Black Death Asteroid

[uniface]

But if I'm going to get denounced for political incorrectness (a term straight out of the Bolshevik lexicon, incidentally) re. sexual diffrences, might as well go whole hog with

Physics For Blondes

"Look, there are two types of people particles," boys "and" girls ". The boys are dressed in trousers, which take 1 meter of the web. This - a spin. Such particles are called buffalo boys-bosons. The girls are dressed in skirts, which leaves 0.5 meter canvas. It - half-integer spin and particle-girls - fermions.

They behave differently.

When bosons get together on a purely male party and discover that all dressed in exactly the same costumes, they happily smile, sit around, slapping each other on the shoulder, pour each other beers, become best friends and act as a single entity. This - the boson condensate (aka Bose-Einstein condensate). And when we heard the cry of "our beat!", All the particles, the boys rush to the defense - in one direction and not interfering with each other. This - superfluidity.

And when the girls fermions, gathered at the bachelorette party, show that they have the same dress or skirt, they snort, and try to turn their backs to each other do not come close to neighboring chairs do not sit down. This - the Pauli exclusion principle.

Now imagine a shopping center with two inputs-outputs from different sides. This - the conductor. Inside - a variety of shops and boutiques. This - the crystal lattice. If you run across one input-girl particle (fermion), instead of having to go right through and come out the other side, it will experience a collision with numerous shops, and will come with a considerably thinner wallet. This - the mechanism of electrical resistance (electrons are fermions).

Now imagine that the input meets a girl friend, and they start chatting about fashion, hairstyles and boys. In this case, two girls (fermions) act as a single entity. This is - a Cooper pair. Hooked conversation, friends do not notice the shops and go through the mall without experiencing collisions with boutiques and without spending a dime of money, that is, behave in the same way as a boy (boson). This - superconductivity.

Well, now you know as much as physics students learn in the annual rate of quantum theory.

Well, almost. "

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/ ... I2gIZrd2HA

[Minimalist]

I think you've lost your mind, uni.

[uniface]

My sincere condolences, Min.

& you too, Spicecake.

Check it out :

Most people you see standing up for a really terrible cause alongside even terribler people are doing it because they think they're fighting some enemy that is far worse. Always remember:

People primarily define themselves by what they hate.

And if you "can't stand haters," you're a perfect example.

Think about how little you've heard people on the Internet talk about their favorite band, versus how much you've heard them talk about their hatred of Nickelback. In high school, the jocks didn't care about being jocks as much as they cared about not being nerds. And that shit doesn't end in high school -- you may never figure out what you want to be when you grow up, but you sure as shit figure out what you don't want to be. Everyone you know -- regardless of how stupid or destructive you think their beliefs are -- is just trying to avoid taking the side of some villain they're sure exists. Like the guy from Duck Dynasty talking about how he's a Christian purely because atheists want to rape and mutilate children.

So the reason that bitter guy on YouTube is screaming about "feminists" probably isn't because he hates Susan B. Anthony or women's suffrage. It's because he hates some very abrasive, dismissive woman who was rude to him on Tumblr. The average liberal hates Ann Coulter, not Adam Smith. You wind up on the left because you're running from a monster you saw on the right, but on the way you'll pass a panicked man fleeing in the opposite direction.

Anyway, this is also why we always attribute unrelated negative features to people we disagree with. It's not enough to say that anti-feminists are wrong and misguided; we have to say they're fat, sexless neckbeards (then their response is that feminists are either angry, masculine women or weak, effeminate men). Conservatives are ignorant rednecks, liberals are out-of-touch hippies, and so on -- the key is to always keep the focus on how inhuman the other side is, so that we never have to examine our own. We'll excuse anything from within our own movement, because no matter how corrupt we are, at least we're not . . .

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reasons-y ... id-things/

[Minimalist]

Where does the fact that Velikovsky is a crackpot enter into all of that?

[E.P. Grondine]

Where does the fact that Velikovsky is a crackpot enter into all of that?

WAS a crackpot - but he managed to set back impact studies by 40 years, and wasted a lot of peoples' time, including Shapely's.
Many people still can not understand the difference between "catastrophism" and impact studies.
I never read Velikovsky, and have no intention of wasting my own time doing it.

[Minimalist]

Correct. "Was."

[uniface]

Thinking that you can dismiss a historian who's impacted the world of thought by calling him names and blaming him for (alleged) developments he had no control over while being unfamiliar with what he said and why he said it is a baldfaced confession of irrationality.

Which self-disqualifies you both from discussing him.

And there are no "compensating credentials" which excuse gross irrationality.

IMO.

[Tiompan]

And there are no "compensating credentials" which excuse gross irrationality.

Not that there are any compensating credentials ,but if there were , the above applies to Velikovsky .

[Minimalist]

There are times when "crackpot" is the only word which will do.

http://skepdic.com/velikov.html

In 1950, Macmillan Company published Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, a book which asserts, among many other things, that the planet Venus did not exist until recently. Some 3500 years ago in the guise of a gigantic comet, it grazed Earth a couple of times, after having been ejected from the planet Jupiter some indefinite time earlier, before settling into its current orbit. Velikovsky (1895-1979), a psychiatrist by training, did not base his claims on astronomical evidence and scientific inference or argument. Instead, he argued on the basis of ancient cosmological myths from places as disparate as India and China, Greece and Rome, Assyria and Sumer.

Now, you have the right to accept such utter horseshit if you like. I regard that as "your problem."

[uniface]

Somebody has some serious catch-up ball to play.

Not gonna say who.

http://www.thunderbolts.info/velikovsky-ghost.htm

With the first reviews of the book, the publisher Macmillan came under fire from astronomers and scientists. But sales of Worlds in Collision skyrocketed, and it quickly soared to the top of the bestseller lists. Dr. Harlow Shapley, director the Harvard Observatory, branded the book "nonsense and rubbish," but without reading it. A letter from Shapley to Macmillan threatened a boycott of the company's textbook division. The astronomer Fred Whipple threatened to break his relations with the publisher. Under pressure from the scientific community, Macmillan was forced to transfer publishing rights to Doubleday, though Worlds in Collision was already the number one bestseller in the country. Macmillan editor James Putnam, who had been with the company for 25 years and had negotiated the contract for Worlds in Collision, was summarily dismissed.

In the wake of Macmillan's publication of Worlds in Collision, one scientific journal after another denounced Velikovsky's work. The eminent astronomer and textbook author Donald Menzel publicly ridiculed Velikovsky. Astronomer Cecilia-Payne Gaposchkin launched a campaign to discredit Velikovsky, without reading Worlds in Collision. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists produced a series of articles grossly misrepresenting Velikovsky. And Gordon Atwater, curator of the respected Hayden Planetarium, was fired after having proposed in This Week Magazine that Velikovsky's work deserved open-minded discussion.

For many years after publication of Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky was persona non grata on college campuses. He was denied the opportunity to publish articles in scientific journals. When he attempted to respond to critical articles in such journals, they rejected these responses. The attitude of established science was typified by the reactions of astronomers. Michigan astronomer Dean McLaughlin exclaimed, "Lies -- yes lies." In response to a correspondent, astronomer Harold Urey, wrote: "My advice to you is to shut the book and never look at it again in your lifetime."

In discussion with Einstein, Velikovsky predicted that Jupiter would be found to emit radio noises, and he urged Einstein to use his influence to have Jupiter surveyed for radio emission, though Einstein himself disputed Velikovsky's reasoning. But in April 1955 radio noises were discovered from Jupiter, much to the surprise of scientists who had thought Jupiter was too cold and inactive to emit radio waves. That discovery led Einstein to agree to assist in developing other tests of Velikovsky's thesis. But the world's most prominent scientist died only a few weeks later.

Velikovsky expected other discoveries through space exploration. He claimed that the planet Venus would be found to be extremely hot, since in his reconstruction, the planet was "candescent" in historical times. His thesis also implied the likelihood of a massive Venusian atmosphere, residue of its former "cometary" tail. And he claimed that the Earth would be found to have a magnetosphere reaching at least to the moon, because he was convinced that in historical times the Earth exchanged electrical charge with other planetary bodies.

Arrival of the space age was a critical juncture for Velikovsky, as data returned from the Moon, from Mars, and from Venus begin to recast our views of these celestial bodies. In 1959, Dr. Van Allen discovered that the Earth has a magnetosphere. In the early sixties, scientists realized, much to their surprise, that the planet Venus has a surface temperature as high as 900 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead. "The temperature is much higher than anyone would have predicted," wrote Cornell Mayer.

In July 1969, on the eve of the first landing on the Moon, the New York Times invited Velikovsky to summarize what he expected the Apollo missions to find. Velikovsky responded by listing nine "advance claims," including remanent magnetism, a steep thermal gradient, radioactive hot spots, and regular moonquakes. All told, it was a remarkably accurate summation of later findings. But still, the scientific community was silent.

Then, in 1972, at the invitation of the Society of Harvard Engineers and Scientists, Velikovsky returned to the site from which the original boycott was launched. His presentation produced a standing ovation.

http://www.varchive.org/lec/harv.htm

[Minimalist]

This is what you are reduced to? An Argument from Popularity? Check out the sales for the Fifty Shades of Gray series in spite of being utter trash.

And, a quick check on Thunderbolt.info brought me to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Talbott

David N. Talbott (born 1942) is an American author and long-time promoter of neo-Velikovskian ideas. Inspired by Immanuel Velikovsky, he proposes a "Polar Configuration"[1] involving the five planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars, Earth, in order, which formerly orbited the Sun as a linear assembly while it rotated about its barycenter and influenced human mythology.[2]

Hmm....what POSSIBLE bias could he have?

Really, Uni. Using one crank to prop up another is not going to get you far.

[uniface]

Those events either happened or they didn't. And they have implications relevant to this or they don't.

Are you really capable of not attempting to reduce factual discussions to soap operas ?

Your track record says, No.

Really. You continually mock the Weekly World News mentality.

But then you turn around and adopt it.

[E.P. Grondine]

uni, Velikovsky's "hypotheses" flatly contradict physics.
For detailed discussion of "Saturnian" cosmologies, including that of the "Thunderdolts", contact Leroy Ellenberger.

While I do not have time to waste trying to straighten you out on this, he does, and will be glad to take a few minutes to do so.

[Minimalist]

You continually mock the Weekly World News mentality.

Uni, it is not their mentality that I mock. They are making money selling bullshit to fools.

It is the fools I mock.

[uniface]

Velikovsky's "hypotheses" flatly contradict physics.

Then how could he have been right about so much ?

Manned, controlled, heavier-than-air flight flatly contradicted the physics of 1900. As many of the most learned journals in science had been at pains to trumpet from the roof tops.

Glass houses and stones, methinks.