Rossi counsel is arguing from conclusions. Of course there are other logical possibilities, but … IH is not required to assert a possibility that makes them into perjurers.

THH is accused, commonly, of pursuing support of IH, but I don’t see that as his position. He’s studied the Lugano test, in particular, and, with others who have also studied this, concludes that they made major errors. That does not “prove” COP = 1. However, we have this situation: Lugano was a major reason for those with some doubt to go ahead and trust Rossi enough to encourage further study. IH decided that they needed to find out about Rossi (before Lugano, but continued with Lugano being important to them).

Lugano appeared to be a conclusion of independent scientists. That is now a problematic assumption. The most obvious errors remain unaddressed by the Lugano team, and THH points that out.

When Rossi filed the lawsuit, his claims pulled the rug out from the idea that there might be something to the Rossi Effect, because serious investors were involved. There is now no evidence adequate to establish the Rossi Effect, which was radically outside the state of the art for LENR. Rossi’s claims were “extraordinary,” and “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” certainly for wide acceptance in the face of high and reasonable skepticism.

That, again, does not prove COP = 1. However, a match has COP much higher than 1. And measurement error is quite possible, as the history of LENR has shown many times. It is even possible, if there is no clear independent and free observation by experts, to fake a megawatt, or, quite a stretch but still possible, to believe that a megawatt is being generated, based on instrument readings, when there is only input power. COP 1.

At Lugano, to know that the infrared camera measurements of temperature, on which the estimates of power were based, were incorrect, one had only to look at the device. At 1400 C., not only would there have been internal problems (a theoretical argument), the object would have been brightly glowing, probably painful to look at, if emissivity were as assumed. Those “scientists” — who were working outside of their specific expertise — relied on theory instead of looking at what was in front of them. They relied on a probable Rossi claim that they could not test the “dummy” device at full input power, because the heating coils could burn out, even though that was actually preposterous, based — as common with Rossi claims — on a half-truth, an incomplete consideration.

The lack of calibration at full input power, then, was compounded by the ignorance of what was visibly obvious. This thing wasn’t at 1400 C.

Lugano was useless. MFMP may or may not be able to recover some estimate of actual Lugano power, from their own dummy data, but this will always remain somewhat speculative. The fuel and ash analyses were useless as to any independent confirmation, because the samples were handled by Rossi, who could trivially have substituted a salted sample (with Ni-62). The later analysis, in 2016, was from a sample provided to Bo Hoistad by Rossi, perhaps stolen from the Florida reactor, if genuine, but there is no clear evidence that the sample was genuine at all.

(Hoistad has never acknowledged that this analysis, which was leaked, was provided through him, but I obtained an original pdf file, which showed more details, including his creation of the file, and, even though this was published, Hoistad never denied the authenticity of the file, and the timing was consistent with Rossi’s visit to Sweden, when Mats Lewan reported a visit to the Swedish professors. Pending such a denial, it can be assumed to be genuine for discussion purposes. If anyone needs to know, Hoistad could be subpoenaed, but I don’t think it’s necessary.)

And now for something completely different

Stupidity is not confined to Planet Rossi. When we are certain that someone else is wrong, or lying, I suggest high caution. The density of error, under those conditions, can be high.

On LENR Forum, PIH wrote:

Italianlawyer wrote:

What’s disturbing you? The fact I’m a lawyer, the fact I’m Italian or the fact I think Rossi is sincere? You can do better! Law is my field and I don’t need to insult people (as you do) to substain my opinion 👏👏👏

I think the relevant info for this post should be quotes of your previous statements.

PIH proceeds to, apparently, cite or paraphrase — or even misquote –, I’m not sure which, prior comments of Italianlawyer, but does not link to them, which is easy to do on LENR Forum. And he could go back and add the links, because LF allows users to edit their own posts

The first quoted comment, above, is not a comment as a lawyer, but simply as a person with opinions. Such a comment, as it is, would be poor evidence for an alleged lack of legal training. We see lawyers making dumb comments in Rossi v. Darden. IL’s English is poor, which also is not evidence. IL is not showing negotiation skills, which can correlate with being a skilled lawyer, but he did not claim particular skill. Annesser has terrible negotiation skills, but I would not claim he is not a lawyer.

What PIH is doing is confusing possible error in casual discussion on LENR Forum, with his ideas of what a genuine lawyer might say. Which are inaccurate, just as some of what IL has written is inaccurate, on a review of the evidence we have. I am, here, looking at both IL and PIH. I am guessing on what PIH is quoting, because PIH is not a skilled writer who would be careful to distinguish who wrote what, either using the LF quotation facility — which, properly used, will also attribute and link — or, as a noob, ordinary text devices like specific attribution and quotation marks.

Let’s review:

Maybe Quarkx is just an evolution of Ecat as you think, maybe it’s a totally different things… but that’s no the point.

The soundness of that statement depends on context, like that of most statements. PIH has left out the context. But assuming this is about IH rights to Quark-X technology, and neglecting the possibility that IL was actually writing about something else, IL was wrong, in my non-lawyer opinion. I suggest reading the relevant paragraphs in the License Agreement. If it competes with the E-Cat, it is covered. Further, Rossi acknowledged publically that Quark-X was an evolution of the E-Cat technology. If Rossi abandoned a trillion dollar technology to work on something completely different, it would be rather odd, I’d think. (He would at least turn it over to someone, and probably occasionally suggest and supervise.) Being wrong would show lack of familiarity with the specifics of the case, not necessarily fraudulent representation.

That’s not the point…………………

Well according to every Legal document in this case, That IS the point.

PIH is definitely not a lawyer, making a stupid comment like that.

This IP may or may not include future evos so you (as a joke lawyer) cannot dismiss it.

Lawyers do not ignore what is written. Hence, you are not a lawyer.

Non sequitur. I read the pleadings in Rossi v. Darden, and have probably more become familiar with aspects of the case, than any of the lawyers. It is not uncommon (on both sides) that they misstate matters. Ideally, every statement is backed with evidence, but it occasionally happens that they misread the evidence. This is normal. With a good lawyer, the errors can be corrected. It would be a serious error to imagine that a good lawyer never makes mistakes!

If I were to bill for the time I have put in, studying this case, at the $350 per hour that lawyers may charge, I’d have about $1 million to bill. It takes time to become familiar with a pile of documents such as we have in Rossi v. Darden.

We have no idea how much time IL has put in, but I’d venture it’s not a lot. That’s all. If it mattered for IL to prove he is an “Italian lawyer,” it could be done — without creating a public problem. All it takes is someone trusted by him, and with a public reputation to protect, willing to testify to identity verification. But it probably does not matter.

PIH continued:

Also,

“The decision to develop something different, from my point of view, could be explained with the will to maintain the control over his IP”

Since when do REAL lawyers have a “from my point of view”.

All the time. Does PIH know any real lawyers? IL has simply given an opinion here about Rossi motivation. This is not a “legal opinion.” Rossi is clearly reactive over “his IP,” went ballistic when IH, perhaps harmlessly, claimed to “own” the IP. The idea of a “co-inventor” was horrifying to him, even if it were legally required, i.e., if T. Barker Dameron had contributed the slightest improvement to the reactors that, after all, IH built (the Lugano reactor being one).

Busted you fraud.

If I were moderating LF, PIH would be warned, the posts would be deprecated (though this was already in the Playground — I’m not sure it started there) and PIH has no history of positive contribution such that a ban would cause harm. There are two basic kinds of LF readers: those who are there to learn or share what they know, and those who like bar-room conflict. How to moderate LF depends on which of these goals is to be served. The structure, as it is, favors the latter. Some mods engage in the latter. That could be fixed if there were a will to fix it.

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

See http://coldfusioncommunity.net/biography-abd-ul-rahman-lomax/

13 thoughts on “Misc and Flabber gas – May 2017”

  1. You wrote: “My biggest complaint about lenr-canr.org was clueless administration and moderation, so clueless as to be dangerous for a writer. I don’t expect it to change, because the owner has set it up the way it is, and is impervious to public comment.”

    That’s not true. I have made many changes to meet specific requests and suggestions from researchers including Storms, Hagelstein, McKubre, Mizuno, Kitamura, and Biberian and several others involved in the JCMNS. I haven’t had any complaints. If you have suggestions, go ahead and make them.

    For example, Peter Hagelstein asked me to create and maintain this index, which he finds useful:

    http://lenr-canr.org/DetailOnly.htm

    There is no moderation at all. I upload whatever the authors send. It is entirely up to them. Several of them do not want me to upload anything. Some of the publishers have asked me not to upload anything.

    The index lists nearly every paper I know of, including ones that are not uploaded. It was compiled by Britz and Storms, with additions by me. It is maintained in EndNote format, and converted to the MySQL database program that comes free with all web servers these days.

    Most people use the site-specific “Custom” Google search at the top of each page, instead of the indexes.

      1. Ah, that makes sense.

        Still, if there is something about LENR-CANR.org that bugs you, by all means let me know.

        I am thinking of offering the EndNote files in native format for people who want to do their own searches off-line. The problem is, the files have many informal notes by Ed Storms and by me in some of the memo fields. Stuff like: “we already have this one” or “lousy paper.” I do not want to hand these out, so I have to find a way to delete the memo fields.

        1. Jed, even when we have disagreed on this or that, you have always acted consistently with the public interest as to lenr-canr.org. I have found errors, you promptly fixed them. I was concerned about alleged “censorship.” You acted showing willingness to handle your part of the affair, making it very clear that the sustained problem was elsewhere.

          You have earned my trust, over and over. Even when you are wrong, your stands are worthy of respect.

          Years ago, I’d simply write a program to do that EndNote change. I did that all the time. Now … I haven’t written a program for too many decades, it’s scary to think about it. It ought to be easy to go through a regular file format and delete all the memo fields, and not terribly difficult to do it manually. But many tasks are fairly easy and we don’t ever get a Round Tuit. Anyone you trusted could do that editing for you. Thus, for community projects, engaging others is crucial, especially if the projects are to outlive us. If CFC depends only on me, it’s going to die, it is only a matter of time.

          1. EndNote has pretty good internal programming capabilities. Or I can write a program easily enough. The problem is, there are 2805 records that need to be manually checked, and I don’t feel like doing it. Some of them have notes & comments in the Abstract field, or someplace else they should not be. There are 1580 files uploaded. All of the EndNote records for them are correct.

            The records for the 2805 papers not on file are listed in the on-line index, but I programmed the transfer to blank out abstracts and other fields, leaving just a few fields. I did that so I wouldn’t have to check them all.

            1. Look, it’s obvious. If we have to do everything ourselves, there are many useful things that won’t get done. I want to create a database, for example, of all the documents in Rossi v. Darden, that can be sorted by original document date, author, addressee, etc. At this point, time sequence is difficult to study. I can do this, and I even started. It’s a lot of work (like some of what I’ve already done). I could create a wiki and let people who care make the work. Of course, I did this with LENR years ago on Wikiversity. How many people showed up? A handful, and without any persistence. So … my stand is that it can be done, and if we are willing to do the work, it will be done. So who is willing?

              I know that for this or that you have been willing, and for this or that I have been willing. Who else will work to create useful content (which is a bit different from herding cats). Ah. Krivit did, at least for a while, but lost his compass.

              My general suggestion would be to quickly delete that extraneous commentary, and make the rest of the data available with caveats that it hasn’t been checked, and actively solicit corrections. That’s crowdsourcing. And if nobody corrects the errors, the crowd gets what it collectively deserves. Part of the skill of this would be making correction easy, if possible. A few errors here have been corrected. Mostly, though, I eventually notice and fix them, if it is material I see again.

  2. It is so crazy that this is used as an argument in support of Rossi. He’d have to be crazy to do this. So, therefore, he is not a con artist, because any con artist would have run with the money, would not have gone into federal court chasing ghosts. However, con artists are routinely crazy, in one way or another. Some are sociopaths, know they are lying, but there are those who are delusional.

    It convinces many otherwise apparently sane people. But most sane people I think are not so interested in this story, we are left with mild obsessives and cult-like believers. It is not always easy to distinguish the two, though anyone with the capacity and time to follow through the evidence can do this.

    1. Some of those apparently convinced by Rossi were relatively sane, and remained so. Ampenergo stands out. And they made millions of dollars from their investment, they may even have made a profit. They didn’t sign the Second Amendment. Why not? Rossi’s argument over this completely falls on its face. They didn’t want to pay, he says over and over and his surrogates repeat it. But IH signed. They supposedly they “influenced” Ampenergo not to sign. The correspondence, though, shows Cassarino simply asking Vaughn what to say to Rossi, and they suggest telling him the truth, it was their choice. Rossi knows, then, that the Agreement GPT was dead, “cancelled.” So when did it change to “Whoopee! It’s going! With an independent customer. Well, not independent, but who cares! A Magnificence.

      What is fascinating to me is those that keep clinging to Rossi Real. Against all evidence. Most of the appearances created, that might have allowed this, within some level of reason, have been demolished. But still they cling. Watch Judge Judy. This is how people are, maybe even most people.

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