User talk:Tweenk

Welcome

What is going on? World Blogs Clogs Elections The Bar (talk) (talk) (talk) (talk) (hic) Welcome to RationalWiki, Tweenk! Check out our guide for newcomers and our community standards! Tell us how you found RationalWiki here! If you are interested in contributing: Read what our articles are intended to be Check out the to-do list See our help page and Wikipedia's formatting cheatsheet If writing a new article, consider writing up a draft And most importantly: Pull up a goat and have some fun!

Welcome to the Dollhouse! ħuman 01:32, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Peak uranium doesn't say what you argued against in your reversion. ħuman 02:16, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

In that case I don't really know how to word this subject to your satisfaction. Maybe I'll find a different way of wording this later. Please read Talk:Peak uranium#Reverts. --Tweenk (talk) 02:19, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Saw it, thanks. You might try adding a section rather than rewriting the whole article, perhaps? ħuman 02:21, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, thanks for your userpage. As I said above, "welcome". ħuman 02:44, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

JW

Mixing tweaky edits (new headers, the odd sentence fix) with a big new section is really hard to copyedit. And believe me, it needs copyediting. Please try to avoid the second person (you/your) in writing, if you can. Use third person (one, they, etc.). ħuman 04:51, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that using the second person enhances the snarkiness in some cases, which is the reason I've come here in the first place. There has to be some funny in the articles. --Tweenk (talk) 04:58, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

But it reads very poorly, every time I've ever come across it. ħuman 05:01, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about making you jump through so many silly hoops, for some reason it was so much easier to deal with those changes in smaller bytes! Thanks. ħuman 05:14, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

PS, on Tuesday this week some fuckknuckle JW rang my doorbell at 11:30 AM. This is at a building the kids don't even dare Trick or Treat at... I told him I "wasn't particularly religious" while he was busy apologizing for waking me up. Fuckwad. ħuman 05:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I sympathize with your plight. ;) My former religion can be annoying, but there are some good things about it. For example JWs encourage people to discuss their religious beliefs and verify them against the Bible, which is markedly different from the standard Christian fare and might actually nudge people towards atheism or agnosticism. --Tweenk (talk) 05:32, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Sysoppery

Congratulations, you are now a sysop. Here is your instruction manual, now go block Human for being such an ass. -- Nx / talk 07:42, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to hear about your demotion, feel free to practice blocking me or any other sysop just for fun! ħuman 06:07, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Fast reactor

Is up for deletion. Consensus is that unless you (or someone else, but probably you) expand it or write the article on "breeder reactors," it's gone. Letting you know. Blue (is useful) 03:21, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, deleted. In retrospect it's really not very relevant to RW, but I was just lazy and went for the shorter article first. --Tweenk (talk) 15:43, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Environmentalism

Good work. I think RW has been lacking a bit in the environmental department. I've been trying to catalog the most prominent climate deniers. What do you think of thorium power as a possibility? It's being touted either as a "silver bullet" or the latest scheme by the nuclear lobby, depending on who you talk to. I'm not very knowledgeable on the nuclear issue, though the dangers seem to be exaggerated by the hardcore greenies. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 02:07, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thorium power is an interesting case. On one hand, it was proven that thorium breeding is possible way back in the 80s. On the other, I don't think there is enough expertise about the thorium cycle to commercialize it in the next 30 years, unless China or India goes on a massive R&D spree. The main proponents of thorium power, like Kirk Sorensen and Charles Barton, are treading on the edge of woo - they represent it, and specifically the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, as something that awaits to be deployed, which is clearly not the case. They also make some claims about the uranium-plutonium cycle which are poorly justified. The bottom line is that it definitely can work and would give us millions of years' worth of electricity, but there's a lot of work left to do, and it might not be a substantial improvement over the better known uranium-plutonium cycle.

I think the proliferation dangers, the main argument against thorium power mentioned by anti-nuclear groups, are fictional, because any uranium-233 produced will be contaminated by uranium-232, which emits high energy gamma radiation. This makes it nearly impossible to construct a bomb, because any electronic components anywhere near the fissile charge will be destroyed. When it comes to dangers of nuclear power in general, I wrote Arguments against nuclear power, which is a quite extensive refutation of the anti-nuclear movement. I'm open to suggestions for more arguments, better sourcing for existing arguments, and making the article sound a little less militantly pro-nuclear. --Tweenk (talk) 02:43, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, I always wondered why we couldn't just launch the waste into space, though I guess we'd be pretty well fucked if the launch got screwed up. Like I said, I don't know much about nuclear issues. Environmental issues are tough to understand because of the vast amounts of disinfo put out by both the corporate shills and enviro fundies hollering about Frankenfoods. AGW is the main issue I keep up with and that in itself is a pain in the ass, though the deniers seem to be backed into the position of having to falsify data and commit straight-up fraud at this point. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 03:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Тy^Talk. 03:18, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the main problem with the space solution is cost. The waste is rather heavy. Moreover, that might not be what we want, because once we launch the waste into space, we can never get it back. Putting it underground means that we can retrieve it later to extract interesting stuff from it (such as plutonium to start new breeder reactors or precious metals, see wp:Synthesis of precious metals). Here's an article that analyzes the space solution in greater detail, though I don't necessarily agree with the article's suggestion that there's something wrong with underground burial. Analysis of this natural wonder convinces me that the technical part of the problem is easy to solve. The political part of convincing people to accept the solution we decide on is going to be much more difficult. --Tweenk (talk) 03:46, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Since you're the big pro-nukes guy here...

...any reason to worry? P-Foster (talk) 03:48, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

This page doesn't load for me at the moment. I see it's a Reuters story, so this link should contain equivalent information: [1]

It seems that the primary problem was that diesel generators which supply emergency power to cooling pumps at one of the power plants failed. This was solved by sending mobile power generators to the affected site. Some steam had to be vented from the reactors in order to bring the pressure down. At one of the reactors, there was an explosion somewhere in the reactor building, but the containment remained intact. Here's a good no-nonsense report: [2]

So to sum this up, there were a few significant problems, but they are rather minor compared to the general devastation caused by the earthquake. In particular, the explosion at Fukushima Daiichi 1 and CCTV footage of it causes a lot of confusion. Some journalists think it was a reactor core explosion like at Chernobyl, and actually mislead experts into thinking that this is what occurred to get more interesting quotes from them (I saw an example of this on Polish TV). The headlines like this are rather nonsensical, because the only parallels to Chernobyl that can be made are that it is an accident, and that it involves a nuclear power plant. --Tweenk (talk) 19:06, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

How about uranium mining? Would you work in a uranium mine? P-Foster (talk) 05:34, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't make a good miner and there are no uranium mines in my country, so I don't expect to ever work in one. But if you're actually asking: "If you were a miner that has an opportunity to work in an uranium mine, would you work there?" - to this I would answer "probably yes". I wouldn't work there if it was an underground mine without proper ventilation (breathing a lot of radon is not healthy).

Uranium mining can be destructive, polluting and unhealthy to workers, but it can also be relatively benign. Same goes for copper, zinc, nickel, lead and other metals. It all depends on the environmental and safety culture in the country where it's located. We also need to weigh the mining damage against the damage caused by other sources of energy (such as global warming). --Tweenk (talk) 15:47, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Skąd jesteś w Polsce?

Ja chyba niedługo będę tam mieszkał. Pracowałem jako inżynier z jądrową energią kilka lat temu, ale to już nieaktualne: myślę, że nigdy już nie będę w tej dziedzinie. Editor at CP^{mały książe} 21:47, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Warszawa, IV rok studiów chemiczno-informatycznych (MISMaP) na Uniwersytecie Warszawskim. Jeśli o mnie chodzi, to z chęcią pracowałbym w dziedzinie związanej z energią jądrową (niekoniecznie w energetyce), ale nie wiem czy coś z tego wyjdzie. Poczekamy, zobaczymy. --Tweenk (talk) 21:52, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

You are right and I am wrong.

...or, more to the point, you are arguing from science and a particular kind of knowledge that I don't have. Everything in my gut tells me nukes are wrong, and you'll never convince me that spraying a farmer's potato field with depleted uranium shells from an A-10 Warthog is a good public health plan, but I don't know the science and don't have the time to expertize myself up right now. Do what you gotta do. B♭maj7 (talk) Anachronistically anachronistic 18:12, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for not discounting me as someone with ulterior motives. --Tweenk (talk) 18:27, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Nuclear paranoia

Can you get that merge happening? Thanks. B♭maj7 (talk) Anachronistically anachronistic 01:42, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Done. --Tweenk (talk) 02:57, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Institute for Irresponsible Bullshit

Thought you might have fun with this Jeffrey Smith guy and his pet project. Found this debunking, but I figured you'd do a better job eviscerating his Mike Adams-approved nonsense. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:19, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I heard about him. He has some really embarrassing history. Note that "Academics Review" in fact looks like a single-serving site dedicated to debunking only Smith, and its domain is registered via Domains by Proxy, so a corporate interest could be behind it. But then, from my limited verification, the information does check out to other sources. It might just be a case of a project that was founded with wider aims but then failed to attract interest from academics in other disciplines. --Tweenk (talk) 01:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, I did some more research. The guy's book is a veritable Gish Gallop that requires quite a lot of effort to debunk. I started an article in my userspace, but it will eventually require writing about the people he is referencing, such as Irina Ermakova - and there are quite a lot of them. --Tweenk (talk) 03:50, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Discussion on Talk:Cold fusion

Tweenk, thanks for your comments on Talk:Cold fusion. However, You cut up my fairly long comment on that page with interspersed comments, without adding in attribution that would make authorship of what I'd written clear, and it became a very difficult section to follow (and would have been even with attribution added).

This is why normally, on wikis, interspersed comment is deprecated. However, to preserve your comments as they were, instead of moving them to their own section (which is also not very satisfactory, I understand why you'd want to intersperse), I collapsed them, and, in addition, added descriptive section subheaders so that each individual argument could be separately edited.

I hope this is acceptable to you. --Abd (talk) 21:29, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

OK. I thought the indentation made it clear which parts we by you and which ones by me. --Tweenk (talk) 22:36, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

By the way, when I was in high school, I thought I'd be a nuclear physicist. I went to Cal Tech and sat with Richard P. Feynman for freshman and sophomore physics, the years that his famous textbook was prepared from his lectures. Then I got involved with Other Stuff, and only came back to physics when I came across an abusive blacklisting on Wikipedia, protested (ultimately successfully), and then started to read the literature in the field. Starting with what the skeptics had written, but one of the books that influenced me was A Dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects, A Guide for the Perplexed About Cold Fusion, 1995, produced under contract to the Electric Power Research Institute, by the late Nate Hoffman, a skeptic. A real skeptic. He exposed the issues and refused to come to premature conclusions. That book is hard to come by, but I can point you to other sources, if you are actually interested. --Abd (talk) 21:39, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

At the point I don't know whether I'm interested, because one paper I've read kind of made sense and was investigating in the right direction, while the 2010 review's theory section was bordering on the absurd. The claimed production of heat might be real, but I am quite sure it is not coming from D-D fusion or any other nuclear reaction, and is most likely some kind of experimental error, for example incorrect calibration of the calorimeter. --Tweenk (talk) 22:36, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

If you read the 2010 review carefully, the issue at this time is not theory at all. The first issue to be settled is whether or not nuclear reactions are taking place, which can be known by observing markers of such reactions. How they take place is a separate issue, one for physicists to work out, and firm rejection of observed results based on theory is precisely the error that produced the "scientific fiasco of the century" (Huizenga's term -- except that he clearly fell into that error himself; nevertheless, his view was falsifiable, and he noticed, in print, the evidence that it was false, before he disappeared from the scene.)

You've stated the default hypothesis that is asserted by many, as "most likely." To sustain that theory, you need to remain ignorant of the vast experimental evidence. I can walk you through this, if you like. You are making "reasonable assumptions" that turn out to be unreasonable, when controls are considered. While errors can be and are made, some of the people doing this work are world-class experts on calorimetry, professionals, and early data from SRI showed, for example, with excess heat of 5% of input power (which is decent, about the minimum considered to be clearly above noise, but by no means the strongest results found), calorimetry noise of about 0.5%. The flow calorimetry was calibrated carefully, and the excess heat is missing from runs with hydrogen instead of deuterium, even though the cells were in series (same current), and from the same cell with the same apparent conditions. The results show stable calorimetry, the anomaly is correlated with current density (that's commonly found in electrochemical CF). It's a "phenomenon," a true "anomaly," and it was very poorly controlled, i.e., nobody knew how to run these cells so that results were always the same. Except, of course, for zero excess heat, that was pretty easy.

I've seen some pretty clever attempts to explain this, for example, a claim that input power was mismeasured due to "bubble noise," and its effect on a constant-current power supply, and that bubble noise would be greater with deuterium than with hydrogen. (Eh? Maybe, it's not what I'd expect.) That effort was pretty sharp, Dieter Britz (skeptical electrochemist) shot it down, showing that the possible error was below experimental significance, but "bubble noise" also failed to consider much of the experimental data, the theory was based on lack of reporting as to high-frequency noise. The researchers themselves, when asked, affirmed that they had used oscilloscopes to look for that noise, which was missing. They don't report everything in the papers.

Richard Garwin, interviewed by CBS in 2009, said the same thing as you. "They must be making some mistake in measuring the input power." He didn't explain what it could be, and how it could show up in deuterium cells and not in hydrogen ones. And how it could affect gas-loading results (no input power).

However, suppose there is some unknown phenomenon, reproducible, that creates this odd error effect. That's Shanahan's theory,in fact (he suggests unexpected recombination). This alone should suggest devoting major research to the issue. What is this unknown phenomenon that could deceive so many for so long?

But there is a problem. How is calorimetry error creating helium? And not just random helium, below ambient, but helium rising above ambient, and correlated strongly with excess heat, such that Storms could report a "probable value" of 25 +/- 5 MeV for the Q? While there is obviously much work to do to nail this down, the helium correlation demonstrates "nuclear reaction," and validates the calorimetry as being at least roughly correct. Other results also show the presence of nuclear reactions in these cells: there is sound evidence for tritium and other products, but not well-correlated with the excess heat. I.e., these other results are chaotic, indicating reaction levels far below the main reaction that makes helium. But still missing from controls.

But the reaction is quite likely not "d+d -> He-4" for all the obvious reasons. It's something else.

The excess heat from PdD is validated in over 150 peer-reviewed reports, and this is ongoing, plus many conference papers. Confirmation bias? This would indicate, if true, a huge ongoing effort that is simply not being reported, but that explanation fails when experimenters report long series of results (positive and negative, all cells being reported). The earliest worker to show helium correlation was Miles, and Storms reports his work as ultimately involving 33 cells, of which 21 showed excess heat. The 12 cells with no excess heat showed no anomalous helium. Of the 21 cells showing the heat, 18 showed commensurate helium. (Probable calorimetry error was a likely source of one of the 3 anomalies -- stuff happens -- the other two used a different cathode material, face-palm. It is quite possible that there is more than one LENR, in fact, it's somewhat obvious, but the Bayesian analysis done on Miles' work included the 3 cells, as it should). Miles' work has been confirmed, with more accurate measurements. The heat and helium have, at least usually, a common source. What is it?

I've seen Rube Goldberg explanations that satisfy their inventor, but nobody else. They don't match the experimental conditions. I've been studying and discussing this field for more than three years now, and some skeptics will make up anything in order to avoid saying, "Well, maybe there is something I don't understand here."

If there is a potential artifact that is plausible as an explanation for the thousands of cells, involving hundreds of researchers, many highly competent and experienced, showing excess heat, and for correlated measured helium, I'd love to see it. There has been a search for that artifact for over twenty years. Cold fusion researchers are mostly scientists, so they keep looking for it, and Storms has recently published material on the error of basing heat estimates on temperature differentials without factoring for the difference in heat conductivity between protium and deuterium. Not all cold fusion reports are sound. Most of the calorimetry, though, is more sophisticated. --Abd (talk) 16:13, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Tweenk, Thanks for putting up with Abd's shit so we don't have to. TheCheat^{I run on alcohol} 14:49, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

The Noisy Orchestra ^{Oi! Oi! Oi!} 14:51, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• Tweenk, thanks for engaging on the actual content and topic. Because of the existence of quite a few users here who do not want to allow real discussion, as shown by the setting of fast archiving for the bot on Talk:Cold fusion, as well as the placement of a closed discussion archive that made it cumbersome to edit the individual discussions there, and an indef block with IP autoblock, I won't continue the discussion with you, unless it is on, say, user or talk subpages where harassment is less likely. Too much work. Obviously, I'm editing now, but only because I unblocked myself this morning, and RNS has now promoted me to disallow that.
• I made a comment referring to you, on Talk:RationalWiki, in case you want to read it. Good luck with your studies, and watch out for pseudoscepticism, it is a killer of genuine scientific inquiry, and I'm assuming you are interested in real science. Feel free to email me, if you like. I was planning on reviewing what you had written, and taking any real issues to the scientists involved, that has sometimes resulted in re-examination of issues with improved clarity. I have good communication with all these scientists. --Abd (talk) 17:49, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

For your reply here. I have not checked back to where that conversation ran until now and your reply was incredibly informative. So again thanks! TheCheat^{I run on alcohol} 16:23, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

ORMUS

Your ORMUS rewrite was great. I've already replaced the old version with your version. Cheers VOX^HUMANA 02:22, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Did you get my email?

Sent you an email, Tweenk, did you get it? --Abd (talk) 02:34, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I did, but I am rather busy right now and didn't have time to respond until now.

The error about 'palladium electrodes' was not actually substantial - if the effect is real, it should also appear with a palladium anode, which is electrochemically very similar to a platinium anode. Your preferred description of Naturwissenschaften quotes from the journal's marketing text instead of describing its actual content, which was almost exclusively life sciences, until Storms was installed there by a coordinated effort of the cold fusion brigade. --Tweenk (talk) 14:12, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Nobody would use a palladium anode. It would dissolve and plate onto the cathode, thus continually creating new surface on the cathode. That might very well not work. The electrode text was about the actual work, and was thus in error. That someone could use a palladium anode for a short time is irrelevant, and you should know that. Don't you?

I didn't say it was "substantial." It was simply wrong, a sign of writing by someone who didn't know the science. Should be no problem, just correct it!

You have made up the history of Naturwissenschaften. Unless you claim that the overall editor of NW is a member of the "cold fusion brigade," and that Springer-Verlag would consent to the hijacking of what they indeed market as their "flagship multidisciplinary journal" by some fringe contingent? Do you think they are idiots? That they came to be the second largest scientific publisher in the world by being idiots?

That 2010 review was *solicited* by the editor, I saw that come down. What was submitted by Storms was originally a narrow review on helium, I'd helped to edit that. There was no "coordinated effort" on the part of cold fusion researchers, except that they had noticed that the journal was accepting research papers in the field, I think that started around 2004 or so, so they began submitting. Do you think that submitting to a journal that is considering papers and not knee-jerk rejecting them is a "coordinated effort?" I haven't studied the overall patterns of publication, because it's not critical. Maybe I'll do that.

You are correct that the actual content mostly is connected in some way with the life sciences, which probably reflects what is being submitted to them. Because they are multidisciplinary, however, they have access to strong peer review resources in every natural science, they used to be connected with the Max Planck Institute, I don't know exactly what they use now. How is the bulk of the content being life sciences related to the point? They are "multidisciplinary," perhaps with most content relating to the life sciences, or they are "life sciences." I'd say they are defined by what they solicit and review, and the actual content reflects what is submitted to them with adequate quality. The "life sciences" point would only be relevant if they didn't have adequate peer review resources.

Cold fusion is cross-disciplinary. The experimental work is chemistry, generally. The proposed mechanism is nuclear, but not specified much more than that. It produces helium. If you can figure out a non-nuclear mechanism for producing helium, that would be spectacular.

In any case, the pseudoskeptics, totally ignorant, are taking out what you created with the article. They call it "crankery." You don't care, fine with me. --Abd (talk) 15:12, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

"Nobody would use a palladium anode. It would dissolve and plate onto the cathode" - no, a palladium anode will not electrodissolve in pure water or D2O. At most, the surface would oxidize to palladium oxide. You have to add a strong acid or a complexing agent, and D2O is neither.

"Should be no problem, just correct it!" - in case you missed it, the article now talks about a palladium cathode. Why are you bringing this up at all if it's already fixed? Do you feel personally slighted by a minor error remaining in the article? If so, perhaps you feel too personal about the subject and should reconsider your involvement in editing this article.

"Do you think they are idiots?" - no, I think they are academic publishers. They form the most ruthless, extortionate and money-grabbing monopoly in the world. Even Microsoft during its heyday was never so blatant in plundering money from publicly funded institutions. They operate by selling back information that the institutions themselves have produced. Academic publishers care only about money. If there is demand for a cold fusion journal, they will publish one. If there is a substantial financial incentive for exploiting an established journal to launder cold fusion into the world of peer reviewed science, they will do it. Publishers do not care one iota about the quality of science. They just want a few high impact factor journals and dozens of publications nobody reads to sell bundled subscriptions at inflated prices. If the editorial board becomes compromised by cranks, the publisher will only react if it becomes a PR problem for them. See Mohamed El Naschie.

"the pseudoskeptics, totally ignorant, are taking out what you created with the article. They call it "crankery." You don't care, fine with me." - This is a rather transparent attempt at manipulation. The only difference between me and people you call 'pseudoskeptics' is that I can understand most CF papers and see why they are nonsense, and that I noticed that a few papers might not be complete nonsense, but whether they really support CF is an open question. Nevertheless, my current position is the same as theirs, that CF is pseudoscience. The fact that the process does not emit nuclear radiation of any kind (no neutrons, no beta, no gamma - nothing) is already strong evidence that the supposed effect is not nuclear - other kinds of electrically induced fusion, e.g. pyroelectric fusion, do emit nuclear radiation. --Tweenk (talk) 23:17, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

It appears you are correct about a palladium anode. I may have become confused by the behavior of gold, which I understand does dissolve (and plate onto the cathode). The electrolyte is alkaline in the cold fusion work, made so, typically, with LiOD or LiCl.

I corrected the "electrode" error a second time. I'm pretty sure that if Hipocrite had not edited after my correction, the correction would have been reverted again. No, this was just an example of knee-jerk reversion. Not a present error.

The point about academic publishers is that they do have a reputation to maintain. It is irrelevant if they are blood-sucking insects or not. There is no specific economic incentive to "launder" cold fusion, certainly the funding will not be coming from cold fusion researchers, who are mostly underfunded.

Interesting, your point of view, though. It implies that the journal system is useless for validating research. Naturwissenschaften has an editorial board that is far from "dominated by cranks," and you seem to think that the editorial board does the peer review. No, editors determine what to send out for review.

I was referring to the content you had put in the article. It's being hacked up by editors with far less knowledge than you. Apparently you are not concerned. That's okay. You have yet to look at the critical evidence for the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect being nuclear, heat/helium. In any case, never mind. I thought you might be useful for improving the RW article. --Abd (talk) 01:01, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

"this was just an example of knee-jerk reversion" - if you can't interact normally with the community and people start reverting you on sight because of your past pattern of behavior, it's not my problem.

"Interesting, your point of view, though. It implies that the journal system is useless for validating research" - Naturwissenschaften is compromised by having Storms on its editorial board. It's like having a homeopathy salesman on the board of a medical journal and using papers from this journal as evidence for homeopathy - there will always be a conflict of interest and doubt, even if the paper looks sensible (and Storms' review doesn't, especially in the theory section). Show me an article in a journal that doesn't have any CF people on its editorial board, and I might change my mind. The experimental setup is simple enough that no specific CF expertise should be required to understand the experiments and results.

"I thought you might be useful for improving the RW article" - I somehow doubt this is your real intention. --Tweenk (talk) 14:00, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Tweenk, you have an inflated sense of your own understanding. NW was *first* publishing articles on cold fusion, for some years, and only later retained Storms as an expert to prefilter the increasing number of submissions. The review was solicited by the managing editor. You think that cold fusion involves a "simple" set-up, that was a common error. The original work was extremely difficult to replicate, that is acknowledged by all sides. Lots of people have thought it was simple, and failed (including plenty of people who "believed" in it). I've read commentary on this from many experts. You might try reading Beadette, Excess Heat, if you can tolerate a massive, carefully-compiled condemnation of your own pseudoscience. In any case, Storms began as a scientist, at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and remains one, and you are very weird if you think that extensive knowledge of the CF literature, which is his primary qualification, in addition to his training as an electrochemist, is a disqualification for serving as an overall editor. Cold fusion is not pseudoscience, like homeopathy. "Condensed matter nuclear science" is an experimental science with very little established theory. It is much more like chemistry than physics. (Chemists don't care much about theoretical predictions of reaction characteristics, because generally the physics is so complex that it can't be done.)

Storms position has been that there is no acceptable theory of cold fusion, so the theory section reports what has been presented. There have been other reviews. Storms now has his own theory, but he is not a theoretical physicist, and the cold fusion that he is presenting is a phenomenon observed with the tools of chemistry. Well-known tools, like calorimetry. I see people who are unfamiliar with the issues involved in cold fusion make major mistakes all the time. They literally misread the evidence, and I could demonstrate that with examples, but it would be wasted effort.

Knee-jerk rejection is typical of pseudoskepticism, not real skepticism, and you are entirely too sure of your own opinions to be a real skeptic. I'm wasting my time here, you've made that plain. So bye.

Oh, as to your doubts about my real intention, go fuck yourself. I know my intention. You don't. That is a classic conversation-killer, probably what you want. --Abd (talk) 19:49, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Question for ya.

This is a longshot, but I see you're interested in the topic. Maybe 15 years ago, I saw a Discovery Channel program that described, over the course of I think an hour, the dropping of the first nuke on Hiroshima. What was interesting and unique about it was that it followed a millisecond-by-millisecond chronology, spending a considerable amount of time explaining at each progressive stage what was happening both at a macro and a sub-atomic level. I'd love to see it again, but I can't find any other info on it. Does this ring a bell for you? OnTheInternetNobodyKnowsYou'reAGod (talk) 19:26, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately no, I don't think I ever saw this one... Youtube has some fragments of a BCC documentary, but it focuses more on the human impacts rather than what was happening during the explosion, e.g. this one. --Tweenk (talk) 20:48, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Quote template thingie

It won't let you click on the reference thingies in the quote template you added. E.g., you can't click on the [1] here. --Andy^{not Schlafly} 20:31, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes you can, but it's a very subtle issue to to with the line-height setting on the quote mark itself. I assume this is because Tweenk's realignment happens to put the ref tag right under the quote mark.^bomination 20:35, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

It might require cquote to be done from scratch with pure CSS positioning. ^sshole 20:37, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh I see now; you just have to click on the very bottom of the bracket. --Andy^{not Schlafly} 20:56, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

The issue was caused by the quote marks being above the reflink in the z-order and obscuring it. I added z-index attributes on the quotes and the origin line; it should be fixed now. Thatnks for spotting this.

I initially tried doing this with pure CSS positioning, but couldn't get it right. Either the quote box would expand to full width of the page regardless of the length of the quote, or the origin would be incorrectly aligned. A hybrid approach that uses a table to correctly align the text and CSS positioning to place the quotes seems to work best. --Tweenk (talk) 23:18, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Benjamin K. Sovacool

Sovacool has contact the RWF several times complaining about his article being libellous and threatening legal action. I have gently attempted to direct him to post his concerns on the talk page, or to send me the post and I can do it on his behalf. It would be appreciated if you could 1) monitor the article/talk page for when/if he comes by and take an honest look at his complaints (some seem valid, some seem a matter of opinion, some are invalid, etc.) 2) do a review of the content all ready posted looking for anything amiss. Thanks for all your hard work, its appreciated. Tmtoulouse (talk) 15:56, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I removed some unnecessary adjectives and slightly changed his characterization in the lead. I can't see anything 'libellous' in the article as it stands now, unless he considers criticism of his work to be libel. --Tweenk (talk) 18:42, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

The lack of anything libelous is why he was directed to discuss content here. Some of it is biographical stuff, for example he says that calling him a lawyer is wrong because he does not have a law degree nor practice law. That kind of stuff can be tweaked assuming he bothers to give us the details. Tmtoulouse (talk) 19:44, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Tweenk, just getting around to this. Yes, your initial posting was libelous since you called me a lawyer when I am in fact not one (this gets into all sorts of tricky questions about representing oneself as an attorney when one isn't). For the other stuff, I think it's time we had an honest debate about assumptions and ideas. I realize the tone of RW is meant to be sarcastic, but I think you cross the line in multiple places. Also, many of the "errors" you identify aren't actually errors, but different assumptions, and you commit many of the same errors in a few of your arguments. So rather than rant and rave at each other, let's discuss, and let's make my RW page fair. There are legitimate issues with some of my work, but there are also legitimate strengths. ^{— Unsigned, by: Sovacool / talk / contribs 2013-06-24T19:20:34‎}

PS - since I'm new to RW, why don't we continue this over email. My address is sovacool@vt.edu. And since you know who I am, why don't you tell me who you are. Much better to interact as real people rather than anonymous avatars. ^{— Unsigned, by: Sovacool / talk / contribs 2013-06-24T19:25:16‎}

IT'S A TRAP! Hipocrite (talk) 19:51, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

@Sovacool: I sent you an e-mail. --Tweenk (talk) 19:35, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Hey - You're a nuke geek, maybe you can help me.

Sometime in the mid-1990s, I watched, probably on the Discovery Channel, a documentary on how nuclear weapons work. What made this one special is that it used a framework of a millisecond by millisecond breakdown of what happens when a nuke goes off, basically stretching down that crucial few seconds out to an hour. I've looked in vain for years, even wrote an unreplied-to e-mail to the network. does this ring any belles for you? I'd love to see it again. Did he doubt/Or did he try? 19:38, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Nothing comes to mind, sorry. I saw something on Youtube which had this kind of breakdown of the critical moments of explosion, but it was just a few minutes of a longer documentary about the Manhattan Project. --Tweenk (talk) 21:16, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Did he doubt/Or did he try? 21:23, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Polish diversity

Hey I saw you put Poland as "one of the least ethnically and racially diverse in the world." According to Alberto et al.'s paper on fractionalization, Poland scores a 0.1183 on their ethnic diversity index which is relatively low but not one of the absolute lowest (Sweden, Italy, Iceland, and Japan are significantly lower and a number of other countries such as the UK and Germany are roughly comparable). It's not a big deal and you aren't really wrong I suppose, I was just wondering about your source. --Cephalophore (talk) 21:03, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Original research, I guess, but it seems that my guess was right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level

The data in your paper is very old, in many cases over 20 years. I am certain that the diversity in many European countries has increased a lot since those dates due to immigration, while in Poland it didn't change much. --Tweenk (talk) 23:12, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Enlighten me.

You undid my edit on Poland. Enlighten me how I am wrong. I seriously want to know. Could be possible there's plenty of bullshit in my head - if that is so, I want to know. Loc (talk) 13:30, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Look at Talk:Poland, there is a link which indicates the claim was either incorrect or highly subjective. --Tweenk (talk) 13:45, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Your point seems pretty reasonable and I realize that far-right propaganda is sometimes as stupid and ridiculous as the one of those who are at charge (especially the piece about homosexuals make me cringe). Still, it's pretty hard to distinguish truth from deliberatery made lies. That's the whole point of politics, I guess. Loc (talk) 01:29, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Awesome Award

🧠Rationalwiki

Awesome Award

for Tweenk

Reason: being awesome

Thanks for the FAQ.

ClickerClock (talk) 08:25, 29 September 2017 (UTC)