(and how is it connected with “Cold fusion community.”)

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

The first visible action, besides incorporation, was to serve as my affiliation for the paper published in Current Science. That paper was designed to communicate the existence of a reliable cold fusion experiment, already confirmed by multiple independent laboratories. There have been, over the years since the original work was done by Melvin Miles in 2001, various criticisms levelled at this; however, my conclusion and that of many scientists is that what Miles found, that heat and new helium are correlated in what is sometimes called the Anomalous Heat Effect has already been confirmed. Because the finding of nuclear reactions in condensed matter is so extraordinary, I realized that confirmation with increased precision (current precision is only about 10-20% on the ratio, and that is only based on two independent reports, each measuring total helium from one experiment) would be a way to move forward with cold fusion as to publication in major journals, and that, given that this was confirmation of known work, not new research, it was not “blue-sky,” speculative. Investment in this was likely to pay off with real results.

Meanwhile, I had reserved the domain “coldfusioncommunity.net” and this was not connected with Infusion Institute. I set up the domain in preparation for ICCF-18, because I attended that conference on a press pass and started up a small project that went nowhere, Cold Fusion Community News, as I recall; there was a page up for a while, which attracted no interest. However, my main consistent activity for many years now has been the study of and writing about cold fusion. In 2015, I was given a modest grant, put into Infusion Institute, and Infusion Institute has started to pay some of my expenses. I am the President of Infusion Institute at this time; I expect that will not continue as others become involved.

I have a blog on Quora for general writing, but it became clear to me that there was a need for another discussion site, something between the very open lenr-forum.com, and the private CMNS mailing list.

So I started this WordPress blog, as an Infusion Institute project. It is now where I expect to do the bulk of my public discussion, but this is, indeed, intended as a community activity. I build things, I’ve done this many times. Sometimes they work for a while, they make a difference for people. Sometimes they don’t. I’m not worried.

All points of view are welcome here, but the kind of gross incivility that has dominated some public fora is not. The community here will develop policies and procedures; pending that, I’m handling this ad hoc. Don’t worry, however, you will not be excluded for your point of view, as such, but for social offenses, and you will be guided, not punished, should the need arise.

I did just decide to delete a pile of user registrations using email services designed to avoid providing a real email. These were coming in, in substantial numbers, and are likely spammers, but it is conceivable that someone who sincerely wants to discuss might use an maximum-privacy service. I am not deleting users for anonymity per se, but if a user does not trust us with a real email address, which could be a gmail address, for example, we won’t trust them with privileged access.

The founding post points out an operational principle of Alcoholics Anonymous. That organization mushroomed rapidly, almost totally dominating their field, even up to today (they started in the 1930s), by setting up certain principles. That starting of a meeting from a resentment (i.e., one didn’t like how another meeting was running) turned a problem — the dominance of a meeting by an individual or faction — into a cause for expansion, because there was no harm in AA if a meeting was small. Even a meeting of one helps keep that one sober. (He will sit there with a book!) And then, over time, the week fills up with possible meetings, in a town of any substantial size, so that meetings are always available when needed. And there is always a congenial meeting, and if there isn’t, one, maybe that’s a clue as well. Why not start one?

There is no harm if we have more than one place to meet. AA meetings generally provide meeting lists that list all meetings in the area. Rare is it that meetings refuse to list another meeting.

So we will freely point to and link other sites with information and discussion on cold fusion (whether we “agree with” them or not.) And some of them will link to us.

As with this post on lenr-forum.com.

This site is still very much under construction. I’m learning to use the WordPress administrative interface. Advice is welcome.

Lenr-forum.com (LF) admin has set the site to reject incoming page requests referred from this blog, so, pending, users following links to LF may get a 403 error.  For instructions on how to bypass this rejection, see 403 error accessing lenr-forum.com. It takes a few seconds.

(note added 12/17/2016)